Diego Velázquez is widely regarded as one of the greatest painters in Western art history, having influenced generations of artists across centuries. French director Stéphane Sorlat's new documentary film essay "The Secret of Velázquez" attempts to trace the footsteps of the Spanish Baroque master, but the investigation raises more questions than it answers about the enigmatic artist.
Velázquez served as a trailblazer for numerous great painters throughout history. Major artists from Francisco de Goya and Gustave Courbet to Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí, Francis Bacon, and even Julian Schnabel were all, to varying degrees, artistic descendants of Velázquez. As Édouard Manet famously declared, "Velázquez is the painter of painters." The Spanish Baroque master didn't simply paint pictures; he painted the craft of painting itself, capturing both the painted subject and the painter's models in a revolutionary way. Unlike any other artist, he made painting a self-reflective subject of his art.
This perspective is shared by many experts featured in Sorlat's film essay. The French director interviewed no fewer than 17 conversation partners about Velázquez, creating a densely woven network of references and voices from art historians, curators, art critics, theater and film directors, artists, and a restorer. This approach gives the documentary an almost baroque richness, though it doesn't make it easy for viewers to grasp the essence of the great 17th-century Spanish painter.
The film briefly outlines the stages of Velázquez's career: his training as a painter in Seville, his appointment to the royal court in Madrid, his trips to Italy, and his rise to become a celebrated court portraitist. While the documentary showcases his major works, it barely explains them in depth, requiring viewers to have considerable prior knowledge of art history.
The documentary fails to clearly explain why Picasso was so obsessed with the famous painting "Las Meninas" that he attempted to deconstruct it in countless interpretations. One director in the film claims that "Velázquez was more modern than Picasso." A curator explains that in "Las Meninas," Velázquez portrayed himself at work, depicting the profession of court painter in all its universality.
Through several examples, the film demonstrates that Velázquez knew how to tell visual stories in completely new ways. In "Venus with a Mirror" (also known as "The Rokeby Venus"), he arranged a female nude in rear view so that the exposed goddess was no longer an object for the viewer but became the subject of her own contemplation in the mirror's reflection. The Spanish master also knew how to make humanity visible, as evidenced in the film through his dignified portraits of court jesters.
The director conjures the phenomenon of Velázquez through numerous quotes from great artists, for whom the Spanish master meant vastly different things. Manet discovered the empty background technique in Velázquez's work and effectively employed this compositional device in his own art, as demonstrated by his paintings of "The Absinthe Drinker" and "The Fifer."
For French Impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir, there was supposedly nothing more beautiful than Velázquez's painting. "It makes you lose the desire to paint," he once said. American Impressionist Mary Cassatt was convinced that "you learn to paint at the Prado, so beautiful and simple is Velázquez's gesture." Francis Bacon, who painted around 45 variations of Velázquez's portrait of Pope Innocent X, believed that "the color in Velázquez is more beautiful than in Claude Monet."
Julian Schnabel offers perhaps the most poetic assessment: "The viewer and the subject of the painting disappear and merge into something sublime," reads his admiring statement about Velázquez. However, despite all these testimonials and expert analyses, the genius of the Spanish master remains a mystery even after watching this film.
"The Secret of Velázquez" is currently playing in theaters, offering viewers a chance to explore the enduring influence of one of history's most important painters, even if definitive answers about his artistic genius remain elusive.
