Diego Velasquez
Diego Velasquez, (1599-1660). Spanish painter. After training under Francisco de Herrera the Elder, he set up his own studio at the age of 19. In 1623 he became court painter to Philip IV and painted many portraits of the king. A trip to Rome in 1648 produced a portrait of Pope Innocent X and Velasquez’s only nude, the Rokeby Venus. One of his best-known and most original paintings is The Maids of Honour (1656), a study of the infanta with her maids and dwarfs.
