Sunday, June 21, 2015

Diego Velazquez and his horses


Salve,
some years ago I lived in Madrid , and there my favorite place to visit was El Museo del Prado with the adjacent parque del Retiro, probably the largest collection of the European XVI-XVIII century paintings.( I also liked the parque del Oeste in Moncloa).
Diego Velazquez, native son of the Imperial, Habsburg Spain,  is one of the stars of that museum, and I frequently stood in front of his canvasses looking and admiring...
Nowadays, with the Internet and Wikipedia, and Google etc, we can view the art on our computers et al, and I would like to take this opportunity to 'corral' some of the horses our esteemed Sevilla-born don Diego created with his brushes on canvass.
Mind you, Andalucia was the land of good horses in the Hapsburg Spain, and  in the not-so-distant Cordoba there was the most famous Royal Horse Stud that had been breeding the pure Spanish horses since 1570s.
Perhaps we can presume that the horses here are the Baroque steeds, but there are some interesting aspects of these mounts, and in some further entries I should explore them. For now I would like to point to you the size of these royal and aristocratic mounts - they look about 15 hands, or so.
Kings
  Felipe III

Felipe IV


Queens
Isabel
 Margaret 

royal child - Baltasar Carlos de Austria


officials -
Gaspar de Guzman, conde de Olivares


Cardinal-Infante Fernando

enjoy

1 comment:

Dario T. W. said...

http://www.academia.edu/11430759/The_Politics_of_Painting_Vel%C3%A1zquez_and_Diplomacy_in_the_Court_of_Felipe_IV