Juan de Pareja

Velázquez painted this portrait in Rome in 1650, while he was travelling in Italy buying pictures for Philip IV, and that March it was shown at the Pantheon among the works he had brought with him; by the account of his biographer Palomino the painters of many nations agreed that the rest of the exhibition was art but this one alone was truth. The sitter, Juan de Pareja, was a man of African descent born in Andalusia, then enslaved in Velázquez’s workshop and a painter in his own right; the artist freed him in 1654. Painted as a study in preparation for the official portrait of Pope Innocent X, it is the earliest known portrait of a Spaniard of Moorish descent. Bought at auction in 1970 for a then-record price, it was acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1971 and remains one of the most admired portraits in the collection.