Desperately seeking Diego: my search for Velázquez on the streets of Seville

He started with streetsellers and rose to paint the king. But what made Diego Velázquez such a compassionate, yet unflinching painter? Jonathan Jones searches for clues in the place of his birth

It’s a Saturday evening in Seville and locals are flocking out of tapas bars into churches. I follow them. In front of a magnificent golden altar in one baroque church, a huge crowd is gathering for mass. I admire a float laden with candles and a statue of the Virgin Mary, ready to be pulled through the streets, past crowds of hooded penitents in the city’s famous Holy Week processions.

When I look more carefully at Mary’s painted face, I notice how lifelike it is and immediately feel closer to the artist I have come to Seville in search of: Diego Velázquez, the greatest painter of reality who ever lived. A major exhibition about the artist, who lived from 1599 to 1660, opens at the Grand Palais in Paris today. But instead of queuing up to revere his art, I want to walk in the footsteps of Velázquez himself, to stand where he stood and feel what he felt.

Continue reading...