Artwork · 17th century · Velázquez

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Juan de Pareja (ca. 1608–1670)

Velázquez1650Oil on canvas81.3 × 69.9 cm

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At a glance

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A man with thick dark curls and a white collar turns his body away but looks straight back at us.
Diego Velázquez painted him, Juan de Pareja, who worked in his studio, in oil on canvas in Rome in 1650.
At the time, Pareja was enslaved by Velázquez. In the same year this portrait was made, he was promised his freedom.

Reading the picture

4 places to look closer

Tap a number on the painting to jump to its note, or a close-up to see that spot in the whole picture.

Start with the eyes. Each one has a tiny white dot of light, so they look wet and alive. A thicker touch of bright paint sits in the middle of the forehead. His head is lifted slightly, and his gaze is steady and proud.
Zoom in on the white collar. Up close there is no lace pattern at all, only gray and white paint scrubbed on roughly. The edge is made of short, broken dabs, so it looks ragged. Step back, and those same strokes turn into thin, crisp fabric.
Look at the hand at the lower right. The fingers curl and slip halfway into the folds of the dark cloak. Light catches only the back of the hand. The fingertips vanish into shadow, and a few small bright dabs sit on the knuckles.
Drop down to the sleeve at the lower left. On the near-black cloth, a single streak of white has been swept across. The stroke is so quick you can't quite say what it shows. With a few marks like this, Velázquez makes light flicker inside dark clothing.

When it was painted

Rome, 1650. Velázquez was fifty, court painter to King Philip IV of Spain, and far from home. He had left Spain in 1649 on his second trip to Italy, sent to buy paintings and ancient sculpture for the royal palace. Beside him was his studio assistant, Juan de Pareja. Born in Antequera in southern Spain, Pareja was at that moment enslaved by the painter he worked for.

A much bigger job was waiting in Rome: a portrait of Pope Innocent X. According to the early biographer Antonio Palomino, Velázquez painted Pareja first, to get his hand in before facing the pope. Palomino credits the story to Andreas Schmidt, a Flemish painter who had been in Rome that year.

Palomino tells one more story. When the portrait was done, Velázquez had Pareja himself carry it to some friends. They looked from the canvas to the man and back again, not sure which one to talk to. And when the picture was shown outside the Pantheon, Palomino says, painters from many countries praised it.

That November, in Rome, Velázquez signed a paper freeing Pareja, to take effect four years later. Pareja went on to work as a painter. In his Calling of Saint Matthew, painted in 1661 and now in the Prado in Madrid, he put himself at the far left, holding a slip of paper.

The portrait later went to England and stayed with the family of the Earls of Radnor for more than 150 years. At Christie's in London in 1970 it sold for £2,310,000, the first painting to pass a million pounds at auction. The Met acquired it the following year, and in 2023 the museum staged an exhibition devoted to Pareja's own work.

Look again at his eyes. This was supposedly a warm-up, yet those two tiny white points of light hold us in place. A man months away from a promise of freedom is still looking straight back at us.

The painter

Velázquez

1599–1660

When painting this, the artist was about 51 years old

All paintings by Velázquez →

More by the same painter

The Supper at Emmaus1622–23

Philip IV (1605–1665), King of Spainprobably 1624

Hidden stories in this painting

The Day a Man Stood Beside His Own PortraitIn Rome in 1650, Velázquez painted Juan de Pareja, the enslaved man who worked in his studio. Pareja later became a painter himself.

Questions to think about

Look for itWhat are the three brightest spots in this painting?
Why?Why do you think Velázquez painted an enslaved man from his own workshop looking so dignified and self-assured?
What about you?What would it take, in our workplaces today, to make sure the people who help us are seen and credited by name?

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