Velasquez [antikvár]

As Ortega y Gasset wrote, Velasquez starts from a new conception of painting. The idea he has of his art is part of the movement of emancipation, which in the middle of the xviith century was to lay down one of the essential principles of modern art ; the art of seizing in an experimental way the outside world as it really is. Indeed, up to that time painters had made use of reality in order to beautify or to ideahze it. In fact what we call classicism rested on the conviction that the objects of nature are merely the imperfect appearances of an idea. In consequence, to get as close as possible to ideal perfection was the artist's supreme ambition. Faithful to these principles, both the humanism and the art of the Renaissance had followed no other path. Velasquez made an attack on this type of aesthetics. As a painter, Velasquez recognized only the visual world—the universe of things that existed. He has no use for imaginary essentials. For him only the world he saw mattered, and he was to become through his art both its eye-witness and saviour. That is why he quietly painted what appeared before