by Jon Lackman | 1 May 2006 | Baroque/Neoclassical, Books
Martin Warnke’s new book on Velázquez elaborates his conception of the artist as a paragon of artistic freedom. A riposte to Carl Justi’s and José López-Rey’s version of biographical art history, this book takes multiple approaches, tackling the economic decline of the Spanish court; jester and dwarf depiction as an anti-courtly impulse and a lesson on the unpredictability of nature; Rubens’ influence on Velázquez’s color; the artist’s experience of Rome as a liberation from the routines of the Spanish court; and the artist’s eventual renunciation of painting as a triumphal going-out in style rather than a clichéd melancholy decline (Andreas Beyer, Die Zeit). Warnke’s takes on the Hilanderas and Meninas best demonstrate the sophistication of his semi-biographical approach, writes Klaus Hammer, in Berliner Literaturkritik.
