ARTES Nigel Glendinning Lecture: Problems in Velázquez’s portraiture

This lecture will consider a range of problems associated with the portraiture of Diego Velázquez, which have emerged while the speaker has been writing a book-length study of the subject. Specific portraits will be used to exemplify problems of typology and chronology; naming and interpretation; and controversies around attributions and the pressure to expand the Velázquez canon. The discussion will also take into account methodological questions which have helped and hindered in framing these problems. People sometimes wonder whether there is anything left to say about the great names in the history of art – evidently, there is.