Spanish school of the late nineteenth century. Follower of Diego Velázquez.

Spanish school of the late nineteenth century. Follower of DIEGO VELÁZQUEZ (Seville, 1599 - Madrid, 1660).
"Menipo".
Oil on canvas.
Measurements: 38 x 23 cm; 45,50 x 30 cm (frame).
This work reproduces with astonishing fidelity Velázquez's original of the same title, in which the author has learned the lessons of the Sevillian master both formally and expressively. According to the Prado Museum itself, the art gallery where the original canvas is housed, "Aesop and Menippus are mentioned for the first time in the inventory made in 1701-1703 of the Torre de la Parada, which housed an extensive cycle of mythological paintings by Rubens and his assistants, and some portraits by Velázquez depicting jesters and members of the royal family dressed as hunters, etc. We mention Democritus and Heraclitus, painted by Rubens, whose height is very similar to that of Velázquez's paintings, although their width is somewhat smaller. They were probably interrelated and were painted in a similar period, around 1638. The comparison with Rubens' philosophers is very interesting to understand Velázquez's personality. The characters in the former, splendid, are dressed in old-fashioned clothes and are seated in front of a rocky landscape, an environment frequently used for the pictorial description of hermits and penitents. Their feet are bare, and one is laughing and the other weeping. Their body build is absolutely Rubenesque, that is to say, robust and muscular, and their gestures conform to solidly established codes of expression. Velázquez places his sitters in an interior setting, their clothes and shoes are those that would be worn by any beggar in any Spanish city, and a realistic approach to the faces is evident. They are placed in space in the same way as many of his portraits, and, although there are plenty of objects that allow a symbolic reading, the painter plays with the limits between portrait and fiction".