ABSTRACT
Velazquez is not only the most important of the Spanish painters of the Golden Age, but also the one about whom authors are best informed; various published literary sources—the most exhaustive concerning any Spanish seventeenth-century painter—and a good quantity of available archival documentation have provided the authors with a large number of more or less trustworthy facts about the man and his work. Velazquez was born in Seville in 1599, first child in a family of modest means but some claims to nobility. His father was of Portuguese origin, and his mother, whose maiden name he would adopt for common use, was Sevillian. His artistic education began at the end of 1610, when his father placed him under Francisco Pacheco's tutelage as an apprentice.
