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Not-So-Innocent
Portrait of Pope Innocent X: By Diego Velazquez, circa 1650
During a conversation with Winterbourne on page 55, Winterbourne's friend references Diego Velazquez's famous portrait of Pope Innocent X. Velazquez, a Spanish artist, painted during the Baroque movement of the 17th century. His work later inspired impressionists and realists alike such as Picasso and Manet, the latter of which deemed Velazquez the “painter of painters”.
Born into a religious Sevillian household, Velazquez showed early artistic potential and honed his craft under artists and teachers Fransisco de Herrera and Francisco Pacheco. He later married Pacheco’s daughter and fathered two children.
Velazquez is most notably regarded for his religious-themed artwork and his portraiture. He painted highly esteemed figures such as poet Luis de Gongora y Argote and King Philip IV, who commissioned Velazquez to be the official portraitist of the Spanish royal family in the mid 1600s. During Velazquez’s trip to Italy in 1650, (he had previously been painting in Madrid), he painted the famous portrait of Pope Innocent X. Despite the Pope’s harsh, condemning expression achieved by Velazquez’s manera abreviada (bold brush stroke style), the painting was widely admired by Italians, Spaniards, and the Pope himself. Today, the portrait of Pope Innocent hangs in the Doria Pamphilj Gallery in Rome, Italy. The Metropolitan Museum of Art houses a smaller reproduction of the portrait.
In addition to his portraits, Velazquez’s famous works include La Venus del espejo, Cruz Roga, Las Meninas (the Spanish royal daughters), Cristo Crucificado, and Old Woman Frying Eggs (my personal favorite).
I find it interesting that Henry James references the portrait of a powerful religious figure, no less a Pope named “Innocent X”, in Daisy Miller. Throughout the travel novel, James raises the question: is Daisy innocent and naïve, or manipulative and selfish? Are “nice” young ladies “frightful, fearful flirts”? Winterbourne’s friend recounts that Daisy spent a delightful afternoon with her Italian lover Mr. Giovanelli “in the secluded nook in which the great papal portrait [was] enshrined” (55). Ironic, no?
To view the complete works of Velazquez: http://www.diegovelazquez.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diego_Vel%C3%A1zquez#Portraiture
A work of art
Thanks for calling this detail to my attention. I'd really missed it completely. But why not quote the key passage? "And in the same cabinet, by the way, I enjoyed sight of an image of a different kind; that little American who's so much more a work of nature than of art and whom you pointed out to me last week." This raises the same question about Daisy that Winterbourne struggles with and that you point to in the post—is she a work of nature (natural & innocent) or a work of art (conniving)? I wonder if James has other reasons for introducing this painting and pope? BTW, rather than providing the URLs, just embed the links in your text, perhaps behind a parenthetical reference to wikipedia.