Detail of Juan de Pareja by Velazquez in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, February 2014

Juan de Pareja (born about 1610, died 1670)

Velázquez (Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez)
(Spanish, Seville 1599–1660 Madrid)

Date: 1650

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 32 x 27 1/2 in. (81.3 x 69.9 cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: Purchase, Fletcher and Rogers Funds, and Bequest of Miss Adelaide Milton de Groot (1876–1967), by exchange, supplemented by gifts from friends of the Museum, 1971

Accession Number: 1971.86

Gallery Label:

This extraordinary portrait depicts Velázquez’s slave of Moorish descent, who served as an assistant in his workshop. Painted in Rome, it was displayed publicly beneath the portico of the Pantheon in March 1650. Velázquez clearly intended to impress his Italian colleagues with his unique artistry. Indeed we are told that the picture "gained such universal applause that in the opinion of all the painters of the different nations everything else seemed like painting but this alone like truth". Juan de Pareja became a painter in his own right and was freed by Velázquez in 1654.

Text from: www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/437869