Spanish school of the seventeenth century. Follower of DIEGO DE VELÁZQUEZ (Seville, 1599 - Madrid,...

Spanish school of the seventeenth century. Follower of DIEGO DE VELÁZQUEZ (Seville, 1599 - Madrid, 1660). "Portrait of Pope Innocent X". Oil on canvas. Relined.

Spanish school of the seventeenth century. Follower of DIEGO DE VELÁZQUEZ (Seville, 1599 - Madrid, 1660).
"Portrait of Pope Innocent X".
Oil on canvas. Relined.
Size: 59 x 47 cm.
Velázquez portrayed Innocent X between early 1649 and mid 1651, during the artist's second trip to Italy. From the original portrait preserved in Rome derive several versions of disputed authorship, scattered in several countries. As in the present work, all of them are of smaller format, with the personage reduced to a bust, omitting his hands and the armchair visible in the original painting. Velázquez's biographers mention that the artist returned from Rome to Madrid with a replica of the portrait, which in the opinion of many experts must be the copy kept at Apsley House, London (Wellington Museum). This work was included (catalogued as autograph) in the exhibition Velázquez and the family of Philip IV held at the Museo del Prado in 2013-14. Another copy, also in a reduced format, is preserved in the National Gallery in Washington; it is one of the paintings that the Hermitage Museum agreed to sell in the 1930s to obtain foreign currency, and which ended up cementing the museum in Washington. It has sometimes been considered to be the replica that Velázquez brought back from Italy, but recent reviews tend to give primacy to the London version, so the Washington version has a better chance of being an alien copy. Another copy, considered a workshop product, is preserved in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.