Diego de Silva y Velázquez (Seville, 1599 – Madrid, 1660) is undoubtedly one of the greatest geniuses of artistic painting, his palette being one of the richest and most powerful in our Western pictorial panorama. He also had one of the most acute, critical and human point of view on the cultural context and the world around him.
Through Velázquez’s art we can travel through the society of his time, through the culture of his time, through the aesthetics of his time, through the economy and politics of his time: through Velázquez’s work we can understand the world in which that work is based, the world that is represented in his paintings and we can also get a better chance to understand the historical keys and the soul of that world.
With this lecture we will approach the aesthetic, creative and cultural discourse of Diego Velázquez in relation to the field of Mythology, which is one of the keys and one of the pillars of Western Culture, since talking about mythology is talking about the Greco-Latin roots of Western Culture and History, all of which would find its place in the work of Velázquez, who presents us with a panoply of images and representations of a mythological past that -and the painter knows this very well- is part of our cultural and historical European Heritage. We shall try to get closer to the keys of classical culture as they appear interpreted, expressed, understood and exposed in this work and in this way we shall get closer to classical mythology, gods, goddesses, demigods and demigoddesses, heroes and their stories, their adventures, misadventures as presented to us by this master of light, color and volumen, Velázquez.
Biography
PhD in History and archaeologist. Analyst and manager of cultural heritage. He is the author (as sole author, co-author or scientific coordinator) of 43 books, 250 scientific articles and more than a thousand informative articles on History and Heritage.
Professor in the Masters of Historical and Archaeological Heritage and Tourism and the Aula de Mayores of the University of Cádiz, he has taught as a visiting professor in various Spanish and foreign universities, participating in international research projects in Morocco, Italy and Portugal.
