The Rokeby Venus by Velázquez in Tiff cats, Madrid, 1936 , Eduardo Mendoza:
English painters of the time knew the art of the nude, but in Spain at the counter, only applied to the male anatomy: scenes of martyrdom and countless crucifixions and descents. In this sense, as in many others, Velazquez had a privileged location as a courtier received private commissions and was able to exercise his art in all genres, including mythology: The Triumph of Bacchus, The Forge of Vulcan and a few others. Among them, Venus and Cupid, who is now in the National Gallery in London and is the first nude in English painting and for a long time alone.
In the decade from 1640 to 1650, Velazquez had reached the height of his fame, "he continued, trying to print to a neutral voice, and irrespective of his duties as court painter, received and accepted orders from major personalities of the nobility and clergy. One such customer was Don Gaspar Gómez de Haro, son of the Marquis del Carpio, who succeeded the Count Duke of Olivares as a favorite of Philip IV.
Don Gaspar was a very powerful man and a passionate art collector, and Velázquez commissioned a painting of mythological: a nude Venus in the manner of Titian. Despite the unusual charge, the company undertook Velázquez with evident relish, judging by the result. When the table was ready, Don Gaspar wisely kept it in his palace and nobody saw it until many years later, when all the protagonists of this story had already died.
Don Gaspar Gómez de Haro was not only an art connoisseur, but a man of licentious. His personality was closer Don Juan Tenorio of San Juan de la Cruz, to say the least. Perhaps this weakness led him to commission a painting Velázquez incompatible with the morals of his time. In any case, the question is this: Who is the woman in the picture? Did you use either a model Velázquez, possibly a prostitute, to represent Venus, or the model was, as some say, one of the mistresses of Don Gaspar, whose forms he wanted to perpetuate on the web? What if, as some have suggested, the woman's portrait is none other than his own wife of Don Gaspar? Proponents of this view argue, by way of proof, that the features of the Venus of the table, reflected in the mirror held by Cupid, were deliberately obscured by the artist to avoid identification, unnecessary thing it had been a simple prostitute.
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