I came, I saw, I Prado´d

The main reason for coming to Madrid/Spain was for the Prado museum. I´m a huge Velazquez fan and they have 60% of his work here. Once I got in, made a b-line for his stuff and it was brilliant! It was also surreal having written essays on this guy to finally see his work in the flesh.

For those who don´t know, Velazquez was around 1599-1660 as the court painter for the Spanish King Philip IV. Basically meant that he had free raine to do what he liked so his style could develop as he didn´t have to worry about where money was coming from (although Spain was fighting wars around this time and his wages were some times 2 years behind).

Thus towards the end of his career, he would paint with his brush at the end of a meter long stick. Thus it would give an impressionistic effect to the work, only 200 years before the Impressionists would make it big in the later part of the 19th century (around this time they were also ´discovering´ Velazquez´s work as it had been under lock and key in the royal collection, out of public view for about 150 years).