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| Diego Velázquez The Three Musicians ca. 1618 oil on canvas Gemäldegalerie, Berlin |
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| Diego Velázquez Adoration of the Magi 1619 oil on canvas Museo del Prado, Madrid |
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| Diego Velázquez Head of an Apostle ca. 1619-20 oil on canvas Museo del Prado, Madrid |
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| Diego Velázquez Portrait of painter Francisco Pacheco ca. 1620 oil on canvas Museo del Prado, Madrid |
"Pacheco's house was a gilded cage of art, the academy and school for the greatest minds of Seville. And thus Diego Velázquez lived contentedly, practicing incessantly his drawing, the basic elements of painting and the main gate of art. . . . Velázquez rivaled Caravaggio for boldness in painting and equaled Pacheco in matters philosophical. He admired the former's taste and his keen painterly instincts, and chose the latter for master because of his erudition and experience. He was also inspired by Italian paintings by Pomarancio, Baglione, Lanfranco, Ribera, Guido Reni and others that had been brought to Seville. But what most excited him were the works of Luis Tristán, a painter of Toledo and disciple of El Greco, with whom he shared a lively imagination and a taste for the unusual. For this reason he proclaimed himself a follower of Tristán and abandoned the example of his teacher Pacheco, whose manner, as Velázquez realized right from the start, was too bland and pretentious, however learned, to suit his temperament. Velázquez was called a second Caravaggio because he always had his eye on nature and imitated it so skillfully. For his portraits he imitated those of Dominico Greco, which, in Velázquez's opinion, could never be praised highly enough. And how right he was, for the portraits have none of the delirium of his last works. We can define El Greco's art by saying that what he did well none did better, and that what he did badly none did worse."
– Antonio Palomino de Castro, from El museo pictórico y escala óptica (1724), translated by Jonathan Brown in Italian and Spanish Art, 1600-1750: Sources and Documents (Northwestern University Press, 1992)
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| Diego Velázquez Venerable Mother Jerónima de la Fuente 1620 oil on canvas Museo del Prado, Madrid |
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| Diego Velázquez Portrait of poet Luis de Góngora y Argote 1622 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Diego Velázquez Supper at Emmaus 1622-23 oil on canvas Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Diego Velázquez Waterseller of Seville 1623 oil on canvas private collection |
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| Diego Velázquez Portrait of Juan Velázquez (possibly) ca. 1623 oil on canvas Museo del Prado, Madrid |
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| Diego Velázquez Portrait of Philip IV 1626-28 oil on canvas Museo del Prado, Madrid |
"In 1627 Peter Paul Rubens (that monstrously talented, skilled, and fortunate man) came to Spain as the Ambassador Extraordinary of the King of England in order to arrange a peace with Spain. As Pacheco says, he had very little to do with the local painters, but he struck up a close friendship with Velázquez, with whom he had previously corresponded, and praised his works. Together they went to The Escorial to see the famous monastery of San Lorenzo. They took great delight in admiring its points of interest and especially the paintings by Europe's great masters. These stimulated Velázquez's long-standing desire to go to Italy to see, contemplate and study those eminent paintings and statues that are the flaming torch of art and worthy to be imitated."
– Antonio Palomino de Castro, from El museo pictórico y escala óptica (1724), translated by Jonathan Brown in Italian and Spanish Art, 1600-1750: Sources and Documents (Northwestern University Press, 1992)
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| Diego Velázquez Triumph of Bacchus 1628-29 oil on canvas Museo del Prado, Madrid |
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| Diego Velázquez Portrait of a Lady ca. 1630 oil on canvas Gemäldegalerie, Berlin |
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| Diego Velázquez Vulcan's Forge ca. 1630 oil on canvas Museo del Prado, Madrid |
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| Diego Velázquez Joseph's Bloody Coat ca. 1630 oil on canvas Monasterio del Escorial |
"Velázquez returned to Madrid after an absence of a year and a half, arriving around the beginning of the year 1631. . . . While he was in Rome Velázquez painted that famous picture of the brothers of Joseph who, out of envy, sold him to some Ishmaelite merchants and brought his clothes, stained with lamb's blood, to his father Jacob, who believed the boy had been killed by a wild animal. No less famous is the other painting he did at the same time, the fable of Vulcan at the moment when Apollo brought him the news of Venus's adultery with Mars. Here Vulcan has turned so white with alarm that he looks as if he has stopped breathing. Velázquez brought these two pictures back to Spain and offered them to His Majesty, who received them with deserved praise and ordered them to be hung in the Palace of Buen Retiro. Later on the painting of Joseph was moved to The Escorial and is now in the chapter room there."
– Antonio Palomino de Castro, from El museo pictórico y escala óptica (1724), translated by Jonathan Brown in Italian and Spanish Art, 1600-1750: Sources and Documents (Northwestern University Press, 1992)