Why are we moved by painting, if we who find ourselves before a work of art have already discovered the natural world of colours ranging from the violet hues of dawn on to the dark blues of the evening sky? Perhaps because painting, in the hands of one who is truly aware, can become a weapon in the struggle to overcome the transience of our natural perception and with it express ourselves, declare our loyalties, show the changes, enmities, imperturbability and torments.

After this preamble which has served to show colours as being real entities in their own right, alive and autonomous, I would like to talk about the work of Velázquez and contradict what his most ardent critics have said about him: to say that he is far from being a pedantic realist, and even less the idealist which Carducho has criticized him for being, (both characterizations only serving to disguise in words and illustrate in colour the banal and accommodating reality of the time). Velázquez was just a painter who needed to paint; but he couldn’t do without a model, within the range of possibilities resulting from...