Who is the greatest Spanish artist who ever lived? Though it’s light on writers and composers, and has only the one architect—Gaudi—Spain has a rich history of great painters; Goya, Dali, Miro, Juan Gris, El Greco. Really, though, there are only three contenders for the Spain’s-greatest-artist plinth: Cervantes—who not only wrote Don Quixote but invented the novel—Picasso, and Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velazquez.
Since this isn’t really a column about who Spain’s greatest artist is, I’ll cut to the chase and tell you that Velazquez is the clear winner. (Though Cervantes isn’t too far behind). What this column is really about is a new Velazquez show in New York, at the Met. It has only got seven paintings, four of which are in the Met’s permanent collection, but it’s a fantastic show, well worth a trip to New York just to see it. That’s how great an artist Velazquez was, though not everyone realizes it.
