Velázquez, Diego Rodríguez de Silva y – Esopo Part 3 Prado Museum

Description of Diego Velázquez’s painting Aesop

In the ancient Greek era, it was Aesop who was incredibly famous. The fables he created were told by people to each other. It was he who embodied all sorts of human types in the form of various animals. These are constant greed, incredible stupidity, great vanity and others. Many, listening to his fables of extraordinary poignancy, recognized themselves in them.

Aesop was a slave. When his master became convinced of his intelligence, he let him go free.

There are many curious legends about Aesop’s appearance. He was usually portrayed as short in stature, necessarily hunched over, and absolutely repulsive. But in fact, many writers deliberately worked to create such an appearance of Aesop, deliberately enhancing all those features that were unpleasant. This was done to highlight the inner beauty of the man against the background of his ugly appearance.

Velázquez portrays the legendary fable writer Aesop. His face is slightly puffy and his clothes are completely shabby. We see a vagabond who used to be a slave. But everything changes when we pay attention to Aesop’s gaze. He looks like a judge who is mercifully listening to excuses, or a doctor scrutinizing a patient, or perhaps a teacher who is about to reprimand a student. Perhaps it is God himself who is watching over a humanity that is constantly gagging. The man who had been at the bottom of society had become almost on top of God himself.

It was incredibly important for Velázquez to show a special wisdom that is divorced from social status and his dignity. Such people are utterly devoid of any gloss. They are far outside society. But it is precisely for them that maximum understanding of all of that society is necessary.

On the one hand, the philosophers of Velázquez are utterly deprived of life, but for this reason their knowledge of life is incredibly profound.