Femi Oyebode

This is one of the most famous portraits in the world, yet few people know the story of the man in it… His name was Juan de Pareja, born in southern Spain and of African descent, and for more than twenty years he was enslaved in the studio and household of the Spanish painter Diego Velázquez. He worked alongside him day after day, learning everything he could by watching one of the greatest artists who ever lived. In 1650, while the two of them were in Rome, Velázquez painted his portrait, and he didn’t paint him as a servant. He painted him with all the dignity of a gentleman: proud, steady, looking straight at us. And within months of finishing it, Velázquez gave him the greatest gift one person could give another: he signed the papers that would set Pareja free. Juan de Pareja went on to build his own career as a painter in Madrid. In 1661, he painted a huge canvas of the Calling of Saint Matthew, now in the Prado, and on the far left he included himself, looking out at us and holding a piece of paper with his own name and the date. The man who had once been painted by someone else was now signing his own work… My favorite moment in this whole story came right after the portrait was finished, when Velázquez sent it to his friends in Rome to hear what they thought and Pareja himself was the one who carried it to them, so that suddenly they found themselves looking at two Juan de Parejas side by side, the man and the painting. According to an early account, it was so lifelike that they simply stood there in wonder, “not knowing to whom they should speak or who would answer.”