Porträt des Ferdinando Brandani

Velázquez painted this on his second long stay in Rome, around 1650, the same months he made his ferocious portrait of Pope Innocent the Tenth and the study of his enslaved assistant Juan de Pareja. It shares their method, a very narrow range of colours worked through countless tones, the face built almost entirely out of light. For centuries no one knew the man, and he was known simply as the Pope's barber. Only recently has he been identified as Ferdinando Brandani, a banker of Portuguese descent who was close to Juan de Córdoba, the Spanish agent who looked after Velázquez while he was in Rome.