Bildnis des Pablo de Valladolid

The man here was Pablo de Valladolid, an actor and jester at the court of Philip the Fourth in Madrid, where Velazquez painted him around the mid-1630s. What people notice first is what is missing. There is no room, no floor line, no furniture, nothing behind him at all, only a soft shadow at his feet that tells you where the ground is. He stands in a space Velazquez barely suggests, defined by his gesture alone as if he were addressing a court. Two centuries later the young Edouard Manet stood in front of it in the Prado and called it possibly the most astonishing piece of painting ever made, then went home and built his own Fifer on the same bare background.