Die Übergabe von Breda

On the fifth of June 1625, after a siege that had starved the Dutch town of Breda for nearly a year, its governor Justin of Nassau came out to hand the keys of the fortress to the Spanish general Ambrogio Spinola. Velázquez painted the scene about ten years later, and he did something unusual for a victory picture. There is no gloating. Spinola stops the defeated commander from kneeling and rests a hand on his shoulder, one soldier to another. Behind them rise the tall Spanish pikes that gave the work its Spanish nickname, Las Lanzas, the lances, a hedge of upright spears that holds the whole crowded canvas together. Velázquez had never seen the surrender. He had, though, crossed to Italy in Spinola's company, and the courtesy he gives the Spanish general here is that of a man he had actually travelled beside.