Buffoon with a Dog

For most of its life this canvas had a name and an author, and it has lost both. The royal inventories of the 18th century listed it as a Velazquez. In 1872 the Prado's director identified the sitter as Don Antonio the Englishman, a buffoon recorded in the palace accounts, and the label stuck until research on those accounts showed the man could not be him. The museum now calls the picture simply Buffoon with a Dog and gives it to a follower of Velazquez, with Juan Carreno de Miranda the name most often proposed since 1925 and Martinez del Mazo another. What survives is the painting itself, made around 1645 at the Madrid court, where dwarfs and jesters were part of the household and were portrayed like anyone else in it. He holds a red ribbon in his right hand and a plumed hat under his left arm, and the great black and white hound beside him comes up to his shoulder.