Portrait of Don Diego de Corral y Arellano

Velazquez had just come back from his first trip to Italy when he painted this, around 1631. The man in black is Diego del Corral, a senior judge on the Council of Castile and a law professor at Salamanca, one of the sober, powerful officials who actually ran Philip IV's Spain. Almost everything here does a job. The black toga and the papers in his hands mark him as a man of the law. The red cross stitched on his chest is the Order of Santiago, a badge of noble rank, and the fact that he keeps his hat on signals his standing. He died in the spring of 1632, so Velazquez must have caught him from life only shortly before.