Portrait of Don Pedro de Barberana

Velazquez had just returned from his first trip to Italy in 1631, back to Madrid and the service of King Philip IV, when he painted this. His sitter, Don Pedro de Barberana, sat on the king's councils and had been admitted the year before to the Order of Calatrava, an old military brotherhood that had become a mark of the aristocracy. Velazquez sets him almost entirely in black against a warm, bare ground, so the one strong note of colour is the red cross of Calatrava on his chest and cloak, the honour Barberana most wanted on record. There is no throne and no room around him. The face is built from the loose, economical brushwork Velazquez had sharpened in Italy.