Portrait of the Count-Duke of Olivares

In 1624 the young Velazquez had been at the Madrid court barely a year, and the man he paints here is the reason he got there. Gaspar de Guzman, Count-Duke of Olivares, was Philip the Fourth's chief minister, the favourite who ran Spain in the king's name, and a fellow Sevillian who had pulled his townsman toward the palace. Velazquez was about 25. He gives Olivares a heavy gold chain, gold spurs, and the red cross of the Order of Calatrava on his chest, with one hand resting easily on a sword. This is the first of at least five portraits he would paint of the minister in the years that followed, as their two fortunes climbed together.