Portrait of the Jester Calabazas

At the court of Philip IV of Spain, jesters and dwarfs were kept as entertainers and companions, doted on and mocked in the same breath. Velázquez, the king's painter, portrayed a number of them and did something quietly radical. He used the grand full-length format normally reserved for kings and nobles for a man on the margins, the jester likely called Juan Calabazas, who had physical and mental disabilities. Velázquez does not hide them. He gives the man a fine dark doublet and a crisp white collar, a cane and a small object in his hands, and lets him stand against a plain dark ground with real presence. It is one of several such portraits Velázquez made in these years, and it hangs today in Cleveland.