Young Spanish Nobleman

By the time this young man sat for him, Velazquez was already painter to Philip the Fourth, installed at the Madrid court while still in his late twenties. Around 1629 he set off for Italy to study the masters there, and portraits like this one, an unnamed gentleman in the stiff dark dress of the Spanish court with one hand set on his hip, sit right at that turning point. The sitter's name is lost. What survives is the alert, slightly wary look Velazquez gave him, and the plain grey ground he preferred to any painted setting.