Don Juan Mateos

Almost everyone Velazquez painted was somebody at court, the king, a minister, a jester, a dwarf. This sitter is a rare exception. He is generally identified as Juan Mateos, the man who ran King Philip the Fourth's hunts, and Velazquez caught him around 1634 as a grave, capable older official rather than a nobleman. The likeness later lost its own name entirely. In 1746 it was sold to Augustus the Third of Poland as a work by Rubens, and under that grander label it entered the royal gallery in Dresden, where it still hangs. Velazquez gives him almost no props, just a dark coat and a steady, weighing look, the face of a man used to organising other people's pleasures.