Ritratto di un uomo

In January 1623, Spain passed a sumptuary law that swept away the fashion for elaborate lace ruffs and put men into a plain, stiff white collar called the golilla. The man here wears exactly that new collar, which is one of the reasons the picture is dated to that year. It was a turning point for Velázquez too. He was in his early twenties, leaving Seville for Madrid, where he would soon be painting the young king. You can already see the habits of those first court portraits forming: a narrow range of blacks and browns, a face lit hard from one side, nothing in the background to distract. Some scholars have wondered whether the sitter is Velázquez himself, though the likeness to his known self-portraits is far from certain.