Охота в Аранхуэсе

This is Aranjuez, the royal estate south of Madrid where the Spanish court went to hunt and escape the city, painted in the 1630s. Small figures watch the chase unfold under a broad sky, with the landscape given as much attention as the sport. The painter, Mazo, had married Velazquez's daughter and worked at his side for years, closer to the great man's manner than anyone else at court. That closeness became a problem for later eyes. Mazo rarely signed anything, and for a long time pictures like this drifted back and forth between the two names, some of them simply called Velazquez. The royal inventories of the seventeenth century, drawn up while both men were alive, are part of why this one is given to Mazo. He would later inherit Velazquez's post as painter to the king.