Hints and tips:
...“They have converted what used to be wooded areas into grassy meadow,” says María Medina Muro, a landscape architect who has worked on other historic parks in Spain....
...Maria Paula Figueiroa Rego was born in Lisbon in 1935, the only child in a wealthy, anti-fascist, Anglophile family....
...Case in point: Former defence minister Karl zu Guttenberg (full name: Karl-Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Buhl-Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg) had to step down in 2011...
...In “María on the Beach at Biarritz, or Backlight, Biarritz”, Sorolla uses the whitest of flowing summer frocks as counterpoint to myriad shades of reflections on the sea....
...Three years before “Las Meninas” Velázquez — Philip IV’s court artist — had portrayed Maria Theresa in a dress stitched with gold and pearls....
...“The only reality is pain”: Kafka’s summing up is quoted by Maria Lassnig in her writings on her own art, and it informs all Francis Bacon’s work....
...From €200; Calle de Velázquez 48, 28001 Madrid (+3491-432 0989; www.guaimaro.es). A recent “find” is the boutique hotel Fundació l’Olivar in Ventalló, Spain....
...The hopeful child “Luis María de Borbón y Vallabriga” at his geography lesson in 1783 is, by 1800, a pensive, under-confident young cardinal....
...True to the wishes of Anna Maria Luisa de’ Medici, who left the family’s art collection to the Tuscan state on her death in 1743 so it might be enjoyed by the public and “attract the curiosity of foreigners...
...September 2012: Iván Velázquez Caballero, more commonly known as “El Taliban” and leader of a splinter group of the Zetas cartel, is arrested....
...In 1658, he visited Madrid (his only recorded absence from Seville) and his exposure to the works of Titian, Veronese, Rubens and Velázquez brought about a loosening of his technique....
...The candid contours of his face framed by his shoulder and a broad-brimmed hat are the fruit of a youth spent copying Velázquez at the Prado....
...The Duchess of Alba – her full name is too long to quote but begins with María del Rosario Cayetana and ends with Santa Esperanza Fitz-James Stuart, Silva, Falcó y Gurtubay – boasts at least 50 titles, more...
...A Goya royal portrait in a private collection is exceptional; most were absorbed into the Prado, as were those of Velázquez, who is not represented here....
...Only in 1951, when the Italian art historian Robert Longhi mounted a retrospective in Milan, did the Lombardy-born master take his place in the pantheon alongside Leonardo, Michelangelo, Velázquez and Rembrandt...
...Among the notches on its belt is the sale of Velázquez’s “Rokeby Venus” (1648-1651) to the National Gallery in 1906....
...One of his most realised versions of the Infanta Margarita Maria hangs opposite one of Velázquez’s own numerous studies of her....
...If Velázquez is invoked he must be cut to size by Dennis the Menace....
...The artist to whom he is closest in spirit and style is the greatest painter of the age, Velázquez....
...His “La Niña María Figueroa”, from 1901, is disguised as a Menina, reflecting the contemporary craze for fancy dress among Spanish high society. Only her face is finished....
...Caldwell’s last regular New York stage appearance was as Maria Callas, and deities of La Divina’s magnitude appear in a photo montage that inaugurates the drama....
...A sultry girl with a string of pearly vegetables over one arm and the city glimpsed like a distant dream through a corner window, the painting is reminiscent of Velázquez’ early work, “Christ in the House...
...With the giants of the 17th century, you know where you are: Velázquez paints Spanish imperialism, Rembrandt the Dutch bourgeoisie. The Enlightenment collapsed those barriers....
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