Sevillian in El Escorial: Diego de Silva Velázquez

Abstract

As patron of San Lorenzo el Real del Escorial, Philip IV had the idea of beautifying the monastery by sending a series of paintings by great artists from various origins. To achieve this, he commissioned his court painter and later chief steward, Diego de Silva Velázquez, to design the layout of the paintings he was sending and those already present.

Most of the main monastic rooms, such as the sacristy, the chapter halls, the moral classroom, and others, were notably transformed, acquiring unity, harmony, and coherence, as their placement was based on a prior study of the sizes, content, and the locations where they would be placed. The witness to this was Father Francisco de los Santos, who later gathered firsthand information in his Descriptions of the Monastery of San Lorenzo el Real del Escorial.

In this remodeling, the painting The Tunic of Joseph was placed in the vicarial chapter room, where it is still preserved. It was the only important space that was later completed by Queen Regent Mariana of Austria after the deaths of the two project authors, Philip IV and Velázquez. The entire process of ornamentation of the Escorial monastery is what is studied in this work.