デモクリトス

A smiling man in black leans toward us, one hand resting on a globe. For centuries nobody agreed who he was or even who painted him. Today he is Velázquez's Democritus, the laughing philosopher, kept in Rouen.

The story behind the painting

The canvas seems to be the one listed in 1689 in the inventory of Gaspar de Haro y Guzmán, marquis of Carpio, as a laughing philosopher with a globe, an original by Velázquez. In 1692 it was handed to the marquise's gardener, Pedro Rodríguez, in place of unpaid wages. It reached Rouen at the end of the eighteenth century, was seized during the Revolution, passed through the collector Lemonnier and an official's private collection, and finally entered the Rouen museum only in 1886. Wikidata dates it 1628, while French Wikipedia says historians place it around 1630, in Velázquez's first Madrid years.

What to look for

The man is seen a little more than half length, in profile, his face turned toward us with a smile, while his other hand points to a globe on a table beside two closed, parchment coloured books. He wears a black doublet with a wide white collar of Bruges lace, lace peeping from a slashed sleeve, and an ochre cape wrapped around his shoulder. Notice the two ways of painting: the clothes and still life are built with tight brushstrokes, while the head and hand are painted lightly in very liquid paint. Infrared images show the hand on the globe was repainted; it once turned upward, holding something.

Meaning and intent

For a long time the sitter was called The Geographer, or even Newton, and the picture was given to Ribera as a portrait of Christopher Columbus. Others linked his dog ear haircut and joyful irony to Velázquez's portrait of the court jester Pablo de Valladolid. In 1928 the art historian Werner Weisbach proposed that he is Democritus, the laughing philosopher, who was often shown with a globe as the object of his amusement. The source suggests the figure began around 1627 to 1628 as a laughing drinker and was raised to a sage around 1639 to 1640, just after Rubens painted his own Democritus for Philip IV.

Legacy

The attribution to Velázquez was settled in 1880 by the Rouen curator Gaston Le Breton and confirmed in 1898 by the Velázquez specialist Aureliano de Beruete, who recognised the painter's touch in the visible strokes that shape the cheekbone, the wrinkles at the corner of the eye and the tendon of the neck. The canvas is unsigned, as Velázquez rarely signed. Two imitations or copies of its earlier state, possibly allegories of taste in which the man holds a wine cup instead of touching a globe, are in Toledo, Ohio, and in Mora, Sweden. The original remains in Rouen, about 101 by 81 cm.