The black painter who was enslaved by a renowned artist and now has an exhibition in NY

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Juan Pareja, a Spaniard of African descent, worked as a slave in Diego Velázquez’s studio, but was emancipated and began an independent career. Portrait of Juan de Pareja, painted by Diego Velázquez in 1650 The Metropolitan Museum of Art via BBC He is best known as the man portrayed by renowned Spanish painter Diego Velázquez (1599-1660) in the canvas that bears his name, Juan de Pareja, from 1650 But for a long time, the details of his trajectory remained unknown. When the painting was completed, Juan de Pareja, a Spaniard of African descent, was in his early 40s and was working in Velázquez’s studio. For more than two decades he was an assistant to the painter as a slave, at a time when the use of slave labor was not uncommon in artistic production in Spain. Shortly after the portrait, Pareja was emancipated and began a career as an independent painter. Among his best known works is The Vocation of Saint Matthew, from 1661, which is part of the collection of the National Museum of the Prado, in Madrid. Now, his life and work will be the theme of the exhibition “Juan de Pareja, Afro-Hispanic Painter”, which will open on April 3 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met), in New York. According to the museum, this will be the first major exhibition to look into Pareja’s personal and artistic trajectory, and to examine the role of artisanal work by enslaved people in the context of the multiracial society of the so-called Golden Age of Spanish culture. Met Director Max Hollein says, “By reexamining the narrative around one of the most celebrated works in the history of Western portraiture, this exhibition challenges us to question existing notions about art and historical objects.” In addition, according to Hollein, the exhibition will feature “a remarkable artist whose name may be familiar to many, but whose work has not been explored in depth.” ‘A Peculiar Kind of Celebrity’ There are few documents detailing Pareja’s biography, but it is believed that he was born around 1608 in the Spanish town of Antequera. His mother was an enslaved woman of African descent, and his father a white Spaniard. The exact date when Pareja began to work as a slave in the studio of Velázquez, who was a court painter for King Philip IV, is not known, but the practice was common in the Spanish artistic world at the time. According to the exhibition’s organizers, historical archives from 17th-century Spain “offer ample evidence of a multiracial society in which artists and artisans used slave labor.” “Slave labor in 17th-century Spain was, in fact, much more widespread in visual culture – from painting and sculpture to metal and woodwork – than is generally acknowledged,” says one of the exhibition’s curators to BBC News Brasil, David Pullins. “As explored in the exhibition, among the main artists who used slave labor were Velázquez’s teacher and father-in-law, (Francisco) Pacheco, and Seville’s leading artist of the subsequent generation, (Bartolomé Esteban) Murillo,” says Pullins, who is a curator Associate in the Department of European Paintings at the Met. When his portrait was painted, Pareja and Velázquez were in Italy, on a journey that began a year earlier, in 1649, and which is one of the focuses of the show at the Met. Completed in Rome, the painting was received with great success at the time and, according to the exhibition’s organizers, “paved the way for Velázquez to create an extraordinary series of portraits”, including that of Pope Innocent XI. “The portrait [de Pareja] he was famous from the moment he was painted and exhibited in Rome, in the Pantheon, in 1650”, says Pullins. According to the organizers of the show at the Met, having his portrait painted by Velázquez guaranteed Pareja “a peculiar kind of notoriety”. and “raises important questions about the relationship between artist and model when one is legally owned by the other.” In the presentation of the show, the organizers note that the trip to Italy was a milestone in Pareja’s personal and professional career. perversely allowed him rare access to monuments of European art that would shape his artistic voice”, they say. It was also on this trip that Velázquez signed Pareja’s manumission documents, which provided that he would be freed four years later. Own style Em 1654, Pareja finally won his freedom. He began to dedicate himself to his artistic career in Madrid, where he developed his own style, independent of that of Velázquez. Along with a group of artists now known as the Madrid School, whose vivid palettes and compositions contrasted with Velázquez’s sobriety, Pareja charted his own artistic path rather than following the style of his former slave master,” says the Met in the presentation of the show. In addition to A Vocação de São Mateus, which includes a self-portrait on the left side of the canvas, the exhibition also features other important works produced by Pareja throughout his career, such as A Fuga para o Egypt (1658), from the John and Mable collection. Ringling Museum of Art, in Florida, Portrait of the Architect José Ratés Dalmau (1660-1670), from the Museum of Fine Arts in Valencia, and The Baptism of Christ (1667), from the Prado National Museum. “The gathering of these works marks a new chapter in the ongoing recovery of Pareja’s art,” say organizers of the Met exhibition. Pareja died in 1670 in Madrid. More than 300 years later, his portrait painted by Velázquez was acquired by the Met in 1971 for nearly $5.5 million, in what was considered one of the museum’s most important acquisitions. David Pullins recalls that the museum’s acquisition of Velázquez’s work “made headlines at the time”, but notes that “scholars and the press said virtually nothing about the man portrayed”. “This exhibition not only sheds more light on Pareja’s life, but also places an emphasis on his agency as a creative force, through his long-neglected works,” says Pullins. Details of the exhibition The show in New York is open until July 16th and will bring together around 40 paintings, sculptures and objects of decorative art. It also includes historical books and documents from the Met collection and other collections in the United States and Europe. In addition to the works by Pareja and Velázquez, there are paintings by other Spanish artists from the 17th century, such as Francisco de Zurbarán and Bartolomé Estebán Murillo, which bring rare representations of the black and Moorish populations of the time. Also on display are pieces in wood, silver and ceramics that show the traces of slave labor used in the artistic production of the period. The exhibition also portrays the efforts of the black writer and historian Arturo Schomburg for the recognition of Pareja’s work. Schomburg was born in Puerto Rico and was an important figure in the Harlem Renaissance cultural movement, which brought together black artists and intellectuals in New York City in the early 20th century. In the 1910s, Schomburg traveled to Spain to research the role of descendants of Africans in 17th-century Spanish society. Their efforts led to a new understanding of Pareja’s work and life. According to organizers, Schomburg’s travel photographs and writings, provided for the show by the New York Public Library, “serve as a common thread connecting 17th-century Spain to 20th-century New York.” For one of the exhibition’s curators, Vanessa K. Valdés, who is associate dean for Community Engagement and professor of Spanish and Portuguese at City College, New York, the exhibition “joins the efforts of scholars who continue to recover contributions from all peoples of African descent, including those of Afro-Hispanic heritage such as Pareja, in order to better understand the full complexity and richness of the global black experience”. -This text was published in

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