Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez was born in Seville and trained with Francisco Pacheco, whose daughter he married. Early bodegones (kitchen and tavern scenes) already show sharp observation of light on ordinary things. In 1623 he became painter to Philip IV in Madrid; Italian journeys in 1629–31 and 1649–51 deepened his study of Venetian colour and classical sculpture while he remained the chief image-maker of the Spanish Habsburg court.
Masterworks include Las Meninas (1656, Museo del Prado, Madrid), The Surrender of Breda (1634–35, Prado), The Rokeby Venus (c. 1647–51, National Gallery, London), and papal and court portraits such as Pope Innocent X (1650, Galleria Doria Pamphilj, Rome) and equestrian images of Philip IV in the Prado. Seville-period works like Old Woman Frying Eggs (c. 1618, National Galleries of Scotland) announce his early realism.
Velázquez painted with an economy that later artists—Manet above all—read as modern: few strokes, exact tone, and an unsentimental eye. Court grandeur and human presence meet in his work without rhetorical excess, anchoring Spanish Golden Age painting in European art history.