Equestrian Portrait of the Duke de Olivares

Country: Spain

Manufactory: Manuel Sanchez

Date of establishment: 1960s

Size (cm): 34*28

Porcelain Story

Wow! .. Repeatedly visiting the famous ''Prado'' museum in Madrid, we literally reveled more than once in the skill of Diego Velasquez, the brilliant Spanish court painter of the first half of the 17th century. By the way, he was not just a court painter during the reign of Philip IV, but also a fairly close friend of the king. And therefore, of course, no one had questions about the many portraits of the monarch on the canvases of the brilliant painter. Including the famous equestrian portrait of Philip, which always drew attention to itself with majestic pomposity.

When this porcelain composition of an equestrian nobleman was brought to me from Spain a few years ago (in our photo on the right), I was sure that this work was created by the sculptor based on Velasquez's painting dedicated to his king. True, I was embarrassed by the fact that Philip was depicted looking in the other direction. Everything fell into place when recently, while carefully studying the reproductions of paintings by Velazquez, presented in the Prado Museum, I suddenly saw not just ''based on'', but a really exact copy of the equestrian porcelain composition stored in our collection. Stop! Everything is the opposite. In the list of paintings by Velasquez exhibited in the Prado, it turns out that there is an equestrian portrait of the Count-Duke de Olivares, the exact porcelain copy of which I have.

It's just incredible. I mean not only the skill of the author of this porcelain work, who managed with amazing accuracy to convey almost every detail of the portrait of the Count-Duke, his clothes, the color scheme of Velasquez's painting. Incredible is literally everything that has to do with the life story of Olivares himself. The favorite of King Philip, who managed to actually tidy up all the power in the country, under the guise of fighting corruption, messed up so much firewood as head of government and shamefully lost so many military campaigns that when he died, both the Spanish king and the Spanish people breathed a sigh of relief. By the way, only Olivares managed to do something that could not be done either before or after him - to combine two previously incompatible titles of count and duke. He was greedy in everything, even in the possession of ranks and titles ...

And the porcelain work turned out beautiful. Agree. And the dynamics, and the details, and even the piercing gaze are transferred just fine.