The portrait of Juan de Pareja by Diego de Velázquez that hangs in a gallery of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan is surrounded by other estimable works, even a few of genius. But this work compels the viewer to look. It is a portrait of personal disappointment and anguish, and its great beauty deepens that anguish profoundly. I felt this the moment I first saw the painting years ago, and go back to visit it every time I’m in New York. I’ve always sympathized with Juan de Pareja and worried why he was suffering so deeply in such seeming silence.

In Rome in 1650, the Spaniard Velázquez was on a royal mission to obtain paintings, sculptures, and other Italian artwork to decorate new rooms in the Alcázar. He spent two and a half years on this assignment, in search of the best the Italians could offer. Among his retinue was a man named Juan de Pareja, who was the mixed-race son of a female slave and, until 1654, a slave to Velázquez himself. Juan had been born in Antequera, Spain, around 1610. As a young man he had been consigned to work in Velázquez’s studio, most probably as some sort of shop assistant. Velázquez’s biographer Antonio Palomino writes that Velázaquez would not allow Juan himself to paint because, he believed, art of the sort that Velázquez did was too great for a slave to undertake. He believed that such art should be reserved for free men. Juan apparently painted anyway, in secret, without the master’s knowledge.

By the time they got to Rome, Juan was one of the great painter’s principal assistants, and there Velázquez undertook to paint the portrait of him. In Sister Wendy's American Masterpieces, the art critic Wendy Beckett writes that "amazingly, this man was technically a slave; we still have the document of manumission with which Velazquez formally set him free. However, we can see from Velazquez’s painting that the two were undeniably equals. That steady look of self-controlled power can even make us wonder which of the two held a higher opinion of himself. It is a daring picture in that it almost eschews the use of color. This is a dark man, with wonderful coppery skin, set against an indeterminate background, where even the rich velvets of the sleeves appear dim."

I believe that Velázquez’s painting of Juan conveys great personal dignity and barely suppressed emotional pain, and I assume from the deep passion that exists in Velázquez’s depiction that, despite his treatment of his slave, he understood him. Somehow Velázquez saw into Juan’s anger. It’s clear in the painting itself.