This story may be true, and Juan did have talent. His painting “The Calling of Saint Matthew” at The Prado in Madrid shows his technical mastery. But - at least in this painting - he shied from the kind of emotional profundity that Velázquez himself had found in him. Juan puts himself in the painting, to the far left, looking out at us. The character is of mild interest, and appears to be of indifferent importance to Juan himself. Sadly, it took the cynical slave-owner Velázquez to convey the truth of Juan de Pareja’s situation to us. What an irony that Velázquez understood his slave’s heart so well, showed it to us so clearly, yet thumbed his nose at the possibility that such a man could have artistic talent himself! It was because of that arrogance, I believe, that Juan de Pareja gazes at the artist Velázquez with so much of a sense of angry dismissal.
Sister Wendy continues: "Nearly thirty years ago, when a British earl offered the family's Velázquez (i.e. the portrait of Juan de Pareja) for sale, protestors marched from many parts of England and Scotland, pleading with the government to save the piece for Britain, but governments, as we know, are penny-pinching creatures, and so this portrait of a man of North African descent, painted by a Spaniard while residing in Italy, finally came to rest in New York.”
Juan de Pareja is the victim of a disaster imposed upon him literally by the forces of history and the manipulative insistence by some people upon the ruination of other people’s destinies. Of all the paintings I’ve ever seen, this one takes my heart the most.
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