The Surrender of Breda
Diego Velázquez (1599 to 1660) · 1634 to 1635
Two armies face each other across the middle of a picture more than three and a half metres wide, and between them two men meet. The Dutch governor of Breda, Justinus of Nassau, bows and offers the key of the city; the Spanish commander, Ambrogio Spinola, steps forward, lays a hand on his shoulder and will not let him kneel. Behind Spinola a forest of upright lances rises against the sky, which gives the painting its Spanish nickname, Las Lanzas. Behind the Dutchman his tired soldiers slouch with their pikes at all angles. In the distance the flooded plain of Brabant smokes under a pale sky. It is June 1625, and the ten month siege of Breda is over.
Velázquez painted this for the Hall of Realms in the Buen Retiro palace, part of a series of Spanish victories, and he turned a piece of propaganda into a picture about mercy. Look at Spinola's face, gentle and attentive, and at the way the two men's bodies lean towards each other. The soldiers on both sides are portraits, and the young man at the far right looking out at us may be Velázquez himself. The horse in the foreground, seen from behind, blocks the view and pulls you into the crowd. Everything is painted with the free, broken touch that Velázquez had learned from Titian on his trip to Italy a few years before.
Spinola, who had been Velázquez's companion on the sea voyage to Italy in 1629, died in 1630 without seeing the painting, and the Dutch recaptured Breda in 1637, two years after it was finished. The picture came to the Prado in 1819 from the royal collection and hangs with the other Hall of Realms paintings. Look for the crumpled sheet of paper in the lower right corner, where a signature would normally go: Velázquez left it blank.
Did You Know? The keys of Breda were never handed over like this; the ceremony is Velázquez's invention, based on the account in a play by Calderón.
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