Portrait of Juan de Pareja

Juan de Pareja meets our eyes with calm, level dignity, his worn grey doublet and lace collar rendered in swift, assured strokes. Pareja was Velazquez's own enslaved studio assistant, of Moorish descent, whom the painter freed soon after; he made this portrait in Rome as a trial run before tackling the pope. Now in the Metropolitan Museum, it is a landmark image - a man held in bondage painted with the full nobility usually reserved for princes, his presence so vivid that Roman viewers said it alone seemed truth while the rest was art.