The Jester Don Diego de Acedo [SEP] country of origin
The Jester Don Diego de Acedo
The Jester Don Diego de Acedo is one of a series of portraits of jesters at the court of Philip IV of Spain by Diego Velázquez. Its subject is the dwarf Don Diego de Acedo, known as "el Primo" (the Cousin). The 1645 oil painting is now in the Prado Museum. The work measures 106 cm high and 83 cm wide.
Velázquez painted a series of portraits of dwarfs and jesters of the court of Philip IV, depicted with realism
, soldiers, churchmen, and the poet Francisco de Quevedo (now at Apsley House), sat for Velázquez.
Velázquez also painted several buffoons and dwarfs in Philip's court, whom he depicted sympathetically and with respect for their individuality, as in "The Jester Don Diego de Acedo" (1644), whose intelligent face and huge folio with ink-bottle and pen by his side show him to be a wise and well-educated man. "Pablo de Valladolid" (1635), a buffoon evidently acting