Borghese Gallery in Rome hosts Velázquez's canvas of "La Mulata"

Rome (Italy), Mar 25 (EFE).- (Camera: Daniel Cáceres) "La Mulata", a painting from Diego Velázquez's youth, is on display from Monday at the Borghese Gallery in Rome among some of Caravaggio's best-known canvases, highlighting the Italian master's early influence on the Sevillian painter.

"Velázquez debuts with a marvellous attention to shadow and light, with a tenebrist painting, with great attention to the execution of the still life and the study of the model (...) This leads us to the naturalism that characterises Caravaggio's painting," the museum's director, Francesca Cappelletti, explained to EFE.

FOOTAGE OF THE BORGHESE GALLERY IN ROME AND THE PAINTING "LA MULATA" BY DIEGO VELÁZQUEZ ALONGSIDE OTHER WORKS BY CARAVAGGIO, IN ROME, ITALY. SOUNDBITES OF FRANCESCA CAPPELLETTI, DIRECTOR OF THE BORGHESE GALLERY MUSEUM IN ROME.

TRANSLATION:

1.- "Velázquez already began with this wonderful tension between shadow and light, didn't he, with this tenebrist painting, but above all with a very great attention to the execution of the still life and also to, let's say the study of the model because here the protagonist is certainly a young woman who is caught up in a moment of everyday life and therefore this also takes us back to that painting from life, to that painting, with the example from life in front of us that characterises Caravaggio's painting".

2. "Velázquez certainly presents himself as a very independent and original artist in the Seville scene of the time, which was certainly a very lively city from an artistic point of view, but also from the point of view of commerce. So much so that in recent studies it is thought that Velázquez may have seen paintings that came from Italy and, therefore, probably also copies that came to Seville from Italy".

3.- "But what is striking about this painting is that it speaks to us of a great artist, an artist with highly original compositional ideas and this irruption of the sacred into the everyday. In fact, this is perhaps the most fascinating feature of this painting, the fact that a passage from the Supper at Emmaus appears in the background. So it is as if the painter is inviting us to consider that no space, not even that of a kitchen, no one is trivial, no one is limited to the action of that moment, but that in all our daily action we can see, can we not? The trace of the sacred".