1630 · Museo del Prado, Madrid

The pictures Velázquez produced in Italy include the large Forge of Vulcan. The god of fire and his assistants are working a red-hot piece of metal in the forge, which is grey with dust, and another journeyman is making a suit of knightly armour, its materiality depicted with a masterly touch, when Apollo the god of light makes his entrance, rather like the youthful hero in a provincial farce - yet radiant as his appearance may be, he brings Vulcan unwelcome news: at this very moment, as we know from mythology, Vulcan's wife Venus is keeping an amorous tryst with Mars, the god of war. The half-naked figures, shown in richly graduated flesh tints and not, as in the Bacchus, pressed close together in a dense group, are depicted in postures noticeably influenced by sixteenth-century Italian masters.Show more