Returning from Madrid in 1865, Manet asked Baudelaire why anyone bothered trying to paint because, next to Vel\u00e1zquez, \u201cthe greatest painter there ever was\u201d, all others \u201cseem completely like fakers\u201d.
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Now Vel\u00e1zquez comes to Paris for the sort of full-scale, radiant, irrefutable retrospective that the Grand Palais does more effectively than any museum in the world. It cannot borrow \u201cLas Meninas\u201d but its loans are rare and outstanding. Rome\u2019s great \u201cPope Innocent X\u201d, wily, inexorable, a whirl of flesh and blood, which the subject declared \u201ctroppo vero\u201d, is here, and the Prado\u2019s \u201cPablo de Valladolid\u201d, the court clown caught mid-breath, mid-gesture, striking a pose. This was the favourite of Manet, who noted how \u201cthe background disappears. It is air that surrounds the man, dressed entirely in black and full of life.\u201d<\/p>\n
The play-off between these two portraits of dramatic self-invention \u2014 neither came to London for the National Gallery\u2019s 2006 Vel\u00e1zquez show \u2014 is alone worth the trip to Paris. In this city of modern art, Vel\u00e1zquez looks more effortlessly cool, nimble, sparkling and tender-ruthless than ever, and there isn\u2019t an idea in painting that he hasn\u2019t explored and perfected.<\/p>\n
The show\u2019s poster girl is \u201cInfanta Margarita Teresa in a Blue Dress\u201d, depicting the same pale child with the heart-stopping gaze who stands at the centre of \u201cLas Meninas\u201d. There she was five, and playful; now she is a composed eight-year-old, and Vel\u00e1zquez\u2019s glittering portrait, commissioned for her fianc\u00e9, Emperor Leopold I in Vienna, reflects her double life as treasured little girl \u2014 inbred Habsburg children seldom survived infancy \u2014 and diplomatic pawn. She scrutinises us with an innocent lightness of being but her body is imprisoned in the courtly armour of a spectacular deep-blue hooped crinoline, which gives her volumetric, stately presence.<\/p>\n