The Velázquez exhibition, sponsored by Abertis through its French subsidiary, Sanef, became one of Paris’s biggest cultural events in 2015. A total of 478,833 visitors saw the first retrospective of the artist Diego Velázquez in France, which the Grand Palais in Paris hosted from 26 March to 13 July.
The show presented a comprehensive overview of the work of the Spanish painter, from his beginnings in Seville until his last years, and the influence that his art exerted on his seventeenth century contemporaries. The exhibition went a little further than a traditional retrospective, as it answered some of the main questions affecting the life of the painter of Las Meninas, and following some unexpected finds in recent years it exhibited newly discovered paintings, in some cases for the first time.
The exhibition was made possible through the joint effort of the Louvre Museum and the Grand Palais, with the collaboration of the Kunsthistorishes Museum in Vienna and support from the Prado Museum. Among the paintings on display were notable masterpieces such as The Rokeby Venus (National Gallery, London) and the Portrait of Innocent X (Palazzo Doria Pamphili, Rome), universal icons of art history.
