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VELÁZQUEZ, Diego Rodriguez de Silva y: Aesop

🖼 Aesop, 1639-41
Oil on canvas
179 × 94 cm
Madrid, Spain

Weathered features and tattered clothes render this solitary figure with unflinching dignity, painted in warm ochres and browns. Velázquez elevates a classical fabulist into a lived human subject, rejecting idealization to honor humble wisdom and intellectual worth.

The story of art
The story of art
E. H. Gombrich
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