This exhibition traces the career of one of the very greatest painters, Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velázquez (1559-1660), and is the first major exhibition to do so. From his beginnings in Seville, Velázquez demonstrated a precocious ability to observe and record reality. At the courts of Philip IV, he achieved ever greater physical and psychological naturalism with ever more pronounced and elegant brushstrokes, ultimately realising miraculous effects of illusion with an astounding, abbreviated technique that inspired future realists as well as the Impressionists. Drawing on the National Gallery's rich holdings of the artist and major loans from the Museo del Prado and other collections, the exhibition demonstrates Velázquez's extraordinary development with great examples of his religious and mythological paintings as well as portraits.

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