Editing Diego Velázquez (section)

==Style and technique==
It is canonical to divide Velázquez's career by his two visits to Italy.  He rarely signed his pictures, and the royal archives give the dates of only his most important works. Internal evidence and history pertaining to his portraits supply the rest to a certain extent.

Although acquainted with all the Italian schools and a friend of the foremost painters of his day, Velázquez was strong enough to withstand external influences and work out for himself the development of his own nature and his own principles of art. He rejected the pomp that characterized the portraiture of other European courts, and instead brought an even greater reserve to the understated formula for Habsburg portraiture established by Titian, [[Antonio Mor]], and [[Alonso Sánchez Coello]].<ref>Carr et al. 2006, p. 30.</ref> He is known for using a rather limited palette, but he mixed the available paints with great skill to achieve varying hues.<ref>McKim-Smith et al. 1988.</ref> His [[pigments]] were not significantly different from those of his contemporaries and he mainly employed [[azurite]], [[smalt]], [[vermilion]], [[carmine|red lake]], [[lead-tin-yellow]] and [[ochres]].<ref>[http://colourlex.com/project/diego-velazquez/ Diego Velázquez], ColourLex</ref> His early works were painted on canvases prepared with a red-brown ground. He adopted the use of light-gray grounds during his first trip to Italy, and continued using them for the rest of his life.<ref>Carr et al. 2006, pp. 71, 78.</ref> The change resulted in paintings with greater luminosity and a generally cool, silvery range of color.<ref name="Carr_2006_p79">Carr et al. 2006, p. 79.</ref>

Few drawings are securely attributed to Velázquez.<ref name="McKim-Smith_Dec_1979">McKim-Smith, Gridley. (December 1979), "On Velázquez's Working Method". ''The Art Bulletin''. '''61''' (4): 589–603.</ref> Although preparatory drawings for some of his paintings exist, his method was to paint directly from life, and x-rays of his paintings reveal that he frequently made changes in his composition as a painting progressed.<ref name="McKim-Smith_Dec_1979"/>