Self-portrait
Ca. 1898. Oil on canvas.Not on display
José Villegas Cordero was director of the Museo del Prado between 1901 and 1918. He was extremely prolific as an artist, producing history and genre painting, whether Venetian, neo-Arabic or bullfighting. He also created portraits which were almost always intimate in nature, especially of his wife, Lucía Monti, his self-portraits and those of his friends and relatives, which stand out from his wide repertoire.
This self-portrait was painted when the artist was in his fifties. He concentrates on the face to achieve a synthetic, almost iconic representation of the artist: work clothes, beret, palette, brushes and canvases. Like Velázquez in Las Meninas (P001174), he appears commandingly, behind the canvas, looking attentively at the sitter, who is identified with the viewer. The object-subject of this gaze is seated, which justifies the low viewpoint that subtly magnifies the artist´s significance or egotism. The light, which floods against the canvas he is painting, is reflected on his face and illuminates the background plane, cutting out his figure. Perhaps this is the densest and conceptualist of Villegas´s self-portraits. It differs notably from others of later date, such as the one in the Galleria degli Uffizi (1897), which has a more descriptive tone and something of sculpture in the pose.
Artistas pintados: retratos de pintores y escultores del siglo XIX en el Museo del Prado, Madrid, Ministerio de Educación y Cultura, Dirección Gener, 1997, p.160-161, n. 46
