Diego Velázquez

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Rokeby Venus. The goddess lying with her back to us, her face in a mirror Cupid holds; painted between 1647 and 1651, probably in Italy, and his one surviving nude, now in the National Gallery in London.

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Las Hilanderas. Women at work in the foreground and, deep behind them, the tapestry of Arachne's challenge to Athena: a late fable of weaving, counted among his very greatest paintings.

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The Surrender of Breda. The Dutch commander hands the key of the town to the Spanish general Spinola, lances rising behind them; painted in 1634 and 1635, and long counted among his best works.

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The Triumph of Bacchus. The god crowns a kneeling soldier while drinkers crowd around him, mythology played as a tavern scene; painted for Philip IV before his first voyage to Italy.

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The Waterseller of Seville. An old man passes a glass of water to a boy with no glance between them; the finest of his Seville street subjects, of which this is one version, the original hangs at Apsley House.

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Christ in the House of Martha and Mary. A kitchen foreground of fish, garlic and a scolding elder, with the Gospel scene glowing in a window at the back: the bodegón carrying a sacred story.

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Portrait of Pablo de Valladolid. A court actor in black and gold, one hand flung out, his feet lost in open air; the freest portrait manner of the 1630s, tried out on a jester.

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Philip IV in Brown and Silver. Life size and rare for showing the king out of his usual black, in embroidered brown and silver with the Golden Fleece at his chest; the model portrait of the 1630s.

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Apollo in the Forge of Vulcan. The sungod brings news to Vulcan's astonished smiths, their half-naked bodies lit as the court never was; the chief work of his first Italian journey.

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Infanta Margarita Teresa in a Blue Dress. The five-year-old of Las Meninas at fifteen, blue silk and pale ringlets, one of his last paintings, sent to Vienna for her uncle and husband Leopold I.

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Equestrian Portrait of Prince Balthasar Charles. The child heir on a prancing pony, painted for the Hall of Realms in the Buen Retiro palace between the mounted portraits of his parents.

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Adoration of the Magi. The three kings at the manger, painted when he was twenty and the largest of his early works, already carrying his gift for living faces.

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Mars Resting. The war god sitting disarmed on a bed, helmet off, moustached and tired, a mythology brought down to a man in a room.

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Coronation of the Virgin. The Trinity crowning Mary in a cool light; painted about 1635, likely for the queen's oratory in the Madrid Alcázar.

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Infanta Margaret Theresa in a White and Silver Dress. The Las Meninas child again at five, in the white dress of that canvas; sent north for the emperor her future husband.

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Portrait of the Infanta Maria Theresa of Spain. A girl of about thirteen in a bright dress against the dark, two watches at her waist; counted among the strongest of the late portraits.

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Infanta Margarita Teresa. The first of his five portraits of the elder infanta, a three-year-old in peach silk, kept in Vienna since it left Madrid.

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Portrait of the Count-Duke of Olivares. The king's all-powerful minister past his prime, face swollen and aged, in black and a white ruff; a likeness without flattery, now in the Hermitage.

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Buffoon with books, formerly known as portrait of "el Primo". The dwarf Don Diego de Acedo among outsized volumes, painted with the realism and respect he gave the whole series for the hunting lodge.

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The Jester Named Don John of Austria. A court jester dressed up in armour and baton for the battle he never fought, part of the same jester series.

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Christ Crucified. Christ alone on the cross against a dark green ground, head fallen to his chest; the most famous religious painting in Spain, made for a Benedictine convent in Madrid.

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The Lunch. Bread and two pomegranates on a creased cloth, an old man, a youth giving the thumbs up and a boy pouring wine: Seville genre painting at the very beginning of his career.

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Prince Balthasar Charles With a Dwarf. The two-year-old heir in a silver frock beside a court dwarf, the first portrait he made of the boy prince.

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Portrait of Prince Philip Prospero. The infant Prince of Asturias in 1659, standing with a lapdog on the chair under his hand, the amulets he carries marking how precarious his health was.