Diego Velázquez

Baptised in June 1599, Velázquez started tight and dark in the tenebrist style before loosening into bolder brushwork that caught light and presence in ways no one else did. He spent his career painting for King Philip IV of Spain and Portugal - dozens of portraits of royals and commoners alike - and in 1656 finished Las Meninas, the one that would become his calling card. Most of his canvases stayed in the Spanish royal collection; the largest cache ended up at the Prado in Madrid, though some portraits were sent to the Austrian Habsburgs as diplomatic currency. Nineteenth-century realists and impressionists studied his technique, and in the twentieth century Picasso, Dalí, and Bacon each took a run at remaking his images.