An inverse chiaroscuro

As far as I know, the inverse chiaroscuro of the RV has never before been noticed. Since Caravaggio, the tradition of Baroque painting was for a left to right orientation of the chiaroscuro. There are very few exceptions to this in Italian and Spanish 17th century painting, except in the case of self-portraits. 

A different arrangement of the chiaroscuro may sometimes be observed, generally due to the presence of real sources of lighting in the places where the paintings were hung. For example, the three works by Caravaggio painted for the Contarelli Chapel in San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome, clearly reproduce the light coming from the upper window. Now, in the RV, a shine can be seen on the left part of the forehead and nasal bridge, while the right part of the face is enveloped in shadow; this implies that the light could only be coming from the right side, i.e., the painting has an inverse chiaroscuro. A look over the catalog of Velázquez’s works shows this to be extremely rare, the only exceptions being Joseph’s Tunic and Las Meninas (I have used Brown's catalogue). The inverse chiaroscuro in the latter work might be explained by the fact that Velázquez is depicted as working on a canvas wherein the chiaroscuro would be normal. Thus, in the whole of Velázquez’s production of portraits, the RV is the only one with a clear inverse chiaroscuro. The only possible explanation is that it is a mirror image. The pose of the sitter is also contrary to that normally seen in Velázquez’s portraits of adult men, who usually look to the left – and even in portraits with the sitter looking to the right he used the normal chiaroscuro (see Table 1: men portraits). (It should be said here that in a few portraits, such as that of Juan de Pareja, the light comes from the center.) Given the above arguments, the RV could well be a Velázquez self-portrait. By the same token, yet another painting called Portrait of a Man (attributed to the workshop of Velázquez, oil on canvas, 69.2 × 56,5 cm, Accession Number 89.15.298), also held at the Metropolitan Museum, can be seen as the self-portrait of Velazquez’s son-in-law Juan Bautista Martínez del Mazo. Both portraits show the same inverse chiaroscuro and their sizes are exactly the same (note also the identical collar).

Velázquez appears to have used his self-portrait in the RV, along with its inverse chiaroscuro, to represent the “unknown man behind the horse” in The Surrender of Breda – a painting with an overall normal chiaroscuro. The only reason for this that occurs to me is that he made the most of his already completed self-portrait. Of course, he was clever enough to disguise the inverse chiaroscuro by having a large hut cast a shadow on the right side of the face. Even so, shiny areas can still be seen on the left part of the forehead and nasal bridge.

J. Brown, Velázquez. Painter and courtier, London: Yale University Press, 1986.