# Portrait of Don Gaspar de Guzman y Pimentel, Count-Duke of Olivares [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [VELAZQUEZ, Diego Rodriguez de Silva y]() - Date: 1601-1650 - Technique: Oil on canvas, 67 x 55 cm ## Commentary Portrait of Don Gaspar de Guzman y Pimentel, Count-Duke of Olivares c. 1638 Oil on canvas, 67 x 55 cm The Hermitage, St. Petersburg The sitter of the portrait was the prime minister of Philip IV. He began his career with a dizzying rise and ended it with a no-less-vertiginous fall, spending his last years in exile. When his star was ascending he introduced the young Velázquez to the king, and the artist painted his powerful patron several times. In the present portrait, made shortly before Olivares suffered a series of defeats in both his foreign policy projects and court intrigues, his face clearly betrays fatigue and disillusionment. ## Related artworks - [A White Horse]() - [A Young Man \(detail\)]() - [Abbess Jerónima de la Fuente]() - [Aesop]() - [Arachne]() - [Breakfast]() - [Cardinal Infante Don Fernando as a Hunter]() - [Christ in the House of Mary and Martha \(detail\)]() - [Christ in the House of Mary and Martha]() - [Christ on the Cross]() - [Court Dwarf Don Antonio el Inglés]() - [Democritus]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()