Shoot the Photo Editor: NY Times Gilds the Velázquez CORRECTED

The NY Times' gold-background Velázquez, in today's paper


Velázquez, "Portrait of a Man," ca. 1630
Image from the Metropolitan Museum's website

NY Times art critic Karen Rosenberg, addressing today a topic that I nosed around on Monday, has been done in by her own photo editors.

I imagine that NY Times uses something more sophisticated than my computer's rudimentary Photoshop program to prepare images of artworks for publication. But you can't just hit the "Auto Contrast" button when reproducing a painting whose attribution to Velázquez hinges on its looking like a Velázquez!

Any knowledgeable reader gazing at the glowing background of the tarted-up illustration in the hardcopy version of Karen Rosenberg's review knows that Velázquez portraits don't look like that---a real problem in an article explaining how the Met reattributed its previously downgraded portrait to the master. Karen quotes legendary dealer Joseph Duveen on the "characteristic silver-gray tones of the works of these years." [CORRECTION: She was not quoting Duveen but art historian August Mayer, who reversed his downgrading of the picture after Duveen had it cleaned.] But the illustration shows us a background that strives to match the color of the golden picture frame. Put this one over the sofa!

Also strange, in an article that considers the question of whether this is a self-portrait, is Rosenberg's failure to mention (let alone illustrate) the artist's most clearly delineated self-portrait---the one in the Museo de Bellas Artes, Valencia.

Leading Velázquez expert and NYU professor Jonathan Brown says this about the Valencia painting in his catalogue essay for the Met's current Velázquez Rediscovered dossier exhibition:

There is no relationship [emphasis added] between the sitter in the Met portrait and the painter, whose visage is recorded in a self-portrait now in the Museo de Bellas Artes, Valencia, and, of course, in "Las Meninas."

Rosenberg says:

The subject [of the Met's portrait] looks more like a cousin of the Velázquez we know from "Las Meninas" and other established self-portraits.

"Other established self-portraits"? As far as I know (from talking to Met's European paintings chairman, Keith Christiansen, and reading his exhibition's catalogue), there's only one other established self-portrait, and it's in Valencia. Keith still thinks that Valencia's Velázquez may be the same guy depicted in the earlier picture owned by the Met---making allowances for his having aged and put on a few pounds.

But Keith, that nose!