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# The Getty Museum in Los Angeles Acquires a Newly Discovered Painting by Diego Velázquez
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/muzei-getti-v-los-andzhelese-priobriol-nedavno-obnaruzhennuiu-kartinu-diego-velaskesa/
- Published: 2026-09-24T12:30:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-01T05:25:05.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Aristocracy, Art, Monarchies, Museums, Science

The Getty Museum in Los Angeles has acquired a newly discovered painting by Diego Velázquez. The work is the first piece by the seventeenth-century Spanish master in the museum's collection.

Velázquez painted the bust-length portrait around 1626; it depicts Gaspar de Guzmán, Count-Duke of Olivares. From 1621 to 1643 Olivares headed the government of King Philip IV. In Spain such a man was called a *valido*, that is, a royal favourite to whom the monarch entrusted the running of the state. In 1623 Olivares helped Velázquez to obtain the post of court painter.

The artist portrayed his patron in a flattering light. Olivares gazes steadily at the viewer and wears ceremonial military dress, which includes armour with gilt decoration and a crimson sash. Such a sash signalled its wearer's closeness to the Spanish crown.

The portrait served a diplomatic purpose. Olivares was born in Rome, into the family of the Spanish ambassador. He commissioned the portrait as a gift for Cardinal Francesco Barberini, nephew of Pope Urban VIII. The popes of that age made their relatives cardinals and entrusted them with the affairs of the Holy See, which is why historians call the office that of cardinal-nephew. In 1626 Francesco Barberini visited Madrid as papal legate, that is, the pope's official representative. Researchers have also recently discovered a portrait of Maffeo Barberini, the future Urban VIII, by Caravaggio, and in March 2026 Italy bought that painting for $35 million.

The 1631 inventory of the Barberini collection mentions a work that matches the description of the portrait, but the painting was later forgotten. Its memory was preserved by an engraving by Paulus Pontius, made after a design by Peter Paul Rubens. Rubens had been at the Spanish court in the 1620s. The inscriptions on the engraving indicated that the image of the minister went back to an original by Velázquez.

In 2025 the original was discovered by Salvador Salort-Pons, director of the Detroit Institute of Arts. He was preparing an exhibition of Velázquez's images of Olivares when he received a letter saying that in Madrid restorers were cleaning an unknown portrait of Olivares. Specialists had previously attributed the painting to Velázquez's workshop. Salort-Pons examined it in Spain and recommended a detailed study. The pigments and the thread count of the canvas matched the materials Velázquez used. X-ray images revealed changes to the composition that repeat the alterations on the portrait of Philip IV of the same period. In short, technical analysis confirmed that the materials and technique corresponded to Velázquez's works of the mid-1620s.

The Getty concluded the deal swiftly. Of the roughly 120 known paintings by Velázquez, almost half belong to the Prado in Madrid, and the Prado might have seemed the logical home for such a find. In the United States only a handful of museums own paintings by Velázquez. The purchase forms part of the Getty's strategy of expanding the Spanish section of its collection.

This autumn the Getty will show the painting in the museum's East Pavilion. The portrait will then travel to Detroit for Salort-Pons's exhibition on Velázquez and Olivares, which will run from 24 January to 25 July 2027.