Excerpt from The Vanishing Velazquez by Laura Cumming, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Almost all of his work was painted for the Spanish king and court and stayed exactly where it was made, long after his death, immured in the royal palaces. Even when the Prado first opened to the public in 1819, with the revelation of more than forty paintings by Velázquez, only the well-heeled traveler could have the slightest sense of his work that is so freely available to us today. Photography did not yet exist, prints were precious few and could scarcely convey his mysterious and diaphanous style, so that the only way a Velázquez could be kept in mind was through the fantastic vagaries of memory.

Excerpted from The Vanishing Velázquez by Laura Cumming. Copyright © 2016 by Laura Cumming. Excerpted by permission of Scribner. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.