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Luigi Rossi returned to Rome in 1650 and died there three years later. At this time (1648 to 1651) Diego Velázquez was in Italy, commissioned to buy works of art for his king, Felipe IV. During those years Velázquez painted some of his most splendid portraits in Rome. One of them is that of his Arabic slave and assistant Juan de Pareja (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). A little time after painting the portrait Velázquez gave him his freedom. From then on, until his death in 1670, Juan de Pareja worked as an independent painter. Rossi, Velázquez, Pareja: three strangers in the cosmopolitan Rome of the mid 17 century. The city which was then well named as the caput mundi, the authentic head or capital of the world. |
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