Portrait of Don Cristóbal Suárez de Ribera

An early portrait by Diego Velázquez (c. 1620), painted in his native Seville, of the cleric Don Cristóbal Suárez de Ribera — Velázquez's father-in-law and early patron. The grave intellectual features and the pale face rising from a deep-black cassock against a dark ground already announce the psychological austerity and sharp naturalism of the young master's portraiture. It is a prized early Velázquez in the Museo de Bellas Artes de Sevilla.