The Surrender of Breda

About this work

Artist

Diego Velázquez (1599–1660)

Year

1634–1635

Medium

Oil on canvas

Original size

307 × 367 cm

Collection

Museo del Prado, Madrid

Movement

Baroque

Justinus van Nassau hands the key of Breda to the Genoese general Ambrogio Spinola, who stops him from kneeling with a hand on his shoulder, while behind the two commanders the beaten Dutch garrison stands on the left and the Spanish ranks on the right under a forest of upright lances that gives the picture its Spanish name, Las Lanzas. The city had fallen on 5 June 1625 after a long siege, and Velázquez, who had travelled to Italy with Spinola in 1629, painted the surrender in 1634 to 1635 for the Hall of Realms in the Buen Retiro palace, part of a cycle of twelve victories commissioned by Philip IV and his minister Olivares. The courtesy of the victor is the subject; there is no humiliation, only tired faces and smoke on the horizon. More than three and a half metres wide, it is in the Museo del Prado in Madrid and is counted among his greatest works.

This print reproduces the whole work, uncropped, from a high-resolution scan of the original. The original is in the public domain.