Featuring the work of five prominent scholars, this collection analyzes the paintings of Diego Velazquez within the cultural, intellectual, and political frameworks of seventeenth-century Spain. Each essay offers novel insight into the greatest artist of the Spanish Golden Age by bringing a remarkable range of material to bear upon the interpretation of his works. Laura Bass considers painting, poetics, and the Spanish canon of arts and letters in an examination of Velazquez's trenchant portrayal of the writer Luis de Gongora. Turning to the nexus between theory and practice, Giles Knox explores how Velazquez engaged with sculpture both as a young man mastering his craft and as a painter to King Philip IV. Fernando Marias uses sixteenth- and seventeenth-century artistic theory to shed light on the complex narrative structure of a work painted by Velazquez in Italy: Joseph's Bloodied Coat, in which the artist placed himself in competition with the celebrated history painters of Rome. Through an investigation of classical philosophy as understood by Velazquez's contemporaries, Aneta Georgievska-Shine locates his enigmatic Aesop and Menippus within discourse on wisdom, paradox, and humor. Javier Portus places paintings and theatrical productions within the social and political matrix of the Spanish court, offering a powerful new reading of the space for which Velazquez created the Surrender of Breda.