The Adoration of the Magi

A young mother holds her child upright on her knees like something she is showing. The child is tightly swaddled and looks calmly at the men who kneel before him. It is evening; the faces are lit from the side.

Velázquez was twenty when he painted this for the Jesuits in Seville. The faces are portraits, and tradition names the sitters: his young wife Juana as Mary, their daughter as the child, his teacher and father-in-law Francisco Pacheco as the old king, and the painter himself as the king who kneels in front.