He could not even reserve his own private time for his art, but as he waxed higher in the estimation of the King, the supervision of Court ceremonies, entrusted to him as an honour, deprived him of leisure, and at last brought his life prematurely to a close.
From the time when Velasquez entered the service of the King, he painted exclusively for the Court.

We have eight portraits by him of Philip IV., and five of the little Don Carlos, besides many others of the queens and princesses.

We can follow the growth of his art in the portraits of Philip IV., as we can follow that of Rembrandt in portraits of himself.

But while Rembrandt might make of the same person, himself, or another model, a dozen different people, so that it mattered little who the model was, Velasquez was concerned with a different problem.
In the seventeenth century almost any good painter could draw his models correctly, but Velasquez reproduced the living aspect of a man as no one else had done.

We have already spoken of the feeling of atmosphere that Cuyp and Peter de Hoogh were able to bring into their pictures.