Following models of Mariano Benlliure.

Spanish school of the 20th century. Following models of MARIANO BENLLIURE (Valencia, 1862 - Madrid, 1947).
"Velázquez".
Bronze sculpture. Edition 2/7.
Signed and numbered.
Measurements: 62 x 26 x 22 cm (sculpture); 10 x 25 x 25 x 25 (base).
This bronze sculpture has its origin, although it was made at a later date, in the plaster sketch for the monument to Velázquez, made by Mariano Benlliure in 1899 and on a smaller scale than the final statue, which, cast in bronze, he sent with great success to the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1900, and which was installed in the centre of the neo-Renaissance courtyard of the Palace of Spain, the seat of the Spanish pavilion. It depicts the man Benlliure considered the painter of painters, standing on a quadrangular pedestal. Dressed in the style of his time, he holds a large hat in his left hand. On the pedestal, surrounded by a laurel wreath, a palette and brushes on the front; The Forge of Vulcan on the right side; Las Meninas on the left and, on the back, The Spears. In 1910, after winning the Grand Prize for Sculpture at the Buenos Aires International Exhibition, it was bought by the Argentinean government to be placed in front of the Museum of Fine Arts in Buenos Aires. There are other replicas of this preparatory plaster in other private collections. In one of them, the mark of the foundryman was found to be Masriera y Campins of Barcelona, Benlliure's first foundryman in Spain on his return from Rome, who was in charge of all the casts that Benlliure presented to the Universal in Paris, where he presented the life-size statue of Velázquez. The original plaster study of this work, which dates from 1899, is in the Sorolla Museum in Madrid, as it was a gift from the master Benlliure to Sorolla.
Mariano Benlliure was a precocious artist, as he showed his gift for sculpture from an early age. His first competitions and exhibitions took place before he was ten years old, and at the age of thirteen he presented his first work at the National Exhibition of Fine Arts. Initially, however, he devoted himself chiefly to painting, a discipline he continued to cultivate in Paris with his master Domingo Marqués. In 1879 he moved to Rome where, fascinated by Michelangelo, he abandoned his brushes to devote himself exclusively to sculpture. In 1887 he settled permanently in Madrid where, at the National Exhibition of the same year, he won the first medal for his sculptural portrait of the painter Ribera. In 1895 he was awarded the medal of honour for his sculpture of the poet Trueba, installed in Bilbao. He also held illustrious foreign decorations, such as the French Legion of Honour and the special medal of Emperor Franz Joseph. Mariano Benlliure has a museum named after him in Valencia, and is represented in the Museo de Bellas Artes San Pío V in the same city, the Museo del Prado and the Museo del Ejército in Madrid, the Museo de Bellas Artes in Murcia and the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Santiago de Chile, among many other public and private collections around the world.