STEPHANIE ARCHANGEL: Juan de Pareja’s portrait by Velázquez is an extremely important painting because there’s so many questions to be asked.

My name is Stephanie Archangel and I’m a curator at the history department of the Rijksmuseum.

It starts with his identity. Is he white? Is he black? And almost kind of forget that he’s a marvelous painter himself who was enslaved at that point in time and is freed by his enslaver who’s one of the biggest artists of all time and then you have the question of how and why was he freed?

NARRATOR: And then there is the gravity and intensity of the image itself.

STEPHANIE ARCHANGEL: He’s fiercely looking at you. He’s really making his presence felt instead of shying away from the viewer which, if you look at paintings from the 17th century where Black people were portrayed mostly looking down or up towards the white sitter or mostly looking away, but not having this one-on-one connection with you as you are standing in front of it. For a person enslaved in that period of time, it’s almost unbelievable that he takes this kind of stance.

NARRATOR: It’s likely that the reception of this painting exhibited at the Pantheon in Rome brought Pareja a certain level of renown. Even though it was mutually beneficial to the painter and subject, we must acknowledge and question the relationship between enslaver and enslaved.

STEPHANIE ARCHANGEL: I don’t know quite where the agency is, and I think that’s the interesting thing about this painting because you don’t know. But you keep asking that question. And I don’t think we will ever get an answer to that. Or a satisfying answer to that.