MADRID, Nov. 24 (UPI) -- Madrid's Prado Museum has acquired a portrait by Velazquez for $27 million, the second largest sum it has ever paid for a painting, a spokesman said Monday.
Barely a dozen of the Spanish painter's works are not in a museum, so a work by Diego Velazquez on the international art market is a rare event. This one was painted while Velazquez was visiting Rome between 1649 and 1651.
Known as "The Pope's Barber," it depicts the head and shoulders of a man in middle age with rather sad eyes and a ruddy complexion.
The Prado's collection of Velazquez paintings is one of the museum's main attractions for the 1.8 million people who visit it annually. But Gabriele Finaldi, director of conservation and research at the Prado, said the collection, though very large, did not include any works from the artist's important Italian trip.
"This acquisition fills that gap," he said.
