Diego Velazquez, (artist), Spanish, 1599 - 1660, The Needlewoman, c. 1640/1650, oil on canvas, overall: 74 x 60 cm (29 1/8 x 23 5/8 in.), framed: 102.2 x 88.3 x 7.6 cm (40 1/4 x 34 3/4 x 3 in.), Diego Velazquez ranks among the greatest masters of seventeenth-century Europe. By 1623, the twenty-four-year-old artist was established as court painter to Philip IV in Madrid. For nearly forty years, he was primarily occupied with painting remarkably innovative portraits of the monarch and the royal family. But in his spare hours, Velazquez turned to subjects that interested him personally;, The Needlewoman, is among those works..