Lost Velázquez portrait of Olivares found in Madrid private collection
A long-lost 1626 portrait by Diego Velázquez has been authenticated in Madrid, placing a rare and immensely valuable artwork on a potential collision course between the auction block and the Prado museum.
Salvador Salort-Pons, director of the Detroit Institute of Arts, has authenticated a lost 1626 portrait by Diego Velázquez, locating the work in a private collection. The painting depicts Gaspar de Guzmán, the Count-Duke of Olivares, dressed in gold-trimmed armour and a red sash.
With only around 120 Velázquez paintings known to exist and fewer than ten believed to be in private hands, the resurfacing of "The Count-Duke of Olivares in Armour" carries significant market weight. Salort-Pons notes that the logical destination for a work of this calibre is the auction block, where it would likely command a premium given its scarcity.
The portrait was being cleaned at a Madrid restoration studio in late 2025 when Salort-Pons was asked to examine it. It had long been dismissed as a product of the artist’s workshop. However, technical analysis revealed what Salort-Pons calls “a perfect match of the pigments” Velázquez used in the 1620s. X-rays and infrared imaging also uncovered compositional alterations, showing Olivares was initially painted in a black outfit before being reworked into military garb.
Crucially, the canvas thread count matches three other Velázquez works, including a 1626–1628 portrait of King Philip IV in armour housed at the Prado. This connection highlights a notable gap in the Madrid museum's holdings: despite possessing roughly half of the artist's surviving works, the Prado does not own any of Velázquez's early painted portraits of Olivares.
Salort-Pons broke his silence on the discovery this month in ARS Magazine, having previously notified only his wife and the Prado. The newly authenticated portrait will be the centrepiece of a Detroit Institute of Arts exhibition opening in January 2027, joined by other early Olivares portraits from New York and São Paulo. Salort-Pons is currently finalising the loan of the matching Prado armour portrait of King Philip IV for the show.
Art historians view the find as a major addition to the understanding of Velázquez's early career. Giles Knox, a Velázquez scholar at Indiana University Bloomington, called the discovery “a big deal”, noting the young artist had to prove his worth to hostile old-guard painters at court. The newly found portrait features a subtle trompe l’oeil hole in the armour, a detail Salort-Pons says was added “to show Velazquez’s great skill as a painter."
The ultimate fate of the painting remains uncertain. When asked about its future beyond the Detroit exhibition, Salort-Pons declined to elaborate, adding only: “If I owned it, I would keep it."
