Surrender of Breda, The

Painting by the Spanish artist Diego Velázquez 1634–35 (Prado, Madrid). It was painted for the Buen Retiro Palace, Madrid, as one of a series of ‘victory pictures’. It shows the surrender 1625 of the Dutch city of Breda by Justin of Nassau to the Spanish general Ambrose Spinola (1571–1630), Marqués de los Balbases.

Velázquez never visited the Low Countries but he had travelled to Italy on the same ship as Spinola and would no doubt have recalled his appearance and perhaps his description of the event. The Spanish title of the work refers to a serried row of lances that completes the original character of this great composition.