Reviews and News: Hitler’s artists: Although it is a commonplace observation that artists tend to suffer under dictatorships, of the left and the right, it is nonetheless true that some have found ways of surviving and even flourishing under repressive regimes—largely through compromises that look egregious after the fact. This was particularly the case with the fascist states of the interwar period from 1919 to 1939. * * Brian P. Kelly reviews Laura Cumming’s fascinating The Vanishing Velázquez. The book is a double portrait, an account of the life and art of that greatest of Spanish painters, Diego Velázquez, and an exhumation of a forgotten art-loving bookseller, John Snare. Even more, it is a beautiful study in extremes: in the case of the artist, of a talent so astounding that Manet called him ‘the greatest painter there ever was,’ and in the case of the merchant, of a passion (or obsession, depending on your perspective) so intense that its pursuit would drive him to ruin.

Source: Prufrock: The Vanishing Velazquez, the Cult of the Colossal, and More | The Weekly Standard