On August 17-18th a team from Factum Foundation worked in London’s Apsley House to record two paintings by Velázquez: The Waterseller of Seville and Two Young Men Eating at a Humble Table. This recording, which took an extra effort to organise due to current COVID-19 complexities, represents an important step forward in the initiative to digitise and make facsimiles of the most representative artworks from the artist’s early life in Seville (1618–1623) for the Casa Natal de Velázquez, due to open in 2021.

The recording of the two paintings at the Wellington Collection was made possible by the generosity of the Duke of Wellington and English Heritage, particularly the Keeper of the Wellington Collection and their Conservators. The facsimiles will be produced in Factum Arte’s studios in Madrid in the next weeks while the data will be given to Apsley House to help draw attention to the remarkable collection of paintings and assist in the preservation and study of these two works.