Recently I visited the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston to see an exhibition that focused on Salvador Dalí. I have little interest in his bizarre images and hallucinatory visions. But I looked forward to the paintings and prints by European artists who influenced him.

The galleries were low-lit, and the lay-out of the spaces was labyrinthine and somewhat cramped. But on a weekday, it wasn’t crowded, so I was able to view the art both from a distance and up close.

I tried to be receptive to the paintings by Dalí, but nothing called out to me. I devoted some time to four Dutch engravings from the sixteenth century and a few other things. I then rounded a corner, and, twenty feet away, I saw a portrait. My response was immediate: “That’s a great painting.”

It was Diego Velázquez’s portrait of an important Spanish poet and priest, Luis de Góngora y Argote. It’s dated 1622, when Velázquez was in his early twenties. It’s not imposing in size, just twenty by sixteen inches. But it dominated the gallery it was in, making everything else recede into the walls. The paintings nearby seemed to be acknowledging they couldn’t compete with what Velázquez had done.

There’s the black of Góngora’s clothing; the white of his ecclesiastical collar; and his strong, severe face, a block of riveting intensity set against a blank background that’s black, gray, and sand-colored. The light falls on two-thirds of Góngora’s angled face, while the other third is in shadow; from a distance, it’s more than shadow, it’s very dark, no facial features visible.

Moving closer, I’m held by the piercing black right eye, located within its flesh-toned eyelids, and the horizontal black eyebrow that sharply turns downward, enclosing and intensifying the concentration and seriousness of this staring eye.

The steep descent of the eyebrow is parallel to a slash-line of black hair that reaches to a point and then veers upward, where the black hair withdraws, forming a triangle of flesh, with a patch of slightly darker flesh tone as its base.

There’s also a small black patch near the ear, maybe an imperfection, a birthmark. I wouldn’t dare to mention it to the bearer of this face, the proud owner of this gaze. I see also an unnerving black line on the lower right cheek, roughly parallel to the white collar.

The flesh-color of Góngora’s face is set off against traces of beard and moustache. Not really a beard, more like a man who needs a shave or who, when he shaves, can’t make his skin clear and clean. Force and dignity here are on the edge of arrogance, with emanations of bitterness, resentment, even anger or the capacity for it.

In a way, this isn’t a face. It’s terrain, a landscape. Start with the dome of the head, capped by a very thin line of black hair across the top. Then, travel down toward the wide forehead, smooth, most of it illuminated, the site and source of Góngora’s mind and imagination, while the other side of his forehead on the left is in shadow.

There are bumps on the forehead, creases between the eyes, a bulge on a nose that has a streak of light color. There’s a lump, too, on the lower left chin, with black shadow next to the grayish white of the collar. From where the hairline ends on the left side to the bottom of the chin, there are little ridges and indentations.

I take in the dramatic descent from the nose, with a bump on it, to its downturned bottom, contrasted against the darkness of the mustached area. Notice the line from the right of the nose toward the side of the mouth. It’s like an incision.

Velázquez gives his subject no left ear, possibly to be true to the angle of the face. Perhaps he doesn’t want this ear to show because he intends to feature the right one.

The hair above the right ear is half black, the other half a lighter, more grayish hue. It’s a remarkable ear, with bends, gradations, twists and flaps of skin, crevices. Are there caves and tunnels in it as well? This spellbinding single ear is scary and sinister if we peer into it for too long.

Góngora’s head sits sealed in its white collar and black coat, monumentalized. It’s hard to imagine how this head could extricate itself from such a firm grasp. The head is fixed, locked in, in custody. Could it break free from this clothing, from the black that covers the bottom third of the canvas and stretches beyond its edges on the bottom and the sides?

There’s no suggestion that Góngora has arms. He’s all head and shoulders, a masterful presence, a formidable personality. He sends out a wary discontent that captivates me. Yet the more I contemplate Góngora, the more I feel suspicion and woundedness in him, a shadowy tiredness in his face.

In part, this comes from the section of his face that’s in the shadows, and from the other eye that we cannot see well, weaker in contrast to the penetrating right eye.

Much of Góngora’s head and forehead is exposed, vulnerable. You could strike at this figure, rendered here as armless, implanted in its black base with the padlock of collar around the neck. His chin rests with a revelation of fragility on the tip of a triangle of black at the lower neck that’s shaped by the collar’s two edges of white.

The tight-lipped Góngora is a poet, a man of words, but he doesn’t strike me here as someone who speaks. I sense that to him, I wouldn’t be worthy or worthwhile as an audience. It could be that he hesitates to disclose himself: am I to be trusted?

The other side of his confrontational stare is watchful uncertainty: why are we scrutinizing him, what might we want? Góngora could be seeking to ward off questions, inquiries into who he is.

He’s flesh tones, blacks, and whites. No bright colors: this man would have repelled blues and reds and yellows if Velázquez had attempted to apply them to his face or clothing. From a distance, Góngora is a pyramid, or maybe a mountain, the sloping blacks from the ear bulging alongside the neck on the right and, with less mass, on the left. Down the shoulders, we proceed along slopes of black, which fasten the stern face of this figure in the composition, reinforcing his authority.

It’s astonishing, the power of the portrait that Velázquez has created. He has made Góngora come alive, this priest and poet in black who’s assertive and on guard, confident and self-protective. Through empathy and expertise, the artist has connected me to his figure’s consciousness, his inner life, to his thinking and feeling while I’m looking at him.

Velázquez has done this with a brush, some oil paint, and a piece of canvas. Such simple materials, and there on the wall was the magical result. My immediate response was the right one: that’s a great painting.

William E. Cain is Mary Jewett Gaiser Professor of English at Wellesley College, where he enjoys teaching courses on Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and other American writers. His recent publications include essays on Edith Wharton and Ernest Hemingway.

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