BAPTISM OF CHRISTEL GRECOTHE PRADO
the latter a representation of natural phenomena; realism a representation of the same with a suggestion of their relation to the horizon of the idea involved in them. This becomes El Greco’s almost invariable habit. Turn, for example, to theSan Mauricio(p. 75), which was executed shortly after theAssumption of the Virgin. According to legend Mauritius was the general of a Theban mercenary legion in the Roman army. He refused to pay homage to the gods and was condemned to be beheaded. Whereupon the whole legion declared their faith and shared martyrdom with their leader. One may believe that El Greco pictured the event in his imagination; its several phases, the general’s refusal, the executions and the glory in Heaven of the martyr’s crown. In the glow of religious fervor a vision shaped itself before the eyes of his spirit and he set it upon the canvas. The noble heads of the general and his lieutenants are clearly portraits of contemporaries, of men who no doubt believed themselves capable of imitating the example of the saint, if occasion required it. At the outset, therefore, the picture is based, not on a mere representation of certain persons, but of the latter in their relation to the idea involved. In the gravity and confidence of the saint’s face are mirrored alike the consciousness of the tragedy to be depicted and the glory that will follow. The saint himself, in fact, is represented as having his own vision of the situation in relation to its horizon of ideas.
The back of the officer who is delivering the ultimatum is modeled with intentional exaggeration, to increase the refined suggestion of the saint and at the same timeto emphasise the separateness of the main group both from the scene that is being enacted in the rear and from the Heavenly vision. The color impression of the whole picture is blue; cold tones of blue relieved by the pale red-wine color of the flag, the pale creamy yellow of some of the corselets and the extreme white of the flesh. It is a scheme which gives an extraordinary suggestion of abstraction. The lighting also reveals the beginning of El Greco’s gradually developed method of chiaroscuro. The latter grew out of his study to give to every part of the decorative pattern of his composition the life of movement. In the figures of the angels actual movement is expressed in the gestures and actions, but in the stationary figures in the foreground it is suggested by the curling, quivering light, especially on the legs. These light effects, so characteristic of El Greco’s work from this point onward, will embarrass the student who is looking for naturalistic exactitude. It is not until he has become used to the artist’s blending of the concrete and the abstract, that he will realise its fitness in the whole scheme of the vision.
The next great work of El Greco’s career wasThe Funeral of Count Orgaz, (p. 76), known in Spain asEl Interrio. This masterpiece still hangs in the church for which it was painted, San Tomé, in Toledo. It commemorates the legend connected with the founder of the church, the pious Count Orgaz, who died in 1323. At his funeral S.S. Augustine and Stephen appeared and lowered the body into the grave. Once more it is a vision both of the actualities of the incident and ofthe no less reality of the spiritual idea involved. While the priests and faithful friends, portrait-studies of El Greco’s contemporaries, assist at the solemn function, some turn their eyes to the vision above, where amid the hosts of prophets, apostles, saints and angels, with the Blessed Virgin interceding, the naked soul of the Count appears at the feet of his Redeemer. Was ever nakedness expressed so literally and yet with such abstraction? The whole vision is illuminated by a cold light which comes from within the scene itself. The sumptuousness of gold embroidery distinguishes the vestments of the two saints in the foreground, emblematic of the opulent ceremonial of the Catholic Church, while the Chivalry of Spain is commemorated in the dead body. The black steel of the armor against the ivory white of the sheet sets the key of black and white which is the general color impression of the lower part of the picture. Above, the Virgin’s mantle makes a positive note of blue among the paler and higher tones of the same color, the pale yellow, cream and occasional suggestion of mauve and faintest carmine.
The prominence given to the Virgin and the nude form, and the elongation of the latter help to isolate the Christ and increase the sense of altitude, up toward which are straining eagerly the faces of the Heavenly hosts. What a pageant of spiritual exaltation, parted by open tableau-curtains of cloud from the drama below! And the latter—was ever a greater intensity of gravity, dignity and tenderness compressed into a group of heads? Tradition has it that the priest to the right in white vestment is Don Andrez Nuñez, priest of SanTomé. The grey-bearded profile to his left is known to be a portrait of the painter, Antonio Corrubias, whose brother, Diego, appears in the white-bearded man on the left of the composition, above the figure of S. Stephen. The face with the ruff, to the left of Antonio Corrubias, is supposed to be the artist’s.
Everyone has praised the consummate characterisation and technical mastery of this lower part of the picture; but many have criticised the upper and been unable to accept it as a reasonable part of the composition. On the other hand, if study of the picture include communion with the spirit and purpose which inspired it, one is brought to feel that upper and lower parts are indivisibly associated both in the conception of the subject and in the rendering of it. The composition for a moment recalls Raphael’s vision of theDisputá, which El Greco must have seen in the Stanza of the Vatican. There, the space to be filled, though proportionately broader than this one is similarly arched, and a band of figures, representing the Church on Earth, spreads across the lower part, while in the upper, Heaven is unfolded. But beyond this all resemblance ceases. Even the earthly group in Raphael’s fresco is disposed in the manner of Italian idealism; in theCount Orgazits naturalness is characteristically Spanish. In the upper part of his painting Raphael continued the geometrical design of the composition by arranging the Heavenly hosts in arcs. El Greco has invented a sort of irregular, spontaneous geometry. The design has a central group of three figures, disposed to form a triangle, outside of which the spaces of cloud are divided
VIRGIN AND SAINTSEL GRECOSAN JOSÉ, TOLEDO
into compartments or pockets, filled with figures. It is a borrowed motive, discoverable in the compositions of Giotto and other primitive Italians and in the mosaics that helped to inspire them. It is, in fact, Byzantine. But the latter term is merely a named and dated milestone on the road which stretches back in endless perspective through Persia to Buddhistic art. To-day, with our opportunities of studying the latter, we can detect a curious affinity between El Greco’s arrangement and well known features of Chinese composition. Unconsciously, in fact, his genius leaped back of its conscious source to the remote spring of Oriental inspiration.
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Following theCount Orgazcame a series of pictures in which passionate ecstasy reached its highest intensity. Three of them are in the Prado:The Crucifixion, already alluded to, in which angels are catching the sacred Blood, aResurrectionandThe Baptism of Christ. The last named (p. 81) is not merely a representation of one man pouring water on the head of another, whose humble mien, coupled with the introduction of a hovering dove and sometimes a venerable aged man above, tells one that the picture is meant to represent the baptism of the Second Person of the Holy Trinity. Such is generally the jejune method of treating the subject. But here we are again in the presence of a vision, in which the real spiritual significance of the facts of the incident are made visible to the eye. Heaven joins with earth in a symphonic burst of devotional enthusiasm. Movement of life abounds, thesoul’s life typified by human forms. There is even the rhythm of movement in the comparatively static figures of the Christ and S. John; in the angels that lift the crimson mantle and those who stand by adoring; while over head the spiritual energy mounts in wave upon wave of jubilance till it circles about the serene figure of the Most High God. Once more we note how a sense of far-off isolation is given to this topmost figure by introduction of taller angels in the front plane; also that there is nowhere any space unfilled with meaning, even the grey-green creamy clouds seeming to mount upward with their angelic burdens. But beyond all possibility of description is the degree to which the picture kindles and lifts the imagination.
Amazing also isThe Resurrection, now in the Prado. The figure of the Lord, long and supple as a reed, is poised above, while down below the soldiers are in agitated consternation. They have been roused out of sleep by the shock of the rending tomb and, still dazed, confront the miracle. One has fallen backward in his fear, some shield their eyes from the light, while others carve the air with their swords in frantic efforts. With the exception of one fine young figure that reaches up his hand, as if in acknowledgment of the miracle, they are all nude, the bodies wrought to extreme tension of expression.
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To this time also belongsThe Dream of Philip II, in the Escoriál. It was followed by a period of serener pictures, such as those which were painted for the Chapel of San José, Toledo. The finest of these, and the bestknown, is a narrow upright panel, theS. Martin, dividing his cloak with a nude beggar. The youthful figure of the saint—a portrait of the artist’s son George, in the beauty of his first manhood—clad in black armor, is mounted on a white horse which has black accoutrements. The animal has one foreleg lifted and arched; the others parallel the legs of the beggar, recalling somewhat the treatment of the legs in theSan Mauricio. The two figures are seen against the sky, which soars above a distant view of Toledo. In the statuesque plasticity of the forms and the chastity of the color scheme of white, black, green and pale greyish blue the picture is one of extraordinary nobility and tenderness and of extreme abstraction. Facing it is the exquisitely tender and reverentialVirgin and Saints(p. 85) in which perhaps, more than in any other of his works El Greco has yielded to the charm of facial loveliness. Above the high altar hangs theCoronation of the Virgin. The center of the composition is a trefoil arrangement of the three figures of the Father, Son and Virgin, beneath which are two adoring figures, the rest of the pattern consisting of clouds in arc-like forms only less full of expressional value than the figures. It is a motive that Velasquez borrowed in his picture in the Prado of the same subject.
To this period is attributed theCrucifixionin the Louvre (p. 70) to which allusion has been already made. Let us note afresh the infinite calm of the Saviour’s form as characteristic of this period of spiritual calm in the artist’s own genius. By this time, also, we are better able to judge the introduction of the two worshippers in the lower foreground. They were probably included of necessity, representing the donor and the priest of the Church for which this picture was painted. But they also introduce that touch of naturalism, dear to the Spanish imagination; and the artist has made them contributary to his conception of the scene as a vision. It is a vision of the holy scene which these men of his own time are contemplating and the contrast of their reality lends to the vision an increased abstraction.
Also to this period chiefly belong the manyAnnunciationsandHoly Families. Of the latter we have a fine example in the Hispanic Museum, New York, which recalls with certain modifications that of the Prado. In all these subjects the type of Madonna is drawn from the people. But it is not left in its stolid plainness as by Velasquez in hisAdoration of the Kings, or sentimentalised as by Murillo. By El Greco it has been rarified, purged alike of grossness and earthly emotion; in fact, spiritualized. We may also assign to this period the smallSantiagoof the Metropolitan Museum, New York; exquisitely choice in its tonal scheme of blue, slightly relieved by dull ochre yellow, yet virile in handling and inspired by an exalted purity of imagination.
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To the artist’s latest period belongs another picture in the Metropolitan Museum,The Nativity. It is the product of a newly awakened ardor, such as characterises the most important work of El Greco’s closing life. The participants in the event are lowly folk; the Mothera girl of the people; the shepherds large-modeled, shrewdly featured peasants. But all are possessed with the exaltation of the moment; their naiveté and crudity are caught up in a frenzy of amazement. In the darkness of the night the scene is all aflame with spiritual incandescence. How marvellously the light and obscurity are interwoven! What a strange diversity of plastic forms and subtlety of sober coloring are wrought into the composition! Strangeness is certainly the first impression one experiences; then, following it, a realisation of intense inspiration and of masterful creativeness. One is in the presence of the unusual, of a great imaginative spirit.
Similarly ecstatic is the vision ofThe Coming of the Holy Ghostin the Prado. At the top, the Dove in Glory; under it, a horizontal row of figures, the Virgin in the center, the heads of all tipped with flame; down below, two figures, leaning back and gazing up at the Divine Glory. Some recollection of the old Titianesque crimsons and blues appears, but nothing of their mundane qualities. The whole conception is one of passionate receptivity toward the illumination from on high. The final expression of tempestuous energy appears in theDeath of Laocoon and His Sonin San Telmo, Seville and in theApocalypse, or as it has been wrongly called,The Sacred and Profane Love, owned by the artist, Señor Zuloaga.
El Greco had pupils but left no followers. Some of his pupils, Luis Tristan, for example, and his son, George Manuel, learned to imitate his manner sufficiently closely to have caused confusion in the attribution of certain pictures. But El Greco’s style was so directly the product of his own intellectuality, sensitive and passionate æsthetic imagination and highly wrought soul, that it could not be absorbed in its integrity by others. But his art influenced no less a master than the great Velasquez. We have noted that the latter borrowed from the Toledan artist his composition for theCoronation of the Virginand may add the debt which his portrait ofInnocent Xappears to owe to El Greco’sDon Fernando Nino de Guevara. It was however in the matter of color that the influence is most marked. Velasquez adopted, as Señor de Beruete says, “certain silver-grey tints in the coloring of the flesh, the use of special carmines and a greater freedom of execution in the draperies, fabrics and other accessories.” These same qualities, and the intellectuality and abstraction of his conception and style have begun to affect some modern artists. The most notable example was the late Paul Cézanne, whose work, in turn, is exerting a potent influence on others. Meanwhile El Greco’s pictures, until recent years known only to a few connoisseurs, are being sought for and treasured by collectors and museums.
Meanwhile, by the young painter of to-day El Greco should be studied closely. For the modern age in every development of life is beginning to demand intellectuality, and in painting particularly a greater degree of subtlety and abstract suggestion. The quality of expression is growing more and more to be the test by which the artist of the present and the future will be judged. El Greco, in all these respects is a master tobe followed; not in the way of imitation, but for the sake of the principles involved in his conception of a subject and its technical rendering, and also because he will help to an understanding of other great artists of expression, such as Michelangelo, Giotto, the nameless artists of the Byzantine period and the known and unknown masters of Buddhistic art.
WHILE El Greco gave expression to the soul of Spanish chivalry and religion, Velasquez embodied in its highest form the racial love of naturalism. More than this, he stands above all other naturalistic painters in truth of representation.
He is usually called a realist. But modern thought is investing this term with a meaning that differentiates it from naturalism. Its use of the word is akin to the philosophic meaning of realism, which recognises the reality not only of the species or individual but also of the genus, and considers the individual as a phase of the universal process which causes it. Modern thought, in fact, applies the word realist to one who views the particular in relation to the horizon at the back of it, to the universal process of which it is a temporary manifestation. Thus it calls Ibsen a realist, because, for example, in “A Doll’s House,” he treatsNoraand her husband as phases of the universal problem of marital relations. On the contrary, the playwright who presents merely a cross-section of life, characters and incidents that are true to life but are not treated in relation to the large horizon of ideas, governing our principles of living, it calls a naturalist. The distinction is a vital one and so clarifying to thought and understanding,
PHILIP IV, OLDVELASQUEZTHE NATIONAL GALLERY
that to have once comprehended it should be to adopt it.
In the light of this distinction is Velasquez a naturalist or a realist? In his portraits, which represent his supreme achievement, is one conscious of anything but the absorbing realisation of an individual personality? Do we think of them as typical of their time and country, as are the subjects of El Greco’s portraits? Most certainly there is a great exception in the marvelousPortrait of Pope Innocent X. Behind his grim face extends a wide horizon of correlated ideas. The psychological revelation and universal suggestion of this portrait seem to declare that Velasquez was in mind a realist, but compelled by the circumstances of his life to be a naturalist. Tethered to the Court, he was chiefly occupied with painting the royal personages and their immediate entourage. His was a scene, closed in, like a stage-scene by the artificial routine of ceremony and punctiliousness, in which the puppets, from Philip down to his dwarf play-things, posed. How could a realist portray them in relation to the horizon of ideas involved except by making them contemptible or ridiculous? But his duty as a Court painter compelled Velasquez to close out the horizon, and to represent these individuals with as much of dignity as possible. It is a noteworthy fact that theInnocent Xwas painted during the artist’s second visit to Italy; while he was for a brief space quit of the cramped conditions of his life, able to look out on men and things and study them in relation to large issues. Also, the fact of it being his second visit and that he was in the full maturity of his powers, implies much. He was less preoccupied withindividual impressions, more capable and disposed to view even the Pope himself in relation to the political and spiritual conditions of Rome and of the World.
But though Velasquez was compelled to be habitually a naturalist, he not only avoided the commonplace which so frequently attaches to naturalism, but proved himself the greatest naturalist in the whole story of painting. He lifted naturalism to its highest pitch of expression. His representations of life are characterised not only by living actuality, but by consummate justness, high distinction and extraordinary beauty. There is in all a union of mental supremacy and of supreme technical artistry. Perhaps only Rembrandt, Hals and Raeburn give one so realising a sense of being in the presence of a living personality, as we experience before nearly all the portraits of Velasquez. With Rembrandt we are usually conscious of an inseeing eye which penetrates the soul of his subject and views it in relation to a wide horizon; for Rembrandt is the great realist. Velasquez, on the other hand, shares with Hals and the Scottish artist their restricted vision; but his is the finer, suggesting his own finer quality of mind. Their minds were incapable of the high seriousness, the noble aloofness of his. Hals, seen at his best in the Haarlem groups, is one of the jolly fellows he is depicting; Raeburn, an honest, sturdy gentleman among the gentry who sit to him. Velasquez is always the aristocrat, looking out upon his subject from the elevation of a superior mental dignity. It was because of this that his portraits have the supremecachetof all great art: aloofness. The separateness of his own mental personality from the ordinary thing around him is communicated to the personages which he creates. They are alone with themselves; whether monarch, dwarf or beggar, separated from the common touch by virtue of their author’s art. In their remoteness they are akin to Jan Van Eyck’s portrait ofJean Arnolfini and his Wifeand Holbein’sGeorge GyzeandErasmus; but these have not the insistent suggestion of being actually alive. We recognise in them an extraordinary illusion of life; but in front ofPhilip IVin the National Gallery, ofMoenippusandLas Meniñasin the Prado, not to mention other examples, the consciousness of illusion does not enter our thoughts. We are face to face with truth; “verdad, no pintura,” as Velasquez himself used to say was his ideal—“truth, not painting.” On the other hand, the truth is saved from being merely lifelike, obvious, by the rarifying quality of Velasquez’s own aloofness. His portraits quiver on the razor-edge of truth and abstraction.
We have spoken of their consummate justness. This represents another result of the high-bred nature of Velasquez’s mind; revealed in a tact of selection, exposition and arrangement. He had an unerring feeling for essentials, his most characteristic works being singularly sparing of detail; a cultivated instinct for the salient gesture and expression, and a rarely economical method of achieving them. His ability to plant a figure on the floor, so that it bears down with its own weight and grows up in its own strength; to give it characteristic action, at once unified and rhythmic; to invest its contour lines with firmness and precision as well assubtlety; to give to the smallest details, such as the modeling of a glove, an individual character and, finally, to adjust all these several qualities into an organized unity and place the ensemble in perfect relation to the open space it occupies—his ability to do all this is the measure of his justness.
To the high distinction of the result we have already alluded in speaking of its dignity and aloofness. It is the product, alike, of elevated mentality and of supreme technical accomplishment. The latter brings us in touch with the cause of its extraordinary beauty.
What does beauty mean to us? If it is beauty of face and form—the easy way to artistic beauty and to lay appreciation thereof—we shall seldom find it in Velasquez’s pictures. The people whom it was his lot to paint were mostly plain-featured, to use no harsher terms; their costumes outrageously extravagant and not in the direction of elegance; the coloring was sombre, only sparingly relieved with gaiety of color. Nor, for the most part, were they people of force of character or with suggestion of experience imprinted on their faces, so that in the interest aroused thereby, one could forget their homeliness. To be frank, they are mostly stupid persons, or at least apathetic. Whence, then, the beauty? Its source is twofold: in the artist’s vision of his subject and in his technical rendering of what he found.
The secret of an artist’s vision, when it is truly artistic, is that it is inspired by a feeling for beauty and is looking for beauty. He is not searching for something to represent, but for a means of expressing what
EQUESTRIAN PORTRAIT OF PHILIP IVVELASQUEZTHE PRADO
he feels of beauty. To such a one as Velasquez it matters little what he is called upon to paint. He is not aware of those limitations which the ordinary man calls ugliness. To him the subject is a manifestation of life and life to him is beauty in every one of its aspects, and to render that beauty is sufficient. And you may say that he finds life and the beauty of life not only in the face and figure, action and gesture, of his subjects, but in the clothes they wear and the accessories that surround them. All are contributory to the sense of life with which the subject inspires him, so that he extracts from fabrics and objects of still-life a raciness of character or subtlety of expression that lifts them above the ordinary and gives them the distinction of beauty.
But, after all, it is not so much a question of extracting beauty from the subject as of putting beauty into it. The final achievement is one of technique. There are hundreds of pictures which a layman can admire without thought of technique. Interest of subject predominates, or at least is sufficient to establish interest; charm of sentiment attracts, or splendor of color or composition. But Velasquez’s compositions for the most part are studiously reserved; his color sober; scarcely the quiver of sentiment disturbs the equanimity of his subjects, and the latter, in the ordinary sense of the term, have no human interest. Such attractiveness, therefore, as they have, is almost completely what has been put into them by his technique.
Take, for example, the bust-portrait (p. 92) ofPhilip IVin the National Gallery, assuredly one of Velasquez’s most notable achievements. How languidthe pale hair; the face, how foolishly prolonged, flabby and expressionless! Imagine it painted by a second-rate artist, and you would pass it by. But before this portrait you pause and linger long. Why? neither you nor I can tell; except simply that we are in the presence of the mystery of life, so that even this sallow, puffed face attracts and rivets our admiration. Even a painter cannot tell you how it was painted. Its technique eludes him. Yet it is the technique which holds him to the spot. Hefeelsthat here the mystery of living structure and tissue has been compassed by the mystery of the artist’s creativeness. Something of the same suggestion of spontaneously created plasticity is to be found in the beautiful child-portrait ofDon Baltasar Carlosin the Metropolitan Museum, New York. Usually, however, the means by which the effect is obtained may be discovered. You note the character expressed in some detail of the canvas; and then approach until you see the brush strokes that produced it, no less magical because patently apparent. In fact, you find yourself let in behind the scenes of the artist’s dramatic representation of facts and in a measure share the joy of creating the illusion.
It is a hopeful theory that out of one’s limitations may grow one’s greatest strength. And it is true of Velasquez. The very narrowness of his scope of actual vision encouraged a closer scrutiny. He discovered beauty in things which had escaped the notice of artists to whom larger liberty of choice was allowed. This is particularly revealed in his attitude toward color and light. The range of color-hues involved in the costumesof his royal sitters was restricted; blacks and greys prevailed, with occasional notes of rose or blue. Debarred from a variety of hues, Velasquez learned to see the variety of nuances which any one hue presents under the action of light. His blacks ceased to be merely the negation of color; they took on silvery hues, and sometimes brown ones. Even the bare drab wall of his studio became a field for the play of light. He grew to be an intimate student of the identity of the effects of light and color; noting how the “local hue” of an object varies in color-value according to the quantity, direction and quality of the light upon the various planes of its surface. Some artists before his time had noted this principle, but none until Velasquez and Hals—for it is a strange coincidence that the Dutch artist also was following this track—had given a practical application to it. Others had treated the local color, as if it were separate from chiaroscuro. They would model the form in monochrome and then spread their local hue over the whole in a thin transparent glaze which permitted the underpainting of shaded, half-shaded, and light parts to be seen through it. Velasquez actually modeled in the local color, by representing the differences of color-values that it assumed, according as the rise or depression of its surface caught more or less of light.
This, of course, is what other artists had done, notably Leonardo da Vinci in hisMonna Lisa, Jan Van Eyck and Holbein in their portraits; but with a difference. They imitated each color-value as exactly as they could, modeling their surfaces with innumerable facets. Velasquez, like Hals, discovered for himself the principle of Impressionism; so far, at least, as this term is applicable to technical processes. For its meaning has become extended to include the artist’s mental standpoint, so that to-day, when we speak of an impressionist, we mean one who in literature, or drama, or painting or sculpture colors his impressions according to the moods of his temperament. But in Velasquez there is nothing of the temperamentalist. He is the cool, impartial observer of objective facts. But, instead of seeing them, as Holbein did, in the multiplicity of their detailed variations, he saw them in the large. Primarily, that is to say, he aimed, not at perfection of parts, but at a unity of ensemble. To secure this he sacrificed the less important to the more important; eliminated the unessential and emphasised the salient. His mental process was one of keen analysis, directed to the question of what was and what was not essential, and also to the study of the relative degrees of importance which the essentials bore one to another and the whole. The end in view was to make the ensemble, not only organically simple, but an organic unit.
No doubt Velasquez was led to these results by his study of color and light. He not only discovered but made technical use of the fact that light tends to unify the colors and forms of objects; that it encompasses them and affects their contour lines, causing some to be sharp and others more elusive, and also, as we have noted, changes the values of their hues. Further, he became aware that under the action of light colors act and react on one another; that, for instance, the value of the flesh of a face will be affected by the color-light
AN ACTOR, CALLED“DON JUAN OF AUSTRIA”VELASQUEZTHE PRADO
of the costume or of other objects near it. Thus, we ourselves may have observed how the white gown and face of a woman, seated on the grass, will assume values of reflected green. Or, if we are acquainted with the Lumière process of color-photography, we are familiar with the surprises of unexpected reflections which the camera records.
All of these results of his study Velasquez employed to render the truth of sight and to unify the impressions. For it was the sum of the impressions he had received that he learned to render. He, in fact, formed in his mind a net impression of the whole scene, then translated each part into its proper share in the total of impression. It is a process which in the case of so great an artist as Velasquez is an act of high imagination, giving birth to an act of real creativeness. The result, then, is not an imitation of nature’s truth but the new creation of an equivalent artistic truth; yet, with such an illusion of natural truth that it still meets his own ideal—“truth, not painting.” Hence the stimulus which the spectator feels in the presence of his finest works. He is urged to be an active participator; to retranslate the equivalent of truth into the natural truth; to read from the shorthand of the brush strokes the full text of the longhand; to adjust his own eyes and mind to the reception of the impression and that a unified one. He becomes, in fact, a part-creator in the picture; somewhat as an intelligent spectator of a good play finds himself a part-actor in the dramatic situations.
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The story of Velasquez’s life is little else than anenumeration of incidents in his career as an artist. He was born June 6, 1599, in Seville, where his father, Juan Rodriquez de Silva, a lawyer of an old Portuguese family, had settled. The mother was Geronima Velasquez. Hence the son’s full name, Don Diego Rodriquez de Silva y Velasquez, was shortened according to Andalusian custom into the family name of his mother. His parents dedicated him to the study of letters and philosophy, but yielded to his desire to become an artist. After a short period in the studio of Francisco Herrera, he was placed under the care of Francisco Pacheco, an academic painter of no great merit, but a man of considerable learning, whose house was a resort of the most cultivated society of the city. The young Velasquez profited so well by these surroundings, that Pacheco accepted him as a son-in-law. He was married to Juana Pacheco in 1618, the result of the union being two daughters, Francisca and Ignacia, the former of whom subsequently married Velasquez’s own pupil, Juan Bautista del Mazo. At this time, the School of Andalusia, under the influence of Ribera’s pictures, was abandoning Italianate mannerisms in favor of the naturalistic motive. When the young king, Philip IV, ascended the throne in 1621, Pacheco began to scheme that his most promising pupil should be brought to the royal notice. A visit to Madrid was planned in 1622, and on this occasion Velasquez gained the notice of the Count-Duke de Olivares, the king’s prime minister and favorite, who in the following year summoned him back to Madrid. Under the Count’s direction and aided by his purse, Velasquez produced an equestrian portrait(which has disappeared) of the king, who was so well pleased with it that he took the young artist into his service. Thus, in 1623 began that mutual friendship of monarch and painter, which resulted in a close companionship of nearly thirty-seven years. It was interrupted only by the king’s occasional journeys of state and by Velasquez’s two visits to Italy.
In 1628 Rubens arrived as an ambassador extraordinary from the King of England. His visit was prolonged for nine months, during which he painted several pictures for the King. Velasquez was deputed to act as his escort in the visits which he paid to the Escoriál and to the royal picture galleries. He was thus brought into touch with the most renowned painter of the day at the period of his most splendid achievement. The association must have broadened the young man, but it did not cause him to falter in his own attitude toward nature and art. Rubens urged him to go to Italy and study the great masters, and the King endorsed the advice.
The first visit was made in 1629 under circumstances of importance. For Velasquez started in the train of the Marquis Spinola, the most renowned Captain-General of the age, whom he was to immortalize in theSurrender of Breda, and on his arrival in Italy presented letters from the Count-Duke de Olivares which procured him admission to the most famous galleries. He copied some of the works of Michelangelo, Raphael and Tintoretto, and brought back five original canvases:The Forge of Vulcan,Joseph’s Coat, two views of theVilla Mediciand aPortrait of Doña Maria. The first, notwithstanding its classic subject, is naturalistic. Velasquez has taken advantage of the story of Apollo announcing the infidelity of Venus to her husband, while he is at work with his assistants, in order to make a study of the nude form, as a vehicle for the expression of action and emotion. But the composition has nothing of the method of Italian idealism, while it abounds with charming passages of still-life painting, thoroughly Spanish. The Villa Medici studies are particularly interesting evidence of Velasquez’s preoccupation with nature, even among the masters in Rome, and his serious regard for landscape, which forms an important feature in many of his portraits. His return to Madrid in 1631 marks the end of what is regarded as the first period of his career. The remainder is similarly divided into two parts.
The chief works of the first period beside those already mentioned are the earlyAdoration of the Shepherds(National Gallery),The Lady with the Fan(Wallace Collection),The Adoration of the Kings,Los BorrachosorThe Topers, andPhilip IV. Young, all of which are in the Prado.
Philip welcomed his artist back with new favors, appointing him to the post of Aposentador Mayor, whose duty it was to superintend the arrangements for the King’s lodging during his excursions to the country. It was a means of keeping his friend with him, though it must have seriously interfered with the work of the artist.
An influence of the first Italian visit may be traced in the large decorative canvases which characterise themiddle period. Olivares had presented his palace of Buen Retiro to the King, and the latter employed Velasquez and other painters to embellish it. Hence followed the equestrian portraits ofDon Baltasar Carlos,OlivaresandPhiliphimself, and the historical picture,The Surrender of Breda. In addition, this period produced theChrist at the Pillar(National Gallery) and the Prado portraits ofPhilip IV as a Sportsman,Don Baltasar Carlos as a Sportsman,Don Fernando de Austria as a Sportsman,The Sculptor Montañéz, and the portraits of dwarfs and actors, among the latter the so-calledDon Juan de Austria(p. 100).
Velasquez started on his second visit to Italy in June 1649, and returned to Madrid in the summer of 1651. It was on this occasion that he painted the portrait ofInnocent X, which is now in the Doria Gallery in Rome. On his return home the King made him Marshal of the Palace, which entailed upon him the onerous duties of arranging court festivities. These, too, had encreased in frequency and pomp owing to the King’s second marriage; this time with his niece, Mariana of Austria, a girl of fourteen. Notwithstanding such interruptions Velasquez produced during these last nine years of his life some of his finest works and his masterpiece,Las Meniñas(The Maids of Honor). Among the other canvases areS. Anthony Visiting S. Paul;Las Hilanderas(The Weavers);Portrait of Queen Mariana(p. 119);Portrait of Doña Maria Teresa(orMargarita Maria);La Infanta Doña Margarita Maria, of the Louvre;Philip IV Old(p. 92) and theVenus(National Gallery);Æsopus,Moenippus,The God Mars, The Dwarf calledAntonio El Inglese, and the actorCristobal de Pernía, called Barbarroja. All the above, except those otherwise specified, are in the Prado.
In June, 1660, the marriage, which had been arranged by Cardinal Mazarin between the young Louis XIV and Philip’s daughter, María Teresa, was celebrated upon the Isle of Pheasants, in the little river which separates Spain and France on the West of the Pyrenees. The weight of the burden of preparation and supervision fell upon the Marshal of the Palace, and proved more than Velasquez could sustain. He broke down at the end of the ceremony and, returning to Madrid, died a few weeks later, August 6, 1660. His wife survived him only seven days.
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In a work of this scope it is impossible to go into the questions which have arisen over the authenticity of many of the pictures ascribed to Velasquez. For information on this head the reader is referred to the latest critical work on the subject—“Velasquez” by Señor A. de Beruete y Moret, and to the continuation of the subject by his son in his recent book, “The School of Madrid.” Both are published in English. The net result of their study is that many of the pictures ascribed to Velasquez are either copies of Velasquez’s work, made by his son-in-law and pupil, Mazo, or original works of the latter, who from constant companionship with Velasquez had learned to imitate his style so closely. Here, I will satisfy the curiosity of the reader only by saying that these critics pronounce thePhilipIV in Hunting Costume, of the Louvre, to be a copy, and theAdmiral Pulido-Pareja, of the National Gallery, an original, by Mazo.
By reference to a few examples, let us trace the evolution of Velasquez’s way of seeing and rendering his subject. The earliest picture in the Prado isThe Adoration of the Magi. This is assigned to about the year 1619, the probable date also ofThe Adoration of the Shepherds(National Gallery). Both, therefore, belong to the Seville period. Perhaps in theMagiwe can detect something of the sophistication of the learned Pacheco, as well as the influence of the new naturalistic movement. The figures are naturalistic; while the grouping and lighting are artificial, academical. The light is arbitrarily centered on the Mother and Child; the shadows which envelop the other figures are also arbitrary; neither shade nor light is naturally distributed; the whole is a studio convention.
Velasquez finishedLos Borrachos, (The Topers) in 1629, the year he sailed for Italy. It represents the climax of his development during the previous ten years, and what progress it exhibits! The distressing murkiness of the older picture has disappeared; the chiaroscuro in this is luminous; the flesh parts brilliantly lighted, the shadows warm and transparent. But it still presents the studio chiaroscuro, designed for the sake of the pattern and unity of the composition; the light and shade are not nature’s. Wonderfully naturalistic, however, are the heads of these peasants, brimming with character and life. The men are engaged in a mock scene, in which a youth, playing the part ofBacchus, is crowning a comrade with vine-leaves. As Señor Beruete says: “The Spanish ‘picaresca,’ or rogue comedy, which plays such a brilliant part in the literature of that day, has never been better rendered than it is in this astonishing picture.” But we note, in anticipation of the artist’s further advance, that the picture presents only a pictorial ensemble, not yet a natural unity. It is a mosaic of splendidly executed items—faces, nude forms, costumes and still-life—each of which merits and indeed demands individual study. As apatternthe composition holds together as a unit, but it does not present a unit ofsight. One cannot see it as a whole; the eye travels from point to point, resting on each and enjoying it separately. The picture is a masterpiece of its kind; but it is not of the kind that Velasquez at length achieved in the single, unified vision ofLas Meniñas.
The Forge of Vulcan, which Velasquez executed in Italy (1630-1631), is remarkable, in the first place, for its freedom from the trace of Italian influence. Velasquez had come face to face with the giants, but had preserved completely his independence. Michelangelo and Tintoretto had shown him their capacity to express emotion and dramatic energy in the action of figures, particularly nude ones. Velasquez observes; but applies the principles to suit his own ideal of truth; no heroics, or pageantry of display; simply the natural expression of emotion, under natural circumstances. The workshop, the articles of still-life, the action of the men, have been studied from observed facts. Their work having been suddenly interrupted, each man pauses for a