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 VELAZQUEZ

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VELAZQUEZ

journey to Italy, commemorated by three or four masterpieces, the two landscapes of the Villa Medici, preserved at ISIadrid, which possess all tlie grace of the most delightful Corots, and the portrait of Velaz- quez' mulatto slave Juan de Pareja (Castle Howard), with which the artist preluded the magnificent por- trait of Pope Innocent X (Palazzo Doria), the finest portrait of a pope save Raphael's JuUus II.

On his return to Madrid the painter, now definitely freed from all shackles, and strong enough to liandle all ideas as he pleased, produced one after another the most decided, and most precious of his works. Such, for example, were the two famous philosophers, the "jEsop", and the "Menippus" of the Prado, the most beautiful example of this class of Spanish mendi- cancy akin to the "Drunkards" of thirty years earlier. Such, likewise, were the two companion pictures, the only existing fragments of an entire decoration — the "Mercury and Argus" of the Prado and the " Venus with the Mirror" of the National Gallery. The "Mars" aiid the "Coronation of the Virgin", at the Prado, are less pleas- ing and original works. For a long time, owing to the nature of his ideas and the constant development of his researches. Vela z- quez devoted hini- seK to the solution of a more important problem. We have seen how in "The Lances" he had at- tempted historical painting, and what prevented him from

succeeding therein.

Ti_ r * u u Ve azftuez, the

henceforth he

devoted himself to a new idea through a whole

series of works, to express directly, in the fashion of a

portrait, not merely an historical scene nor a single

figure but a complete action of daily life. Thus,

small pictures such as the "Boar Hunt" (Wallace

Collection, c. 1636;), "Balthazar Carlos in the Riding

School" (Wallace Collection, c. 1640), and the "View

of Saragossa" lead us up to Velazquez' grandest works,

those which contain all his genius and present the

highest exi)ression of his art, such as "The Spinners"

and "The Maids of Honour" (Las Meninas) (c. 1655-

56). In subject they are both genre pictures, but of

hitherto unknown dimensions and treated in the

"historical" size. The former shows a workshop

which is being visited by two ladies; the latter, an

inner chamber of the Alcazar in which Velazquez is

shown painting the young infanta, who is surrounded

by her ladies in wait ing, her duefias, her dwarfs, and

her dog. Into these everyday scenes is introduced an

element of selection, of fantasy, caprice, genius — a

something .subjective and purely individual, without

which such iiictures could never have been conceived.

Such grovips as these were formed again and again

in the noisy and overheated work-rooms or the

coolness of dark palaces, but thcj' demanded a

supremo artist.

To tran.slate these wholly intellectual facts of a

quite peculiar order of existence, the artist did not

make use of known lines or colours; he employed

splashes, vague coloured splashes without parallel in

form and with no more relation to the world of real

facts than the colourless dust on the butterfly's

wing bears to the rich diapering which the eye per- ceives. Everything became more elliptical, more uncertain and unreal, and assumed an appearance of a special nature, no longer that of visible and material phenomena, but of their reflexion in the artist's soul, on a rarely sensitive surface; the operations of the hand become imperceptible and mj'sterious, and show an agility and caprice bordering on the miracu- lous; the complete whole takes form before our eyes with a verisimiUtude w-hich seems fantastic, and we have no longer a meaningless scene, but a real vision. These two works, wTites Raphael Mengs, are the theology or the "Summa" of painting. They seem to exist outside of all the expedients of art and as by a mysterious fiat. Through them an entirely new path was opened to the painting of things. Every other scene of life has the same claim to be depicted, provided it has for observer and interpreter such a witness as Velaz- quez; it was a new viewpoint of nature, a method of fruitful and infinite applica- tion. We are as- sured that on seeing the "Meninas" the king was so charmed with the work that he perceived only one oversight and, taking up a brush, painted on the breast of the artist's own portrait the grand cross of St. .lames. Whatever the worth of the legend, the coveted order was none the less gi'anted to Ve- lazquez 12 June, 165S. He had given jjroof of his Hmpieza dt: sanfire, that is, that he had in his family not a drop of Jewish or Moorish blood, that he had never worked for his living, that he had never made a trade of painting, that he had never prac- tised his art save as a recreation and in the service of the king.

To these last years belong some busts (London, Turin, Madrid) which Velazquez made of the prince, stirring works, in which we discern beneath the cold- ness of the mask the interior tragedy which froze the charming countenance of the poet that Philip IV had been. The last, and one of the most charming, of Velazquez' works is the "Anchorites" of the Prado, which is perhaps his most airy and luminous, his tenderest and most poetic work. After his return from Italy, filling the post of royal aposrntador, he was charged with all the preparations for the journey on the occasion of the Peace of the Pyrenees and the marriage of Louis XIV with the infanta. Worn out by this excess of labour, the jjainte; was attacked, on his return, by a fever which i)rved fatal. Philip IV keenly felt the loss of his friend. In the margin of a report of the Junta de Obras y Hosques, ordering that lOIX) ducats of the painter's estate be returned to the budget of the Alcazar, of which Velazquez had been sui)erinteiident (proving that his management had been negligent and irregular), the King wTote the heart-broken words: "I am crushed" (Quedo adha- lidn).

In his sphere Velazquez had no superiors and perhaps no equals. Not only must all i)ainting com- pared with one of his seem artificial and forced, so that in the wonder-crowded Prado, he seems the sole

a Forge Prado, Madrid