Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/150

Rh 134 VELAZQUEZ may be taken as the most advanced example of the first style of Velazquez. It is usual to divide his artistic career by his two visits to Italy, his second style following the first visit and his third the second. Roughly speaking, this somewhat arbitrary division may be accepted, though it will not always apply, for, as is usual in the case of many great painters, his styles at times overlap each other. Velazquez rarely signed his pictures, and the royal archives only give the dates of his more important works. Internal evidence and history, as regards his portraits, supply to a certain extent the rest. In 1629 Philip gave Velazquez permission to carry out his desire of visiting Italy, without loss of salary, making him besides a present of 400 ducats, to which Olivares added 200. He sailed from Barcelona in August in the company of the marquis De Spinola, the conqueror of Breda, then on his way to take command of the Spanish troops at Milan. It was during this voyage that Velazquez must have heard the details of the surrender of Breda from the lips of the victor, and he must have sketched his fine head, known to us also by the portrait by Van Dyck. But the great picture was not painted till many years later, for Spinola had fallen into disfavour at court. In Venice Velazquez made copies of the Crucifixion and the Last Supper of Tintoretto, which he sent to the king, and in Rome he copied Michel angelo and Raphael, lodging in the Villa Medici till fever compelled him to remove into the city. Here he painted the Forge of Vulcan (No. 1059 of the Madrid gallery), in Avhich Apollo narrates to the astonished Vulcan, a village blacksmith, the news of the infidelity of Venus, while four Cyclops listen to the scandal. The mythological treatment is similar to that of the Bacchus : it is realistic and Spanish to the last degree, giving a picture of the interior of an Andalusian smithy, with Apollo thrown in to make the story tell. The conception is commonplace, yet the im pression it produces is undoubted from the vividness of the representation and the power of expression. The model ling of the half-naked figures is excellent. Altogether this picture is much superior to the other work painted at the same time, Joseph s Coat, which now hangs in the Escorial. This work has been much praised overpraised in the opinion of the present writer and this opinion is shared by Don Federico de Madrazo, the director of the Madrid museum, who looks on it as one of the weakest of the productions of Velazquez. Both these works are evidently painted from the same models. In looking at these two pictures what strikes one especially is that they betray no trace of the influence of the Italians. Velazquez remained true to himself. At Rome he also painted the two beautiful landscapes of the Gardens of the Medici, now in the Madrid museum, full of sparkle and charm. Landscape as a form of art never had attraction for the Spaniards ; but Velazquez here, and in the silvery land scapes painted some years later at Aranjuez, shows how great a master he was in this branch of art. After a visit to Naples in 1631, where he worked with his country man Ribera, and painted a charming portrait of the infanta Maria, sister of Philip, he returned early in the year to Madrid. He then painted the first of many portraits of the young prince Don Baltasar Carlos, the heir to the throne, digni fied and lordly even in his childhood, caracolling in the dress of a field-marshal on his prancing steed. Sir Richard Wallace owns a fine example ; but the finest in the United Kingdom is the well-known picture at Grosvenor House, a masterly example of the second manner of Velazquez. The colour is warm and bright, the workmanship solid and fused like enamel, while light and air pervade every corner. The scene is in the riding-school of the palace, the king and queen looking on from a balcony, while Olivares is in attendance as master of the horse to the prince. Don Baltasar died in 1646 at the age of seventeen, so that judging by his age this picture must have been painted about 1641, two years before the fall of Olivares. This powerful minister was the early and constant patron of the painter. His impassive saturnine face is familiar to us from the many portraits painted by Velazquez, a face which, like his royal master s, seems never to have known a smile, and in which are written pride and disdain. Two must be named of surpassing excellence, the full length belonging to Mr. Holford (exhibited at Burlington House in 1887), stately and dignified, in which he wears the green cross of Alcantara and holds a wand, the badge of his office as master of the horse ; the other the great equestrian portrait of the Madrid gallery (No. 487), in which he is flatteringly represented as a field-marshal in all his pomp during an action. It is difficult to overpraise the excel lence of this work, either as regards its dramatic power or its masterly execution. In these portraits Velazquez has well repaid the debt of gratitude which he owed to his first patron, whom he stood by in his fall, thus expos ing himself to the risk and it was not a light one of incurring the anger of the jealous Philip. The king, how ever, showed no sign of malice towards his favoured painter. Faithful in few things, Philip kept true to Velazquez, whom he visited daily in his studio in the palace, and to whom he stood in many attitudes and costumes, as a huntsman with his dogs, as a warrior in command of his troops, and even on his knees at prayer, wearing ever the same dull uninterested look. His pale face and lack-lustre eye, his fair flowing hair and moustaches curled up to his eyes, and his heavy projecting Austrian lip are known in many a portrait and nowhere more supremely than in the wonderful canvas of the London National Gallery (No. 745), where he seems to live and breathe. Few portraits in the whole range of art will compare with this work, in which the consummate handling of Velazquez is seen at its best, for it is in his late and most perfect manner. 1 From one of the equestrian portraits of the king, painted in 1638, the sculptor Montanas modelled a statue which was cast in bronze by the Florentine sculptor Tacca, and Avhich now stands in the Plaza del Oriente at Madrid, &quot;a solid Velazquez,&quot; as it has been well named by Ford. This portrait exists no more ; but there is no lack of others, for Velazquez was in constant and close attendance on Philip, accompanying him in his journeys to Aragon in 1642 and 1644, and was doubtless present with him when he entered Lerida as a conqueror. It was then that he painted the great equestrian portrait (No. 1066 of the Madrid gallery) in which the king is represented as a great commander leading his troops, a role which Philip never played ex cept in a theatrical pageant. All is full of animation except the stolid face of the king. It hangs as a pendant to the great Olivares portrait, fit rivals of the neighbour ing Charles V. by Titian, which doubtless fired Velazquez to excel himself, and both remarkable for their silvery tone, and their feeling of open air and harmony combined with brilliancy. The light plays on the armour and scarf thrown to the wind, showing how completely Velazquez had mastered the effects he strove to reach in his early days. Of these two great works Sir Richard Wallace possesses small but excellent replicas. 1 In this and in all his portraits Philip wears the golilla, a stiff linen collar projecting at right angles from the neck. It was invented by the king, who was so proud of it that he celebrated it by a festival, followed by a procession to church to thank God for the blessing (Madame D Aulnoy, Voyage d Kspagne). The golilla was thus the height of fashion and appears in most of the male portraits of the period. In regard to the wonderful structure of Philip s moustaches, it is said that, to preserve their form, they were encased during the night in perfumed leather covers called biyoterc.s.