Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/152

Rh 136 V E L V E L fered with tlie exercise of his art. Yet far from indicat ing any decline, his works of this period are amongst the highest examples of his style. The dwarf Don Antonio el Ingles (the Englishman) with his dog, ^Esop, Menippus, and the Sculptor, all in the Madrid gallery, show his surest and freest manner. To these may be added the charming portraits of the royal children in the Louvre and Vienna, among the choicest of his works. It is one of these in fantas, Margarita Maria, the eldest daughter of the new queen, that is the subject of the well-known picture Las Meninas (the Maids of Honour) in the Madrid gallery, painted in 1656, where the little lady holds court, sur rounded by her ladies-in-waiting, her dwarfs, and her mas tiff, while Velazquez is seen standing at his easel. This is the finest portrait we have of the great painter, and, as etched by St Raymond, it forms the frontispiece of the book by Mr Curtis. It is a face of much dignity, power, and sweetness, like his life, equable and serene, unruffled by care. Las Meninas was the picture of which Luca Giordano said that it was the &quot;theology of painting,&quot; an other way of expressing the opinion of Sir Thomas Law rence, that this work is the philosophy of art, so true is it in rendering the desired effect. The result is there, one knows not by what means, as if by a first intention without labour, absolutely right. The story is told that the king painted the red cross of Santiago on the breast of the painter, as it appears to-day on the canvas. Velazquez did not, however, receive the honour till 1659, three years after the execution of this work. Even the powerful king of Spain could not make his favourite a belted knight with out a commission to inquire into the purity of his lineage on both sides of the house. 1 Fortunately the pedigree could bear scrutiny, as for generations the family was found free from all taint of heresy, from all trace of Jewish or Moorish blood, and from contamination by trade or commerce. The difficulty connected with the fact that he was a painter was got over by his being painter to the king and by the declaration that he did not sell his pictures. But for this royal appointment, which enabled him to escape the censorship of the Inquisition, we should never have had his splendid Venus and Cupid, belonging to Mr Morritt of Rokeby Hall (exhibited in Manchester in 1857), painted in his latest manner and worthy of comparison with Titian. There were in truth but two patrons of art in Spain, the church and the art-loving king and court. Murillo was the artist favoured by the church, while Velazquez was patronized by the crown. One difference, however, deserves to be noted. Murillo, who toiled for a rich and powerful church, left scarcely sufficient means to pay for his burial, while Velazquez lived and died in the enjoyment of good salaries and pensions. Yet on occasions Philip gave commissions for religious pictures to Velazquez, among others, and belonging to this later period, the Coronation of the Virgin (Madrid), splendid in colour a harmony of red, blue, and grey but deficient in religious feeling and dignity. It was painted for the oratory of the queen, doubtless Maria Anna, in the palace at Madrid. Another royal commission for the hermitage of Buen Retiro was the St Anthony the Abbot and St Paul the Hermit, painted in 1659, the landscape of which excited the warm admiration of Sir David Wilkie. The last of his works which we shall name is Las Hilanderas or the Spinners (Madrid), painted about 1656, representing the interior of the royal tapestry works. The subject is no thing, the treatment everything. It is full of light, air, and movement, splendid in colour, and marvellous in handling. This picture, Raphael Mengs said, seemed to have been painted not by the hand but by the pure force of will. 1 The records of this commission have been found among the. archives of the order of Santiago by M. Villaamil. We see in it the full ripeness of the power of Velazquez, a concentration of all the art-knowledge he had gathered during his long artistic career of more than forty years. In no picture is he greater as a colourist. The scheme is simple, a harmony of red, bluish green, grey, and black, which are varied and blended with consummate skill. In 1660 a treaty of peace between France and Spain was to be consummated by the marriage of the infanta Maria Theresa with Louis XIV., and the ceremony was to take place in the Island of Pheasants, a small swampy island in the Bidassoa. Velazquez was charged with the decoration of the Spanish pavilion and with the whole scenic display. In the midst of the grandees of the first two courts in Christendom Velazquez attracted much attention by the nobility of his bearing and the splendour of his costume. On the 26th June he returned to Madrid, and on the 31st July he was stricken with fever. Feeling his end approaching, he signed his will, appointing as his sole executors his wife and his firm friend Fuensalicla, keeper of the royal records. He died on the 6th of August 1660, passing away in the full possession of his great powers, and leaving no work behind him to show a trace of decay. He was buried in the Fuensalida vault of the church of San Juan, and within eight days his wife Juana was laid beside him. Unfortunately this church was de stroyed by the French in 181 1, so that his place of interment is now unknown. There was much difficulty in adjusting the tangled accounts outstanding between Velazquez and the treasury, and it was not till 1666, after the death of Philip, that they were finally settled. Velazquez can hardly be said to have formed a school of painting. Apart from the circumstance that his occupations at court would have prevented this, his genius was too personal for transmission by teaching. Yet his influence on those immediately connected with him was considerable. In 1642 he befriended young Murillo on his arrival in Madrid, received him into his house, and directed his studies for three years. His son-in-law Mazo painted in his manner, and doubtless many pictures by Mazo are attributed to the master. Carreno, though never a pupil, was a favourite and had the good sense to appreciate him and imitate him. His faithful slave Pareja studied his methods and produced work which by the favour of Velazquez procured his manumission from Philip. But the appreciation of the fine talent of Velazquez passed away quickly in Spain, as that country began to fall to pieces. In addition to the standard works by Palomino, Cean Bennudez, and Pacheco, see the biographical notice by Don Pedro de Madrazo in his Calalogo del Miiseo del Prado (1S72) ; Velaz&amp;lt;iuez and his Works (1855) and Annals of Artists of Spain (1848), by W. Stirling (afterwards Sir W. Stirling-Maxwell); Ford s Handbook to Spain (1855)and his article in the English Cydopirdia ; Velazquez and Murillo, by Charles B. Curtis (1883); the works of W. Burger (T. Thore); Gcscli. d. Mahrn, by Woltniann and Woermann ; Sir Edmund Head s Handbook of Spanish Paint ing (1848); Works of Velazquez (prints), by G. W. Reid (1872); Uaz. d. Beaux Arts, art. &quot;Velazquez &quot;, by Paul Lefort (second period 1879-8:2) ; and Justi, Diego Velazquez u. sein Juhrhundert, 2 vols., Bonn, 1888. (J. F W.) VELEIA, a town of Liguria, near the frontier of Gallia Cisalpina, on the Apennine slope, about 20 miles to the south of Placentia. The &quot; oppidum Veleiatium &quot; is vaguely mentioned by Pliny as belonging to Liguria, but its exact site remained unknown until 1760, when its remains began to be recovered from under a mass of debris, which showed that the city must have been overwhelmed by a landslip from the neighbouring mountain. Among the buildings that have been brought to light are a basilica, an amphi theatre, and several temples. Interesting antiquities from Veleia, including the &quot;tabula alimentaria &quot; of Trajan (see vol. xiii. p. 132), are deposited in the museum at Parma. None of the coins hitherto discovered on the site are later than the time/rf Probus (276-282). VELEZ-MALAGA, a town of Spain, in the province of Malaga, and 15 miles east-north-east from that town, is finely situated in a fertile valley at the foot of steep mountains (Sierra Tejada), within a mile of the mouth of the small river Velez. Formerly it was a place of con siderable commercial importance, but its prosperity has much declined in recent years, and it suffered severely in the earthquakes of 1884. It is associated with many