Page:Impressions of Spain in 1866.djvu/40

24 SO strongly displayed. It would be hopeless to attempt to describe all his pictures in the Madrid Gallery. The Saviour and St. John, as boys, drinking out of a shell, is perhaps the most delicate and exquisite in colouring and expres- sion ; but the ^ Conception ' surpasses all. No one should compare it with the Louvre pictures of the same subject. There is a refinement, a tenderness, and a beauty in the Madrid ' Conception ' entirely wanting in the one stolen by the French. Then there is Velasquez, with his inimitable portraits ; full of droll originality, as the 'iEsop ; ' or of deep historical interest, as his 'Philip IV.; ' or of sub- lime piety, as in his 'Crucifixion,' with the hair falling over one side of the Saviour's face, which the pierced and fastened hands cannot push aside : each and all are priceless treasures, and there must be sixty or seventy in that one long room. Ford says that 'Velasquez is the Homer of the Spanish school, of which Murillo is the Virgil.' Then there are Riberas, and Zurbarans, Divino Morales, Juan Joanes, Alonso Cano, and half-a- dozen other artists, whose very names are scarcely known out of Spain, and all of whose works are impregnated with that mystic, devotional, self- sacrificing spirit which is the essence of Catholi- cism. The Italian school is equally magnificently