VELAZQUEZ, DIEGO RODRIGUEZ. 



VELAZQUEZ, DIEGO RODRIGUEZ. 



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did Philip IV. resent this un courtier-like gratitude. In November, 

 1648, VeMzquez made a second journey into Italy, in order to purchase 

 modern pictures for the king, and to procure moulds from the beet 

 antique statues for a projected academy. He embarked at Malaga, 

 lauded at Genoa, passed rapidly to Milan, Venice, Florence, and Par- 

 ma, and thence hastened to embrace his well- beloved Ribera at Naples. 

 Returning to Rome he was presented to Innocent X., whose portrait 

 he painted, which is now the gem of the Doria collection, and the 

 only real specimen of his art in Rome. He was elected a member of 

 the Academy of St. Luke. He remained in Italy almost a year, 

 purchasing rather than painting pictures, and busy with his casts 

 from Greek sculpture. He fully felt the value of exquisite form, of 

 which he had known the want ; and ever in after-life strongly urged 

 all young artists, Murillo particularly, to complete their studies in 

 Italy. Spain always was, and is, very deficient in fine antique marbles, 

 for which the Spaniards have little taste. The church preferred the 

 relic of a monk to a statue by Phidias, in which they only saw a 

 pagan idol. Their Inquisition persecuted nudity, the essence of Greek 

 art, and employed artists to clothe the least exposure either in 

 painting or sculpture; hence the draped character of the Spanish 

 school, of which the clergy have been the best patrons, not for the 

 sake of art, but as a means of extending their own influence. Painting 

 took the veil of the nun, Sculpture the cowl of the monk ; but 

 Philip, lax and voluptuous, protected the licence of Greece and Italy, 

 and VeMzquez felt that the chance might never recur : the casts 

 were made, which after the king's death were neglected, injured, and 

 finally lost 



VeMzquez returned to Madrid in June 1651. He was now in his 

 full power, and painted his finest pictures. In 1656 he received the 

 much-coveted cross of Santiago, which the king drew in with his own 

 hand on a portrait of VeMsquez, painted by the artist himself. The 

 nobles resented this profanation of a decoration given hitherto only 

 to high birth ; nor were the difficulties removed without a papal dispen- 

 sation and a royal grant of Hidalguia. 



About this time Velazquez was raised to the lucrative and honour- 

 able post of Aposentador Mayor. His duties were to superintend the 

 personal lodgment of the king during his frequent migrations. This 

 much-envied office robbed VeMzquez of his time, precious to art, and 

 eventually of life itself. He was sent in 1660 to prepare the royal 

 quarters during the journey from Madrid through the ill-pi-ovided 

 Castiles to the Bidassoa. He erected on the Island of Pheasants the 

 temporary saloons wherein the conferences were held which termi- 

 nated in the marriage of the Infanta Maria Teresa with Louis XIV., a 

 union fatal to the future weal and independence of Spain as to 

 Velasquez, who here appeared almost for the last time, remarkable 

 among the noble crowd for his tasteful costume and arrangement of 

 diamonds. He returned to Madrid, July 31, worn with over-fatigue 

 in preparations which any lord- of the bedchamber might have super- 

 intended. He died one week afterwards, on the 7th of August, 1660, 

 and was buried with great pomp in the church of San Juan. In seven 

 days his wife, broken-hearted at his loss, followed her gentle and 

 excellent husband, and was laid by his side in the same grave. No 

 monument has ever been erected to her greatest artist by Spain, 

 always ungrateful to those who have served her the best ; nor did the 

 influence of VeMzquez survive him; his pupils and imitators were 

 few. Spain was hastening rapidly to her fall, which was consummated 

 by the Bourbon succession, when French tastes were substituted for 

 Spanish in art and literature. 



Such is the unimportant biography of a man whose name is now 

 immortal, of whom, like Lope de Vega, all talk familiarly, although 

 most imperfectly acquainted with his real works. His genuine and 

 finest works remain at Madrid : in other cities of Spain they are quite 

 as rare as in every other part of the world : and the reasons are obvious. 

 VeMzquez commenced his career as painter to the king ; he rarely 

 condescended to work for the church or private patrons ; all his great 

 pictures were thus monopolised, and hung in the royal palaces, and 

 these were inaccessible to purchasers, and seldom seen even by the 

 few travellers who visited Spain. Neither were they scattered abroad 

 in the wreck which ensued at the French invasion. In the universal 

 rapine, by which the works of many Spanish artists, whose names 

 previously were almost unknown in Europe, were first ushered into 

 notice, VeMzquez formed an exception. His paintings hanging in 

 royal residences were respected even by marshals, as passing with the 

 crown from the legitimate dynasty to the intrusive. Two only were 

 sent to Paris, and these were the Jacob and the Philip IV. on horse- 

 back, pictures selected more from their historical than intrinsic 

 interest. In truth the French never have appreciated Velazquez ; a 

 taste depraved by the vain tinsel of the empirical, unnatural David, 

 could not feel the grave repose and sober simplicity of the proud 

 Spaniard. It is impossible to estimate VeMzquez without going to 

 Madrid ; on seeing him in this, the richest gallery in the whole world, 

 the first impression of his masculine power and universality of talent 

 is irresistible : it is the reality more than the imitation of life and 

 nature, and in every varied form. Grievous is the error of those who 

 suppose him only to be the portrait-painter of sallow mustachioed 

 Spaniards in black cloaks. There is no branch of the art, except the 

 marine, which he has not pursued, and he attained almost equal 

 excellence in all. 



His portraits baffle description and praise; they must be seen : he 

 elevated that humble branch to the dignity of factory. He drew the 

 minds of men : they live, breathe, and seem ready to walk out of the 

 frames. His power of painting circumambient air, his knowledge of 

 lineal and aerial perspective, the gradation of tones in light, shadow; 

 and colour, give an absolute concavity to the flat surface of his 

 canvas ; we look into space, into a room, into the reflection of a 

 mirror. The freshness, individuality, and identity of every person 

 are quite startling; we can hardly doubt the anecdote related of 

 Philip IV., who, mistaking for the man the portrait of Admiral Pareja 

 in a dark corner of VeMzquez's room, exclaimed (he had been ordered 

 to sea), " What ! still here ? " After a few days spent in the gallery of 

 Madrid, we fancy that we have actually been acquainted with the 

 royal family and court of that day, and that we have lived with them. 

 Nono perhaps but a Spaniard could so truly paint the Ca^tilian. 

 VeMzquez was the Vandyck of Madrid. He caught the high-bred 

 look of the Hidalgo, his grave demeanour and severe costume, with 

 an excellence equal to his Flemish rival, differing only in degree ; he 

 was less fortunate in model. Vandyck, like Zeuxis, had the selection 

 of the most beauteous forms, faces, and apparel, in the English court 

 of Charles, which he was created expressly to delineate, with his 

 clear, silvery, and transparent tones, his elegant aristocratic air, those 

 delicate skins, and tapering fingers which are never seen in coarse, 

 tawny Spain; nor did VeMzquez ever condescend to flatter even 

 royalty : honesty was his policy. 



Courts could not make a courtier of bis practical genius, which saw 

 everything as it really was, and his hand, that obeyed his intellect, 

 gave the exact form and pressure : he rarely refined. He did not 

 stoop to conciliate and woo his spectator. Thus even when displeased 

 with repulsive subjects, we submit to the power of a master-mind dis- 

 played in the representation. 



His Infantes are often booby-faced, and his Infantas mealy ; for the 

 royal originals were made, not by him, but by Nature's journeymen ; 

 still they are real beings, not conventional ; they are flesh and blood, 

 our fellow-creatures, and with them therefore we sympathise. Their 

 costume, whether of the court or the chase, is equally true ; and they 

 wear their clothes with ease and fitness, not like the fancy masque- 

 rade of an imaginative painter, stuck on a stiff lay-figure, but the 

 every-day dresses of living flexible bodies underneath. VeMzquez was 

 inferior to Vandyck in representing female beauty ; for he bad not 

 his advantages : the Oriental jealousy of the Spaniard revolted at any 

 female portraiture, and still more at any display of beauteous form : 

 the royal ladies, almost the only exception, were unworthy models, 

 while the use of rouge disfigured their faces, and the enormous petti- 

 coats masked their proportions. VeMzquez was emphatically a man, 

 and the painter of men. He was aware of his strength and weakness : 

 his greatest works Las Lanzas, Los Bebidores have no women in 

 them whatever; and in the ' Hilanderas,' a group of females, he has 

 turned aside the principal head in the foreground, leaving it, like 

 Timanthes, to be supplied by the imagination of the spectator. He 

 was moreover a painter only of the visible tangible beings on earth, 

 not the mystical glorified spirits of heaven : he could not conceive the 

 inconceivable, nor define the indefinite. He required to touch before 

 he could believe a fulcrum for his mighty lever : he could not escape 

 from. humanity, nor soar above the clouds : he was somewhat deficient 

 in ' creative power : ' he was neither a poet nor an enthusiast ; Nature 

 was his guide, truth his delight, man his model. No Virgin ever 

 descended into his studio ; no cherubs hovered around his pallet : 

 he did not work for priest or ecstatic anchorite, but for plumed kings 

 and booted knights ; hence the neglect and partial failure of his holy 

 and mythological pictures holy, like those of Caravaggio, in nothing 

 but name : groups rather of low life, and that so truly painted, as 

 still more to mar, by a treatment not in harmony with the subject, 

 the elevated sentiment : his Mars is a mere porter ; his demigods, 

 vulgar Gallicians; his Virgin, a Maritornes, without the womanly 

 tenderness of Murillo, the unspotted loveliness of Raffaelle, or the 

 serenity, unruffled by earthly passions, of the antique. He rather 

 lowered heaven to earth, than raised earth to heaven. His pictures 

 however of this class are very few, and therein is his marked difference 

 from all other Spanish artists, who, painting for the church, com- 

 paratively neglected everything but the religious and legendary. 



In things mortal and touching man VeMzquez was more than 

 mortal : he is perfect throughout, whether painting high or low, rich 

 or poor, young or old, human, animal, or natural objects. His dogs 

 are equal to Snyders ; his chargers to Rubens they know their rider. 

 When VeMzquez descended from heroes, his beggars and urchins 

 rivalled Murillo. He is by far the first landscape-painter of Spain : 

 his scenes are full of local colour, freshness and daylight, whether 

 verdurous court-like avenues or wild rocky solitudes : his historical 

 pictures are pearls of great price ; never were knights and soldiers so 

 painted as in his surrender of Breda. 



His style was based on Herrera, Caravaggio, Ribera, and Stanzioni; 

 a compound of all, not a servile imitation of any. His drawing was 

 admirable, correct, and unconstrained ; his mastery over his materials 

 unequalled ; his colouring was clear and clean ; he seldom used mixed 

 tints ; he painted with long brushes, and often as coarsely as floor- 

 cloth ; but the effects when seen from the intended distance were 

 magical, everything coming out into its proper place, form, and tone. 



