Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016 https://archive.org/details/artofvelazquezOOarms THE PORTFOLIO MONOGRAPHS ON ARTISTIC SUBJECTS WITH MANY ILLUSTRATIONS ISSUED PERIODICALLY No. 29 October , 1896 The Art of Velazquez h U AL TER AR MSTROXG London: SEELEY AND CO., LIMITED, 38 GREAT RUSSELL STREET. Sold bv Hatchard, 187 Piccadilly P ar,s: Librairie GaUcnam, 224 Rue de Rivoli. Berlin : A. Asher & C'o. 13 Uxter den Linden- New \ork : Macmillan & Co. Six Monographs are issued in the Year Price 3 s'. 6 d. net 2 THE PORTFOLIO . THE AUTOTYPE COMPANY Invite the attention of Artists and others to their Permanent Processes of Photographic Reproduction, combining great range of Tone Effect with Accurate Monochrome Representation and Artistic Express The Autotype Solar or Carbon Process, for the reproduction in permanent pigments of Oil Paintings, Drawings in Water Colour, Pencil, Cra Indian Ink, &c. Auto-Gravure. The Autotype Company’s Process of Photographic Engraving on Copper, yielding results resembl mezzotint engravings. The Company has successfully reproduced several important Works by this Process, indue Portraits by Sir J. E. Millais, P.R.A., J. Pettie, R.A., W. W. Ouless, R.A., F. Holl, R.A., The H Jno. Collier, Sir G. Reid, P.R.S.A. ; also examples of Gainsborough, Turner, Constable, Schm Douglas, Draper, &c., &c. The Autotype Mechanical Process (Sawyer’s Collotype), for Book Illustrations of the highest class. Adopted by the Trustees of the British Museum, many of Learned Societies, and the leading Publishers. Examples of Work may be seen, and Terms and Prices obtained at THE AUTOTYPE FINE ART GALLERY 74 NEW OXFORD STREET, LONDON. MR. MORING’S Catalogues & Books of Examples. MONUMENTAL BRASSES. Book of Examples of Monumental Brasses. Royal quarto, post free. BRASS DOOR PLATES. Book of Examples of Brass Door Plates. Royal quarto, post free. BOOK-PLATES. A Book of Illustrations of Book-Plates designed and engraved in mediaeval style on wood. Imperial i6mo, printed on hand-made paper, 25 stamps. SEAL ENGRAVING, RINGS, SEALS, &c. Catalogue of Seal Engiavings, Rings, Seals, Stones, &c.. handsomely printed on hand-made paper, and illustrated with Autotype reproductions of seals and medals. Also an Introduction on the History of Seals and the Art of Seal Engraving, 13 stamps. VISITING CARDS AND PRIVATE STA- TIONERY. Price List and specimens of Visiting, Invitation. Wedding, and Memorial Cards, Dies, and Note Papers, post free. HERALDIC PAINTING AND ILLUMIN- ATING. A leaflet containing prices for Armorial Painting, Shields, Banners, Hatchments, Heraldic Stained Glass, and Illuminated Addresses, post free. THOMAS MORING, 52 HIGH HOLBORN, LONDON, W.C. ^Permanent ^fjotogvapfjs. THE COMPLETE COLLECTION OF THE HOLBEIN DRAWING AT WINDSOR CASTLE ( Photographed by the gracious permission of Her Majesty Queen). THE WORKS OF SIR EDWARD BURNE-JONES, BAR' ANI) MANY OF THE PORTRAITS AND PICTURES] B G. F. WATTS, R.A., & D. G. ROSSETTI “Beata Beatrix” & “Dante’s Dream,” &e. CAN NOW BE OBTAINED FROM FREDERICK HOLLYER, 9 PEMBROKE SQUARE, KENSINGTO Lists of Subjects and Prices.will be sent post free on applicati or Illustrated Catalogue for Twelve Stamps. HART, 6 Arundel Street, Strand, London , M Established 1791. Communications respecting advertisements most be addressed to Mr. JOHN 01 (’// ■,or (ar/rr). 'rrn/n , Grr'mrnh t <>tr fi/t -•■ THE ART OF VELAZQUEZ By WALTER ARMSTRONG Director of the National Gallery , Ireland LONDON SEELEY AND CO., LIMITED, GREAT RUSSELL STREET NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN CO. I 896 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PLATES PAGE Don Balthazar Carlos. Museo del Prado . . Frontispiece Pablillos de Valladolid. Museo del Prado 30 The Surrender of Breda. Museo del Prado 56 St. Anthony visiting St. Paul .... 86 ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT Adoration of the Magi. Museo del Prado, Madrid. From a Lithograph by C. Palmareti . . . . . . . .19 Dead Warrior. National Gallery. Engraved by T. Huson, R.P.E. . . 27 Portrait of a Man. Museo del Prado, Madrid. From a Photograph by Braun, Clement, & Cie. Engraved by T. Fluson, R.P.E. . . .29 Philip IV. (bust in armour). Museo del Prado, Madrid. From a Photograph by J. Laurent . . . . . . . .31 Philip IV. (holding hat and glove). Museo del Prado, Madrid. From a Photo- graph by Braun, Clement, & Cie. Engraved by T. Fluson, R.P.E. . 33 Los Borrachos (The Topers). Museo del Prado, Madrid. From a Photograph by Braun, Clement, & Cie. Engraved by T. Huson, R.P.E. . . 37 Maria, Oueen of Hungary. Museo del Prado, Madrid. From a Photograph by Braun, Clement, & Cie. Engraved by T. Huson, R.P.E. . . 43 The Crucifixion. Museo del Prado, Madrid. From a Photograph by J. Laurent 45 Oueen Margarita. Museo del Prado, Madrid. From a Photograph by Braun, Clement, & Cie. Engraved by T. Huson, R.P.E. . . .47 Philip IV. dressed for the Chase. Museo del Prado, Madrid. From a Photo- graph by Braun, Clement, & Cie. Engraved by T. Huson, R.P.E. 49 4 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE “Don Juan of Austria.” Musco del Prado, Madrid. From a Photograph by Braun, Clement, & Cie. Engraved by T. Huson, R.P.E. . . 53 Figures from the Boar Hunt. National Gallery. Engraved by T. Huson, R.P.E. 55 El Primo, a dwarf. Museo del Prado, Madrid. From a Photograph by J. Laurent. Engraved by T. Huson, R.P.E. . . . .57 El Bobo de Coria. Museo del Prado, Madrid. From a Photograph by J. Laurent ......... 59 Sebastian de Morra, a dwarf. Museo del Prado, Madrid. From a Photograph by Braun, Clement, & Cie. Engraved by T. Huson, R.P.E. . . 6] F.1 Nino de Vallecas. Museo del Prado, Madrid. From a Photograph by J. Laurent ......... 63 Don Antonio Alonso Pimentel. Museo del Prado, Madrid. From a Photograph by Braun, Clement, & Cie. Engraved by T. Huson, R.P.E. . . 71 Mars. Museo del Prado, Madrid. From a Photograph by Braun, Clement, & Cie. Engraved by T. Huson, R.P.E. . . . . .7 3 Venus. Rokeby Park, Yorkshire. From a Photograph by E. Yeoman . . 77 Portrait of the sculptor Martinez Montanes. Museo del Prado, Madrid. From a Photograph by J. Laurent. Engraved by T. Huson, R.P.E. . . 79 Oueen Mariana. Museo del Prado, Madrid. Engraved by T. Huson, R.P.E. . 81 Las Menihas (The Maids of Honour). Museo del Prado. From a Photo- graph by J. Laurent . . . . . .83 The Infanta Margarita. Louvre. Engraved by T. Huson, R.P.E. . . 87 View of Saragossa. By Mazo-Martihez. Museo del Prado. From a Photo- graph by J. Laurent. Engraved by T. Huson, R.P.E. . . .90 Garden of the Villa Medici, Rome. Museo del Prado, Madrid. From a Photo- graph by Braun, Clement, & Cie. Engraved by T. Huson, R.P.E. . 92 Garden of the Villa Medici, Rome. Museo del Prado, Madrid. From a Photo- graph by Braun, Clement, & Cie. Engraved by T. Huson, R.P.E. . 93 Reunion de Gentilshommes. Louvre. From a Photograph by J. Laurent. Engraved by T. Huson, R.P.E. . . . . . .95 Drawing of Horses. British Museum ...... 101 THE ART OF VELAZQUEZ CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY It may fairly be said that the kingship of painting is at present shared between Velazquez and Rembrandt. Among those who understand pictures, nine out of ten would call Velazquez the greatest painter, and Rembrandt the greatest artist in paint, the modern world has yet produced. Thirty years ago a very different though equally positive belief prevailed. At that time the world had been long agreed that the king of painters was Raphael, and spoke of his art in terms which would now be employed by few whose opinions are not at least a generation old. The change is generally put down to an improvement in taste, or at least to an advance in technical knowledge, both among artists themselves, and among those who, from the outside, seriously concern themselves with artistic matters. It would, perhaps, be more prudent merely to confess that ideals have followed their usual line of change, and that one half of the nineteenth century has adopted with renewed enthusiasm the dictum of Voltaire, that it matters not what you say, if you say it well. Art, at large, follows the same course of evolution as the knowledge of art in a man’s brain. It starts by believing that you must have some great external objective before you can produce great work ; it goes on to perceive that no man can express more than he has within him, and that no art is so poor but that its methods alone afford a vehicle for the expression of the greatest personality. The masterpieces before which our fathers went down on their knees were triumphs of conception. They existed, or might well 6 THE ART OF VELAZQUEZ have existed, in their creators’ brains before a touch was put upon the canvas. The Madonna di San Sisto is a vision, seen first, and then elabor- ately realised. Its effect upon the spectator is a faint echo of what he might feel were he thus brought face to face with the Mother of God. Such a picture is complete as soon as it has taken final shape in the artist’s mind. Technically, his task is rather not to spoil it than to add anything to it. It is dangerous to generalise on artistic matters, for art changes with every votary that comes to its shrine ; but, speaking broadly, we may say that the Italians, down to, and even beyond, the days of Raphael, imagined a goal beyond the powers of paint, and struggled as near it as they could ; while such art as that into which Velazquez was born takes the nearest theme, and builds a creation upon it by dint of consummate and ex- pressive execution. This is in harmony with the inevitable evolution of art. There is no need to pit Italy against Spain, or rather against Velazquez. The one greatness does not exclude the other, and the lapse of a century between the earlier climax and the later had more to do with their difference than any real antagonism between the methods they employed. I have used the phrase “such art as that into which Velazquez was born.” Those who claim that the great Spaniard was a sort of modern, born before his time, and anticipating in his art the notions to which the world at large has only now arrived after a further two centuries of ex- perience, may object to such a way of putting the case. And yet, if anything, it appears to me too weak. Not only had Velazquez pre- cedents for everything he did, not only was his finest work anticipated, in intention, by many an inferior master, both in Italy and in his own native country, but he himself was rather slow than prompt to take example by the best of what had already been done. Like Rembrandt, he was the reverse of precocious. His earliest productions are both dull in themselves and founded upon dull examples. They are promising chiefly in the evidence they afford of a faculty for taking pains. It was not until just before his first visit to Italy that he awoke to the larger possibilities of the art he practised, or to the nature of his own gifts. Even then he hankered for a time after false gods, perpetrating the melodramatic San Placido Crucifixion, and such Guido-fed productions as the Forge of Vulcan and the Christ at the Pillar. Velazquez was always sincere. THE ART OF VELAZQUEZ 7 Even when he deliberately tried to rival some other master, he gave free play to his own personality, and so his imitations — for his Coronation of the Virgin , his Crucifixion , his Mars , his Adoration of the Magi , are little more — are never without dignity and interest. Essentially, however, none of these things — and with others like them they make up no small portion of his total production — differ in anything but the stronger person- ality behind them from much that was done in the Spain and Italy of the seventeenth century. Examined in the light by his later work, we see, of course, that their producer took his art very seriously indeed, and that from every figure he painted he learnt something to be used in the next. But, speaking generally, the first steps of Velazquez show that he, like other people, had to work long and hard before he mastered what his seniors had to tell him, and could go on to make his own great contri- bution to a structure which had been rising, more or less continuously, ever since the revival of learning. The most difficult problem to be faced by the would-be critic of Velazquez is that of disentangling his own genuine creations from the copies, imitations, and more or less controlled replicas turned out by his pupils. Velazquez had almost as many scholars as Rembrandt. Several of these had the credit, during the master’s lifetime, of repeating his work with such skill as to deceive good contemporary judges. One pupil, the master’s son-in-law, Juan Bautista del Mazo-Martinez, was an excellent painter. The pictures acknowledged as his in the Museo del Prado vary greatly in excellence, but some approach so closely to the master as to leave us in no kind of doubt that Mazo set posterity a very ticklish problem indeed when he repeated Velazquez. We must remember that the forty years covered by the master’s career in Madrid were by no means devoted exclusively to painting. Four were spent in Italy, where he used his eyes more than his hands. The last eight were partly given up to the duties of the Aposentador Mayorship, which was very far from being a sinecure. Besides all this, Velazquez busied himself energetically as director of the royal collections, which kept him continually trotting backwards and forwards between Madrid and the Escorial . 1 All this time his atelier was going on. His pupils, according to the practice of every time but our own, were multiplying his works, 1 See Life of Velaxquez ( Portjolio for July 1896), p. 81. r I HE ART OF VELAZCIUEZ and painting those royal portraits which Philip sowed broad-cast over Europe to carry the name, at least, of his favourite into Austria, Italy, France, and England. But Mr. Curtis, in his Catalogue of the works of Velazquez and Murillo, enumerates three hundred pictures ascribed to the elder master in the various public and private collections of Europe and America. Against this total of three hundred it would be difficult to muster fifty left to his pupils. Outside Spain, I scarcely know a picture ascribed to Mazo. The National Gallery has a problematical copy with variations of the Prado Don Antonio the English- man, and a worthless little picture was exhibited under his name last winter at the New Gallery. A few more can be found here and there, but even then, the ascription to Mazo is, in most cases, a pure guess, and the picture bearing it quite unlike the two thoroughly authenticated examples in the Prado Museum. Before these two pictures, one a portrait, the other a view of Saragossa from the opposite side of the Ebro, the conviction is irresistible that not only many pictures ascribed to Velazquez, but several of those on which his reputation rests most securely for those who have not visited Madrid, are in reality the work of his son-in-law. The question will be discussed in detail in the following chapters. As with Mazo, so with Juan de Pareja. The Moor lived in the house of Velazquez for thirty-seven years, and astonished his master’s friends with the skill of his imitations. His ability was rewarded by the king, and made use of by Velazquez. During the ten years which elapsed between the discovery of his talent and his master’s death, he did nothing but paint. Where are his pictures? The Prado Museum has one, in which the influence of what he saw during his attendance on Velazquez in Italy can be easily traced. Else- where his name scarcely occurs. Their fellow-pupils were inferior in ability to these two, but when at work under the master’s eye, they may well have produced pictures now accepted as the handiwork of Velazquez himself. The readiness to accept as genuine pictures which are both different from, and inferior to, the authentic works of the master is primarily due, of course, to mere lack of opportunities for acquiring a trustworthy knowledge of his art. In the first place, very few examples of any importance have left Spain at all. In collections north of the Pyrenees THE ART OF VELAZOUEZ 9 we find a considerable array of good pictures bearing the master’s name, but in the vast majority of cases their excellence is of a kind that cannot, by any ingenuity, be made to fit into that of the series in Madrid. To give an instance, the Philip IV. at Dulwich is a masterpiece of colour and design. In subtlety, says a competent French critic, it is equal to the finest Metzu. Such a comparison would scarcely suggest itself in the Museo del Prado. But there, whatever we miss, we invariably find the most consummate drawing and the most significant march of the brush, both of which are conspicuously absent from the Dulwich picture. The head, the hands, the sword-hilt, the lace — all these have been painted carefully and with the best intention, but the results are soft and nerveless. In the absence of better things to go by, this picture and others like it have been accepted as genuine, and set up for students to copy. T hey have seemed worthy of the fame of the Spanish master, and so it has been taken for granted that they are by him. More especially has this been the fault of painters, who are too apt to ask themselves the question, “Is this good enough for so-and-so?” rather than, “Is the particular excellence we see here characteristic of so-and-so?” The laborious green pictures of Rembrandt’s first time are certainly his, as no one who examines the master’s work as a whole can doubt, but I have heard painters, and excellent painters too, flatly refuse to believe it. T'he excuse for the mistaken idea — as I venture to think it — which is too often formed of Velazquez, is the inaccessibility of Madrid. Few people care to make a pilgrimage of twelve or thirteen hundred miles to the dullest metropolis in the world for the sake even of such a gallery as the Museo del Prado, and such an artist as he who painted the Maids of Honour and the Surrender of Breda. And yet, until you have spent days before the forty-eight or fifty standard pictures in Madrid, you can have no clear idea of the true range of Velazquez, or of the successive stages by which he advanced from the laborious “ lightness ” of his youth to the unrivalled freedom and mastery of his latest portraits. All this becomes easy enough in the Museo del Prado. A map, as it were, of the master’s career is spread out before you. The path he followed is quite distinct, and you see that he made for his goal with as little deviation and un- certainty as a Mohawk. A few pictures ascribed to him, even at Madrid, IO THE ART OF VELAZCIUEZ cannot be fitted into the chain of his development. These I shall venture, in the following pages, to reject, giving what seem to me sufficient reasons for so doing. With the help of the rest and those rare pictures outside Spain which seem to me authentic, I shall do my best to paint a true picture of Velazquez the artist, and to determine his share in the tradition which has grown up about his name. CHAPTER II THE MUSEO DEL PRADO The brick and stone Museo del Prado, one of the few really architectural buildings of which Madrid can boast, may be said to have struggled into existence. It was begun as far back as the reign of Charles III. ( 1759 - 1788) by Juan de Villanueva, its object being to house a museum and academy of natural history. After the death of Charles, his successor slowly went on with the structure, but the soldiers of Napoleon caught it while still unfinished, and, after grievous misuse, left it little better than a ruin. Its chance came when Ferdinand VII., on his second marriage, revolutionised the interior of the Royal Palace, turning it into a sort of inferior Tuileries, and banishing the pictures which filled it to its less honourable parts. Some nobles of the Court devised a scheme for which the king afterwards obtained the credit. With the queen’s sanction, they completed three rooms in the derelict museo , and there placed some three hundred and more of the royal pictures, among them many examples of Velazquez. This was in 1819. The experiment was successful, and so more rooms were finished and opened, until the whole building was at last completed, and devoted to a purpose not entirely foreign to that for which it had been designed. Though constructed of shabby materials, it has dignity, and would produce a more satisfactory effect than any other building in Madrid were it not for the trees with which a mistaken taste has masked its best facade. As for its contents, these have been so persistently belauded that it requires some courage to confess to the feeling of disappointment which certainly affected me at my first visit, and did not afterwards entirely disappear. The collection is, of course, one of the most interesting in THE ART OF VELAZQUEZ I 2 the world. Its possession of nearly all the important works of Velazquez would make it so even if all the rest were rubbish. But to those who travel to Madrid in the hope of seeing forty-five Titians and fifty or sixty Rubenses of the first class, as well as a splendid array of Raphaels, and other prizes to the spears and bows, or rather the money-bags, of Charles V., Philip II., and Philip IV., the reality is slightly disconcerting. Most of the Titians are of his latest period, when he was but a fascinating shadow of his former self. The two great pictures of his early time, the Bacchanal and the Sacrifice to Venus , have been annihilated by the cleaner. The Charles V. on the Field of Muhlberg has suffered almost as much from fire and restoration. Few celebrated pictures are so disagreeable in their present condition as the Spasimo di Sicilia , while the little Madonna , which used to be so famous as La Perla, is a good design spoilt by the horrible colour of some incompetent pupil. The Purer , by himself is a bad copy. The so-called Van Eyck, the ' Triumph of the Church over the Synagogue , which Messrs. Crowe and Cavalcaselle chose for the frontispiece to their History of Early Flemish Painting , is, so far as execution goes, a harsh, leathery, sixteenth - century production, so unworthy of its ascription that its acceptance for so long, and by such high-sounding authorities, seems quite incomprehensible. The Giorgione has been flayed, so has the finest Rubens ; while a perverse dexterity has been shown in bringing together a crowd of pictures by Teniers and the Dutchmen of the seventeenth century with scarcely a single thing among them that sticks in the memory. This is the reverse of the medal. On the other side we have the lovely little Mantegna, the Cardinal and Virgen del Pez of Raphael, to atone for the Spasimo and the Perla , Titian’s standing Charles V ., and one of the best of Tintoretto’s smaller works. To these we must add the fine series of Early Flemish pictures, the Moros, a Diirer, two great Vandycks, a few good examples of the French School, some notable and too-much-neglected Spagnolettos, a few hints at Goya, and the dazzling display of Velazquez. The history of the collection repeats that of most of the great con- tinental galleries. Charles V., Philip II., and Philip IV. were so placed in Europe that they might, had they understood their opportunities, have filled Madrid with the masterpieces of Italy and the Netherlands. As a fact, they did try to do something of the sort, and were imitated THE ART OF VELAZQUEZ i3 in a feebler way by the Bourbon, Philip V. Most of the pictures now in the Museo were bought by those four kings, and hung in the various royal palaces and seats down to the year 1819. I have already explained how the gallery was housed. Ferdinand VII. afterwards increased it slightly by purchase, but the only important accessions since his death have been from the Escorial and from the disestablished Museo Nacional. This museum was formed between the years 1836 and 1840, under the supervision of Commissioners appointed by the Academy of San Fernando. Its home was the disused Convent of the Trinity, into which some three hundred pictures, drawn from various churches, monasteries, and convents in the provinces of Madrid, Toledo, Segovia, and Avila, were collected. All these were removed to the Prado in 1840. The most notorious picture so acquired was the quasi Van Eyck, the Triumph of the Church over the Synagogue , which came from the monastery del Parral at Segovia. Considering that it was not originally designed for a picture gallery, the museum answers that purpose fairly well. One room, the Sala de la Reina Isabel , which has been turned into a kind of salle d'honneur, is really well lighted, and every picture it contains can be well seen. The central gallery, similar in its section to the great gallery of the Louvre, but narrower and only about one quarter as long, is well enough on very bright days, which, happily, are the rule at Madrid. But in cloudy weather it is very dark, and yet it contains the Surrender of Breda , the Maids of Honour , the Mcenippus , and many another first-rate Velazquez, as well as the equestrian portrait of Charles V. by Titian, Raphael’s Spasimo, Tintoretto’s Baptism , and not a few pictures besides which have to be carefully studied. Velazquez, again, is the presiding genius of a large side-lighted room divided into five compartments by screens, which opens out of the vestibule. Here, indeed, one of his very finest works, the little Don Balthazar Carlos on his pony, has been hung. As the freshest and most brilliant passage of colour ever achieved by the master, it ought surely to have been in a better place. Most of the Flemish Early Collection is in the basement, in the last rooms opened, although a few examples have been placed in the Sala de la Reina Isabel. The idea has clearly been to spread the better pictures pretty evenly over the whole building. The slight preference of the Sala just mentioned over THE ART OF VELAZQUEZ 14 the rest is shown rather by excluding second-rate pictures from its walls than by crowding them with masterpieces. Personally, I should prefer to see this room called the Sala de Velazquez, and the whole of his pictures collected into it ; and in this, I fancy, most foreign visitors would agree with me. But perhaps an even more desirable improvement would be to bring the illumination of the great gallery up to the level of this Sala. Both are lighted from the roof, so there could be no great difficulty in carrying out such an operation. Galleries which immediately communicate with each other should always be lighted equally. If not, the darker of the two will always be more or less depressing. The corner room in our National Gallery, where the Correggios hang at present, is light enough from a positive standpoint, but compared with the great Venetian Gallery it seems too dark, and its contents have an air of being banished. A feeling of the same kind makes itself felt as we pass from the Sala of Queen Isabella into the main gallery at Madrid. I have ventured to say that all the pictures by Velazquez should be hung together. At present they are distributed over three galleries — the side-lighted room at the entrance, the great gallery, and the Hall of Queen Isabella. And in the distribution no regard whatever has been paid to chronological or any other sort of classification. Size and shape have been the determining factors, and in not a few cases inferior and doubtful pictures have been given the pas over their betters, simply because they fitted more neatly into the pattern. Such a method puts needless diffi- culties in the way of enjoyment. With painters like Velazquez and Rembrandt — between whom in some ways there is a curious and subtle affinity — the only way to arrive at a thorough knowledge of what they were and what they were not, which means what they did and what they did not do, is to establish every step of their progress, to trace the develop- ment of their ideas and the emancipation of their hands almost from day to day, so that at last you have a complete chain of evolution in which there is no room for a foreign link. By dint of years of hard work Dr. Bode has done this for Rembrandt, whose pictures are scattered all over the world. With Velazquez, of course, it is easier, as the materials are practically all under one roof. But it might have been much easier still, especially for those who are not blessed with Dr. Bode’s memory, had the THE ART OF VELAZQUEZ 1 S Madrid authorities been a little kinder. The absence of such mechanical facilities must, to no small extent, bear the blame for the confused lines in which Velazquez’s portrait has too often been drawn. Several pictures in the Prado would betray themselves at once, as being outside his line of advance, if they were hung beside his genuine works, while, as it is, they too often pass muster. In the case of nearly every great painter, the unity which marks each separate production is characteristic also of his work as a whole, so that, when his pictures are collected, the impression produced is scarcely less clear and definite than that resulting from the study of any single creation. This observation is truer, perhaps, of Rembrandt than Velazquez. The Spaniard had periods which were more obviously tenta- tive than any in the career of the Dutchman ; and yet, even in his case, the genuine works form a pattern on which any excrescence becomes gradu- ally conspicuous to the patient inquirer. There is another reason why every possible facility for comparison should be provided. In spite of his greatness, in spite of his almost un- rivalled faculty for creation through technique, Velazquez is not so difficult to copy, even now, as many a lesser man. Even painters with individualities of their own have made decent copies of his work. I need only instance the reproduction of the Meninas by John Philip, at Burlington House. His own pupils, painting in his own studio, with his own “ palette,” overlooked by his eye, and helped here and there with a touch of his own hand, may well have produced things which only the most searching comparison will discover to be not by the master himself. As a fact, I shall be able to show in the sequel that the chief groups in two well-known pictures, both generally accepted, by painters no less than by critics, as the actual handiwork of Velazquez, are identical with each other, touch for touch , so that one must be a slavish copy of the other or both ot a third. No great original painter, certainly none who painted with the freedom of Velazquez, ever did, or could, repeat of himself in that fashion. The method invented by Morelli, and applied by himself and his followers with more or less success to the works of the early Italians, would not be of much use in the case of Velazquez. At its best the system of comparing details of manner seems to me more fitted for the purpose of demonstration than for that of study. The critic who requires to look at the pattern of an ear before he can distinguish between a i6 THE ART OF VELAZQUEZ Moretto and a Moroni has only half learnt his business, but such an easily -grasped piece of evidence has its value when the truth of con- clusions arrived at on some more solid, though less generally perceptible, ground has to be demonstrated. Velazquez was endowed with so true an eye, and his interest in the look of things was so keen, that with him manner never takes the place of truthful interpretation. In his later and freer work we can, indeed, perceive a few personal tendencies in matters of form. Perhaps the most conspicuous of these is a fondness for plump hands with rather short, very tapering fingers. But this is due not so much to a lapse of observation as to his system of handling. We must search in his technique, as a whole, for his true distinctive marks, and reinforce our conclusions by a true vision of the man behind that tech- nique, to which an examination of his methods of conception will help us. Here, perhaps, it may be as well that I should explain what I mean by technique. In his careful study of the art of Velazquez, Mr. R. A. M. Stevenson spreads the meaning of the term over practically the whole of a painter’s activity. He includes in it everything done between the first inception of a picture and the last touch put upon the canvas. This appears to me both inconvenient and misleading. It is inconvenient, be- cause it substitutes a vague for a perfectly definite term ; it is misleading, because it implies an identity of character between processes which are, as a fact, different. Conceiving a picture and realising a picture are different things, depending upon different personal endowments, which are capable of being divorced from each other. The fact that, in conceiving a picture, an artist has to keep technical possibilities in view, does not justify us in confusing, or, if you like, blending the two things. Take an illustration from a minor art. An architect designs a grille to be carried out in hammered iron. If he knows his business he keeps the technique of forging iron constantly in his mind as he combines his curves and decides upon his forms. A good result is arrived at through his art and know- ledge of technical requirements and the practical technique of the forger. In the case of painting both processes are carried out by one man, but that does not make them identical in kind. By technique, then, I shall mean everything done on the canvas , as distinct from such matters as have to be decided before the canvas is touched. The distinction is a little diffi- cult to keep up, I grant, because technique continually reacts on conception THE ART OF VELAZQJJEZ l 7 and vice versa , hut nevertheless it has to be done if we are to arrive at clear ideas. Some of those — and I hope there maybe some! — who read these pages may feel inclined to cry cui bono ? when they come upon all this discussion as to how the actual hand of Velazquez is to be recognised. Velazquez, they may say, created the fashion in art of which his pupils were exponents as well as himself. Lump them all together, and study them as the exemplars on which the most efficient painting of our own day is based. To do so would be to abandon the most fascinating, as well as the most useful, function of the critic. The seed of art is sincerity. Without sincerity, without the sincere expression of really felt emotion, art is nothing but artifice, and those who practise it are not causes, but effects. In his beginning Velazquez got afloat on a stream which had been flowing for centuries, but the time came when he determined its channel. His pupils floated on by his side, but they determined nothing ; and to make no attempt to distinguish their work from his, would only be to weaken our impressions and confuse our conclusions. We must learn our Velazquez in his own confessions, and when we have done so I think we shall find that, in some ways, he is not truly presented in Cis-Pyrenean tradition. B CHAPTER III CHRONOLOGY OF VELAZOUEz’s PICTURES The chronology of Velazquez is by no means easy to establish. The dates of a certain number of his pictures can be fixed with more or less confidence, but for various reasons it is not safe to depend upon matters which would be considered decisive in the case of most painters. It seems, for instance, to have been his habit to work upon pictures which had long been finished. There is reason to believe, too, that some of the royal portraits represent their originals, not as they were at the time of sitting, but as they had once been. In spite of this, however, a few fixed points can be set up, which we must try to supplement by the internal evidence of style. The earliest works we know are the fairly numerous bodegones and kindred pictures, of which by far the finest is the Duke of Wellington’s Aguador. These seem, for the most part, to have been painted in his first youth, as, from the unerring evidence of technical com- pleteness, they are inferior to the Adoration of the Kings at Madrid, still more to the Adoration of the Shepherds in the National Gallery. And yet the Madrid picture is dated 1619, when the master was only twenty, and the probability is that the Adoration in Trafalgar Square was painted immediately after it. We may, then, take the Aguador and the two Adorations as the typical works of his youth, before the influence of Seville had encountered a rival. It is possible, of course, that the Adoration of the Shepherds was painted somewhat later, and that its decided superiority represents more than a few months of added ex- perience. It seems quite certain, however, that it holds a place about midway between the Aguador and the bust portrait of Philip IV. (Prado, No. 1071), which we may give to the year 1623 with some confidence. Adoration of the Magi. Museo del Prado , Madrid. From a Lithograph by C. Palmareti. THE ART OF VELAZLIUEZ 2 I To about the same time belong the standing portrait of the king (Prado, No. 1070), and the full-length of Olivares at Dorchester House. Accepting these dates, then, we may thus arrange the fruits of Velazquez’s first period of activity, confining ourselves to such pictures as we may have further cause to mention. Between 1615 and the autumn of 1623 : — Old Woman cooking Eggs (Sir F. Cook). Christ in the House of Lazarus (National Gallery), a b ode gone •, the title is misleading. Two Young Men at a Meal (Apsley House). I'he Aguador (Apsley House). The Epiphany, or Adoration of the Kings (Museo del Prado). 'The Adoration of the Shepherds (National Gallery). *Bust portrait of Philip IV. (Museo del Prado ; costume added, or repainted, later). [It is known that Philip carried out his promise to sit to the young Sevillian on August 30, 1623. f h e result was the life-size equestrian portrait which was afterwards exhibited to the public in the Calle Mayor before it was hung in the Alcazar. In 1686 it was removed, and has now disappeared. It was probably burnt in the fire of 1734. The bust above mentioned may have been the study for it. The king most likely was content to sit for the head, to which Velazquez may well have added in later years the freely painted armour which now completes the picture.] Full-length portrait of Olivares (Dorchester House). Bust portrait of a man (Museo del Prado). ‘^Full-length portrait of Philip IV. (Museo del Prado, No. 1070). Pablillos de Valladolid (Museo del Prado). All of these belong to the first, laborious time of Velazquez. They show that composition still had insurmountable difficulties for him, that “handling” had scarcely begun, and that such colour as he commanded was suggested by the examples he had had before him at Seville. During the next three or four years he must have made rapid progress, but it is not easy to determine the pictures which belong to them. Probably the original of the full-length Philip IV. in the National Gallery was one. This picture, which came to Trafalgar Square from Hamilton Palace, cannot, I think, be accepted as entirely the work of Velazquez. It appears to me a repetition by Mazo, which has been worked on by the master. However, that question need not detain us at present. Just now I wish to establish a list which may be the ground-work for dis- 22 THE ART OF VELAZQUEZ cussion, and I find it difficult to select examples within my own knowledge for these particular years. Such gaps occur here and there with Velazquez, and the usual explanation, the burning of the Alcazar, is probably the true one. When we get to 1628 we are on firmer ground. That was the year Rubens came to Madrid, and when we find that Velazquez received the price of a Bacchus from the king in July 1629, we are confirmed in our belief that the Borrachos should come in here. Philip IV. was not a prompt paymaster, but his readiness on this occasion is to be accounted for, perhaps, by the artist’s preparations for his first tour in Italy. Rubens had affected the aims, though not the manner, of his art. In Italy, men so opposed, and, in our eyes, so inferior to the Fleming as Poussin, Guido, and the Carracci, exercised a still deeper influence. The Forge of Vulcan was painted in Rome, and its inspiration is unmistakable. Between 1628 and 1635 I should place the following pictures : — *|Los Borrachos, 1628-29 (Museo del Prado). *Forge of Vulcan, 1630 (Museo del Prado). ^Joseph’s Coat, 1630 (Escorial). T Christ at the Pillar (National Gallery). ^Portrait of Don Balthazar Carlos with another child, 1631 (Earl of Carlisle). Crucifixion (Museo del Prado). [Justi thinks this picture probably dates from 1638, basing his opinion on the fact that the Convent of San Placido, for which it was painted, was reinstated in its honours in that year. In style, however, it suggests an earlier date, when the master had been more recently under the influence of the painters collected in Rome.] M'ull-length portrait of Philip IV. in hunting dress, about 1635 (Museo del Prado). * Full-length portrait of Don Fernando in hunting dress, 1635 (Museo del Prado). ^Full-length portrait of Don Balthazar Carlos in hunting dress, 1635 (Museo del Prado). [ 1 hese three pictures bear signs of having been worked upon again at some later period in the master’s career.] Fhis list shows a surprising variety of manner, but the dates of the Borge, the Joseph's Coal, and the three hunting pieces are certainly known, and yet they embrace the extremes of difference. Here, however, the master’s violent oscillations practically come to an end. With the ex- ception of a few things painted after his second visit to Italy, the rest of his work flows on like a river, the starting-point, I think, being the great THE ART OF VELAZQUEZ 23 group of equestrian portraits which head the list of pictures painted between 1635 an d *640 : — ;f Equestrian portrait of Olivares (Museo del Prado). ^Equestrian portrait of Philip IV. (Museo del Prado). ^Equestrian portrait of Oueen Isabel de Bourbon (Museo del Prado). " Equestrian portrait of Don Balthazar Carlos (Museo del Prado). "'Full-length standing portrait of Don Balthazar Carlos (Buckingham Palace). "'Full-length standing portrait of Don Balthazar Carlos (Vienna). "'Surrender of Breda (Museo del Prado). -'Portrait of Admiral Pulido da Pareja, painted in 1639 (National Gallery). Pernia (Museo del Prado). Don Juan of Austria (Museo del Prado). El Nino de Vallecas (Museo del Prado). El Bobo de Coria (Museo del Prado). El Primo (Museo del Prado). Don Sebastian de Morra (Museo del Prado). fEsop (Museo del Prado). Mcenippus (Museo del Prado). In 1649 came the painter’s second tour in Italy, and to the months immediately after his return I feel tempted to ascribe the second group of pictures in which Italian influence is conspicuous. The list for the years between 1649 and the end of his life would then be in something like the following order : — Juan de Pareja (Earl of Carlisle). * Innocent X. (Apsley House). "'Innocent X. (Doria-Pamfili Palace, Rome). If Coronation of the Virgin (Museo del Prado). Venus (Rokeby Hall). TMars (Museo del Prado). * Infanta Margarita (Vienna Gallery, No. 619). "'Infanta Margarita (Louvre). *Las Meninas (Museo del Prado). II Martinez Montanes (Museo del Prado). "'Oueen Mariana (Museo del Prado). "'Infanta Margarita (Museo del Prado). The Tapestry Weavers (Museo del Prado). "'Infanta Margarita (Vienna Gallery, No. 615). "'Infante Prosper (Vienna Gallery, No. 621). [These two were painted and sent to Vienna in 1659.] Mercury and Argus (Museo del Prado). ^Philip IV. in old age (National Gallery). Visit of St. Anthony Abbot to St. Paul (Museo del Prado). 24 THE ART OF VELAZQUEZ This list, which contains fifty-two pictures, is confined, with one exception, to works which seem to me indubitably by the hand of Velazquez himself. The dates of those to which an asterisk is prefixed are approximately known, either by external evidence, or, in the case of a portrait, by the apparent age of the sitter. Others indicated by a may be dated with some confidence through the marks they bear of various influences. Around these the rest are arranged according to affinities of style. The list is not a very long one, and yet I fancy it includes nearly one half of all the existing works of Velazquez. Rather more than a hundred pictures is not a great total for a master who painted with facility, and who was at work for forty years. But we must remember the de- struction wrought by the burning of the Alcazar in 1734 ; and also that for many years of his life Velazquez had duties to attend to which kept him away from his studio. In any case, it is mainly upon the pictures above enumerated that I have to ground the following attempt to sketch his artistic personality. CHAPTER IV THE EARLY WORK OF VELAZQUEZ W e saw in the biographical section of this study that the youthful Velazquez had two very different men for his teachers — the fiery, free, and impulsive Herrera, and the tame, methodical Pacheco. One of the puzzling things about the master’s development is, that in his beginnings he took after Pacheco, to return in his maturity to the bolder methods of Herrera. There is much in the latter’s existing productions to remind us of the Surrender of Breda , and even of the series of dwarfs and buffoons. Pacheco, on the other hand, is clearly responsible for the clumsy design and the tame smoothness of execution we see in the bodegones. So far as I know, only one other instance of a similar vacilla- tion is to be found in the history of art. Albert Cuijp appears to have deserted a free for a lighter and more laborious manner, returning after- wards to his first style and basing his final development upon it. The first efforts of Velazquez, the work he did or may have done in the studio of Herrera, are not now to be traced. They were probably of very slight merit — he was not a quick beginner— and may all have been destroyed as soon as finished. It is unlikely, however, that they resembled the dull, plodding productions he turned out while under the wing of Pacheco ; and even if he only stayed twelve months with Herrera, as Justi supposes, the absence of all positive witness to the way in which he spent his time may be lamented. The Velazquez we know begins with the bodegones , with one or two heads in the Prado, and with the Aguador at Apsley House. What do these pictures tell us of his personality ? The first thing to strike us about them is a curious contradiction in the witness they bear to their author’s originality. It required unusual inde- 26 TIIE ART OF VELAZCLUEZ pendence to paint such subjects at all in the Spain of the early seventeenth century. The severity with which art was restricted to religious subjects has, no doubt, been exaggerated. The Inquisition must have either been less omnipotent or more liberal in its ideas than its enemies assert. Other- wise the public corridors of the Alcazar could never have been hung with such pictures as many of the Titians collected by Charles V. and Philip II. A censorship which tolerated the Danae could hardly have done much to narrow the bounds of art ! But if such subjects as the Dutch were to set permanently on a higher plane in this very century were not positively tabooed, they were certainly not encouraged. The most certain road to success was not in their direction, and a painter chose it at his peril. In later years, when Velazquez had shown the way, Murillo walked in his footsteps, but earlier masters, such as Juanes, March, Morales, Navarrete, Orrente, Pantoja de la Cruz, Ribalta, Ribera, Sanchez Coello, Zurbaran, and Pacheco himself, were very seldom tempted off the well-worn triple path of religion, history, and portraiture. The choice, then, of Velazquez argues courage, and the kind of originality which lies in a readiness to differ. Strangely enough, the young painter’s independence stops here. In the early work of Rembrandt there is not much art, in the strict sense of that word, but there is always something beyond the mere impulse towards imitation. In his single heads we find an endeavour to get dramatic if not pictorial unity by the management of the lighting ; in his more com- plex creations the same quality is won by some daring piece of design, such as the drapery of Persephone in the little picture at Berlin. In Velazquez you find nothing of the kind. His originality seems to exhaust itseh in choice of a subject. To realisation he seems to bring a lethargic mind and an almost stupid content with the first form which presents itself ; even such a picture as the Aguador , superior as it is to the rest of its class, has the effect rather of a study, painted ploddingly by a South Kensington student, than of a picture born of a pictorial idea. This dulness and want of initiative seem to have marked the painter’s imagina- tion for an unusually long period. The early portraits at Madrid show but little advance upon the best of the bodegones and none at all upon the Aguador. Pheir success with Olivares and the king seems to have been due mainly to the formidable likeness which was never beyond the Dead Warrior. National Gallery. Engraved by T. Huron, R.P.E. THE ART OF VELAZQUEZ 29 painter’s reach. Philip, who was familiar with the Charles the Fifth' s and Portrait of a Man. Museo del Prado , Madrid. From a Photograph by Braun , Clement , If Cie. Engraved by T. Huson , R.P.E. Philip the Second's of Titian, cannot have been so blind as to think the first attempts of Velazquez on his own royal physiognomy were great works 3 ° THE ART OF VELAZQ.UEZ of art. The best of these, perhaps, is the full-length which is numbered 1070 at the Prado. Strange in drawing and conventional in arrange- ment, it produces its effect by a forcible and consistent illumination, and by the evident sincerity which has governed every touch of the brush. But it has no reality. It is the result, not of free observation, but of a process which gives not echoes, but symbols, of what is. Still we glean from it some presage of the vitality Velazquez was afterwards to breathe into every detail of his work. We can scarcely say this of the Olivares , or of the bust portrait of Philip. The bust, or rather head — for all below the throat is an after-thought — is thoroughly modelled from the student point of view, but the most promising thing about it is its sincerity. As for the Olivares , it is an imposing silhouette, the map of a man with no “tactile values,” to use Mr. Berenson’s new phrase in what, I hope, is its right sense. It is curious that in these first mutterings of the genius of Velazquez the quality most conspicuously absent is that on which his fame, with painters, now securely rests. His youthful eye seems to have passed unseeingly over the actual relations of one plane with another. His portraits are apt to look as though he had posed his sitters between him- self and the light, and had then proceeded to divine what he could not see. His subject pictures, on the other hand, are lighted from the front, but, as if he despaired of any real depth, he nearly always sets his figures against an impenetrable shadow. The eye which was afterwards to make possible such a tour de force as the Tapestry Weavers , either did not appreciate the relations of one surface to another, or, in conscious reserve, its owner postponed all attack upon such a difficulty till experience should have grown to meet it. Here again I feel tempted to contrast him with Rembrandt. In his early work the Dutchman betrays the tendencies which were to distinguish him to the end. Take, for example, the head of himself at Cassell, in which he has bathed the whole upper half of the face in unaccountable shadow. The endeavour is to win effect by the strongest use of light and shade. The result is dramatic rather than pictorial, suggestive rather than self-explanatory. As time went on and Rembrandt developed into an artist, he grew into the understanding that to the painter chiaroscuro should be a vehicle for the expression of pictorial emotion, not of a mental conceit. But even from the beginning, even from ifi/iij (/<• (d/a