Chapter 2
In 1649 the king granted Velazquez permission to return to Italy in order to find pictures for a Royal Academy of Fine Art to be established in Madrid. By this time Philip was a widower, though he was on the point of marrying his niece, Mariana of Austria. She had been affianced to the Infante Don Balthasar Carlos, but he had been dead for three years, and the Spanish throne was without an heir. Velazquez visited Genoa, Venice, Milan, and Padua, and brought back pictures by Veronese and Tintoretto. Rome and Naples were revisited, and the famous portrait of Pope Innocent X., of which one copy is in St. Petersburg, and the other in the Doria Palace in Rome, was painted. The former is a bust and a study; the latter is a three-quarter length, and is painted with a wonderful blend of red and white. It was copied by Sir Joshua Reynolds, who declared that it was the finest work he had seen in Rome. What would he have thought of the later masterpieces by the same hand? The portrait was copied by other men too, and there is no doubt that the copies were in some cases sold for originals.
By the time Velazquez returned to Madrid in 1651, at the urgent request of his royal master, the court of Spain was _en fête_. Philip's wife, to whom he had been married two years, was only seventeen, and required amusement. Functions of every sort, excursions, entertainments on a most sumptuous scale, were the order of the day, and because Velazquez was now at the summit of his achievement, because he could paint pictures that will endure as long as men care for art, it is difficult indeed to forgive Philip IV. for making him Marshal of the Palace. To be sure the post was well paid, the salary being about £400 a year with lodging in the Treasure House, but the duties were endless. The king's action was on a par with the custom that prevails in our own Foreign Office, of sending a man who understands China thoroughly to serve the country in Peru, and one who has mastered Russian politics to Portugal.
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PLATE V.--ANTONIO THE ENGLISHMAN
This was one of the dwarfs in the service of the king. His is one of the last portraits painted by Velazquez. The figure is life size, and hangs in the Prado at Madrid.
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Happily Velazquez, for all that he was regarded in Madrid as a rather lazy man, found time when he was Marshal of the Palace to paint the best of all his portraits. He was honoured by Queen Mariana of Austria, the king's second wife, who sat for him on several occasions, and the results may be seen in Paris, Vienna, New York, and Madrid. Some of the portraits, painted without a suspicion of flattery, show the absurd head-dress, the false hair, and the extraordinary crinoline that were worn at the time, in all their ugliness, and force us to see how great was the distance lying between the royal house and any sense of beauty. Velazquez was not perhaps very happy with this work, because Nature had endowed Philip's wife with a face that was almost as dull and unresponsive to emotion as that of her lord and master; but after a time children were born, and the court painter had a more sympathetic task. He has left portraits that are quite charming of the Infanta Margarita and the Infante Philip Prosper; he painted both of the children while they were very young. In point of fact, neither lived to grow up; doubtless they would have been uninteresting enough if they had been spared. The Infanta Margarita is to be seen in Vienna, in Paris, and in Madrid, and she of course is the centre of the famous picture, "Las Meniñas." Prince Prosper was painted by Velazquez, when no more than two years old. There were two other children, Prince Ferdinand and Prince Carlos II., but the former was no more than a year old when Velazquez died, and Carlos was unborn. Of the four children born to Philip IV. by his second wife, three died young.
In the last years of his life, when the pressure of court duties and the ill-will of highly placed fools must have been hard to bear, Velazquez found time to paint some of his greatest masterpieces. "The Maids of Honour" ("Las Meniñas"), "The Spinners" ("Las Hilanderas"), "Æsop," "Menippus," "The Coronation of the Virgin," and the "Venus with the Mirror," are all the ripe fruit of the painter's last decade. His art had matured; adversity had thrown him back upon his work; it was the solace of the hours that were not claimed by absurd official duties. Who shall say that the scant consideration he received from parasites and courtiers was an unmixed evil? The men who despised the painter because Philip favoured him may have helped to mould his character, may have enabled him to detach himself completely from his own official character when he could lay aside the garb of office and turn to his beloved canvases once again. The portraits of Philip in his last years, those of his second wife and her children, those of the dwarfs too, belong to the years between 1651 and 1660.
It was a custom of the unhealthy and depressing Spanish court in which the queen lived in an armour of corsets and crinoline, and might not be touched by any of her faithful subjects upon pain of death--the court in which the king was compelled to preside at the _autos da fé_--to keep dwarfs as playthings. Perhaps because they were ugly and deformed they came quite naturally into the court environment. The earliest portrait of Don Balthasar Carlos shows him in company with a dwarf, and there were about the court many other unfortunate creatures whom Velazquez painted between 1650 and 1659.
There is more than a suspicion in the minds of many of his biographers that the half-concealed contempt with which Velazquez was regarded in court circles left him small choice of company; that he was rated with dwarfs and outcasts because he worked with his hands; and of course no hidalgo, who was a perfect master of the art of time-wasting, could take seriously any low-blooded creature who earned his right to live by working. If Velazquez had been on the same footing as Rubens--had he enjoyed the same position that Goya, with no greater official appointment, was to hold a little more than a century after his death--we may presume that the dwarfs would not have been painted, and that Velazquez' art would have been given to the service of the blue-blooded gentlemen who were making as big a muddle of Spanish interests as their country's worst enemies could desire. One hesitates to say that they would have been less interesting sitters, because we know that nobody, however dull and stupid in appearance, could fail to become interesting at the hands of the painter. It is fair to remember, too, in defence of the Spanish attitude, that the years were given not to the arts of peace but to those of war; that leisure was scanty, intrigue unceasing, and the austerity of life was made greater by the strong and merciless grip of the Church. Formality and superstition marched hand in hand in a court whose ruler, if we may judge by his portraits, had forgotten how to smile. Then again, the atmosphere of the Madrid court, for all its dulness and secrecy and unhealthy ways, was not as it became under Charles III., when Godoy played the part of Count Olivarez, and the Countess Benavente, the Duchess of Alba, and other women as frail as they were beautiful, did not hesitate to indulge in open intrigue with the king's painter. Turn to the canvases of Velazquez and you will not find a woman who was fascinating enough to have been worth the trouble and danger of an intrigue. The wives of Philip IV. could not but have been virtuous, and would have had but small sympathy with pretty women. To be sure Philip IV. had many mistresses, but he did not ask his court painter to record their beauty.
Before Velazquez returned to Madrid from his second visit to Italy, he seems to have painted the portrait of the dwarf known as "El Primo," now in the Prado. This man, known in private life as Don Louis de Hacedo, accompanied Philip on a tour, and he seems to have been a studious person, because the artist has depicted him with book, pen, and paper, and given him a refined expression. The others have little to redeem their ugliness and deformity. The child of Vallecas seems to be the dwarf who figures with Don Balthasar Carlos in the first picture that Velazquez painted of the unfortunate young prince, the one that is now in America. He has grown a little older and a little more ugly in the canvas that is devoted entirely to his portrait; he does not wear good clothes, but a coarse green coat with stockings to match. The Idiot of Coria is also dressed in green, though his garments are a little richer, but Don Antonio seems to have been a person of some importance. He is pictured in the Prado standing beside a beautiful mastiff almost as big as himself, and he wears a ruddy brown dress worked with gold. He carries a large plumed hat in his hand. Sebastian de Morra, who sits facing the audience, has one of the most wonderful heads ever set on canvas by the artist. This dwarf too is dressed in the green costume that would seem to have been worn by the dwarfs attached to the court of Spain. In addition to the little company of dwarfs there were buffoons at the court, and of these Velazquez painted Pablillos, who is known as "the comedian," and Don Juan of Austria, whose portrait is a triumph of harmony in colour, the pink of mantle and stockings contrasting admirably with black doublet and cape.
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PLATE VI.--ADMIRAL ADRIANO PULIDO PAREJA
This picture may be seen in the National Gallery. It is signed and dated 1639, and was purchased from the Longford Castle Collection in 1890. Señor Beruete holds a strong opinion that it was not painted by Velazquez.
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In the last years the painter seems to have gone a little further down in the social scale in search of his sitters, for the "Æsop" is a beggar, and "Menippus" is no better. To all these sufferers and outcasts Velazquez responded with a sympathy that is not less clearly revealed than the technique that gives so much enduring delight to artists the world over.
In the final decade of the painter's life Philip seems to have given him no more than two sittings. Perhaps the artist's "Mars" and his "Venus with the Mirror" gave offence in Madrid, where the nude was only accepted if it was painted by some artist who had won his fame outside the Iberian Peninsula. The whole trend of life in the court of Mariana of Austria was opposed to the presentation of the nude in art. The two late pictures of Philip, of which the one is in the Prado and the second in our National Gallery, are quite the most finished of all his studies of his royal master. The face, free from even a suggestion of human interest or enthusiasm, has no emotion whatsoever save disillusionment and sadness. The spectator gets a suggestion that life has resolved itself into a long series of formal duties and formal enjoyments, and that neither suffices to make it worth living. Duty to the world at large and to the vast empire slipping from his grasp seems to be all that holds Philip; and when we consider that he had lost his first wife and her promising son, and of his children by his second wife one or two were dead already; that dissipation and anxiety had sapped his energies, and superstition had crabbed his intelligence; it is not strange that the face should be as it is.
In 1658 Philip conferred upon Velazquez the knighthood of Santiago, and money was deposited on his behalf by a friend who understood the painter's financial straits to pay for the inquiries relating to his genealogy. In spite of the king's wishes, the Council appointed to inquire into the antecedents of the painter refused to admit him, though Velazquez supplied many proofs that his blood was pure and his origin honourable. At last, Philip applied to the Pope Alexander VII. for a dispensation in the artist's favour, realising that the Vatican was a Court whose jurisdiction was unlimited in its scope. The Pope was complaisant: he could hardly be otherwise to Philip IV.; he sent a brief that enabled Velazquez, after long delays, to obtain the much coveted order. The story that Philip bestowed it upon Velazquez as a reward for the picture "Las Meniñas" is one of the pretty fables that must be disregarded, and it seems likely that Philip only exerted himself on his painter's behalf because he wished him to superintend the arrangements for the festivities that were to celebrate the marriage of the Infanta Maria Teresa with Louis XIV. If we may read character in physiognomy, there is little risk that Philip would have behaved generously without cause.
Velazquez left Madrid for Irun, on the Franco-Spanish frontier, in April 1660. The work was harassing; he was not a _persona grata_ with his colleagues, and none sought to lighten his burdens. He returned to the capital at the end of June, when Madrid is not fit to live in, and was taken ill a month later. Hard and unremitting labour, the folly and bitter opposition of men who were not worthy to clean his palette, the inconveniences and delays of travel in Spain, and the tender mercies of several Spanish doctors of repute, seem to have combined, with a bad attack of fever, to bring a troubled life to its closing scene. The end came on the 6th of August 1660, when, to quote Señor Beruete, "he delivered up his soul to God, who had created him to be the admiration of the world."
The body was decorated with the ornaments of the knights of Santiago and buried in the parish church of St. John the Baptist. Within a week his devoted wife, Juana de Pacheco Velazquez, followed him to a rest that no ceremonial of the Spanish court could disturb.
Strange as it may seem to those who know nothing of Spain, the petty worries and vexations to which Velazquez had been subjected did not cease with his death. It was decided by the authorities that the thousand ducats paid to the dead painter for superintending the works of the Alcazar must be returned, and in order that the claim might be met, the contents of the artist's studio and some of his furniture would seem to have been seized. King Philip recorded his gracious distress at this decision, but did nothing to overrule it.
Litigation followed, and after some years the claim to the thousand ducats was withdrawn by the authorities, the affairs of the master were wound up for all time, and the stigma of debt was removed from the memory of a man who never received a tithe of his deserts.
Philip IV. took Juan del Mazo, the painter's son-in-law, to be court painter in Velazquez' place, and the appointment is worth noting, because it is to this worthy man's wonderful facility for echoing his father-in-law's style that we owe the presence of so many imitations in the world's public galleries and private collections. Some of these clever copies of lost pictures have remained unchallenged until recent years, and whether this be a tribute to the capacity of del Mazo or a reflection upon the capacity of critics, is a question lying beyond the scope of this little book. But it is not difficult to understand that the renown of Velazquez was on the increase for a few years after his death, and that Mazo, who was clever and poorly paid, and had a sincere respect for his father-in-law, should have remembered that there is no greater flattery than imitation.
IV
A RETROSPECT
It is in no spirit of extravagance that one ventures to say that the life of Velazquez was a long and tragic struggle against surroundings detrimental to the full and natural expression of his genius, nor is it surprising that the people who had followed his career with indifference saw very little matter for comment when he died. There were a few useless and pompous ceremonies associated with his obsequies, and Spain went on with the daily task, the common round, unconscious of her loss. So many material possessions were passing from hands too weak to hold or to administer them that the death of an artist could not be noticed.
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PLATE VII.--DONNA MARIANA OF AUSTRIA
This picture was brought from the Escorial to the Prado in 1845. The lady was the second wife of Philip IV., and would have been the wife of Don Balthasar Carlos had he lived.
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Fair-minded critics may hesitate to say with Spain's enemies that civilisation ends with the Pyrenees, but it is certain that the Spanish attitude towards life has differed from that of other countries to an extent that has left indelible impressions upon art and literature. Velazquez carried a little of the Andalusian sun to Castile, but the heavy cloud that settled upon the Spanish court speedily obscured it. Life for the painter was an affair of constant struggle against financial and social difficulties, of endless work for unresponsive masters; and the labour was not lightened by any of the associations that helped the great masters of the Italian School who had some share of light and honour. The funereal pomp of the Spanish court; the strange climatic conditions of Madrid, where you may pass in a moment from a blaze of sun that scorches to a blast of icy wind that strikes a fatal blow at the lungs; the hard and unattractive landscape; the proud, cruel, and impassive people who cannot even feign an interest in such affairs as art or letters, all served to leave their impression upon the painter's work. We cannot imagine that any artist who worked in Madrid in the seventeenth century could become a colourist after the manner of the Venetians; he would not see the colour unless he went to Catalonia or Andalusia and entered into their stirring national life. Then again Spain was influenced by the Moors, and eastern art is more concerned with harmony than colouring, more concerned to blend neutral tints than present rich tones.
The writer has seen many pictures in the studios of modern Madrid that are inspired directly by the Italians, for nowadays Spanish artists flock to Italy, where they learn to imitate the Venetian colour schemes, and to become third-rate echoes of old masters. There are a few men who paint interesting pictures in Spain to-day--Pradilla and Carbonero are among the best; but Spain does not hold a great artist. The last of all died in exile in Bordeaux in the early days of the last century, and left his gifts to the French School of Manet.
Velazquez could never have become a flamboyant colourist. A few of the pictures in the Prado have some reds and pinks; for example, "Las Hilanderas," in which there is a red curtain, and the picture of Philip on horseback, in which the king wears a pink scarf. There are high colours in "The Coronation of the Virgin" and a few others, but as a rule Velazquez wrought with a subdued palette, and sought to weave harmonies in grey and silver. Bright colours are an expression of the joy of life, and this was unknown to the Spaniards of Castile. Murillo has colour, but then he was always an Andalusian. Just as Velazquez borrowed very little from his sitters and gave a great deal, so he claimed next to nothing from the primary colours, and he gave a colour sense that is indescribably beautiful to silver and grey. This was his deliberate choice and judgment, but it is impossible to forget that surroundings and associations must have had a great deal to do with it. Men who live lives that are complete in the fullest sense of the term have a natural craving for glowing hues, and may find Velazquez dull if they come to the Prado from the Academy of Venice; but unless their tastes have become wholly vitiated, unless their eyes are suffering from a surfeit of light, they will soon learn to find that their best beloved masters would not bear transplanting. They belong to the soil of the country they worked in, while Velazquez, like Rembrandt, can travel to any climate, and shine with unclouded glory in any atmosphere. It is impossible to imagine that Rubens could have painted with the palette that served Velazquez, but the greater of the two men has given the world an invaluable lesson in appreciation, and because Nature is full of exquisite colour harmonies that are quite subdued in tone it is well that we should have been taught to appreciate them. Velazquez himself declared that Raphael did not please him, but Titian did; he found in him the greatest of all the Venetians. And yet it is hard to say that he took anything from the admired master, because with Velazquez admiration and imitation are things apart. He did not even imitate El Greco, the painter whose influence upon the world of art is not yet fully acknowledged or understood, and he did not copy Rubens, whose splendours would have dazzled a weaker man.
Velazquez merely saw certain truths in Greco's handling of portraiture, and accepted them. Throughout his life he made a steady improvement in the quality of the work done, but the changes came through introspection rather than from any outside influence.
His pictures are divided by many critics into three styles, which may be divided roughly by his visits to Italy. In the early days the paint on his canvas was very thick, the shadows were heavy, the composition was not always conclusive or well devised. The one quality was that irreproachable throughout all the years was the drawing, which was always masterly. From the days of the early "Bodegones" down to the "Meniñas" nobody could find a picture in which his drawing is obviously at fault; although in speaking of Velazquez it is of course difficult to separate drawing from painting. As he grew up the sense of composition and colour harmony became stronger and stronger, and the faults passed. At the same time, Velazquez was a severe critic of his own work, and a careful examination shows that even those pictures to which no suspicion can attach were retouched and corrected in the making.