V i THE PORTFOLIO MONOGRAPHS ON ARTISTIC SUBJECTS WITH MANY ILLUSTRATIONS ISSUED PERIODICALLY July^ 1896 The Life of Velazquez h WALTER ARMSTRONG London: SEELEY AND CO., LIMITED, ESSEX STREET STRAND iSold by ^ Hatchard, 187 Piccadilly Parus: LiBRAiRiE Galignani, 224 Rue de Rfvoli. Berlin : A. Asher & Co. 13 Unter den Linden New York : Macmillan & Co. Six Monographs are issued in the Year Price '^s. 6d. net 2 THE PORTFOLIO. A Selection of the Pine Art Volumes published by THE AUTOTYPE COMPANY, 74 NEW OXFORD STREET, LONDON. ONE HUNDRED EXAMPLES OF ENGRAVINGS. By Francesco Bartolozzi, R.A. Complete in Four Parts, Three Guineas each. Also a Brief Memoir of Bartolozzi, by Louis Fagan, Esq., of the Department of Prints and Drawings, British Museum. 150 copies only of the complete work issued. THE LIBER STUDIORUM OF J. M. W. TURNER, R.A. Repro duced in Facsimile by the Autotype Process, and accompanied with Notices of each plate, by the Rev. 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CAN NOW BE OBTAINED FROM FREDERICK HOLLYER, 9 PEMBROKE SQUARE, KENSINGTON. Lists of Subjects and Prices>will be sent post free on application, or Illustrated Catalogue for Twelve Stamps. Communications respecting advertisements must be addressed to Mr. JOHN HART, 6 Arundel Street, Strand, London, W.C. THE LIFE OF VELAZQUEZ By WALTER ARMSTRONG Director of the National Gallery, Ireland LONDON SEELEY AND CO. LIMITED, GREAT RUSSELL STREET NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN CO. 1896 The Art of Velazquez will be the subject of a second Monograph by the same Author. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PLATES PAGE Prince Ferdinand in hunting costume, Museo del Prado . . . Frontispiece The Forge of Vulcan. Museo del Prado . . . . .38 The Infante Balthazar Carlos. Museo del Prado . . . .50 The Tapestry Workers. Museo del Prado , . . . .94. ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT Portrait of Velazquez. Collection of Sir Francis Cook. From a Photograph published by the Directors of the New Gallery .... 9 The Aguador, or Water-seller. Collection of the Duke of Wellington. From a Photograph published by the Directors of the New Gallery . . 13 The Adoration of the Shepherds. National Gallery . . . .15 Philip IV. National Gallery ....... 29 The Count-Duke Olivares. After Velazquez, with a border by Rubens. From the Engraving by Paul Pontius ...... 33 Juan de Pareja. Collection of the Earl of Carlisle. From a Photograph published by the Directors of the New Gallery . . . .39 The Boar Hunt. National Gallery ...... 45 Philip IV. on Horseback. Museo del Prado, Madrid. From a Photograph by J. Laurent ........ 53 The Riding School. Collection of the Duke of Westminster. From a Photo- graph published by the Directors of the New Gallery . . -55 The Infante Balthazar Carlos, with a Page. Collection of the Earl of Carlisle. From a Photograph published by the Directors of the New Gallery . 57 The Count-Duke Olivares. Museo del Prado, Madrid. From a Photograph by Braun, Cle'ment, & Cie. ...... 59 4 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Admiral Pulido da Pareja. National Gallery . . . . .61 The Wife of Velazquez. Museo del Prado, Madrid. From a Photograph by Braun, Clement, & Cie. . . . . . . .64. The Family of Velazquez. Imperial Gallery, Vienna. From a Photograph by Lowy . . . . . . . . .65 Christ at the Pillar. National Gallery . . . . . .67 The Daughter of Velazquez. Museo del Prado, Madrid. From a Photograph by Braun, Clement, & Cie. ....... 69 Pope Innocent X. Doria-Pamfili Palace, Rome. From a Photograph by Braun, Clement, & Cie. ........ 75 Pope Innocent X. Collection of the Duke of Wellington . . -77 Philip IV. (bust). National Gallery . . . . . -83 The Infanta Margarita. Imperial Gallery, Vienna. From a Photograph by Lowy 85 The Infante Prosper. Imperial Gallery, Vienna. From a Photograph by Lowy 87 The Dwarf Don Antonio. Museo del Prado, Pvladrid. From a Photograph by Braun, Clement, & Cie. ....... 89 Moenippus. Museo del Prado, Madrid. From a Photograph by Braun, Clement, & Cie. . . . . . . . . .91 ^sop. Museo del Prado, Madrid. From a Photograph by Braun, Clement, & Cie. 95 Mercury and Argus. Museo del Prado, Madrid. From a Sketch by Walter Osborne ......... 97 Coronation of the Virgin. Museo del Prado, Madrid. From a Photograph by Braun, Clement, & Cie. 99 Equestrian Statue of Velazquez at Paris. By M. Fre'miet. From a Photograph by Fiorillo . . . , . . . .101 THE LIFE OF VELAZQUEZ CHAPTER I EARLY YEARS AT SEVILLE 1599-1623 Few cities of the world suggest by their very names the poetry of a picturesque past more vividly than Seville. After five centuries of Catholic rule, it still retains the impress of its Arab masters, its character as a meeting-place of East and West, where buildings, customs, and traditions proclaim the fusion of the hardy Gothic spirit with the exotic culture and magnificence of the Moorish genius. Jaber's tower still divides the traveller's interest with the great Cathedral ; the marble courts and fountains of the East are common features of the houses ; the convents and palaces were once the homes of Moorish kings ; and in the architecture of the Christian churches built during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the mingling of Gothic elements with the Sara- cenic arch seems to deliberately symbolise the marriage of alien races. Nowhere, indeed, has the scent of the roses clung more persistently to the broken vase than in Seville. The geographical position of the city marked it out from early times for a centre of commercial enterprise. The Guadalquivir gave it not only easy access to the sea, but a water-way for inland transport. Long before the discovery of the New World, Seville was the most flourishing city of the peninsula, but after the conquest of Mexico and Peru, its wealth and importance were vastly increased. The Silver Fleet unloaded in the port, galleons freighted with Spanish pistoles, and argosies Laden with spice and silks brought their precious cargoes to her quays. Auctions were held in 6 VELAZaUEZ the public streets of slaves, and silver-work, and costly textiles. Before the building of the Exchange, the plaza in front of the Cathedral was the meeting-place of merchants whose trade was the very poetry of commerce, like that of Marlow's Merchants of the Indian mines, That trade in metal of the purest gold ; Or wealthy Moor, that in the Eastern rocks. Without control can pick his riches up And in his house keeps pearls like pebble stones. A great colonial trade sprang up under the direction of the Casa de Contratacion, and the vast possibilities of the Indian markets began to attract the adventurous. Immigrants of all races, whose memory survives in the names of those quarters of the city in which they lived, mingled with the native populace on the quays and in the streets. Far from despising this activity as plebeian, the nobles took an active part in commerce. Great fortunes were built up, enabling their owners to adorn the city with sumptuous buildings, to encourage art and letters, to enjoy life in a cultured and luxurious society. The numerous churches and monasteries attested the devout spirit on which the Sevillians prided themselves. Their religious zeal may have been a half- conscious survival of the struggle with the Moors, which the Catholic Church regarded mainly as a crusade waged by the followers of Christ against the infidel. The Sevillians proved them- selves in a peculiar degree the worshippers of the Madonna. They claimed to be the earliest champions of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. The building of their great Cathedral extended over a century (1413-1508), and was carried on by successive generations of zealous churchmen, who patronised innumerable artists, both native and foreign. Works of practical piety were not neglected, and wealthy benefactors founded asylums for the poor and hospitals for the suffering. The University was founded by Pier Afan de Ribera (died 1455), a soldier who passed his life fighting against the Moors, Such a com- bination of military and civil interests was no more uncommon in the Spain of the fifteenth and sixteenth century than among the princely VELAZaUEZ 7 condottieri of Northern Italy. Many of the Sevillian poets and dramatists were men of action, who wielded sword and pen indifferently. The annals of the city enshrined the names of a long array of such writers, and of scholars, theologians, connoisseurs, collectors of curiosities and antiques. Hernando de Herrera, the poet (born 1534), and Benito Montanes, the scholar and linguist (born 1498), to whom Philip II, entrusted the production of the famous polyglot Bible printed by Plantin, are the most notable among these worthies, among whom honourable mention must also be made of Hernan Colon, the son of Columbus, who bequeathed to the Cathedral a library of 20,000 volumes which he had collected in his travels through Europe. By the middle of the sixteenth century, Italian culture had obtained a firm footing in Seville, and the Latin and later Italian poets were widely read and imitated. Art and literature went hand in hand in this direction. Spanish painters visited Rome, adopted the manner of the Roman School, and were employed on the decoration of the Sistine Chapel and in Santa Trinita dei Monti. Some, such as Ribera and Ruviales, made their homes permanently in Italy. Painting in Seville, if we are to credit local history, is of great antiquity. Three colossal presentments of the Virgin are extant, which are confidently asserted to date from the era of the early Christians ! But setting pictures aside, authentic relics exist from the period of Ferdinand III.'s conquest (1248) which attest the early activity of religious art. These are the two statues of the Virgin known as the Virgin de las Betallas and the Virgin de la Vega. The building of the Cathedral naturally gave a great impulse to such an activity. Foreigners from Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands were attracted to the work, and left permanent traces of their presence on the national art. Flemings in particular found a cordial welcome, not only in Seville, but throughout the Spain of this period. They introduced the new fashion of painting in oil, which was eagerly adopted by Spanish artists, and commissions from Spanish patrons flowed in upon the workshops of the Netherlandish painters. The works of Juan Sanchez de Castro, Alejo Fernandez, and Juan Nunez, who flourished at the close of the fifteenth century, and whose pictures may be studied in the churches of Seville, proclaim this Flemish tendency. But the movement was 8 VELAZaUEZ short-lived. A reaction set in, and early in the sixteenth century the far-reaching influence of the Italian Renaissance laid its spell on Seville. " All the great men produced by Spain in painting and sculpture," says Pacheco, " chose the way pointed out by Michelangelo, Raphael, and their schools." The chief exponents of the new manner in Seville were the Bruxellois, Peeter de Kempeneer (whose name is transformed in the sonorous Spanish tongue to Pedro Campana), Luis de Vargas (the imitator of Perino del Vaga) and his pupil Villegas, and Pablo de Cespedes. This exotic art, which had no root in national life and sentiment, had the seeds of decay in it from the beginning. The year made memorable by the birth of Velazquez found it already obsolete, and surviving only in the feeble canvases of Pacheco, Vazquez, and a few kindred spirits. Two artists of a very different mould had meanwhile arisen in Seville to be the pioneers of the great national school of the seventeenth century. The greater of the two was Juan de las Roelas, " the first," says Justi, " to combine naturalism with mysticism, the two elements whose fusion imparted its special character to the Sevillian painting of the next generation." His works are to be found in the Cathedral and churches, and in the Hospital de la Sangre, and mark an extraordinary advance when compared with the decaying art of the mannerists. Francisco de Herrera, though not in the strict sense a pupil of Roelas, adopted his manner, overlaying it, however, with the extravagance of his own fierce and sombre temperament. In his later works, examples of which are in the Seville Museum, this turbid spirit dominates him completely, revealing itself in eccentricities in which "he casts off the rules of art as a maniac does his clothes." Herrera had great natural aptitudes, combined, if we may believe what we hear of him, with such a lack of all sweetness and light that it is a question whether he was not indeed a madman. His children fled from his tyranny, his son seeking an asylum in Italy, his daughter in a convent. His gloomy figure is a memorable one in Spanish art, not only for its own sake, but as that of the first master of Velazquez. Herrera's contemporary and fellow-student, Francisco Pacheco, was in all respects his antithesis. The prosperous member of a distinguished VELAZaUEZ 9 family, archaeologist, poet, and critic rather than painter, he was a belated mannerist, whose frigid and feeble productions are in curious contrast Portrait of Velaz,que%. Collection of Sir Francis Cook. From a Photograph published by the Directors of the New Gallery. to the vehement art of his contemporary. In his later works there is a slight increase of vitality, due, it is said, to the quickening influence lO VELAZaUEZ of visits paid in 1611 to Madrid, where he studied the original works of the great Italians he worshipped, and to Toledo, where he made the acquaintance of the wonderful Greek, Theotocopuli. His most valuable bequests to posterity were his Arte de la Pintura, a treatise full of curious learning and interesting glimpses of contemporary art-history, and his Libro de Retratos, an iconography of distinguished Sevillians. After his return from Madrid, he opened a school of painting which became not only a popular academy, but a favourite resort of the most cultured persons in Seville. From this hasty sketch of the stage on which the greatest of Spanish — some will say, the greatest of all — painters made his d^but, we can form some idea of the conditions under which his genius made its start in life. More favoured than many great artists, his lines fell to him in pleasant places ; he opened his eyes on a world full both of natural and of man -created beauty, on sunshine, wealth, and pleasure, on a world in which his vocation was under no disability, but was accepted as honourable and dignified. His native city, if it could not vie with the Florence of Michelangelo or the Venice of Titian, might fairly take its place with the Antwerp of Rubens, or the Amsterdam of Rembrandt van Ryn, Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velazquez was born at Seville, in the house known as No. 8 Calle de Gorgoja, in 1599, the birth year of Vandyck. June 5 is the generally accepted date, for his baptism appears from the parish registers to have taken place at the Church of San Pedro on June 6. The Archives of the Order of Sant' lago in Ucles show that his grandfather, Diego Rodriguez de Silva, belonged 'to an ancient and honourable family of Portugal, whose estates at Quinta de Silva were some eight or nine miles from Oporto. A reverse of fortune caused him to move with his wife from his native Oporto to Seville, where their son Juan, the painter's father, was born. The said son eventually took to wife Geronima Velazquez, the daughter of a Sevillian noble. The artist was therefore of gentle birth on both sides. His family were reckoned hidalgos, or members of the petite noblesse, and entitled to use the style of Don, but this privilege they seem to have allowed to lapse. It is recorded, in evidence of their spotless descent, that VELAZaUEZ familiars of the Holy Office had been chosen from both the Silva and the Velazquez families. The painter's real surname was, of course, Silva. But the super- session of the father's by the mother's patronymic was by no means unusual in Andalusia, and it has been suggested that it was probably adopted by Velazquez as carrying greater weight in Seville than the Portuguese "Silva." The youthful Diego, as one of his biographers quaintly tells us, was nurtured by his parents " on the milk of the fear of the Lord." He was further sent to imbibe nurture of a more mundane sort at the Grammar School of his native city. Here he showed the usual boyish precocity, covering his copy-books with hints at his future greatness. His quick intelligence gave his parents a lofty idea of his gifts, and though the profession of painter was not a usual one for a youth of his rank to adopt, they seem to have acquiesced from the first in his wish to become an artist. He was allowed to leave his other studies to enter the studio of Francisco Herrera, the turbulent individual whom lovers of analogy have christened the " Michelangelo of Seville." He was rather, perhaps, the Torrigiano, though we do not hear that he broke Diego's nose ! His violence, however, soon scared away his pupil, who passed from his school into that of the milder Pacheco. It is not precisely known how long Velazquez remained with Herrera. Justi assumes that it was no more than a twelvemonth from the beginning of his noviciate in 1612. Between pictures, however, ascribed to the crazy master and the later work of his celebrated scholar points of resemblance exist which seem to point to a longer connection. Under Pacheco, at any rate, Velazquez studied diligently for five years, and in 161 8 entered into still closer relations with his master by his marriage with Pacheco's daughter, Juana de Miranda. " After five years of education and training I married him to my daughter, induced by his youth, integrity, and good qualities, and the prospects of his great natural genius." It is to Pacheco's honour that he was able from the first to appreciate an art so essentially the opposite of his own. In his Arte de la Pintura he practically claims the sole credit for Velazquez's training, but short as the latter's sojourn with Herrera was, the vigour of that truculent master left a more decisive impress on his art. Pacheco, in spite of his limitations 12 VELAZaUEZ as a painter, was an excellent teacher. He seems to have been one of those uninspired but conscientious theorists who often prove more successful as masters than their betters. Unable to dominate his brilliant pupil, he was capable of directing him. Ford, in his article on Velazquez in the Penny Cyclopcsdia, maintains, indeed, that Pacheco had no influence of any kind on Velazquez, and that "the principles of Herrera's method are to be traced in all the works of his pupil, improved mdeed by a higher quality of touch and intention." But though Pacheco's works were poor and wooden, and little regarded even by his contemporaries, the principles he lays down in his handbook are sound and judicious, and their application is to be traced in every picture of Velazquez. Drawing he declares to be " the life and soul of painting . . . here are needed courage and steadfastness ; here giants themselves have a lifelong struggle, in which they can never for a moment lay aside their arms." To such advice Velazquez no doubt owed much of his delicate and unerring draughtsmanship. A third influence probably counted for something in his development, that of Luis Tristan of Toledo, a pupil of El Greco, whose art a distinguished French critic has described as " a continuation of El Greco, and an anticipation of Velazquez." Nature was, however, the most insistent of the young Diego's teachers. He drew unceasingly from the model, and the fervour and sincerity with which he threw himself, into Pacheco's "lifelong struggle," is attested by the quality of his early work. " He kept a peasant lad as an apprentice, who for payment served him as a model in various attitudes and postures, weeping, laughing, in all imaginable parts. After this model he drew many heads in charcoal and chalk on blue paper, and made similar studies after many other natives, thereby acquiring his sure hand in hitting ofi^ likenesses." Such earnestness bore fruit in the mastery that distinguishes the Water-Carrier at Apsley House, the Adoration of the Kings in the Madrid Museum, and the much finer Adoration of the Shepherds in our own National Gallery, all painted while the artist was yet in his teens. His earliest independent works were bodegones — kitchen and tavern scenes which appealed to those realistic tendencies of Spanish art which began to show themselves in the early seventeenth century. In their treat- ment of such things, Spanish painters evinced a Dutch power of observa- VELAZaUEZ 13 tion, an uncompromising realism, and a strange disregard for decorative effect. The most famous work of this class by Velazquez is the Water- The Aguador^ or Water-seller. Collection of the Duke of Wellington. From a Photograph published by the Directors of the New Gallery. Carrier above mentioned. The master took it with him when he first went to Madrid, and on the completion of the new palace of Buen VELAZaUEZ Retire, it was chosen to hang in one of the rooms. It passed thence to the new Bourbon palace, and together with Correggio's Jgony in the Garden was carried off by Joseph Buonaparte in his flight to Vittoria. When, after the battle, these two pictures fell into the hands of the Duke of Wellington, he proposed to restore them to Spain, but King Ferdinand begged his acceptance of both as personal gifts. The composition of the Aguador, as the early picture is called, is extremely simple. The chief figure in the group of three is the water- seller himself, a member of that guild of aguadores whose function it was to water the parched streets of the city during the summer months, and, throughout the year, to distribute the fresh water brought to the town in pipes from the Archbishop's Well. He stands before a rough table, his left hand on the great stoppered jar at his side, and in his right a glass goblet, which he hands to a fair-haired boy, who leans forward to take it. A second lad, of a swarthier and less refined type, drinks greedily from an earthen mug in the background. The painter's model is said to have been a Corsican, well known in Seville, where the aguadores belonged for the most part to the French colony. A striking effect is won by the easy and natural juxtaposition of the three heads, the weather-beaten face of the water-bearer contrasting with the smooth youthfulness of his boyish customers. Apsley House is the home of another familiar study of the same period, but of inferior quality. It represents two young men in a sort of cave, seated at a table at the close of a frugal meal. One raises a wooden bowl to his lips ; the other dozes, his head on his arm. Sir Francis Cook's so-called Old Wofnan making an Omelet approaches more closely to the Water-Carrier . A wrinkled peasant, standing at the brazier on which she is cooking eggs in a pan, just as you may see the same operation performed in the streets of Madrid or Seville to the present day, listens to some explanation made by her assistant, a mulatto lad. The kitchen utensils are painted with Dutch accuracy, although the general treatment is broad and even a little empty. This picture was exhibited by the owner at the New Gallery last winter, with another, claiming to be of the same style and 'period. The Beggar with the Globe. Justi has pronounced against the authenticity of this VELAZaUEZ 15 picture, which he describes as a work of the Dutch School. In this opinion I concur, and would ask those who cling to the ascription to The Adoration of the Shepherds. National Gallery. Velazquez to explain the presence of a copy after a landscape by J. van Artois on the globe on which the so-called beggar leans i6 VELAZaUEZ Two famous religious subjects were painted by Velazquez when he was barely out of his apprenticeship, and was still more or less under the eye of Pacheco. These are the Epiphany in the Prado, and the Adoration of the Shepherds in our own National Gallery. The first bears the date 1619. The second, undated, is of the same period, perhaps a little later, to judge by a greater breadth and vigour in the brushing. The catalogue describes it as "an early work in the simple, naturalistic manner of the painter, in the style of Spagnoletto " ; and Justi goes so far as to say that the types are directly copied from those of the Valencian master. The evident reminiscences of Ribera make it, indeed, a work apart in the very individual ceuvre of Velazquez, and have sometimes caused it to be looked upon with suspicion. A Spanish critic has even pronounced it an early Zurbaran. It was bought by Baron Taylor for Louis Philippe from the Conde del Aquila, in whose family it had remained from the time when it was painted, and was acquired by the National Gallery at the sale of the French king's collection in London in 1853. Contemporary with these two pictures were the companion pieces painted for the Chapter-House of the Carmelite Friars, St. John the Evangelist at Patmos, and the Woman ■pursued by the Dragon. A great impetus had been given to devotional painting by the Dominican movement in support of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, sanctioned by Paul V. in a brief of 161 7. Religious establishments had multiplied in an extraordinary manner throughout Spain under the rule of Philip III., and nowhere more conspicuously than in Seville, where one great monastery after another rose in the early years of the seventeenth century. In these new foundations there was a natural zeal to do something for the glorification of the lately-formulated dogma, and the artist was called in to represent the apotheosis of the Queen of Heaven. For all such pictures there was a prescribed form. The theme being the sanctity and spotlessness of Mary, those more human aspects of her legend which had inspired the great Italians from Giotto downwards were set aside for the mystic vision of the Apocalypse — the " woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars." It was, no doubt, the connection between Velazquez and the influential Pacheco which secured a commission of VELAZaUEZ 17 such unusual importance for so young an artist. Though the prescribed conditions ensured a certain uniformity in all pictures of the kind, his characteristic realism asserted itself in his Virgin and his Evangelist, both faithful studies from models of no very exalted type. The Mary is an Andalusian peasant girl, sedate and pious, but far from beautiful ; the Evangelist a swarthy, black-bearded, young man of Moorish origin. The pictures were removed from the monastery to preserve them from destruction by rioters, and were handed over in 1809 to Sir Bartle Frere, the English ambassador at Madrid, in whose family they still remain. The first three years of the married life of Velazquez seem to have been happy and uneventful. Two daughters were born to him — Francisca on May 18, 16 19, Ignacia on January 19, 1621. The latter died in infancy. Secure in the prospect of more local patronage, like that which had already fallen to his share, the young painter may have looked forward contentedly to a career in his native place. Seville had nourished many notable artists, and the beautiful city, with its busy and varied life, could have been no prison-house to genius. But a wider destiny was shaping itself before him. On March 31, 1621, the faindant Philip III. died suddenly, and was succeeded by his son, a youth of fourteen. The prompt assumption of personal authority by the young king was followed by one of those administrative revolutions that set new forces in motion in every department of society. The late king's favourite, the tyrant Lerma, and all his faction, were ignoniiniously dismissed. A new era dawned for the country, and new men pressed eagerly to the front. Several Sevillians of distinction rose into favour at the new court. Olivares himself, the young king's friend and gentleman-in-waiting, had lived for some time in Seville, where he had formed an intimacy with the poet, Francisco de Rioja. Rioja was one of the choice spirits of Pacheco's circle. His name appears as one of the witnesses to the marriage of Velazquez. Later, when Olivares was at the height of his power, Rioja was summoned to Madrid, where the Minister employed him as a sort of aide-de-camp throughout his long administration. By his advice, per- haps, Pacheco, who had formed the highest opinion of his son-in-law's genius, despatched the young painter on a sort of voyage of discovery to Madrid. Diego or his father-in-law seem previously to have had relations with their fellow-citizens in the capital, for on his arrival in April 1622 he B i8 VELAZaUEZ was very courteously received by two members of a distinguished family, Don Luis and Don Melchor del Alcazar. The introduction which proved of greatest service to him, however, was one to Don Juan de Fonseca, Canon of Seville, who held the office of Sumiller de cortina in the royal house- hold. The duties of this office, an office generally bestowed on one of the clergy, were to superintend the arrangements for the king's attendance at mass, to wait on him in the chapel, and to raise or drop the curtain {cortina) when necessary. Fonseca was a lover of the arts, in which he seems to have dabbled himself. He and other friendly courtiers made an effiDrt to introduce Velazquez to the king, but in vain, and Diego returned to Seville. His only achievement of any importance during this first visit to the capital was a portrait of the poet, Luis de Gongora, painted at the request of Pacheco. It attracted much favourable notice at Madrid, and is perhaps to be identified with the portrait numbered 1085 Mn the Prado Gallery. Fonseca, meanwhile, was despatched on a diplomatic mission to Italy. On his return he made another attempt in favour of his young -protege^ and this time with better success. The sympathies of Olivares were enlisted, and in the spring of 1623, Fonseca wrote, conveying a request from the Minister that Diego should return to Madrid at his expense, for which purpose he made a grant of fifty ducats. The hoped-for goal nov/ seemed within a reasonable distance, and Pacheco showed his confidence in his pupil's future by shutting up his house in Seville and going with him to Madrid. There Velazquez was lodged and boarded in Fonseca's own house. He seems to have left his wife to await events in Seville, for after his success with the first equestrian portrait of the king, he was cordially invited by Olivares to bring his family to Madrid. His first commission after his return to the capital was the portrait of his patron, Fonseca. This picture cannot now be identified, and we have no means of judging an achievement which excited much en- thusiasm at the court. On the day of its completion it was carried off to the palace by Count Penaranda, Chamberlain to the king's brother, the Infante Don Fernando. The king, the prince, and the whole house- ^ Many confusing changes have been made in the numbering of the pictures in the Prado Gallery. Those here given refer, in all cases, to the last edition of Senor Madrazo's catalogue. VELAZaUEZ 19 hold inspected it, and expressed their admiration. It was decided that the painter should receive the honour of a royal commission forthwith. Don Ferdinand was at first chosen to sit, but it was finally agreed that the king himself should be painted. The execution of the portrait was delayed, however, owing to the king's engagement in weighty matters of State. The year 1623, it will be remembered, was that in which the Prince of Wales, afterwards Charles I., spent a momentous six months in Madrid, in an abortive wooing of the king's sister, Maria. The Prince sat to Velazquez before leaving the capital, and the artist made a sketch, for which Charles paid him one hundred escudos. It may have been designed as a souvenir for the Infanta, for the Prince did not bring it with him to England. No further mention of it can be traced, and the picture itself has long disappeared. It would have been interesting to compare such a work with Vandyck's stately and poetic renderings. It was not until August 30, 1623, three days before Charles's departure, that Philip found time to fulfil his engagement. Velazquez painted a life-size portrait, on horseback, in a landscape. This, too, has disappeared. It was displaced in 1686, probably to make room for some other work by the same hand, and may have perished in the fire of 1734. The king, the Infante, and in particular Olivares, expressed their great satisfaction with the painter. Olivares summoned him to an audience, in which he overflowed with compliments, promising that Velazquez alone should paint the king in future. The portrait was then publicly exhibited in the Calle Mayor, opposite to the Church of San Felipe, "to the admiration of the capital and envy of those of the pro- fession," says Pacheco. It was arranged that the young man should make his home permanently in Madrid, and he left the Minister's presence full of hopes, which, high as they were, were not destined to be disappointed. CHAPTER II FIRST PERIOD AT MADRID AND FIRST VISIT TO ITALY 1623-163I Until the time of Philip 11. , Madrid was a small fortified city, chiefly remarkable as having once served the Moors as an outpost of Toledo. It was captured for Christendom in 1083. The Castilian kings had a residence there which they occasionally used for hunting in the Pardo, but this was demolished when its permanent occupation by the court made an increase of accommodation necessary. The Alcazar was then turned into a regular royal palace. The keen air of the lofty plateau on which the city stands was found by Charles V. to suit his gouty constitution, and he determined to make it his chief domicile. Madrid is now considered one of the most unhealthy spots in Spain, a result brought about by the ruthless denudation of the country round. In the sixteenth century the undulating plain over which the eye travels from the belvederes of the capital was not the expanse of brown earth, scarcely masked by scanty herbage, it now is. It was a waving forest, the shelter of wild boars and other game, and a defence to the soil against excessive desiccation. The great rise in the population of the city under Philip II. and his successor increased enormously the demand for fuel, and so the woods were sacrificed. No attempt to repair the loss by replanting was made until the time of Philip IV., when the uplands had already been shaved bare. Beyond its stimulating climate, the site had few advantages. Philip II., however, exerted himself to the utmost for the extension and improvement of his new capital, and Madrid remained until comparatively recent times the city he had created. VELAZaUEZ 21 Attracted by the presence of the court, the nobles of Toledo and Valladolid found their way thither. These Philip II. encouraged, by a variety of concessions and privileges, to build houses for themselves, and in spite of its inconvenient situation, the difficulties of transporting supplies, and the consequent dearness of living, the city developed rapidly, and soon became the busy centre of national life — the heart of that huge body corporate, the Spanish Empire of the sixteenth century. The Spaniards prided themselves on the cosmopolitan character of their capital, on its influence, its hospitality, its commercial prosperity, in a word on its fulfilment of the duties, as then understood, of the metropolis of a State whose subjects were of every race. The modern foreigner, fresh from London or Paris, may be staggered by the provincialism, the extraordinary monotony, and, above all, by the unpicturesqueness of Madrid ; but to the Spaniard of the sixteenth century, used to the narrow lanes of Toledo or Seville, the regularity of plan due to its sudden creation, the command over a wide champaign given by its site, and that very freedom from signs of the Moorish domination which we dislike, must have been legitimate sources of pride and self-congratulation. The arts, fostered by the Emperor Charles, commanded an intelligent and widespread recognition in the capital. Rich amateurs had formed collections of pictures and statues, gems and bronzes, which vied with those of the Italian princes. The collections of Pompeo Leoni (the son of the Italian sculptor Leone Leoni) and of Juan de Espinosa are famous in the annals of art. Hardly inferior in taste and knowledge to these virtuosi^ great nobles themselves, such as the Counts Monterey, Leganes, and Villamediana, had turned their palaces into museums of rare and beautiful things, Italy was the storehouse whence most of these treasures were derived, and it is hardly surprising that the prevailing taste when Velazquez brought his genius from the south was less Spanish than Italian, Such was the stage upon which Velazquez entered at the age ot twenty-four, his genius recognised and his career already assured, A retaining fee of twenty ducats a month was granted him from the king's privy purse, in addition to the separate payments made for each 22 VELAZaUEZ completed work. He also received an ecclesiastical sinecure, bringing in three hundred ducats a year. The income from this he seems, however, not to have enjoyed till three years later, when the preliminary dispensa- tion required was granted by Urban VII. A further grant of three hundred ducats for expenses was made shortly after his appointment, and a private residence, valued at a rental of two hundred ducats, was given to him in the city. The Crown at this time reserved to itself the curious privilege of a right of occupation in the second story of private houses. The custom dated from the time of Philip II,, who had claimed this concession as a set-off to the immunities enjoyed by those who built themselves dwellings in the city. The right was not infrequently enforced, and court officials, members of council and of foreign embassies, were thus economically lodged by the sovereign. To evade the infliction, many later buildings were planned with one story only. Whether Velazquez lived in one house throughout the long term of his career in Madrid is not certainly known, but existing records show that in his fortieth year he was established in the house of one Pedro de Yta, in the Calle de Concepcion Geronima, a street off the Calle de Toledo, deriving its name from a convent of Hieronymite nuns, founded by a noble lady of Madrid in 1504. The historic studio of the court- painters, where Philip 11. had paid surprise visits in his dressing-gown to Antonio More and Sanchez Coello, was, however, in the palace itself, and here the master painted all his finest works. This palace, the famous Alcazar of the Hapsburg dynasty and once the citadel of the Moors, no longer exists. It was a vast quadrilateral building, enlarged and improved by successive sovereigns from Pedro the Cruel to Philip IV., under whom it received its final shape. It first became the king's residence in the time of Philip II., who abandoned the old palace, on the site of which his sister Joanna founded a convent for the Barefooted Nuns. He enlarged it mainly by the addition of the south facade, with its suite of state-rooms, which doubled the width ot the original south wing. He also added greatly to its imposing appear- ance by the construction of the great square in front, now the Plaza de Armas. This place still forms the approach to the chief entrance of the modern palace built on the site of the Alcazar. The present armoury, on a low site to the north of the existing palace, formerly belonged to VELAZaUEZ 23 the stables, and is the only remnant left of the ancient building. The huge pile contained a world in itself, the whole business of the State being transacted within its walls. Ranged round two inner courts or patios^ divided one from another by the royal chapel, were the council chambers, the offices, and audience halls, in which was carried on the business of the ten Boards, by whom were regulated the affairs of Castile, Aragon, Italy, Portugal, and Flanders. The guard-rooms, the assembly hall of the Cortes, the great galleries for public entertainments, the Treasury, the Exchequer, the private apartments used by the king and queen in winter and summer respectively, and those occupied by the inferior members of the royal family, as well as by various State officials, were also within its walls. The public was allowed free access to the eastern court, under the arcades of which painters set up their easels, and jewellers, booksellers, and other dealers in decorative wares plied their trade in booths, or at open stalls. The interior of the palace is described by foreign visitors as dark and gloomy, after the sombre Spanish fashion. This gloom was, however, relieved by the magnificent Flemish tapestries, the finest collection in the world, with which the state-rooms, and even, on gala occasions, the halls and courts, were hung. In the summer the tapestries were replaced by pictures from the royal collections, chiefly by large decorative views, processions, and battle-pieces. Down to the time of Philip IV. the more precious examples, such as the Titians, were carefully guarded in the Treasury, but that king made more generous arrange- ments. The famous series of mythological subjects painted by the great Venetian for Philip II., framed, like all the royal pictures, in narrow black frames, were then hung in the loggia, or closed arcade, of the so-called Emperor's Garden, which was a hanging terrace adorned with copies of antique Roman busts representing the Emperors from Augustus to Domitian. The painter's quarters were in the eastern wing of the building, in the Casa del Tesoro, or Treasury. One of the many secret passages which intersected the palace, and enabled the king to move about un- perceived, connected the studio with the royal apartments. Philip had also, we are told, duplicate keys to every room in the building ; and, following the example of his predecessors, he paid constant visits to the 24 VELAZaUEZ painter to watch his progress. A special chair was reserved for his use, which he occupied nearly every day. He is said to have practised painting himself, and with some success, and probably many of the drawings and pictures by him praised by Spanish writers were executed during his visits to the master's studio. No examples of his skill have come down to us, however, or at least none recognised as by his hand. The office Velazquez now entered upon was one in which he had had distinguished predecessors. Titian had been court painter to the Emperor Charles V., both in Italy and in Germany, and magnificent examples of his art had, as we have seen, found their way to Madrid, though he had never worked in the Spanish capital. Antony Mor, whom we call Sir Antonio More, and his imitator, Sanchez Coello, were limners to Philip II. The feeble character of Philip III. seems to have infected even the art which perpetuated his features. His painters were Coello's pupil, the mediocre, but not absolutely worthless, Pantoja de la Cruz, and the uninteresting Bartolome Gonzalez, the latter of whom still retained his post at the accession of Philip IV. He died in 1627, and his place was filled by the Florentine, Angelo Nardi. Two other Tuscans, Vincenzo Carducho and Eugenio Caxesi, enjoyed like honours, and were the colleagues of Velazquez from the first. The three Italians, though strongly influenced, of course, by their national tra- dition, had shown considerable flexibility in conforming to Spanish taste, and catching the Spanish spirit. Nardi was an eclectic, trained at Bologna in the traditions of the Carracci. Caxesi, a Florentine on the paternal side, had a Spanish mother, and was born in Madrid. His art, therefore, had more of the grave, not to say gloomy, Castilian character than that of his fellow-artists. Vincenzo Carducho, the most important of the three and a prolific and versatile painter, was highly esteemed as a teacher. He also wrote a treatise on painting which ranks with Pacheco's Arte de la Pintura as a valuable record of contemporary Spanish art. The book was not published till 1633, but it no doubt embodies the polemics of many previous years, as it directs much impassioned argu- ment against the detested naturalistic tendency, of which so redoubtable an exponent had been admitted into the very stronghold of art. Velazquez made no attempt to compete with the three Italianisers in their special departments, the painting of decorative works and altar- VELAZaUEZ 25 pieces, and could in no way be supposed to encroach on their rights in the exercise of a genius with which they had so httle sympathy. Carducho, indeed, pronounced portraiture the lowest branch of art, and declared that no painter of the first rank had ever practised it ! More- over, he saw in the newcomer's manner an attack on his own academic system. And so, although he never actually names Velazquez, he defends his own principles with unflinching vigour. The Sevillian seems to have borne himself with modesty and good-humour in the fray. When told by the king that his rivals reproached him with being unable to paint anything but heads, he retorted : " These gentlemen pay me a great compliment. At least I know no one who can paint a good head." The controversy is interesting, as showing that the young master's position was not entirely unassailed, and as having stimu- lated him to his first attempt at history, and his sole essay in allegory. Philip, confident of his favourite's ability to meet his oppon- ents on their own ground, proposed a competition between the four painters. Each was to paint his version of a given subject on a canvas of a given size, the results to be submitted to two judges, the Roman artist Crescenzi, and the Spanish friar Maino de Toledo. It was proposed to celebrate some great event in Spanish history, but the chosen theme seems a curious one, looked at in the light of later events. The expulsion of those Moriscos, or Moors, who had been allowed to remain in the country after the conquest of Granada, on condition that they embraced Christianity, was one of the most ruinous measures ever adopted by a Government. These inoffensive people, to whose industry and skill the country owed the greater part of its commercial prosperity, were driven across the Mediterranean in 1609. This choice of a subject was certainly more favourable to the Italians than to Velazquez, for its treatment demanded just the qualities of imagination and dignity in which they believed him to be deficient. Nevertheless, the judges pronounced decisively in his favour. All trace of the picture has long disappeared. It is supposed to have perished in the fire of 1734. Palomino, writing ten years earlier, describes it fully. It represented Philip III. in a white robe and armour, pointing seaward with his sceptre, and directing the embarkation of a weeping crowd of Moors, while an allegorical figure of Hispania, enthroned on 26 VELAZaUEZ his right, looked on approvingly. Such an essay was, however, a rare incident in the main business of the painter's life at court, which was the production of royal or official portraits. Those to which he gave his almost exclusive attention during his first years of office initiated that wonderful series by which he has made the supercilious features of the fair-haired Philip as familiar to us as Vandyck has made those of our own Charles 1. Few characters in history have offered such a curious compound of contradictory qualities as Philip IV. If we may accept contemporary testimony he had many of the gifts that make a strong and wise ruler, but never were such qualities less effectively exercised. . To a handsome person, a distinguished bearing, courtly manners, and proficiency in all the accomplishments of a cavalier, he added the more sterling virtues of a kind heart, a tolerant disposition, and a self-control so remarkable that he is said never to have shown anger, and only to have laughed three times in his life ! His energetic action in dismissing his father's favourites, and instituting such reforms that a contemporary writer declared Philip III.'s death to have created a " new world," seemed to foreshadow a vigorous personal rule. Yet in the sequel, no king was ever more completely under the sway of his Ministers, or more timidly averse to any display of initiative. This becomes the more surprising when we find that he did not shrink from the tedium of affairs, but regularly devoted some six hours a day to the despatch of business ; and that he had the most exalted notion of his own dignity, and of his mission as a Spanish king. His innumerable love affairs no doubt diverted his attention to some extent from more weighty matters ; but these, in spite of the thirty-two natural children with which he is credited, were of an ephemeral kind, and no woman established a lasting ascendency over him. The vivifying gifts he lacked were a resolute will and a capacity for prompt and decisive action. Thus he resigned himself willingly to the role of a roi faineant und^r such a Mayor of the Palace as Olivares, till the State he lacked the resolution to govern was well-nigh overwhelmed by disasters, and the prestige of one of the greatest empires that the world had ever known disappeared. In the character of a patron of art and letters Philip shows to greater advantage. He was the friend of Calderon, Rioja and Quevedo, he was the host of Rubens, and the VELAZQUEZ 27 appreciative critic of Velazquez, while many foreign musicians, architects, and engineers had cause to bless his generosity. In the first presentments of Philip there is a certain stiffness, an apparent adherence to a traditional treatment, not amiss in portraits of royal persons. The pose is severe and dignified, the expression haughty and impassable. No accessories detract from the majestic isolation of the figure. The costume is carefully and minutely observed. Philip appears dressed with the simplicity he himself introduced, an innovation which was one of the few reforms he carried out thoroughly and with resolution. Immediately after his accession the elaborate fashions in vogue under his predecessors were swept away by sumptuary laws. In particular the starched ruffs of Antonio More's sitters were forbidden by edict. In these early portraits the king wears the golilla, or plain turned-over collar of white linen. Pictorially, the one remarkable innovation to be noted is the substitution of a light gray background for the more usual dark one. A bust in the Museo del Prado (No. 1071) is supposed to be the earliest extant portrait of Philip by Velazquez. It is perhaps a study for the first equestrian portrait. A full-length in the same gallery, in which the king, dressed in black, stands by a table, holding in his right hand a folded paper, is probably the next in order (No. 1070). A more elaborate work, painted perhaps a little later than this, is the portrait at Dorchester House, representing the king equipped as if about to take the field, grasping the commander's baton in his right hand. A portrait (No. 1073 in the Prado) of Philip's brother, Don Carlos, who died at the age of twenty-five, not without suspicion of having been poisoned by Olivares, may be grouped with the foregoing. The prince, who is described as by far the ablest of the three brothers, was at open enmity with the Minister. Fearing his influence over the king, Olivares jealously excluded him from any share in the administration, and even prevented his marriage, as likely to give him greater importance. Olivares himself, that fountain, or rather conduit, of honour, to whom Velazquez owed his position, was painted more than once in the first decade of the master's activity at Madrid. Throughout their relations, Olivares proved himself a warm and generous friend to the painter, while Velazquez, on his side, was one of the few who remained 28 VELAZaUEZ faithful to the Minister after his fall, even so far disregarding the severe etiquette of the Spanish Court as to visit his disgraced patron in his exile. The career of this remarkable man is a strange chapter in the history of the times. Born at Rome in 1587, the second son of a distinguished father, who successively filled the posts of Ambassador to the Pope, Viceroy of Naples and Sicily, and Governor of the Alcazar of Seville, Don Caspar Guzman, Count of Olivares, was originally intended for the Church, and studied at the University of Salamanca. A more brilliant prospect opened before him, however, on the death of his elder brother, after which event he married, and lived for some years in great splendour at Seville. Lerma invited him to Madrid during the lifetime of Philip III., and procured him the office of Chamberlain in the household of the Infante. In this position he gained a complete ascendency over the future king, his junior by twenty years. He appears at first chiefly as the purveyor of his master's pleasures, and organiser of all matters connected with those sports and pastimes of which Philip was so passionately fond. In short, he seems to have played the part of a less roystering FalstafF to a more decorous Prince Hal. In this case, however, it was the boon companion who first " turned away from his former self," and, leaving the diversion of his master to others, suddenly revealed the gifts of a subtle and ambitious politician. His conversion from a mere master of the revels to an all-powerful Minister caused at first a kind of incredu- lous consternation which no doubt favoured his designs. His only rival in the administration was his uncle Zuniga, on whose death the nephew became practically the autocrat of the State and ruler of its ruler. He obtained command of the royal signet, and dispensed favours and honours like a sovereign. His industry was as boundless as his appetite for power. He was at work day and night, and even gave audiences to envoys while still in bed. All State papers passed through his hands, and the king relied absolutely on his judgment. Nor was his ambition of the more sordid kind. Personally incorruptible, it soon became known that the bribes which had been freely accepted by the complaisant Lerma were powerless in the case of Olivares. He dreamt of universal empire for his country, empire of which the sovereign might enjoy the prestige. Philip IV. National Gallery. VELAZaUEZ 31 while he himself wielded the power. Unhappily for Spain, he had the ambition of a Richelieu without the ability, and the blunders of his administration brought more loss upon his country than all the victories of her generals had brought gain. Early in his career the king created him Duke of Lucar — hence the title El Conde-Duque by which he is familiarly known. No Minister was ever more detested. Much of this ill-will, no doubt, sprang from mere envy of his power, but even the well-disposed were alienated by his arrogance of manner. The extant portraits of Olivares by Velazquez are comparatively few in number, and it has been suggested, with much probability, that some may have been destroyed by their owners after his downfall. Several engravings indeed exist of portraits which have disappeared. Among them is the well-known plate by Paul Pontius, with an emblematic setting designed by Rubens. The list of existing portraits begins with the full-length at Dorchester House, in which the Conde- Duque stands, dressed in black, against a dark background, in his right hand the wand of office as Master of the Horse. Of this picture Mr. Edward Huth possesses a replica at Wykehurst, Sussex. It represents the Minister at about forty years of age. It has long been a vexed question among connoisseurs how far the adoption of a broader manner by Velazquez was determined by an event in any case of great interest in his career, the arrival of Rubens on a diplomatic mission to Madrid in the summer of 1628. The great Fleming was the bearer of letters and despatches from the Infanta Isabella, Regent of the Netherlands. These letters had to do with the peace proposals informally thrown out from the English Court through the medium of Balthazar Gerbier, Charles I.'s painter. After the successful accomplishment of his mission, which had for ulterior result his famous visit to England in the following year, Rubens laid aside the ambassador and remained several months in the Spanish capital as a painter. The monopoly of Velazquez in the reproduction of the royal features was gracefully waived on this occasion, Rubens was assigned a studio in the palace, where the king visited him almost daily. He painted an equestrian portrait of Philip to His Majesty's "great satisfaction and approval," and a series of heads of the whole royal family " for the illustrious Infanta, my mistress." 32 VELAZQUEZ Rubens, on an earlier visit to Madrid, had found little to admire in Spanish art. He now seems, however, to have formed a very high opinion of Velazquez. " He (Rubens) associated little with painters," says Pacheco ; " only with my son-in-law (with whom he had previously exchanged letters) he formed a friendship, and expressed himself very favourably on his works because of his modesty. They visited the Escorial together." It was on this occasion that Rubens made the famous sketch of the Escorial from which several landscapes were afterwards painted in his studio. At the time of this visit, Rubens was fifty-one, and Velazquez twenty-nine. It is natural to suppose that the close intimacy in which these two great men lived for months was not without some effect on the development of the younger. But the Spaniard's genius was so original, his aesthetic aims so definite from the first, that his art shows no trace of direct reflection from that of the gorgeous Fleming. The increase in vigour which marks his work about this period may be accounted for on other grounds than that of Sir Peter Paul's influence. Velazquez had, in fact, by this time left behind the phase of dry and painful workmanship by which most great artists have attained to freedom of hand, and felt the confidence that comes from a knowledge of power. The intercourse with Rubens bore fruit more by precept than by example, for it was by the Antwerp master's advice that he begged the king's consent to the journey he had long wished to make into Italy. The famous Bebedores or B or radios (the Topers) has been relied on as a document proving his indebtedness to Rubens, but its execution hardly warrants the assumption, though the subject — one rarely treated by Spanish artists — is certainly more Flemish than Spanish. Velazquez seems to have been kept at work almost exclusively on portraits during his first ten years at court, and the Borrachos is the first recorded work in which we find him harking back to the popular subjects of his Sevillian period. The conception is highly original, blending the most finely observed realities with fable so rendered as to seem almost realistic. In the foreground of a hilly landscape the grotesque Bacchus, a finely- modelled figure, nude but for the drapery over his legs, thrones it on a cask amidst a band of weather-beaten revellers, one of whom, a burly The Count-Duke Olivares. After Felazquez, with a border by Rubens. From the Engraving by Paul Pontius. VELAZaUEZ 35 soldier, he crowns with vine leaves. It is strange that the master should have made no subsequent variations on a theme once treated with such entire success. According to an entry in the palace archives, the picture was painted "for the service of His Majesty." On July 22, 1629, Velazquez received a hundred ducats in payment for a " Bacchus," together with three hundred ducats of arrears due to him. He had already, in the preceding year, been granted an increase of salary, consisting of " the daily ration of a chamber barber " (physician, surgeon, and chemist were already provided), and other perquisites to the value of three reals a day, with the further privilege of a suit of clothes each year to the value of ninety ducats. The four hundred ducats were therefore, no doubt, as has been suggested, a provision for the expenses of the Italian journey. The Bebedores is in the Madrid Gallery. Two replicas exist, which have puzzled critics considerably. One, accepted by the majority as a study for the Madrid picture, is in Lord Heytesbury's collection, the other in the Naples Museum. Lord Heytesbury's picture is too carefully finished for a sketch, and differs in some essentials from the original. It is signed (an unusual feature with Velazquez), and bears a date generally read as 1624, but which Dr. Bode and Justi agree in taking to be rather 1634. CHAPTER III FIRST VISIT TO ITALY 1629 Velazquez had long been anxious to visit Italy, the Mecca of the seventeenth-century artist. Such a desire is likely to have been stimu- lated on all occasions by Pacheco, and was warmly encouraged by Rubens, whose personal intercession may very probably have been brought to bear on the king. A few weeks after the Antwerp master's departure from Madrid, Velazquez not only received the royal consent to his departure, but was urged by the king to start at once. He received the four hundred silver dollars above referred to for his expenses, which Olivares supplemented by a further sum of two hundred gold ducats, a medallion of the king, and many letters of introduction. These letters were especially necessary at the time. Italy was in a state of ferment over the Mantuan succession, a question involving issues far wider than those nominally at stake. The Due de Nevers, who, having claimed the heritage of the Gonzaghi on the death of Vincenzo without direct heirs, was in possession with the support of France, was unrecog- nised by Spain. The dispute had resolved itself into a duel between Olivares and his detested rival, Richelieu. " Luigi III.," says Manzoni, " ossia il cardinale di Richelieu, sosteneva quel principe, suo ben affetto e naturalizzato francese : Filippo IV., ossia il conte d' Olivares, comune- mente chiamato il conte duca, non lo voleva li, per le stesse ragione, e gli aveva mosso guerra."^ ^ "Louis XIII., or rather Cardinal Richelieu, upheld the prince (the Due de Nevers), his good friend, and a naturalised Frenchman ; Philip IV., or rather the Count of Olivares, commonly called the Count-Duke, would have none of him, for those very reasons, and. declared war against him." VELAZaUEZ 37 The preparations of Velazquez for departure coincided with the Count-Duke's determination to despatch the great captain Ambrogio Spinola to take the command in Italy. Spinola had but just returned from his victorious campaign in the Netherlands, his prestige enhanced by his latest exploit, the capture of Breda. It was resolved that Velazquez should travel under the protection of the general, to whom he afterwards paid so magnificent a tribute in the famous Las Lanzas. But a visitor arriving in such company was by no means sure of a favourable reception at all the Italian courts. In addition to the recommendations he carried with him from the Minister, it was thought necessary to obtain from the various Italian envoys in Madrid special letters, assuring their respective Governments of the purely artistic and non-political object of his journey. Several of these envoys supplemented their formal despatches by private communications, designed to set at rest suspicions that seem to have been entertained as to the possibility of the master's metier being a cloak for the functions of a spy. Safeguarded thus by credentials to Rome, Venice, Bologna, Ferrara, and many of the minor states, Velazquez left Madrid with Spinola, attended by his slave and assistant, the Morisco Juan de Pareja, and embarked at Barcelona on August lo. He reached Genoa on the 20th. He probably travelled to Milan with Spinola, and at any rate arrived in Venice by the end of the month. In Venice, the only one of the North Italian states which had successfully resisted Spanish domination, hostility to Spain and her policy was at its height. The Republic was preparing for war, arming and recruiting with feverish energy. Mocenigo, the Venetian envoy in Madrid, had given Velazquez a safe-conduct and letters to various persons of importance in the city. He had also answered to the Senate for his peaceable intentions. The painter was lodged in the Spanish Embassy, but, in addition to other safeguards, it was deemed prudent to protect him with an escort out of doors. Little is known of his sojourn in the city of the lagoons, but it is easy to imagine how his days were spent. Palomino says that he " drew incessantly," and spent much time in the Scuola di San Rocco, making studies from the great works of Tintoretto, especially from the Crucifixion. He made a copy of the Last Supper for the king. The art of Tintoretto seems to have made 38 VELAZaUEZ a deep impression on him, and one which was not without its influence on his own practice. But Boschini tells us that his highest enthusiasm was reserved for Titian, and puts into his mouth the following dictum : — I saw in Venice The true test of the good and the beautiful ; First in my judgment ever stands that school, And Titian first of all Italian men.^ He would gladly have remained longer in Venice, says Palomino, had not the war prevented him. His next goal was Rome, whither he journeyed by way of Ferrara, where he presented his letters of recommendation to Cardinal Saccheti, sometime Papal Nunzio in Spain. The Cardinal received him graciously, and wished him to take up his quarters in his own palace. The master excused himself, on the ground that his dinner-hour would not be that of his host ! Saccheti accordingly ordered a lodging to be found for him, and directed a member of his household to show him the sights of the city. Food was also provided from the Cardinal's own table. Between Venice and Rome, Bologna was his only halting-place, and so eager was he to reach the Eternal City that he made but a brief stay in the shadow of the Garisenda and Asinelli, so brief indeed that he did not deliver his letters of introduction. He renounced his proposed visit to Florence ; it does not appear for what reason. He arrived in Rome to find preparations for war going on as actively there as in Venice, and the city swarming with armed bravoes, the retainers of the great prelates and nobles. All were ready for a sudden call to battle. Urban VIII. and his nephew. Cardinal Barberini, had patriotic aspirations for Italian freedom and unity. They dreamed of a confederation of states, in which Rome should join hands with Venice, Florence, and Genoa. The Pope had invited Louis XIII. to enter Italy and draw his sword on behalf of the "woman among nations." Monterey, the Spanish ambas- sador, rarely appeared at the Papal Court, where all things Spanish were the objects of constant ridicule and opprobrium. Velazquez, nevertheless, was received with great courtesy by Cardinal Barberini, a fervent lover of the arts. The Cardinal obtained him a lodging in the Vatican, and 1 Ruskin, Tzvo Paths. VELAZaUEZ 39 gave him the keys of certain rooms, so that he might go in and out at his will. The painter soon left this lodging, however, finding it inconvenient, and disliking the solitude in which he found himself He Juan de Pareja. Collection of the Earl of Carlisie. From a Photograph published by the Directors of the New Gaiiery. sought and received permission to be let in freely by the watch when he wanted to draw from " Michelangelo's Last Judgment or things from Raphael." He was so delighted with the situation of the Villa Medici 40 VELAZQXJEZ that he next wished to take up summer quarters there. Count Monterey accordingly obtained the necessary lease from the Tuscan Grand Duke, and Velazquez worked industriously for two months in this earthly paradise. At that time the Villa was still the home of Cardinal Ferdinand de' Medici's famous collection of antiques. This included the Venus de Medici, the Wrestlers, and the Niohe, afterwards removed to Florence. The opportunity of studying these statues was, no doubt, one of the Villa's chief attractions to the Spanish painter. Two com- panion sketches in the Prado, Nos. 1106 and 11 07 (garden scenes with statues), are interesting memorials of his sojourn. After a time he was driven from his retreat by an attack of ague, which forced him to move to the healthier neighbourhood of the Spanish Embassy. Monterey was assiduous in his attentions, sending his doctor to attend him, and keeping him well supplied with delicacies during his convalescence. Poussin was at work in Rome, and in close proximity to Velazquez during his stay on the Pincian. The two painters no doubt met, but we hear nothing of their intercourse. Velazquez was absorbed in the great masters of a past generation, and probably felt little drawn either towards the new school of classic landscapes, or to the decadents ot the Roman School. A doubtful tradition, put forward by Cean Bermundez, asserts that while in Rome he ordered a picture from each of the twelve most famous painters in Italy on behalf of Philip, and took them back to Spain with him. Among the twelve were Guido, Guercino, Domenichino, and Sandrart, who, indeed, mentions the com- mission in his Teutsche Akademie, but says nothing of any part played by Velazquez in the transaction. It seems probable therefore that Monterey, who afterwards gave similar commissions to the best artists in Naples, was the prime mover in the affair. None of the works ordered seem ever to have found their way to Madrid. While he was in Rome, Velazquez did not exclusively confine his attention to studies from the great works of the past. He painted two memorable pictures for the king, his master— the Forge of Vulcan, now in the Museo del Prado, and Joseph's Coat, in the Escorial. The first marks a change in the master's development, and betrays perhaps more decisively than any other of his works the influence Italy had upon him. And in saying this I am not forgetting the Coronation of the VELAZaUEZ 41 Virgin^ and its perhaps more obvious surrender to Italian ideals. Velazquez, like other great painters, does not seem to have always followed the best examples set by his predecessors. In the Forge of V ulcan^ as in Mars, and the Flagellation of the National Gallery and some other works of his middle period, Bolognese influence — or, to be more particular, the influence of Guido — is unmistakable. The silvery tones, the clear, limpid, passionless design, even in parts the types selected, recall the Bolognese master, and show that the Spaniard was not unaffected by the vogue his art enjoyed in the Rome of Urban VIII. In the Forge traces, too, seem to be visible of the influence of Poussin, although on that point we may feel more doubt than in the case of Guido. The difference between the Forge and the Borrachos, which, as Justi remarks, " even a dull eye can see," is not so much one of execution as of conception. Both pictures are " tight " in their painting, the surfaces being fused and the outlines decoupes and sculpturesque. The difference is one entirely due to the example of work less preg- nant, less closely packed, less terribly in earnest than his own. Not for some time yet was Velazquez to win real freedom or breadth of hand. The touch of quasi-mythological feeling which is almost lost under the realism of the Borrachos, hardens into something more salient in the Forge, but even there classic fable is treated in a spirit akin to that which inspired the organisers of a mystery play. Vulcan stands at the forge, surrounded by four brawny assistants, and listens with an angry but improbable surprise to the tale of his partner's treachery. Apollo, a sturdy, laurel-crowned youth, declaims with uplifted finger at the entrance to the forge. The pictorial motive is the contrast of the various nude bodies under different conditions ot light. The pendant picture, Josepfis Coat, though so different in subject, deals with much the same artistic problem. It, too, is a composition of five figures, two of them finely- modelled nudes, illumined by the light that streams from two large windows into a lofty hall with a chequered marble floor. The aged Jacob, seated in the shade of a curtain, listens horror-stricken to the tale of his son's supposed end. Two portraits painted during this Italian visit remain to be noticed. The more interesting of the I pair cannot now be identified with any cer- tainty. This was the picture described by Pacheco as the " portrait of 42 VELAZaUEZ my son-in-law, executed in Rome and painted in the manner of the great Titian, and (if it be permitted to say so) not inferior to that artist's heads." Miindler suggests, with some probability, that it may be identical with the beautiful head of a young man in the Gallery of the Capitol, to which he was the first to draw attention as a work of Velazquez. The second portrait took Velazquez from Rome to Naples. Early in the winter of 1630 he received instructions from Philip to bring back a portrait of the Infanta Maria, the king's favourite sister. After the failure of the proposed match with Charles of England, she had become the wife of Ferdinand, King of Hungary. Her marriage had taken place early in the preceding year, but the preparations for her journey to her new home had occupied many months, and when at last she set out she was compelled to take the route by Naples, as the plague was raging in North Italy. She remained four months in Naples, lodged in the Palazzo Reale. Two portraits of her ascribed to Velazquez are extant. One is a bust in the Prado Gallery (No. 1072), the other a full- length in the Berlin Gallery. The claim of the latter to be by the hand of Velazquez himself is doubtful. At Naples, Velazquez made the acquaintance of Ribera, the master whose influence is so apparent in his early works. Ribera held the post of court painter to the Spanish Viceroy, and to him was entrusted the supervision of all artistic matters in the Palazzo Reale. It was perhaps to the friendship formed during this visit that Ribera owed much of the appreciation he afterwards enjoyed in Madrid. A large number of his pictures found their way to the Alcazar during Velazquez's later administration of the Royal Galleries, and are still preserved in the Prado. From Naples the master returned to Madrid, having been absent eighteen months. He was warmly received both by Olivares and the king. The latter expressed a lively pleasure at his return, while Velaz- quez, on his part, was gratified to find that no other artist had been allowed to paint His Majesty during his absence. CHAPTER IV NINETEEN YEARS AT COURT 163I-1649 From 1631 to 1649, the term commonly described as the middle period of Velazquez, he worked uninterruptedly at the court of Philip, following the sovereign in his sojourns at the hunting-seats of El Pardo, Buen Retiro, and Aranjuez, and accompanying him on his military expeditions to the seat of war in Aragon. The more intimate records of these fruitful years are very scanty, and the painter's history must be read chiefly in his works. Although he rarely signed or dated a picture, it is possible to fix the dates of many important achievements by the help of contemporary records or internal evidences. Classified roughly, the pictures fall into three principal groups : — ( i ) Hunting- scenes, with a few landscapes and fetes gal antes (.^) ; (2) portraits of royalties, notably of the king and the youthful Don Balthazar Carlos, together with certain portraits of distinguished visitors to the court and State dignitaries ; (3) historical and religious subjects, as represented by the Surrender of Breda^ the Crucifixion, and the Flagellation. Sport was Philip's ruling passion. It is strange to read of the immense sums which were squandered on great hunts at a time when the royal exchequer was at so low an ebb that no official could get his salary without endless importunity. The pay of the king's own body-guard was three years in arrear. Velazquez himself, in a petition which makes special mention of a great hunting-scene painted for the Torre de la Parada, begs earnestly for payment for his work, excusing his boldness on the grounds of his mucha necesidad. This petition is dated 44 VELAZWEZ October i6, 1636. In Spain, hunting was the recognised royal pastime. The early kings of Castile and Leon made frequent expeditions to the large tract of wooded country lying about six miles north of Madrid, in which stood the village of El Pardo, so often mentioned in the annals of royal sport. At El Pardo (not to be confounded with the Prado, the public pleasance of the Madrilenos under the Philips, as it still is) stood an ancient hunting-seat, restored and enlarged by Charles V. About half a mile from this Charles also built a tower, as an occasional halting-place on his expeditions to Balsain. To this tower Philip IV. made large additions, turning it into a hunting-box, where he lodged with his suite and his guests on all great sporting occasions. For such a retreat, hunting-scenes were the obvious decoration. They were by no means novelties in Spain, where this branch of art had long been cultivated. Flemish artists had been in the habit of painting pictures of the kind for Spanish princes, and Pieter Snayers, in particular, had executed several for Philip IV. 's brother, the Cardinal-Prince Fernando. When, however, it was resolved to commemorate some special occasion, and local accuracy was a sine qua non, native artists had of course to be employed. As may be supposed, the king was anxious that certain red-letter days in the annals of his favourite pastime should be immortalised by his favourite painter. On these large compositions Velazquez seems to have bestowed unusual pains, making experimental sketches for the groups of spectators. These, no doubt, were recognisable portraits when painted. It is not impossible that the famous group of thirteen gentlemen in the Louvre is one of these sketches, although, personally, I have very strong doubts as to its being the work of Velazquez at all. This, however, is part of a question that must be left for future discus- sion. At present all that need be said is that the most important picture in this connection is the Boar Hunt of the National Gallery. The hunt, or, to be more accurate, the boar-baiting, occurs in a glade of the Pardo. The flat bottom of the little valley is artificially enclosed in the manner of an amphitheatre. On these occasions a circular space was, in fact, walled in by a double partition of canvas fixed to stakes and bars. The quarry was decoyed by food through an opening which was securely barred when enough animals had been entrapped to afford good sport. VELAZaUEZ 47 Within the arena the cavaliers who were to take part in the business were grouped. They were armed with a sort of trident, called a horquilla, with which they tormented the boar much as the modern picador does the bull. In the National Gallery picture the spectators stand for the most part on a knoll outside the canvas wall, but a curious feature of contemporary manners is shown in the presence within the enclosure of coaches in which sit the queen, Isabella de Bourbon, and other ladies. Among these, if the occasion is, as generally supposed, the great hunt of 1638, was the famous Marie de Rohan, Duchesse de Chevreuse, the friend and confidante of Philip's sister, Anne of Austria. The duchess had escaped from France, or rather from Richelieu, in boy's clothes, and had found a cordial welcome at the Spanish Court. These lady spectators were provided with horquillas to turn the boar if the beast made a rush at the carriages, as he sometimes did. To the right of the picture (left of the spectator) the king, closely attended by Olivares, is shown in the act of thrusting his gilded trident into the boar's flank. The cavalier on horseback behind is said to represent the Cardinal- Prince, but this identification does not agree with the supposed date, as Fernando was in Flanders in 1638. Lord Ashburton's large Stag Hunt is an elaborate composition of the same class. Here the king and his brothers enter the arena attended by Olivares, while Queen Isabella, with her ladies, looks on from a platform above. The great hunts at El Pardo were more largely attended and less jealously confined to the royal circle than those of Aranjuez and Buen Retiro, to which even distinguished foreign visitors were rarely invited. Buen Retiro was an inspiration of Olivares. The story of its building reminds one of Wolsey, or of some ambitious Grand -Vizier of the Arabian Nights. The Count -Duke owned a park near the Prado, where he amused himself by breeding pheasants and rare poultry. In his constant anxiety to divert the king's mind from affairs of State, he conceived the idea of providing him with the means of enjoying his favourite sport at the gates of the capital itself. He extended his originally small estate by purchase and other devices till it covered an area of nearly a square mile. Then he built a house, laid out grounds and stocked preserves with a secrecy and despatch almost magical, and finally presented it to the king. The new villa adjoined the monastery 48 VELAZaUEZ of San Geronimo, in connection with which a royal pied-a-terre already existed in the shape of a "retreat," where members of the reigning family were accustomed to retire for Holy Week, and for periods of court mourning. The architect, Crescenzi, was supposed to direct the work, but was overruled at every point by Olivares, whose interference was fatally apparent in the faulty and flimsy construction. A chapel and a theatre were attached to the main building, and the whole was completed in the short space of two years. On December i, 1633, the king took formal possession of his new toy, celebrating the occasion by a grand tournament in which he tilted with Olivares. The joust took place in the plaza before the theatre. This theatre was the crowning attraction of Buen Retiro. Olivares secured the services of the most famous Italian scene-painters and stage mechanicians of the day, and inaugurated a series of gorgeous masques and spectacles. Some of these took place in the illuminated gardens. One memorable performance was that of Calderon's Circe in 1635, on an island in the Estanque Grande, the largest of the artificial lakes. The internal decoration of the new building next engaged the Minister's attention. This gave an opportunity for the employment of many native artists. Pedro Orrente (d. 1644), Juan de la Corte (i 597-1 660), and Francisco Collantes (i 599-1656) painted a number of landscapes. Biblical and mythological pieces, many of which are now in Spanish museums. Seven artists of Madrid were also employed in celebrating the national victories in the recent wars, Olivares choosing the subjects, while Velazquez seems to have superintended the under- taking generally, in some cases directly influencing the treatment. A Surrender of Breda, by Jose Leonardo, was one of the series, Velazquez seems to have been oppressed by Jose's inadequate rendering of a great event for the treatment of which his own intimacy with its hero, Spinola, had given him peculiar advantages. In any case, he gave his own version, and with what looks like brutality, annihilated Leonardo's picture by hanging his own magnificent creation beside it in the Sala de los Reinos. The series, as we learn from a despatch written by Serrano, the Florentine envoy at Madrid, was completed, with one unimportant exception, in the spring of 1635. It has been assumed that Las Lanzas, as the Breda picture is commonly called,. VELAZQUEZ 49 was painted about 1647. -^^^ it seems not unlikely that it belongs to a somewhat earlier date. Originality of conception, nobility of treatment, and a strongly dramatic interest combine with splendid pictorial quality to make this not only one of the master's greatest achievements, but perhaps the finest purely historical picture in the world. Extraordinary enthusiasm had been roused in Spain by the capture of Breda in 1625. After many vicissitudes during the great war in the Netherlands, when the city had been alternately held by the two contending parties, Breda had fallen into the hands of the Orange family. They had a castle there, strongly fortified, as indeed was the town itself. Its proximity to Antwerp and the great natural advantages of its position caused it to be accepted by both parties as the key to the Netherlands. After a close investiture of a year, the fortress surrendered to the Spanish troops under Spinola, their Genoese commander, an event justly esteemed the crowning exploit of his brilliant campaign in the Low Countries. Spinola covered himself with glory no less by his military success than by the gallantry with which he treated the vanquished. The most honourable terms were accorded to the besieged. Permission was given to Justin of Nassau, the governor, to march out under arms, with flags flying, and lighted matches. A general amnesty was proclaimed so far as non-combatants were concerned, and various other concessions were made ; the members of the Orange family, for instance, were allowed to remove all their portable property. The defeated general evacuated the place and handed over the keys to Spinola on June 2. Velazquez has chosen the moment of this significant ceremony. Spinola, attended by a brilliant stafi^, awaited the garrison at Tetteringhen. Justin, accompanied by his family and other prominent citizens, advanced at the head of the infantry, from which the cavalry bringing up the rear were hardly to be distinguished, owing to the loss of nearly all their horses. The foreground of the canvas is filled by the two groups of main actors in the drama. Beyond them stretches the wide lowland champaign, intersected by the river Merk, and winding across the plain in long perspective we see the column of the capitulating force. To the right is grouped a body of D 50 VELAZQUEZ Spanish spearmen, their long ash -wood shafts cutting the horizon in tall vertical lines. The effect these shafts produce is a stroke of genius, and quite justifies the popular name of the picture. The interest culminates, of course, in the figures of the two protagonists. Both generals dismounted before they met, and Spinola's charger, held by a squire on the left, makes an important passage of dark colour in the foreground. Justin, bent but not broken, hands the key to his chivalrous foe with an expression of resigned, yet dignified sorrow, a sense of having played his part worthily enabling him to meet adversity with courage. It is in his conception of Spinola that Velazquez shows his greatness. The noble serenity of his own temper is reflected in Spinola's countenance "as in water face answereth to face." The Italian's tall figure is bent slightly forward as he lays his hand kindly on the Flemish commander's shoulder. Attitude and expression proclaim that perfection of good breeding which springs from the union of courtliness with warmth of heart. Spinola, we are told, praised the valour of his opponent, telling him that the courage of the vanquished is the only glory of the victor. In the technical treatment, the master evidently kept the destination of his picture well in view. The efi^ect is broadly decorative ; the tones are warmer and the tints more various and positive than is usual with Velazquez. Mr. Stevenson says, in his elaborate study of the " Art of Velazquez," that " it was rather the purpose than the subject of the Surrender of Breda which modified the art of Velazquez, and made it akin to the work of a Venetian. The canvas was to serve as a decorative panel, a thing to be looked at as one looks at a piece of tapestry ; hence, doubtless, its decorative features, its variety of colours, its blue foundation, its brown foreground, its blocklike pattern." No doubt this is true to a certain extent, although, perhaps, the reason- ing should be carried farther back, and we should say simply that the subject was chosen for its fitness for decorative treatment. As to the blue foundation and brown foreground, those occur in many other pictures of this period, notably in the Don Balthazar Carlos, reproduced in one of our plates, and no one can look out from the palace at Madrid towards the Guadarama and fail to see how they are suggested. The younger man in a broad-brimmed hat to the extreme left of the VELAZaUEZ 51 canvas has always been called the painter himself. Justi pronounces against this tradition, but, perhaps, on insufficient grounds. The head certainly differs from that of the master's portrait of himself in Las Meninas, otherwise called La Famiglia, chiefly, however, in things which years may very well have modified. Las Lanzas, the great picture of the master's middle period, to which it bears the same relation as La Famiglia does to his last manner, may be taken as the nucleus round which to group other works of the same epoch. Speaking broadly, Velazquez may be said to have first reached his bloom at this time. His visit to Italy had suggested a goal for his ambition to aim at, had shown him more fully what paint could do than his experience at home. With Titian, of course, he had been familiar, but in the dark Spanish interiors of the seventeenth century, the impression made by the great Venetian would be weak compared with that received from his work in Venice, with the cortege of Bellinis, and Giorgiones, and Tintorettos which enhanced its power. The individuality of the Spaniard is no less marked in this intermediate time than it was later, when his mere self-reliance became more pro- nounced, but it accepts notions and conventions from the neighbouring peninsula which it afterwards simply did without. The earliest portraits in which the results of his Italian journey can be clearly traced are, I think, the three companion full-lengths painted for the Torre de la Parada, namely, the king, his short-lived heir, Don Balthazar Carlos, and Prince Fernando, all in hunting costume. That of the little Infante bears the inscription anno aetatis suae VL We are thus enabled to 1635 the date of the picture. The king's portrait was probably painted in the same year. That of Don Fernando, or at any rate the study for it, must have been painted a year or two earlier, for in 1632 the Cardinal- Prince. left Spain for the Netherlands, where he took up his residence as the appointed successor of the Regent Isabella. In all three portraits the landscape is practically the same, a sierra in the distance, an oak-tree near the figure in the foreground. The three sportsmen are attended by their dogs, and carry their guns. In Don Fernando's costume the impasto is loaded as if to conceal a dress of earlier date, and the companion pieces also show traces of retouching. All three may have been worked upon to make them harmonise when hung 52 VELAZaUEZ together. After the sacking and partial destruction of the Torre de la Parada during the War of the Spanish Succession, these portraits were removed to Buen Retiro. They afterwards went to the new palace on the site of the Alcazar, whence they passed to the Museo del Prado. To this period belong the four great equestrian portraits of Philip IV., Qiueen Isabella, Bon Balthazar Carlos, and OHvares, Nos. 1066, 1067, 1068, and 1069 in the Prado. That of Philip was probably painted in 1635. Olivares proposed to complete the adornment of Buen Retiro by the erection of a great equestrian statue of the king. This the Florentine, Pietro Tacca, was commissioned to execute. In 1635 Tacca, who had made some progress in the general design of his work, asked for a portrait of Philip from which to study the figure and costume. Velazquez was probably working at the time on the eques- trian portrait, and there seems to be every reason to suppose that the canvas despatched to Florence was the small repetition of the Madrid picture, which now hangs in the Pitti Palace (No. 243). The compiler of the Uffizi catalogue claims this distinction for the huge semi-allegorical piece in the Sala del Baroccio, and is supported by critics of a former generation, in spite of the obviously Flemish origin of this work. It is clearly a copy with decorations by some pupil of Rubens, worked on perhaps by that master himself. In the Madrid picture a gallant cavalier, in the prime of early man- hood,, bestrides a bay Andalusian charger. He wears gold-embroidered breeches and a burnished steel cuirass, inlaid with gold, crossed by a crimson scarf, the ends of which flutter behind him. His right hand grasps a baton. The background, a wide stretch of Castilian upland with the sierra in the distance, forms an appropriate setting for a king who was reputed to be the best horseman in Spain. There is a good copy of this picture at Hertford House. The companion canvas of Isabella de Bourbon, Philip's first wife, though inferior as a work of art, is interesting as her one unquestionably authentic portrait by Velazquez. The head is all that remains of the original, the horse and landscape having been entirely repainted by the master himself, while the elaborate dress and trappings are by another hand. Many portraits of Isabella were sent as gifts to foreign courts VELAZQUEZ 53 during her lifetime, but it would be hazardous to assert that any of these were actually by the hand of Velazquez. They were probably painted by pupils under his direction, perhaps from his sketches. Isabella greatly disliked sitting, as she told the Duchesse de Chevreuse when Philip IV. on Horseback. Museo del Prado, Madrid. From a Photograph by J. Laurent. urged to have her portrait painted for her sister, Henrietta Maria of England. The portrait at Hampton Court, formerly in Charles I.'s collection, is no doubt one of these studio pictures. It was probably adapted from the sketch made by Velazquez for his equestrian portrait. The serious and intelligent, rather than beautiful face, is framed in dark hair puffed over the forehead and ears. Little likeness 54 VELAZaUEZ can be traced either to the strongly- marked features of Isabella's great father, or to the delicate beauty of her sister. The fate of Isabella, though not so tragic as that of Henrietta Maria, was melan- choly enough. She was greatly beloved in her adopted country, where her sweetness of disposition commanded no less admiration than the judgment she displayed when entrusted with the administration during Philip's absence at the seat of war. Fearing her influence, Olivares had done his best from the first years of her marriage to sow discord between the royal couple, and to divert the king's affections. The Countess Olivares, a sour, elderly duenna, was appointed her first lady-in-waiting, and acted the part of spy and gaoler. After the downfall of Olivares, the king made tardy atonement for his neglect by a renewal of his early affection, and a public recognition of her worth and talents. But the responsibilities so suddenly restored seem to have overtaxed a constitution undermined by grief and chagrin. The king was still absent when she was attacked by her last illness, but she begged he might not be summoned back, lest the success of the Catalonian expedition should be endangered. From Saragossa Philip sent her a parure of diamonds, with affectionate assurances of his concern at her illness. " Now I am sure of the king's affection," she exclaimed, "but this ornament I shall never wear. He will see me again only in death." She died on October 6, 1644. Two children survived her, one of whom, the idolised Balthazar Carlos, followed her to an early grave, while the other, the Infanta Maria Theresa, went to France as the bride of her cousin, Louis XIV. The equestrian portrait of the young prince is one of the finest things painted by the master for Buen Retiro. The boy rides an Andalusian pony, and flourishes his baton with an engaging mimicry of his father. In decorative brilliancy of colour Velazquez never excelled this picture. A positively dazzling effect is produced by the richly-dressed little horseman, in his green velvet doublet, white sleeves, and red scarf against the iridescent landscape. Don Balthazar is said to have delighted his father by his skill and courage in the riding school ; the king makes frequent allusions to his progress in letters to Don Fernando, who encouraged his little nephew by presents of armour, dogs, and a pony described as a "little devil," but warranted to go like "a little dog" if FELJZaUEZ 55 treated to some half-dozen Jashes before being mounted. The prnice's horsemanship was probably acquired under the direction of Olivares, one TSe Riding School. Collection of the Duke of Westminster. From a Photograph published by the Directors of the New Gallery. of the best horsemen in Spain, who appears in one of two sketches ascribed to Velazquez, showing the child preparing for a lesson with the lance. 56 VELAZaUEZ Both are in English collections. The Duke of Westminster owns that with Olivares in the arena, and the king and queen looking on from the balcony of the building which is now the Royal Armoury ; the other, a composition with more figures, is at Hertford House. Don Balthazar was born during the absence of Velazquez in Rome. The master painted him first at the age of two, as we learn from a reference to such a portrait in a document of 1634. The picture at Castle Howard (once ascribed to Correggio !) shows him at about the same age, or a little older. He stands somewhat insecurely, supporting himself by means of a baton, while a dwarf rather more in the foreground seems to encourage him to walk by holding out a silver rattle and an apple. This is, perhaps, the earliest of the fine series of portraits which chronicle the various stages of the prince's short career. Several were sent to foreign courts as preliminaries to a demand for the hand of this or that princess, the prince's marriage having been a subject of anxious consideration almost from his birth. A portrait in Buckingham Palace, representing him in armour, with golden spurs, lace collar, and crimson scarf, is supposed to be the picture spoken of by the Tuscan envoy in 1639. " A portrait of the Crown Prince has been sent to England, as if His Highness's marriage with that Princess were close at hand." Such a picture figures in the inventory of Charles I.'s collection, and in the catalogue of one of the sales under the Commonwealth as " The Prince of Spain." A more important example of this class is a full-length at Vienna, in a black velvet dress embroidered with silver, sent to the Austrian Court when a betrothal with the Emperor Ferdinand's daughter, Mariana, was under discussion. In 1645 the Infante went with his father to receive the homage of the provinces of Aragon and Navarre, an event commemorated by Juan Bautista del Mazo-Martinez, commonly known as Mazo, in his fine View of Saragossa (No. 788 in the Prado) ; the figures in which, representing the royal party, have been ascribed to Velazquez himself. In June of the following year, the prince's betrothal to Mariana was officially announced, and shortly afterwards he accom- panied his father to the seat of war in Aragon, where his beauty and spirit excited great enthusiasm. A chill taken at Saragossa cut short the young life on which such high hopes had been built on October 6, 1646. With characteristic self-control, Philip, to whom policy and VELAZaUEZ SI affection alike made this loss the most cruel of disasters, announced the boy's death to the Marquis of Leganes in the following letter : — Marquis — We must all of us yield to God's will, and I more than others. It has pleased Him to take my son from me about an hour ago. Mine is such grief The Infante Balthazar Carlos, with a Page. Collection of the Earl oj Carlisle. From a Photograph published by the Directors of the New Gallery. as you can conceive at such a loss, but also full of resignation in the hand of God, and courage and resolution to provide for the defence of my lands, for they also are my children. . . . And so I beseech you not to relax in the operations of this campaign until Lerida is relieved. 58 VELAZQOJEZ The latest portrait of the prince ascribed to Velazquez is probably the full-length numbered 1083 Prado, representing him at about the age of fifteen, in a black court suit. Justi calls it one of the few indifferent works by the master. In the absence of any decisive evidence in its favour it is impossible to accept it as the master's work at all. The great equestrian Olivares, on the other hand, is one of the painter's acknowledged masterpieces. The Count -Duke masquerades as a general, waving his imaginary troops down to the battlefield, the smoke of which rises in heavy columns to the sky. The Minister had never been in action, and to those who did not love him his military pretensions were a constant source of mirth. He nevertheless looks martial enough, as seen by Velazquez. Several small replicas and copies of this picture exist. The original was probably painted either shortly before or shortly after the equestrian portrait of Philip. A word must be said in passing of two other equestrian portraits (Nos. 1604 and 1605 in the Prado) in which the hand of Velazquez is recognisable in the horses and landscape. These are the portraits of the king's father and mother, Philip III. and Margarita of Austria, most likely painted by Pantoja de la Cruz or Bartolome Gonzalez. A Spanish tradition asserts that Philip IV. himself worked upon these canvases. Both pictures have been enlarged by pieces added at either side, to fit them, no doubt, for places in the Sala de los Reinos at Buen Retire. In 1642 the king, roused at last from his apathy by the French successes and the revolt of "his own subjects in Catalonia, left the capital for the seat of war in the north. Much was expected from the en- thusiasm the royal presence was sure to excite, but such patriotic hopes were doomed to disappointment. Olivares detained the king at Saragossa, and inaugurated a round of festivities in which the money so much needed for the expenses of the campaign was recklessly squandered. In 1644 the king, alarmed by the loss of Perpignan and Roussillon, again took the field. Velazquez followed in the train of his royal master, and is known to have painted at Fraga a portrait of the king " in a scarlet gold-embroidered doublet and hose, smooth leather collar, and white hat with red plume." A portrait of the dwarf. El VELAZaUEZ 59 Primo, was painted at the same time. Justi suggests that this Fraga portrait is the half-length in the Dulwich Gallery. Here, however, the The Count-Duke Olivares. Museo del Prado, Madrid. From a Photograph by Braun, Clement, & Cie. costume differs in some essential points from that described by Palomino ; the king is too young for the date ; and the general workmanship is too 6o VELAZaUEZ feeble for the master himself It is probably a repetition by Mazo of some picture lost in the Alcazar fire. Among the master's more notable sitters of his so-called middle period was Francisco de Quevedo. The poet and philosopher was painted before his disgrace, probably while he still held the office of secretary to the king. Quevedo, who had injured his sight in youth by voracious reading, wears large, dark-rimmed spectacles. This picture, a bust in a dark doublet, on the breast of which is sewn the cross of Santiago, is at Apsley House, and the head may be compared with that in the so-called Betrothal recently presented to the National Gallery by Lord Savile as a picture by Velazquez. The date of the fine portrait of the sculptor Martinez Montanes, formerly supposed to represent Alonso Cano, is determined by a curious document discovered by Bermudez in the archives of the Spanish Board of Trade. Montanes is shown modelling a head of Philip, a work he was summoned from Seville to undertake in 1635, probably at the instance of Velazquez. This head, like the picture already spoken of, was for the use of the Florentine, Tacca, in the execution of his statue. The document above mentioned is a piteous appeal for settlement of the Sevillian sculptor's claims in respect of this work. Instead of paying in cash, Philip had given him an order on the Sevillian Chamber of Commerce empowering him to choose a vessel from the Indian fleet with which to trade for his private advantage. No such ship was, however, available, and twelve years afterwards he sets forth his hard case in writing. He relates how he had been ordered by the king "to prepare an effigy of his royal person, to be sent to the Grand Duke of Florence, who had requested it for his equestrian statue. In consequence of this he had abandoned house and business, and spent over seven months at court, executing the commission so much to His Majesty's satisfaction that the effigy was forthwith despatched to Florence." How the sculptor's petition fared we have no evidence to show. Three other portraits of Spanish worthies remain to be mentioned. The most important is that of the truculent Admiral, Adrian Pulido da Pareja, in the National Gallery. This was painted in 1639. Pulido had greatly distinguished himself at the victory of Fontarabia in 1638, when the attempt of the French under Conde to seize a stronghold which Admiral Pulido da Pareja. National Gallery. VELAZQJJEZ 63 would have given them a footing within the Spanish frontier had resulted in their total rout. Palomino describes the picture at consider- able length. He tells us that Velazquez signed and dated it, contrary to his usual custom, " because it is among the most famous painted by [him]." It bears the inscription : — Did. Velasq^ Philip IV. a cubiculo eiusq ! pictor 1639. The name Adrian Pulido Pareja has been added much later, by some other hand. The story of how Philip, during one of his frequent incursions upon the painter, mistook the portrait for the admiral himself, and scolded it for not being at his post in the Indies, is usually told as much to damage Philip as to glorify Velazquez. It is sad that a jest so kindly meant should have so miscarried ! It is in connection with this picture that Palomino first speaks of the long brushes used by Velazquez, which enabled him to keep both canvas and sitter in focus at the same time. The portraits of Don Antonio Pimentel, Count of Benevente, and Lord of the Bedchamber to Philip (No. 1090 in the Prado), and of Cardinal Borgia, Bishop of Seville (in the Staedel Institute, Frankfort), are more delicate in quality. Borgia returned to Madrid in 1636, after a residence of twenty-two years in Rome. His spirited opposition to the anti -Spanish policy of the Papal Court had long made him obnoxious to Urban VIII., who, after vainly demanding his recall, managed to rid himself of his adversary by reviving the bull which required all bishops to live in their sees. On his return the Cardinal's patriotic zeal was rewarded by the highest honours. He was associated with the queen in her brief regency, and in 1643 "^^^ created Archbishop of Toledo. This dignity, however, he only enjoyed two years. The portrait was painted, perhaps, on his elevation to the primacy. There is a replica at Toledo, and doubt is possible as to which is the original. Numerous portraits of Olivares scattered in various collections represent the Minister in the last years of his power. They seem all to be derived from a common source, and are probably nearly all copies made in the studio, and in some cases retouched by the master. The 64 VELAZaUEZ portrait of Julianillo, the Minister's natural son by Dona Isabel de Anversa, a frail beauty of Madrid, is one of the last memorials of the connection between Velazquez and the favourite. Julianillo, who The Wife of Velazquez. Museo del Prado, Madrid. From a Photograph by Braun, Clement., l§ Cie. had led a vagabond life throughout his youth, came to Madrid in 1640, when he was legitimised by Olivares, whose heir he became. After the Minister's disgrace and death in 1643, Julianillo was banished from the court. The portrait must therefore have been painted between 1640 and 1642, VELAZaUEZ 65 If, as seems to be generally agreed, the two studies of a little girl in the Prado (Nos. 1087 and 1088) belong to the master's middle period, we must reject the traditional title of The Daughter of Velazquez, for Ignacia died in infancy, and Francisca, born in 16 19, was of an age to marry her father's pupil Mazo in 1634. The so-called Sybil The Family of Felazque%. Imperial Gallery, Vienna. From a Photograph by L6wy. (No. 1086 in the Prado), a dark-haired woman in gray and yellow, holding a tablet, was formerly supposed to represent Juana de Miranda Pacheco, the wife of Velazquez, under which title she figures in the catalogue. The half-length of a richly-dressed lady which passed from the Dudley Gallery to the Berlin Museum also claims this distinction. They certainly do not depict the same person, nor is it easy to trace a likeness between either of the two and the seated lady 66 VELAZaUEZ in the so-called Family of Velazquez at Vienna. Another enigmatic female portrait of this period is the beautiful half-length of the Lady with the Fan at Hertford House. The authorship of all these pictures, however, is open to discussion, as well as the identity of the persons represented. The question must be postponed for the present. We may close the tale of notable portraits with that of the youthful Francesco IL, Duke of Modena, in the Modena Gallery, which, however, I have not seen. Francesco had espoused the cause of Spain in the struggle over the Mantuan succession, and was looked upon at the Spanish Court as an ally whose friendship it would be politic to retain. He was accord- ingly invited to Madrid, where he arrived in September 1638, He was warmly received by the king and Olivares, and made himself very popular during his stay at Buen Retiro, winning the hearts of the Madrilenos by his agreeable manners, and that of the king by his skill as a sportsman. He received the Order of the Golden Fleece, and was requested to act as sponsor to the Infanta Maria Theresa. Velazquez painted him, and he was much impressed by the genius of the master, to whom he presented a rich gold chain which Diego, " as was the custom, wore on feast-days in the palace." Velazquez also began an equestrian portrait of the duke for Philip, and a replica for Francesco himself, with which he seems to have made but slow progress. He was at work on these in the following year, as we learn from a despatch of the Modenese envoy, Testi, to his master. " Velasco," he says, " is doing the portrait of your Highness, which will be admirable. But he has the failing of other great artists, that he never finishes right off and never tells one the truth "(!). These pictures seem never to have been completed. They were perhaps put aside when the duke deserted his Spanish allies and declared for France. Two remarkable pictures were added to the short list of the master's devotional works at this period. The famous Crucifixion (No. 1055 in the Prado) was painted for the Convent of San Placido, probably about 1638, when the community was reinstated in its former honours and privileges after a temporary eclipse due to the displeasure of the Inquisition. The isolated figure on the cross, standing out in strong relief against a plain dark background, has the peculiarly sculpturesque character which justifies Stirling-Maxwell's comparison of it to "an VELAZaUEZ 67 ivory carving on a black velvet shroud." The modelling of the body has been enthusiastically admired, and the drooping head, half concealed by the black, matted hair which falls over it like a veil, is both deeply poetical and realistic. But the ensemble is unconvincing, a result due, no doubt, to the combination of a realistically treated head with a body in which the conventional pose and action have been accepted. Christ at the Pillar. National Gallery. The poignant note is struck more resolutely in the Christ at the Pillar of the National Gallery. The early history of this picture is unknown. It was bought in Madrid towards the middle of the present century, and made a great impression when it was seen at Manchester in 1857. In 1883 Sir John Savile Lumley, now Lord Savile, presented it to the nation. The subject is one often treated by painters of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It represents a probable incident of the Passion not described in the gospel narrative. The fainting 68 VELAZaUEZ Saviour, left alone for a time after the scourging, has sunk to the ground among the instruments of His torture, His wrists still bound with cords to a column on the right. To the left, a child in a long bluish tunic kneels in adoration, obedient to the gesture of his guardian angel, a curiously muscular figure in draperies of orange and dull purple. On the evidence of style this picture belongs to the very beginning of the master's third period, while the influence of Italy, and especially of Guido, was still strongly upon him. The slightly effeminate pathos, the silvery tones, the inertness of the action, all vividly recall the Bolognese painter. Of the master's private life throughout this fruitful period we know little. Its chief event outside the studio was the marriage of his daughter Francisca to Juan Bautista del Mazo-Martinez. The wedding took place in 1634. Mazo's works are, ostensibly, little known out of his native country, and those who have written on Velazquez have taken strangely little pains to estimate his true place in the master's career. He and the Morisco, Juan de Pareja, are probably the true authors of many a treasured "Velazquez." Born at Madrid about 16 10, Mazo entered the studio during the first decade of the master's court career, and became one of his most skilful assistants and imitators. Palomino commends him as excelling equally in history, portrait, and landscape, and so proficient was he as a copyist that it was said to be impossible to distin- guish his reproductions of Venetian pictures in the king's collection from their originals ! He took a second wife after the death of Francisca in 1658 ^"^d succeeded his father-in-law as court painter, surviving him by some twenty-seven years. The two acknowledged pictures by himself at Madrid show that he was a painter of great power and dexterity, bearing somewhat the same relation to Velazquez as Jordaens did to Rubens. His portrait, by Alonso Cano, is in the Prado Gallery. Of the master's relations with contemporary artists we catch a few brief glimpses during this period. Among the painters attracted to Madrid by the building and decoration of Buen Retiro were his friends and fellow-citizens Zurbaran and Alonso Cano. Both owed much of their success in the capital to the good offices of Velazquez. A more important advent was that of the young Murillo in 1641. Born at Seville in 1618, he had early shown his aptitude for art, which he studied VELAZQUEZ 69 under Juan del Castillo. On the conclusion of his apprenticeship he acted as his master's assistant, but was thrown on his own resources when Castillo removed to Cadiz. For a time he earned a scanty The Daughter of l^elazquez. Museo del Praao, Madrid. From a Photograph by Braun, Clement, £if Cie. livelihood by painting small devotional pictures and images for the traders to Peru and Mexico and for the holders of booths at local fairs. By such means as these he gathered a modest sum of money. This enabled him to find his way to Madrid, where he sought the presence of his great compatriot at the Alcazar. Fired by the tales of 70 VELAZQUEZ Vandyck's career in England, as set forth by one Pedro de Moya, a roving Sevillian who had followed the Flemish painter to London, Murillo is said to have once intended to settle in this country, Velazquez, however, who received the obscure youth with great kindness, seems to have dissuaded him from doing so. He received every facility for the prosecution of his studies in the capital. Velazquez procured him free access to the pictures in the palace, where he was able to work at leisure during the king's absence in Aragon. No doubt, too, the master opened the stores of his own ripe wisdom for the young man's guidance, and must therefore be credited with that revolution in the young Sevillian's art which so amazed his friends on his return to the south in 1643. CHAPTER V SECOND VISIT TO ITALY 1 649-1 65 1 Not the least important of the offices filled by Velazquez at court was that of Director of the royal galleries, and of the work of alteration and enlargement which was going on in certain parts of the Alcazar. New rooms had been built, and many old ones transformed. These the king was now anxious to decorate in the Italian manner. Agostino Mitelli and Michelangelo Colonna were then at the height of their reputation, having successfully applied their new system of perspective and figures to many important buildings in Florence, Bologna, and other Italian cities. Their art was unknown among contemporary Spanish painters, who showed little aptitude for decoration. Fresco painting, after a brief and inglorious career, had completely died out in Spain. Walls to which this method would have been applied in Italy were decorated, when decorated at all, either by tapestries or painted canvases shaped to fit them, Philip, whose operations in the palace had been mainly directed to giving it a lighter and more cheerful character, determined to secure the services of the two Italian decorators. He was also anxious to purchase some of the treasures that only Italy could supply, for the pictures of the royal collection were insufficient for the adornment of the new rooms, while statues and casts from the great antiques were also included in the scheme of decoration. For the successful carrying out of all this it was necessary that a competent agent should be despatched to Italy. Velazquez was no doubt eager to renew his former impres- sions, and to taste some months of freedom from the monotony of court 72 VELAZQUEZ life. He promised the king that if he were sent on this mission he would bring back " some of the best work of Titian, Paolo Veronese, Bassano, Raphael, Parmigiano and the like." Late in the autumn of 1648 he started from Madrid. He travelled as before, in the train of a State commissioner, but one bound on an errand very different from that of his former protector. The alliance between the royal houses of Spain and Austria, which the untimely death of Bahhazar Carlos had broken off, was again on the tapis. The dangers that threatened the State through the want of a male heir had been strongly urged on the king by the Cortes, and Philip had now offered himself as the groom of that fourteen-year-old niece of his own who had been betrothed to his son. The Duke of Najera had been appointed a special ambassador to bring home the bride, and Velazquez joined his train. The company embarked at Malaga, a route adopted to avoid both the plague-stricken ports of Alicante and Valencia and the disturbances still rife in Catalonia. Landing at Genoa after a stormy passage, the painter travelled through Milan and Padua to Venice, leaving Najera and the rest of the embassy to pursue their own course northwards to Trent. Venice was then the chief picture market of Italy, but Velazquez was a less successful buyer than he had hoped to be. Competition had become keen. Most of the princely collectors of the day had agents in the city, to whom those who had anything to sell preferred to make the first offer of their wares. The trade in pictures was already a recognised and lucrative calling, carried on by men such as Niccolo Rinieri and Paolo del Sera, half collectors, half dealers, whose names occur in the history of so many famous works. Charles L of England had sent his Kapelhneister, Nicholas Laniere, to Italy to buy for him, while Christina of Sweden and the Archduke Leopold William were also in the field. According to Palomino, Velazquez secured but four pictures in Venice. A Venus and Adonis by Paolo Veronese (No. 526 in the Prado), a sketch by Tintoretto for the great Paradiso in the Doges' Palace (No. 428) and two other subjects by the same hand. Boschini, however, whom Velazquez charmed by the courtesy and distinction of his bearing, speaks further of two Titians. From Venice the master travelled through Florence and Bologna to Rome. Here he found himself obliged to go on VELJZaUEZ 73 immediately to Naples, to present his letters of introduction to the Conde Onata, the Viceroy who was instructed to give him all possible facilities for carrying out the objects of his journey. The painter's business in Naples seems to have been more especially the selection of casts from the antique. He found leisure to renew his acquaintance with Spagnoletto, then in his first grief at the loss of his beautiful daughter. Maria Rosa Ribera, a beautiful girl and her father's usual model for the Madonna, had been seduced and carried off by Don John of Austria (the less), Philip IV.'s natural son. Don John had come to Naples in 1647 put down Masaniello's revolt, and had been introduced into Spagnoletto's household by its imprudent master himself. By Maria Ribera he had a daughter, who lived and died in the Royal Convent of Barefooted Nuns at Madrid. His business in Naples concluded, Velazquez returned to Rome, enter- ing the Eternal City in time for the celebration of the Jubilee of 1650. The anti-Spanish Urban VIII. had been succeeded by Innocent X., formerly Cardinal Pamfili, and the diplomatic relations of Spain and Italy were less strained than on the occasion of the painter's former visit. But great popular indignation had been awakened by the severity with which Don John had put down the Neapolitan rising. Many of the refugees had fled to Rome, where the citizens openly sympathised with their wrongs, and Spaniards were hardly more favourably regarded than under the Barberini. Velazquez, however, as the emissary of His Most Catholic Majesty, was received with all possible consideration. The Pamfili were less munificent patrons of art than the Barberini, but nevertheless the city still sheltered a large colony of artists. Many of these had been engaged on the public monuments to be unveiled at the Jubilee. Among those with whom Velazquez now came into contact were the aged Poussin, Salvator Rosa, Pietro Berettini of Cortona, Michelangelo Cerquozzi, and the sculptors, Bernini, Fran(^ois du Quesnoy, and Alessandro Algardi. We have no direct evidence of negotiations between Velazquez and Bernini or Algardi. But the many replicas of their works which afterwards found their way to the Alcazar were doubtless commissioned by him. The sculptors may have helped him, too, in procuring casts, or even moulds, from the Roman 74 VELAZQJJEZ antiques. Boschini bears witness to his acquaintance with Salvator by his report of a conversation between the two painters, which, he says, he received from Velazquez himself Its theme was the fame of Raphael, whose art Velazquez confessed " pleased him not at all," earning by the phrase another claim to be called the father of modern painting ! Salvator Rosa was then at the height of his reputation, and it is curious that Velazquez should have taken back no example of his work to Madrid. But Salvator was known to have been in Naples at the time of Masaniello's rising and to have openly confessed his sympathy with the movement, and policy may have required that the royal patron- age should be withheld from such an upholder of sedition. One of the events of the Jubilee year was the opening of the Roman Museum of Antiquities in the Capitol, a solemnity which gave expression to the lively interest felt at the time in the great classical monuments. Velazquez had no lack of competent advisers in the task he had before him. Among the famous connoisseurs and collectors of the day were three with whom his relations were probably very intimate, Camillo Massini (afterwards a cardinal), whose portrait he painted, the Cavalier Cassiano del Pozzo, and Cardinal Girolamo Colonna. The last named was a ■persona grata at Madrid. He had studied in his youth at Alcala, and had kept up a friendly intercourse with the Spanish Court for years. It was he who presented the famous Apotheosis of Claudius to Philip IV., perhaps on this occasion of that king's commissioner's presence in Rome. Accounts differ as to the extent of the painter's undertakings during this visit. According to Palomino, he obtained moulds, from which bronze and plaster casts were made after his return to Madrid. Other writers state that the reproductions were actually cast in Rome, and brought back ready for their places in the palace. The former statement is probably the true one, as we hear from different sources that on the foundation of the San Fernando Academy of Art by Philip v., a collection of moulds from masterpieces of antique sculpture was handed over to its managers. The more important of the painter's selections were the Laocoon, the Apollo, the Antinoiis, the Venus, the Cleopatra, and the Nilus of the Belvidere, the Hercules and the Flora of the Farnese Palace (now at Naples), the Wrestlers from the Villa 76 VELAZQJJEZ Medici (now in the Uffizi), the Hermaphrodite, the Hercules and the Satyr with the Infant Bacchus, now in the Louvre, the Dying Gladiator and the Mercury of the Villa Ludovisi, and the Touth extracting a Thorn, of the Capitol. Of all the reproductions brought back by Velazquez, the best were set up in the new rooms, the rest distributed throughout the palace. This second sojourn of Velazquez in Rome is illumined in his artistic career by the production of one of his most extraordinary pictures. Innocent X. decided to honour the Spaniard by sitting for his portrait. The result was the wonderful canvas in the Doria-Pamfili Palace, the study for which is supposed to be in Apsley House. Before embarking on so important a commission, Velazquez, whose powers might have rusted since he had left Madrid, painted a half-length of his slave, Pareja, producing so startling a likeness that the friends to whom he sent it by the hand of the original looked from the live man to the man of paint, " doubting which they should address." In accordance with a popular custom of the day, this portrait was hung with other pictures in the cloister of the Pantheon on the Feast of S. Joseph (March 19), where it was greeted with acclamations by all the painters in Rome. The author was immediately elected to the Academy of St. Luke. Two portraits of Pareja, both in English collections, claim the honour of identity with this famous work. One is at Castle Howard, the other at Longford Castle. We reproduce the former on p. 39. The Moor, who wears a dark-green doublet, with a broad white collar, turns to the spectator proudly and confidently, with the air of a connoisseur who knows himself in the hands of a master. Born at Seville in 1606, Pareja followed Velazquez to Madrid in 1623, and remained with him till his death. He was first employed as studio boy, but watched his master to such purpose that he taught himself to paint, and imitated the manner of Velazquez with considerable success. He was, the story goes, so quiet about it that at the time of the Roman visit Velazquez had no idea of his slave's proficiency. Pareja is said to have at last revealed himself by placing one of his own works in his master's studio. It was noticed by the king, who at once gave the Moor his freedom. Pareja is said to have excelled in- portraiture. VELAZaUEZ 77 but he also painted subject pictures in a style rather Venetian than Spanish, for his fancy had been caught by the great masters he had seen in Italy. The Madrid Gallery has a Calling of St. Matthew by him Pope Innocent X. Collection of the Duke of Wellington. in which his own portrait is introduced. The head agrees in all essentials with that painted by Velazquez, though Pareja has ventured to soften the Moorish character of his own features. Innocent X. was seventy-four when he sat to Velazquez, but con- 78 VELAZaUEZ temporaries describe him as having preserved in an unusual degree that air of commanding vigour suggested by the master. The seated figure is turned slightly to the left, and the strong sinister face confronts the spectator with a look in which cunning, secretiveness, and a touch of sensuality are combined. The dictum of Mengs that Velazquez seemed not to paint, but to will his figures on to the canvas, and the oft- quoted Spanish description of the master's manner — non pintura ma verdad — seem to us the very sobriety of criticism while we sit in the little cabinet in which this Pope enjoys an eternity of state denied to others. Beside the "Innocent" of Velazquez, even the Leo X. of Raphael, to say nothing of the Julius II., seems lifeless and wooden. Innocent's ugliness has been minutely described by contemporaries. His coarse and sensual features were made yet more unattractive by a red complexion and a habitually forbidding expression. These defects are said to have been seriously urged as a reason for refusing him the tiara in 1645. '^^ ^2iidi, too, that Guido, annoyed at a reproof received from the then Cardinal Pamfili while he was working in St. Peter's, gave his features to Satan in the St. Michael of the Capuccini. In the Doria-Pamfili picture the reds of the cap, the robe, and the chair, and the Pope's own ruddy flesh-tones, are reinforced by the crimson of the curtain behind him. This curtain disappears in the Apsley House picture, where the superbly-modelled head is set against a plain dark- gray background. In his left hand the Pope holds a letter with the following inscription : — Alia Santta di N'o. Sig^e. Innocencio Xo. Per Diego de Silva Velazquez de la Ca mera di S. M^a- Cattc-i- Innocent was satisfied with the picture, and presented Velazquez with a gold chain and a medallion of himself on its completion. He also paid him with his own hand. Velazquez is said to have refused payment from the papal chamberlain, on the sufficient ground, in those punctilious days, that his own master always paid him himself. To have accepted payment from the servant of another employer would VELAZQUEZ 79 have been to admit an inferiority in Philip. The success of the Pope's portrait is said to have brought Velazquez many would-be sitters. Among the accepted few were the Pope's sister-in-law, Olympia Malda- chini, Flaminia Triunfi, and Girolamo Bibaldi. In spite of repeated hints from Madrid, the painter seems to have lingered on in Italy. But at last the king's positive command for his return reached him in a letter from Don Fernando Ruiz de Contreras. Sending his collections ofiF to the care of the Spanish Viceroy at Naples, he accordingly started for Genoa, where it had been arranged that the painters Mitelli and Colonna should meet him and return with him to Madrid. At the last moment, however, he had the mortification of finding that these men had broken their word and had elected to remain in Florence and work for Cardinal de' Medici. It was not until 1658 that they paid their promised visit to Madrid, where they worked at the decoration of the palace for nearly four years. Another disappointment awaited him at Modena, which he visited on his way in the vain hope of securing some examples of Correggio, notably the Nativity, which, some ten years earlier, had been forcibly removed by Duke Francesco from San Prospero in Reggio.^ Embarking at Genoa, Velazquez landed at Barcelona in June 165 1. The king expressed his satisfaction with the results of his mission, and in the following November the master's salary, both as court painter and inspector of works, was paid up in full for the whole term of his absence. 1 Antonio Allegri da Coreggio (Heinemann, London, 1895), by Corrado Ricci, p. 295. CHAPTER VI APOSENTADOR MAYOR DEATH 1651-1660 In February 1652 Velazquez, on his own petition, was appointed to the office which cost him his Hfe. The post, which he asked for as one specially suited to his gifts and position, was that of Aposentador Mayor, or Palace Marshal to the king, which had become vacant during his absence in Italy. It was an office of considerable dignity and import- ance, but no sinecure. The Marshal, among his multifarious duties, was solely responsible for all the interior arrangements of the palace. It was his duty to inspect all the details of lighting, heating, sanitation, decoration, etc. ; to assign apartments to the various persons in waiting ; to organise all court festivities, drawing up programmes of the enter- tainments for submission to the king ; and finally, to act as quarter- master during the royal progresses. Those who have travelled in Spain, even in our own day, will understand what the task of transport- ing a luxurious court across such a country must have been in the seventeenth century, when to the difficulties of obtaining supplies and quarters were added the harassing minuti^ of a rigid and bewildering etiquette. The letters of "those argus-eyed Venetian envoys, who surprised so many courts and cabinets in their unguarded moments, and daguerreotyped their character and policy for the instruction of the crafty Republic," are full of indignant lamentations over the horrors of Spanish travel. Velazquez had need of all his courtesy and tact under the responsibilities of his new office. The broader and more summary manner of his last decade may have been induced to some extent by the VELAZaUEZ 8 1. high pressure under which he worked, but his art shows no trace of deterioration. Rather does it take on a new luxuriance under difficulties, 'as grass grows tallest round a stone.' His new office was closely allied to his other important post, the directorship of the royal galleries. For some time after his return from Italy he was busy over the distribu- tion of the works of art he had collected, and the general rearrangement of the collections. The year 1654 witnessed the long-delayed completion of the Escorial. The building of the Pantheon, or sepulchral crypt, under the high altar, which was a charge laid by Philip II. on his son, had been delayed till this time by structural difficulties. On March 1 5 Philip IV. attended the solemn removal of his ancestors' remains from their temporary resting-place in the upper church. Deeply impressed by the function, one feature of which was the opening of the royal coffins for inspection,! the king conceived the idea of showing his respect for his grandfather's great work by a gift of some of his choicest pictures to the Escorial. These were hung in the great sacristy by the direction of Velazquez. " To him," says Fray Francisco de los Santos,^ "is it due that the Escorial, no less than the Royal Palace, is remarkable as much for its paintings as for its architecture. Velazquez it was who fitted up the sacristy, the aulilla, and the prior's chapter-house ; nay, the very pictures with which he adorned those places were brought together by himself from various parts of Europe." This handsome tribute seems curious in the light of the accusation brought against De los Santos by modern Spanish writers, who assert that his descriptions of the new pictures are boldly conveyed from a series of notes made by Velazquez himself, which are mentioned by Palomino. " Velazquez," says the latter, " composed a description or Memoria, in which he gave particulars of their excellence, their authors, and the places where ! Quirini, the Venetian envoy, described the appearance of the Emperor Charles V.'s body. " The likeness of the Emperor to his portrait," he wrote, " could be recognised quite well. He had a rather full fair beard ; the body was under the average size, the bones thin, the flesh dry and meagre. Nose and lips, fingers and toes, were deformed by the gout, which does not even spare the dead." The great Emperor's tomb was again opened in 1870. Decay had not made any great progress in two centuries and a quarter. The likeness of Charles to his portraits could still be recognised, and the ravages of the gout still traced. Palmaroli made a sketch of the body as it lay. This sketch was lent by Lady Layard to the New Gallery in the present year (1896). 2 Short Description of the Monastery of San Lorenzo El Real, 1657. 82 VELAZQUEZ they (formerly) hung, in order to explain them to His Majesty, and with so much elegance and propriety that the document is a proof of his great learning and judgment." No trace of this Memoria has ever been found in the Spanish archives. In 1871, however, one Adolfo de Castro of Cadiz announced that he had discovered it in print. It was in the form of a short pamphlet, issued in 1658 by Don Juan de Alfaro of Cordova, a pupil of Velazquez, his object being the vindication of the painter's literary fame. Don Adolfo declared that the entire contents of this pamphlet were to be found scattered through the friar's descriptions. The trouvaille lacks authenti- cation, however. We must leave Fray Francisco in possession of his critical laurels for the present, and accept the loss of the Memoria as resignedly as that of the angel of whom Dante " drew the resemblance upon certain tablets." The forty-one pictures have a special interest for English readers, as the list includes four from the rich harvest reaped by Don Alonzo de Cardenas at the sale of Charles I.'s collection.^ Cardenas, bought nominally for Don Luis de Haro, the nephew and successor of Olivares, who, however, promptly handed over his purchases to the kmg. PhiHp probably felt some compunction at this greedy falling upon the spoil of his unhappy brother-monarch, for Sir Edward Elyde (Clarendon) and the aged Sir Francis Cottington, the representatives of Charles II. at Madrid, suddenly received their passports when the ship bearing the treasures landed at Corunna. The English king's adherents complained bitterly of the eagerness with which contemporary princes competed for their master's property, and De los Santos is careful in his description to speak of the Stuart pictures as gifts to the Crown, in the acquisition of which Philip himself had no hand. In the midst of these various preoccupations Velazquez nevertheless found time to produce a series of great works on which his fame as a master of the first rank might securely have rested, had all his earlier pictures perished. The fruits of this last and greatest period group themselves round two great compositions, the wonderful Maids of Honour 1 These four were : Paolo Veronese's Marriage at Cana (No. 534 in the Prado) ; Tintoretto's Christ washing thje Feet of the Disciples ; Andrea del Sarto's Madonna and Clnld with an Angel; and the so-called Raphael, La Perla. VELAZaUEZ 83 (^Las Menifias\ and the still more consummate Tapestry Workers {Las Hilanderas), both in the Prado Gallery ; while the list of portraits includes the magnificent head of Philip in the National Gallery, the amazing P/niip IV. National Gallery. costume pictures of the young Queen Mariana, and of the little Infanta Margarita, and that strange series of dwarfs, fools, and other eccentric ornaments of the royal household, which so vivaciously 84 VELAZaUEZ illustrates the ' beauty of ugliness.' To all these must be added the mythological subjects, painted probably to the king's order for the Hall of Mirrors in the Alcazar, and those religious pieces in which the colour- music of Italy finds a last echo in the master's art. The finest of the late portraits of Philip is the well-known bust in our own National Collection (No. 745). Many copies and studio replicas exist, among them one in the Prado (No. 1080) and another in the Vienna Gallery (No. 612). A bewildering number of portraits attest Philip's devotion to his second wife, the girlish hoyden who is said to have commanded a fidelity denied to the high-minded Isabella. Many of these were certainly painted by Mazo and other followers of Velazquez. So great was the king's impatience to possess her effigy that he would not await the return of his painter from Italy. Mariana made her triumphal entry into Madrid in November 1649, and Mazo at once executed a portrait which Palomino pronounced " a marvel of the brush." Of her portraits painted by Velazquez after his return, the earliest were sent to her own family, and have now become difficult of identification. Of the two large full-lengths in the Prado (Nos. 1078 and 1079) the least open to question is the first in order, in which the rose-coloured curtain of the background is gathered more closely away to the right. She wears a costume of black trimmed with silver, and rests her right hand on the back of a chair. Seeing her in the portentous costume of a Spanish lady of the period, her young features set in a weary peevishness natural enough in the victim of such monstrous bravery, we fail to recognise the frolicsome princess described by Spanish writers. Mariana delighted in such practical joking as the letting loose of a number of mice among her ladies, and incurred the rebuke of her duenna for laughing too loudly at the jests of her dwarfs. The grotesque clothes, here so faithfully portrayed, amazed the French and Italian ladies. Ameyden, the Spanish envoy in Rome, describing the arrival of the Duke of Arcos and his suite, remarks in his Diario : " Rome stands aghast at the vile and offensive Spanish female dress, comparing it with past times, when it was so becoming." Velazquez contrived, by unerring taste, to reconcile us in some degree to its absurdity, but he would perhaps have found that task beyond even his powers had his sitters VELAZQUEZ 85 been of less exalted rank. Hieratic costumes require a hieratic carriage. Philip's daughter by his first marriage, the Infanta Maria Theresa, The Infanta Margarita. Imperial Gauery, Vienna. From a Photograph by Lowy. was only three years younger than her stepmother, and the two princesses were companions for nearly twelve years. The younger princess acted as sponsor to her own step-sister, the little Infanta Margarita (born 86 VELAZQUEZ July 12, 1 651), and was a prominent figure at all the court festivities. In grace and charm she quite eclipsed her stepmother. The marriage with her cousin, Louis XIV., though projected for many years, was kept in abeyance during the interval when she was heir-presumptive to the Spanish Crown, but the negotiations were finally concluded after Mariana had borne her second son to Philip. Several portraits of the Infanta had meantime been sent to France at the request of her aunt, Anne of Austria. These were presumably painted in the studio of Velazquez, who is mentioned in a letter of Quirini's as about to undertake such works. They are now difficult to trace. One may be the picture formerly in the Morny Collection, and afterwards bought at the Lyne Stephens sale by Mr. Pierpont Morgan. The magnificent portrait of a young girl in a rose and white gown of more than the usual monstrous proportions, described in the Prado Catalogue (No. 1084) as a portrait of the Infanta Maria Theresa, is obviously, as Justi points out, not this princess, but the Infanta Margarita. A comparison with the little princess in Las Meninas^ to say nothing of the remarkable little picture in the Salon Carre of the Louvre, leaves no doubt upon this point. The marriage of this delicious little daughter of Spain with a Hapsburg cousin had been predetermined almost from her infancy, and she was formally betrothed to the Emperor Leopold in 1664. Portraits of her were accordingly despatched to Vienna from time to time. The earliest shows her at about the age of four, in a rose-coloured frock embroidered with silver, her fair hair, innocent as yet of the monstrous devices of the court coiffeur, parted on one side, and tied with a knot of ribbons on the other. Here again she passes under the name of Maria Theresa. Another is almost identical with an example at Hertford House, while a third Vienna portrait (No. 620) answers to the work de- scribed by Palomino as sent to the Emperor in 1659. It is one of the finest examples of Velazquez out of Spain. It was accompanied by a portrait of Margarita's two-year-old brother, Prosper, the feeble infant who had succeeded the gallant young Balthazar Carlos as heir to the throne. Prosper was epileptic and hydrocephalous. Quirini describes him as " lethargic and colourless after the Austrian manner, with a large head, and but little strength in his knees." He adds that the child would VELAZQUEZ 89 let no one carry him but the aged Franciscan friar, Don Antonio de Castilla, " but their Majesties, who honour the holy habit with unequalled zeal and veneration, put up with this inconvenience with remarkable The Dwarf Don Antonio. Museo dei Prado, Madrid. From a Photograph by Braun, Clement, l£ Cie. fortitude." The poor weakling died in 1661 at the age of four, having survived his still feebler younger brother Ferdinand by a year. He had not lived in vain, for his portrait at Vienna is nearly as fine as that of 90 VELAZQUEZ his sister. Philip's successor, his third son by Mariana, was born after the death of Velazquez. The portraits of the dwarfs, buffoons, and imbeciles, indispensable features of the royal household at this period, may be glanced at before passing on to the two great subject-pictures. The more remarkable of these, with the exception of the portrait of El Primo, already mentioned as painted at Fraga, belong to the last decade. The buffoons, or jesters {liombres de placer'), were painted for Buen Retiro, the dwarfs for the Alcazar. To the first category belong the three numbered respectively 1092, 1093, and 1094 in the Prado. They represent one Pablillos de Valladolid, who is depicted in the attitude of an actor, declaiming on the stage; Cristobal de Pernia, nicknamed " Barbarossa " ; and an unknown, who was called " Don John of Austria." Some likeness in temper or appearance to a famous person was often taken advantage of by the buffoon, who dressed in imitation of his prototype, and burlesqued his conversation and manner. Five portraits of dwarfs have been preserved in the Prado : El Primo, in a black dress and slouch hat, seated on a stone in a hilly landscape ; Sebastian de Morra, seated on the floor and gazing out at the spectator ; Don Antonio the Englishman, richly dressed in a gold-embroidered suit and lace collar, holding a mastiff in leash ; the so-called Child of Vallicas, an idiot seated in a field with a pack of cards in his hand ; and yet another abortion, the Fool of Coria, seated on a stone with a gourd on either side, and his hands on his knee. Akin to these grotesque subjects are the two superb full-lengths of bee gars, or ragged philosophers, christened respectively vEsop and Moenippus. Las Meninas, or the Maids of Honour, the great picture in which most critics recognise the high-water mark of the genius of Velazquez, is, pictorially, a study of sunlight on figures in an interior. It is a Spanish De Hooch, enlarged. The episode which serves as its pretext is a visit of the king and queen to the studio, while the little Infanta Margarita is sitting for her portrait. To the right Velazquez stands facing us, before a tall canvas, paint-brush in hand and palette on thumb. The blonde figure of the little princess occupies the centre of the canvas. A maid of honour, kneeling, hands her a cup of water on a golden salver. The other bends and curtseys with Mcenippus. Museojdel Prado, Madrid. From a Photograph Braun, Clement, Cie. VELAZQUEZ 93 extended hands over her enormous guarda infanta. The names of these noble maidens are recorded. The first is Dona Maria Agostina, daughter of Don Diego Sarmiento ; the second, Dona Isabel de Velasco, daughter of the Count of Fuensalida. The maids of honour were carefully selected from among the daughters of the old Castilian nobility for their beauty. As a foil to their youthful grace, we see in the foreground the grotesque figures of the princess's dwarfs, Maria Barbola and Nicolasico Pertusato. A fine mastiff dozes in front of them, which the dwarf, with characteristic malice, teases with his foot. In the shadow behind, two court officials, the Senora de honor., Dona Marcela de UUoa, and a guarda damas (equerry to the court ladies) converse together, while farther in the background the queen's marshal, Don Jose Nieto, draws aside a curtain, flooding the darkened room with sunshine. The whole scene, as I understand it, is one of a child being induced to be good by her accustomed companions and playthings, and in the presence of her parents. The picture on the easel is, of course, this very canvas itself, so that the whole conception has an amusing involution. On the breast of the painter's doublet glows the red cross of Santiago, one of the great Spanish Orders. Tradition records that the king, looking at the finished picture, remarked that it lacked one thing, and, seizing a brush, himself added the decoration. Documents still preserved in the archives of Madrid show that the formalities connected with the master's reception date from some two years after the picture was painted. Velazquez received the papal dispensation necessary in his case as a married layman, and established the facts of his honourable life and spotless descent on both sides in 1659, when he received the habit. Palomino states that the cross in the picture was added by the king's order after the painter's death. In spite of all this the tradition may be true, for Spanish proceedings were never prompt, and the king would certainly not have troubled to do more than roughly indicate the cross with his brush ; the present well-painted badge being added as Palomino says. A sketch of the picture belongs to Mr. Banks of Kingston Lacy ; here, too, Velazquez wears the decoration. In Las Hilanderas (the Spinners) the master again seizes a momentary effect in which a problem of light is involved. In 94 VELAZQUEZ the quarter of Madrid known as Santa Isabella had been established, early in the reign of Philip IV., a factory for the weaving of tapestries which would, it was hoped, compete with the products of Flemish looms. In his capacity as Aposentador del Rey, Velazquez had charge of the hangings and tapestries for the palace, which he gave out on festive occasions to the Tapicero mayor, or court upholsterer. It was, no doubt, also his duty to arrange for the replenishment of the store, perhaps even to suggest subjects and furnish designs. On the occasion of one of his visits to the factory he may well have seen the materials for a picture in some such accidental group as he has here recorded. Three ladies, escorted perhaps by the Aposentador himself, have come to inspect or purchase. The piece submitted to them hangs in a sort of raised alcove in the background, lighted by a broad beam of sunshine from an unseen window. To this bright illumination is opposed the mysterious half-light of an ante-room, where an elderly woman and four young girls are at work, spinning, winding, and carding wool. The women have unusual beauty, notably the supple and finely-formed damsel on the right, who winds with a grand sweeping movement of her arm and body. Las Hilanderas hung originally in Buen Retiro, and later in the new palace. Strange to say, it is unnoticed by Palomino, and Mengs was the first writer to recognise its great importance. In its place in the Sala de la Reina Lsabel it now receives more unstinted homage from members of his own craft than any other picture by Velazquez, Of the five mythological subjects painted for the Mirror-Room in the Alcazar only three have survived. The room took its name from eight mirrors in ebony frames, which alternated with the windows, and with the five great portraits of the Spanish Hapsburgs by Titian, Rubens, and Velazquez. Above these were hung a series of mythologies and Biblical scenes, to which Velazquez contributed an Apollo and Marsyas and a Venus and Adonis, both of which have disappeared, the Mars (No, 1063 in the Prado), the Mercury and Argus (No, 1102), and the beautiful Venus with the Mirror at Rokeby Hall. Of the two religious subjects with which we end the tale of the master's activity, one, the Coronation of the Virgin, probably painted for the oratory of Queen Mariana, was so alien to the realistic spirit of VELAZaUEZ 97 his genius that we should rather wonder at its success than join in the chorus of depreciation which has too long been its portion. The general inspiration is unmistakably Italian, while in the palette we seem to recognise echoes of Moretto ; and yet Velazquez can scarcely have seen much of the Brescian's work. The legendary visit of St. Anthony to the ancient St. Paul, in the Thebaid, was a theme more in harmony with the painter's natural tendencies. And yet, as a pictorial conception, it is difficult to see how his treatment of it can be put above the Coronation of the Virgin. The wild glen among the Sierras, where the event takes Mercury and Argus. Museo del Prado, Madrid. From a Sketch by Walter Osborne. place, and the heads of the saints themselves, are painted with extra- ordinary vigour and freedom, but the work as a whole is disconnected and anecdotal. We must now turn from the final achievement of the painter Velazquez to watch his last and most imposing appearance on the stage of official life. In 1659, Spain, exhausted by a war of twenty-five years, and crippled by the reverses that had befallen her in the recent struggle against the combined forces of France and England, declared herself ready to accept terms of peace. Mazarin and Don Luis de Haro signed the Treaty of the Pyrenees on the neutral ground of the Isle of G 98 VELAZQUEZ Pheasants, in the Bidassoa, after a duel in which for four long months each had tried to outwit the other. France was conciliated by the cession of Artois and some important strongholds on the Belgian frontier ; and it was agreed that the peace should be crowned by the long-projected marriage between Louis XIV, and the Infanta Maria Theresa, whose interest in the Spanish succession was renounced in consideration of a dowry of 500,000 crowns. The next episode was the handing over of the Infanta, and the subscription of the marriage contract. The Marquis de Grammont had visited Madrid some months earlier to formally demand the princess's hand for his master. Velazquez had been ordered to attend him throughout his visit, when no doubt many details of the approaching ceremony were discussed. April 15, 1660, was the date fixed for the departure of the royal cortege from the capital. Velazquez, on whom all the arrangements for the journey and the subsequent pageant devolved, set out some days before. Three assistants — his son-in-law Mazo, Jose da Villareal, and Damian Goetens — travelled with him. The magnitude of the preparations for such a progress may be imagined. Two officers had preceded Velazquez, whose business it was to get the roads between Madrid and the frontier put in order. The personal suite of the royal family hardly exceeded in numbers those of some of the great nobles who travelled with the king. Don Luis de Haro had, for instance, a retinue of two hundred persons, and the advance guard of the procession entered Alcala as the rear was quitting Madrid. Twenty-four halting-places had been prepared for the reception of the party between the capital and San Sebastian, and at each town on the route the king's passage was celebrated by masques, bull -fights, illuminations, and festivities of all sorts. The provincial nobles placed their castles, many of them bare enough in their plenishing, at the king's disposal, for no inns suitable for such guests existed in the country. The court reached San Sebastian on May 1 1 , and there it stayed for three weeks. The interval Velazquez spent in preparing the Castle of Fontarabia for its reception, and in putting the finishing touches to the pavilion on the Isle of Pheasants, in which the culminating function was to take place. Priceless tapestries had been brought from Madrid for the adornment of this building, a temporary structure, consisting Coronation of the Virgin. Museo dei Prado, Madrid. From a Photograph by Braun, Clement, &^ Cie. lOO VELAZaUEZ of a central hall, 56 feet long by 28 wide, and two sets of private apartments for the French and Spanish parties respectively. Each set contained a long gallery, three saloons, and a cabinet, and was connected with its own several mainland by a bridge of boats. On June 7 the Infanta was handed over to her new family. The king, greatly overcome by the meeting with his sister Anne, after more than forty years of absence and estrangement, is said to have burst into tears, exclaiming, Es el diahlo que lo ha hecho. He wept bitterly again on taking leave of his daughter. Maria Theresa herself, though pleased with her handsome bridegroom, quitted her native land with much emotion. The young Louis, though " appalled by her costume," thought her beautiful, and declared it would be easy to love her. Velazquez, says Palomino, played a prominent part in all the ceremonies, and was entrusted with the French king's presents to his father-in-law, the Badge of the Golden Fleece in diamonds, and a watch encrusted with the same gems. The magnificence of the painter's attire set off his handsome person to great advantage, and bore witness to his " loyal affection." The chronicler minutely describes his silver-braided costume, his cloak with the red cross of Santiago, his sword with its silver scabbard, and the heavy gold chain from which hung the jewelled badge of his Order. The return journey began on the following day, entailing fresh fatigue and exertion on the Aposentador, and on June 26 the whole party was once more safely housed in Madrid. It seems likely that the master's health had already begun to fail on the way, for a report of his death had preceded him to the capital, and his wife, his family, and friends could scarcely believe their eyes when they saw him return. An ague, contracted perhaps on the frontier, and aggravated by the fatigue and anxiety of the journey, attacked him with great violence on the last day of July. The court doctor, Vincencio Moles, and the king's private physicians, Miguel de Alva and Pedro de Chavarri, recognised his case as hopeless from the first. Philip, deeply distressed, and seeing temporal help to be of no avail, sent Don Alonzo de Guzman, Archbishop of Tyre and Patriarch of the Indies, to minister to his spiritual needs ; and the prelate, we are told, preached him a long sermon for the comfort of his soul. On Friday, August 6, 1660, at about two in the afternoon, the last Sacraments received, and his friend Don Gaspar de Fuensalida VELAZQJJEZ loi appointed his executor, " he resigned his soul to Him who had created it for such a wonder of the world, leaving all in great grief, and not least Equestrian Statue of Velaxquex. at Paris. By M. Fremiet. From a Photograph by Fiorillo. His Majesty, who, when his life was in suspense, gave all to understand how much he had loved and prized him." I02 VELAZQUEZ According to the custom of the Order to which he belonged, the painter's body was dressed in the habit of the Knights of Santiago, and Jay in state for twenty-four hours. At nightfall on the Saturday it was borne to its last resting-place in the Church of St. John the Baptist, and there deposited in the vault of Fuensalida. In the archives of Simancas is preserved a document on the margin of which Philip bears witness to his grief at the loss of his favourite. It records a resolution passed by the Junta on August 15, to the effect that Don Diego's stipend of a thousand ducats should revert to the Treasury. When this was placed before the king for signature, he wrote on the margin in a trembling hand, Qjiedo adhatido (I am overwhelmed). Velazquez left all he possessed to his wife Juana, who, however, survived him only a few days. His affairs were found, or at least declared, to be in great disorder. He was said to have exceeded his credit on the Treasury to the extent of one millon two hundred and twenty thousand maravedis, a total which looks less alarming when reduced to its equivalent of rather more than seven hundred pounds sterling. An embargo was laid upon his effects, which was removed some six years later on the payment by his son-in-law of half the asserted debt, the other half being remitted when investigation showed that the State was in debt to Velazquez. The foregoing pages are practically confined to an account of the career of Velazquez as a man, and are based chiefly, though by no means exclusively, on the researches of Professor Justi. The next number of the Portfolio will be devoted to a discussion of his work as a painter. INDEX " Adoration of the Kings, The," 12 " Adoration of the Shepherds, The," 12, 16 " vEsop," 90 " Aguador." See " Water-carrier " Alcazar, The, 22, 23, 42, 52, 69, 71. 73. 84, 9°i 94 Alcazar, Don Luis del, 18 Alcazar, Don Melchior del, 18 Alfaro, Don Juan de, 82 Algardi, Alessandro, 73 Alva, Miguel de, 100 Ameyden, 84 Andalusia, 1 1 Anne of Austria, 47, 100 " Antonio the Englishman," 90 "Apollo and Marsyas," 94 Apsley House, 12, 14, 60 Aquila, Conde del, 16 Aragon, 43, 56 Aranjuez, 43, 47 Ashburton, Lord, 47 Balsain, 44 Balthazar Carlos, The Infante, 43, SO, 51, 52, 54, 58, 72 " Balthazar Carlos on Horseback," 52 " Barbarossa," 90 Barberini, Cardinal, 38 Barcelona, 79 " Bcbedores, Los," 32, 35, 41 Berettini, Pietro, 73 Berlin Gallery, 42, 65 Bermudez, Cean, 40 Bernini, Giovanni, 73 Bibaldi, Girolamo, 79 Bidassoa, The, 98 " Boar-Hunt, The," 44, 47 Bode, Dr., 35 Bologna, 37, 38, 72 Borgia, Cardinal, 63 Boschini, Marco, 38, 72, 74 Breda, 37, 49 " Breda, The Surrender of." iice " Las Lanzas " Buckingham Palace, 56, 68, 90, 94 Buen Retiro, 13, 43, 47, 48, 52, 54 Buonaparte, Joseph, 14 Calderon, 26, 48 Campana. See Kempeneer Cano, Alonzo, 60, 68 Capitol, The, 42, 74 Cardeiias, Alonzo de, 82 Carducho, Vincenzo, 24, 25 Carlos, Don (The Infante), 27 Castile, 44 Castilla, Don Antonio, 89 Castillo, Juan del, 69 Castle Howard, 56, 76 Castro, Adolfo de, 82 Castro, Juan Sanchez de, 7 Catalonia, 58 Caxesi, Eugenio, 24 Cerquozzi, Michelangelo, 73 Cespedes, Pablo de, 8 Charles I. (of England), 19, 26, 53,72 Charles V. (Emperor), 20, 21, 24, 44, 8 I (note) Chavarri, Pedro de, 100 Chevreuse, Duchesse de, 47, 53 "Child ofVallicas, The," 90 " Christ at the Pillar," 67 Christina of Sweden, 72 Clarendon, 82 Coello, Sanchez, 22-24 CoUantes, Francisco, 48 Colon, Hernan, 7 Colonna, Cardinal, 74 Colonna, Michelangelo, 71, 79 Conde, 60 Contreras, Don Fernando tie, 79 Cook, Sir Francis, 14 " Coronation of the Virgin, The," 94, 97 Correggio, 14, 56, 79 Corte, Juan de la, 48 Cottington, Sir Francis, 82 Crescenzi, 25, 48 "Crucifixion, The," 43, 66, 67 Cruz, Pantoja de la, 24, 58 DoMENicHiNO, 40 Dorchester House, 27, 31 Doria-Pamfili Palace, 76 Dudley Collection, 65 Dulwich Gallery, 59 " Epiphany, The," 16 " Escorial, The," 32, 40, 81 Espinosa, Juan de, 21 Ferdinand, Emperor, 56 Ferdinand, King of Hungary, 42 Ferdinand VII. (of Spain), 13 Ferdinand, Don (The Infante), 18, 19, 44, 47, 51, 54 Fernandez, Alejo, 7 Ferrara, 37, 38 " Flagellation, The," 43 {see also " Christ at the Column ") Florence, 38, 68, 72, 79 Fonseca, Don Juan de, 18 Fontarabia, 60, 98 " Fool of Corin, The," 90 Ford, Richard, 12 " Forge of Vulcan, The," 40, 41 Fraga, 58, 90 Frankfort (Staedel Institute), 63 Frere, Sir Bartle, 1 7 Fuensalida, Don Gaspar, 100, 102 Goetens, Damian, 98 Gongora, Don Luis de, 18 Gonzaghi, The, 36 Gonzalez, Bartolome, 24, 58 Grammont, Marquis de, 98 Granada, 25 Greco, El, 12 Guadarama, The, 50 Guido, 40, 41, 68 Guzman, Don Alonzo de, 100 Guzman, Don Gaspar. See Olivares Genoa, 37, 38, 72, 79 Gerbier, Balthazar, 31 Hampton Court, 52 Haro, Don Luis de, 82, 97, 98 Henrietta Maria, 53, 54 " Hermits, The," 97 Herrera, Francisco de, 8, 11, 12 Herrera, Hernando de, 7 Hertford House, 52, 56, 66, 86 Heytesbury, Lord, 31; "Hilanderas, Las," 83, 93, 94 Huth, Mr. Edward, 31 Innocent X., 76-79 Isabella, The Infanta, 3 1 Isabella de Bourbon, Queen, 47, 51 52-54 Isle of Pheasants, The, 98 Italy, 21, 36-42, 71-79 John, Don (of Austria), 73 "John, Don (of Austria)," 90 "Joseph's Coat," 41 Julianillo, 64 Justi, Carl, 8, 11, 14, 35, 41, 51, 58, 86, 102 Justin of Nassau, 49, 50 Kempeneer, Peeter de, 8 " Lady with the Fan, The," 66 Laniere, Nicholas, 72 "Lanzas, Las," 37, 48-51 Leganes, Marquis de, 21, 57 Leonardo, Jose, 48 INDEX Leoni, Pompeo, 21 Leopold, The Emperor, 86 Leopold William, The Archduke, 72 Lerma, Duke ot, 17, 28 Longford Castle, 76 Louis xin., 36, 38 Louis XIV., 54, 86, 98, 100 Louis Philippe, 16 Louvre, The, 44, 86 Lucar, Duke of. See Olivares Madrid, 10, 12, 13, 17, 18-21, 24, 27, 31, 42, 44, 48, 50, 66, 98 " Maids of Honour, The." See " Meniiias, Las " Maino de Toledo, 25 Malaga, 72 Maldachini, Olympia, 79 Margarita, The Infanta, 58, 83, 85, 86, 90 Maria, The Infanta, 19, 42 Maria Theresa, The Infanta, 54, 66, 85, 86, 98, 100 Mariana of Austria, 56, 83, 86, 94 Masaniello, 73, 74 Massini, Camillo, 74 Mazarin, 97 Mazo-Martiiiez, Juan Bautista del, 56, 60, 65, 68, 84, 98, 102 Medici, Cardinal F. de', 40 Medici, Canlinal G. de', 79 Medici, The Villa, 39, 40 Mengs, Raphael, 94 " Meniiias, Las," 83, 86, 90, 93 " Mercury and Argus," 94 Milan, 37, 72 Mitelli, Agostino, 71, 79 Mocenigo, 37 Modena, 79 Modena, Duke of, 66 Modena Gallery, 66 " Mcenippus," 90 Montafies, Benito, 7 Montafies, Martinez, 60 Monterey, Count, 21, 38, 40 More, Antonio, 22, 24, 27 Morgan, Mr. Pierpoint, 86 Morny Collection, 86 " Morra, Sebastian de," 90 Moya, Pedro dc, 70 Murillo, 69, 70 Najera, Duke of, 72 Naples, 42, 73, 74 Naples Museum, 35 Nardi, Angelo, 24 National Gallery, 12, 16, 44, 60, 67,83 Navarre, 56 Nevers, Due de, 36 New Gallery, 14, 81 (note) Nunez, Juan, 7 "Old Woman making an Omelet," 14 Olivares, 17-19, 26-31, 36, 42, 48, S2> 54, 56, 63, 64 " Olivares on Horseback," 52, 58 Olivares, The Countess, 54 Ofiata, Count, 73 Oporto, 10 Orrente, Pedro, 48 Pablillos, 90 Pacheco, Francisco, 8, 11, 12, 16- 18, 24, 32, 36, 41 Pacheco, Juana de Miranda, 1 1, 65, 102 Padua, 72 Palomino, 25, 37, 63, 68, 72, 74, 81, 84, 93, 94, 100 Pardo, El, 43, 44 Pareja, Adrian Pulido da, 60, 63 Pareja, Juan de, 68, 76, 77 Paul v., 16 Penaranda, Count, 18 Perpignan, 58 Philip II., 7, 20-24, 81 Philip III., 16, 17, 24-26, 28, 58 Philip IV., 17-20, 22, 23, 25, 26, 28, 40, 43, 48, 56-59, 63, 71, 74, 81, 83, 84, 100 " Philip IV. on Horseback," 52 Philip v., 74 Pimentel, Don Antonio, 63 Pitti Palace, 52 Pontius, Paul, 3 1 Poussin, 40, 41, 73 Pozzo, Cavaliere del, 74 Prado Gallery, 16, 18, 27, 35, 40, 42, 52, 58, 65, 68, 83, 84, 86, 94 " Primo, El," 59, 90 Prosper, Don (The Infante), 86 I'yrenees, Treaty of the, 97 QuESNOY, Francois du, 73 ^uevedo, Francisco de, 26, 60 ^uirini, 8 1, 86 (note) Raphael, 74 Ribera, Josef, 7, 16, 42, 73 Ribera, Maria Rosa, 73 Ribera, Pier Afan de, 6 Richelieu, 36, 47 Rinieri, Niccolo, 72 Rioja, Francisco de, 17, 26 Roelas, Juan de las, 8 Rokeby Hall, 94 Rome, 37, 38-42, 56, 63, 72, 73 Rosa, Salvator, 73, 74 Roussillon, 58 Rubens, 26, 31, 32, 52, 94 Saccheti, Cardinal, 38 "Saint John at Patmos," 16 Salamanca, 28 San Sebastian, 98 Santos, Fray Francisco de los, 81, 82 Saragossa, 54, 56, 58 Savile, Lord, 60, 67 Sera, Paolo del, 72 Serrano, 48 Seville, 5-18, 60, 68 Silva, Diego Rodriguez de, 10 Silva, Juan de, 10 Snayers, Pieter, 44 Spinola, Ambrogio, 37, 49, 50 "Spinners, The." See "Hilan- deras. Las " " Stag-Hunt, The," 47 Stevenson, Mr. R., 50 Stirling-Maxwell, 66 " Surrender of Breda, The." See " Lanzas, Las " "Sybil, The," 65 Taylor, Baron, 16 Tacca, Pietro, 52, 60 Testi, 66 Tintoretto, 37, 72 Titian, 23, 24, 72, 94 Toledo, 20, 21,63 Torre de la Parada, 43, 51, 52 Tristan, Luis, 12 Triunii, Flaminia, 79 UcLES, 10 Uffizi, The, 52, 76 Urban VIII., 22, 38, 41, 63, 73 Vargas, Luis de, 8 Vatican, The, 38, 39 Vazquez, Alonzo, 8 Velazquez, " The Daughter of," 65 Velazquez, Diego Rodriguez de Silva y, his birth and family, 10 ; apprenticed to Herrera, 1 1 ; leaves Herrera for Pacheco, 1 1 ; marries Pacheco's daughter, 11 ; birth of his children, 17 ; first visit to Madrid, 18, 19; ap- pointed court painter, and settles at Madrid, 21, 22 ; his first visit to Italy, 36 j returns to Madrid, 42 ; goes with the king to the seat of war, 58 ; revisits Italy, 72 ; paints a portrait of the Pope, 76 ; returns to Madrid, 79 ; appointed Palace-Marshal, 80 ; superintenfls the royal pro- gress connected with the mar- riage of the Infanta, 100 ; his last illness, 100 ; death, 102 " Velazquez, The Family of," 66 Velazquez, Francisca, 17, 65, 68 Velazquez, Geronima, 10 Velazquez, Ignacia, 17, 65 Venice, 37, 38, 72 " Venus and Adonis," 94 " Venus with the Mirror," 94 Veronese, Paolo, 72 Vienna Gallery, 56, 84, 88 Villegas, Pedro de, 8 Villamediana, Count, 21 Villareal, Jose da, 98 "Water-carrier, The," 12, 13 Wellington, Duke of, 14 Westminster, Duke of, 56 " Woman pursued by the Dragon, The," 16 ZufjIGA, 28 Zurbaran, 16, 68 Printed by R. & R. Clark, Limited, Edinburgh.