VELAZQUEZ
326
VELAZQUEZ
journey to Italy, commemorated by three or four
masterpieces, the two landscapes of the Villa Medici,
preserved at ISIadrid, which possess all tlie grace of
the most delightful Corots, and the portrait of Velaz-
quez' mulatto slave Juan de Pareja (Castle Howard),
with which the artist preluded the magnificent por-
trait of Pope Innocent X (Palazzo Doria), the finest
portrait of a pope save Raphael's JuUus II.
On his return to Madrid the painter, now definitely freed from all shackles, and strong enough to liandle all ideas as he pleased, produced one after another the most decided, and most precious of his works. Such, for example, were the two famous philosophers, the "jEsop", and the "Menippus" of the Prado, the most beautiful example of this class of Spanish mendi- cancy akin to the "Drunkards" of thirty years earlier. Such, likewise, were the two companion pictures, the only existing fragments of an entire decoration — the "Mercury and Argus" of the Prado and the " Venus with the Mirror" of the National Gallery. The "Mars" aiid the "Coronation of the Virgin", at the Prado, are less pleas- ing and original works. For a long time, owing to the nature of his ideas and the constant development of his researches. Vela z- quez devoted hini- seK to the solution of a more important problem. We have seen how in "The Lances" he had at- tempted historical painting, and what prevented him from
succeeding therein.
Ti_ r * u u Ve azftuez, the
henceforth he
devoted himself to a new idea through a whole
series of works, to express directly, in the fashion of a
portrait, not merely an historical scene nor a single
figure but a complete action of daily life. Thus,
small pictures such as the "Boar Hunt" (Wallace
Collection, c. 1636;), "Balthazar Carlos in the Riding
School" (Wallace Collection, c. 1640), and the "View
of Saragossa" lead us up to Velazquez' grandest works,
those which contain all his genius and present the
highest exi)ression of his art, such as "The Spinners"
and "The Maids of Honour" (Las Meninas) (c. 1655-
56). In subject they are both genre pictures, but of
hitherto unknown dimensions and treated in the
"historical" size. The former shows a workshop
which is being visited by two ladies; the latter, an
inner chamber of the Alcazar in which Velazquez is
shown painting the young infanta, who is surrounded
by her ladies in wait ing, her duefias, her dwarfs, and
her dog. Into these everyday scenes is introduced an
element of selection, of fantasy, caprice, genius — a
something .subjective and purely individual, without
which such iiictures could never have been conceived.
Such grovips as these were formed again and again
in the noisy and overheated work-rooms or the
coolness of dark palaces, but thcj' demanded a
supremo artist.
To tran.slate these wholly intellectual facts of a
quite peculiar order of existence, the artist did not
make use of known lines or colours; he employed
splashes, vague coloured splashes without parallel in
form and with no more relation to the world of real
facts than the colourless dust on the butterfly's
wing bears to the rich diapering which the eye per-
ceives. Everything became more elliptical, more
uncertain and unreal, and assumed an appearance of
a special nature, no longer that of visible and material
phenomena, but of their reflexion in the artist's soul,
on a rarely sensitive surface; the operations of the
hand become imperceptible and mj'sterious, and
show an agility and caprice bordering on the miracu-
lous; the complete whole takes form before our eyes
with a verisimiUtude w-hich seems fantastic, and we
have no longer a meaningless scene, but a real vision.
These two works, wTites Raphael Mengs, are the
theology or the "Summa" of painting. They seem
to exist outside of all the expedients of art and as by
a mysterious fiat. Through them an entirely new
path was opened to the painting of things. Every
other scene of life has the same claim to be depicted,
provided it has for observer and interpreter such a
witness as Velaz-
quez; it was a new
viewpoint of nature,
a method of fruitful
and infinite applica-
tion. We are as-
sured that on seeing
the "Meninas" the
king was so charmed
with the work that
he perceived only
one oversight and,
taking up a brush,
painted on the
breast of the artist's
own portrait the
grand cross of St.
.lames. Whatever
the worth of the
legend, the coveted
order was none the
less gi'anted to Ve-
lazquez 12 June,
165S. He had given
jjroof of his Hmpieza
dt: sanfire, that is,
that he had in his
family not a drop of Jewish or Moorish blood, that
he had never worked for his living, that he had never
made a trade of painting, that he had never prac-
tised his art save as a recreation and in the service of
the king.
To these last years belong some busts (London, Turin, Madrid) which Velazquez made of the prince, stirring works, in which we discern beneath the cold- ness of the mask the interior tragedy which froze the charming countenance of the poet that Philip IV had been. The last, and one of the most charming, of Velazquez' works is the "Anchorites" of the Prado, which is perhaps his most airy and luminous, his tenderest and most poetic work. After his return from Italy, filling the post of royal aposrntador, he was charged with all the preparations for the journey on the occasion of the Peace of the Pyrenees and the marriage of Louis XIV with the infanta. Worn out by this excess of labour, the jjainte; was attacked, on his return, by a fever which i)r()ved fatal. Philip IV keenly felt the loss of his friend. In the margin of a report of the Junta de Obras y Hosques, ordering that lOIX) ducats of the painter's estate be returned to the budget of the Alcazar, of which Velazquez had been sui)erinteiident (proving that his management had been negligent and irregular), the King wTote the heart-broken words: "I am crushed" (Quedo adha- lidn).
In his sphere Velazquez had no superiors and perhaps no equals. Not only must all i)ainting com- pared with one of his seem artificial and forced, so that in the wonder-crowded Prado, he seems the sole
a Forge
Prado, Madrid
