How to Study Pictures.
By Charles H. Caffin.
A series of articles for the older girls and boys who read “St. Nicholas.”
Fourth Paper
Comparing Rubens with Velasquez.
The student of art, when he reaches the period of the seventeenth century, turns a sharp corner. Italy is left behind, Spain attracts his attention to the west, while far to the north Holland and Belgium beckon. Immediately three of the greatest names in art rise to our notice—Rembrandt, Rubens, and Velasquez. It is with the last two that we are concerned this month.
The pictures selected as a basis for the study of these two giants in art are “The Descent from the Cross,” by Rubens, and “The Maids of Honor” (“Las Meninas” in the Spanish), by Velasquez. “The Descent from the Cross” was painted when Rubens was thirty-five. He had completed his education by a sojourn of eight years in Italy. He was now returned to Antwerp, and one of the first works in which he revealed himself to he a master was “The Descent from the Cross.” “The Maids of Honor,” on the contrary, was painted by Velasquez only four years before he died, and represents the finest flower of his maturity.
Possibly our first impression of the Rubens picture will be “How beautiful!” of the Velasquez, “How curious!” In the former the figures almost fill the canvas, and are grouped so as to decorate it with an imposing mass of light and shade and a beautiful arrangement of lines; whereas in the other the figures are all at the bottom of the canvas and do not present a similarly beautiful pattern of lines and masses. The one looks like a magnificent picture, the other seems to be rather a real scene—as, indeed, it was. The story of “Las Meninas” is that Velasquez was painting a portrait of the Spanish king and queen (who sat where the spectator is when he looks at the picture), Their little daughter, the Infanta Margarita, came in with her maids of honor, her dog, and her dwarfs, and accompanied by her duenna and a courtier. The little princess asks for a drink of water; a maid of honor hands it to her with the elaborate etiquette prescribed by the formalities of the most rigidly ceremonious court in Europe. The scene presented so charming a picture that the king desired Velasquez to paint it. The artist has included himself in the group, at work upon a large canvas on which it is supposed he was painting a portrait of the king and queen when the interruption occurred. The reflection of the king and queen appears in the mirror at the end of the room, and the chamberlain, Don José Nieto, stands outside the door, drawing the curtain. The scene is, indeed, represented with such wonderful realism that a famous French critic said of it: “So complete is the illusion that, standing in front of ‘Las Meninas,’ one is tempted to ask, ‘Where is the picture?’”
It is the mature work of a painter whose motto was “Verdad no pintura” (“Truth, not painting”). By comparison, the principle which Rubens followed is ‘“Painting and truth.” Let us see how the two ideas are illustrated in the two pictures.
“The Descent from the Cross” arouses one’s feelings of awe and pity to an extraordinary degree. This is partly due to the actual moment in the great tragedy of the Redemption which the artist has seized, The terrible anguish of the Crucifixion is past; the poor, limp body is being tenderly cared for by the faithful few who have come, under the cover of night, to render the last office to the Dead. Joseph of