great genius was therefore compelled to find another way, and did find it in directions which were new and lasting additions to the art of painting.
Rubens, on the other hand, not less original, took from the Italian style what could be of use to him, and then built upon it a style of his own. He was as intellectual a man as Velasquez, and, like the latter, was accustomed to court life; but while Velasquez, bound to the most punctilious, and superstitious court in Europe, was driven in upon himself, Rubens traveled from court to court with pomp as a trusted envoy at liberty to do as he pleased. As an artist, Rubens had the wonderful faculty of being constantly in a white heat of imagination, while perfectly cool and calculating in the control of his hand. Hence the enormous output of his brush.
Velasquez for nearly two centuries was forgotten outside of Spain. Italian art continued to be the model to imitate; and, even when a return to the truth of nature was made at the beginning of the nineteenth century, sixty years passed before this great example of “truth, not painting” was “discovered,” Then a few painters visited the Prado Museum at Madrid, which contains most of his pictures; others followed, and the world became gradually conscious that in these pictures of Velasquez, especially in the wonderful series of portraits of the king and members of the court which he made during forty years of royal intimacy, there was revealed a great and solitary genius. Since then he has exercised such an influence upon modern painting that he has been called “the first of the moderns,”
“Of course not! Anybndy can see she uses a curling-iron!”
