Ulrich was now seventeen, and had been allowed to paint for four months.
Sanchez Coello rarely appeared in the studio, for he had gone to study
with the architect, Herrera; Isabella vied with Ulrich, but was speedily
outstripped by the German.
It seemed as if he had been born with the power to use the brush, and
the young girl watched his progress with unfeigned pleasure. When Moor
harshly condemned his drawing, her kind eyes grew dim with tears; if the
master looked at his studies with an approving smile, and showed them
to Sophonisba with words of praise, she was as glad as if they had been
bestowed upon herself.
The Italian came daily to the treasury as usual, to paint, talk or play
chess with Moor; she rejoiced at Ulrich’s progress, and gave him many a
useful suggestion.
When the young artist once complained that he had no good models, she
gaily offered to sit to him. This was a new and unexpected piece of
good fortune. Day and night he thought only of Sophonisba. The sittings
began.
The Italian wore a red dress, trimmed with gold embroidery, and a high
white lace ruff, that almost touched her cheeks. Her wavy brown hair
clung closely to the beautiful oval head, its heavy braids covering the
back of the neck; tiny curls fluttered around her ears and harmonized
admirably with the lovely, mischievous expression of the mouth, that won
all hearts. To paint the intelligent brown eyes was no easy matter, and
she requested Ulrich to be careful about her small, rather prominent
chin, which was anything but beautiful, and not make her unusually high,
broad forehead too conspicuous; she had only put on the pearl diadem to
relieve it.
The young artist set about this task with fiery impetuosity, and the
first sketch surpassed all expectations.
Don Fabrizio thought the picture “startlingly” like the original. Moor
was not dissatisfied, but feared that in the execution his pupil’s work
would lose the bold freshness, which lent it a certain charm in his
eyes, and was therefore glad when the bell rang, and soon after the king
appeared, to whom he intended to show Ulrich’s work.
Philip had not been in the studio for a long time, but the artist had
reason to expect him; for yesterday the monarch must have received his
letter, requesting that he would graciously grant him permission to
leave Madrid.
Moor had remained in Spain long enough, and his wife and child were
urging his return. Yet departure was hard for him on Sophonisba’s
account; but precisely because he felt that she was more to him than a
beloved pupil and daughter, he had resolved to hasten his leave-taking.
All present were quickly dismissed, the bolts were drawn and Philip
appeared.
He looked paler than usual, worn and weary.
Moor greeted him respectfully, saying: “It is long since Your Majesty
has visited the treasury.”
“Not ‘Your Majesty;’ to you I am Philip,” replied the king. “And you
wish to leave me, Antonio! Recall your letter! You must not go now.”
The sovereign, without waiting for a reply, now burst into complaints
about the tiresome, oppressive duties of his office, the incapacity
of the magistrates, the selfishness, malice and baseness of men. He
lamented that Moor was a Netherlander, and not a Spaniard, called him
the only friend he possessed among the rebellious crew in Holland and
Flanders, and stopped him when he tried to intercede for his countrymen,
though repeatedly assuring him that he found in his society his best
pleasure, his only real recreation; Moor must stay, out of friendship,
compassion for him, a slave in the royal purple.
After the artist had promised not to speak of departure during the next
few days, Philip began to paint a saint, which Moor had sketched, but
at the end of half an hour he threw down his brush. He called himself
negligent of duty, because he was following his inclination, instead of
using his brain and hands in the service of the State and Church. Duty
was his tyrant, his oppressor. When the day-laborer threw his hoe over
his shoulder, the poor rascal was rid of toil and anxiety; but they
pursued him everywhere, night and day. His son was a monster, his
subjects were rebels or cringing hounds. Bands of heretics, like moles
or senseless brutes, undermined and assailed the foundation of the
throne and safeguard of society: the Church. To crush and vanquish
was his profession, hatred his reward on earth. Then, after a moment’s
silence, he pointed towards heaven, exclaiming as if in ecstasy: “There,
there! with Him, with Her, with the Saints, for whom I fight!”
The king had rarely come to the treasury in such a mood. He seemed to
feel this too, and after recovering his self-control, said:
“It pursues me even here, I cannot succeed in getting the right coloring
to-day. Have you finished anything new?”
Moor now pointed out to the king a picture by his own hand, and after
Philip had gazed at it long and appreciatively, criticising it
with excellent judgment, the artist led him to Ulrich’s portrait of
Sophonisba, and asked, not without anxiety: “What does Your Majesty say
to this attempt?”
“Hm!” observed the monarch. “A little of Moor, something borrowed from
Titian, yet a great deal that is original. The bluish-grey leaden tone
comes from your shop. The thing is a wretched likeness! Sophonisba
resembles a gardener’s boy. Who made it?”
“My pupil, Ulrich Navarrete.”
“How long has he been painting?”
“For several months, Sire.”
“And you think he will be an artist of note?”
“Perhaps so. In many respects he surpasses my expectations, in others he
falls below them. He is a strange fellow.”
“He is ambitious, at any rate.”
“No small matter for the future artist. What he eagerly begins has a
very grand and promising aspect; but it shrinks in the execution. His
mind seizes and appropriates what he desires to represent, at a single
hasty grasp....”
“Rather too vehement, I should think.”
“No fault at his age. What he possesses makes me less anxious, than what
he lacks. I cannot yet discover the thoughtful artist-spirit in him.”
“You mean the spirit, that refines what it has once taken, and in quiet
meditation arranges lines, and assigns each color to its proper place,
in short your own art-spirit.”
“And yours also, Sire. If you had begun to paint early, you would have
possessed what Ulrich lacks.”
“Perhaps so. Besides, his defect is one of those which will vanish with
years. In your school, with zeal and industry....”
“He will obtain, you think, what he lacks. I thought so too! But as I
was saying: he is queerly constituted. What you have admitted to me more
than once, the point we have started from in a hundred conversations--he
cannot grasp: form is not the essence of art to him.”
The king shrugged his shoulders and pointed to his forehead; but Moor
continued: “Everything he creates must reflect anew, what he experienced
at the first sight of the subject. Often the first sketch succeeds, but
if it fails, he seeks without regard to truth and accuracy, by means
of trivial, strange expedients, to accomplish his purpose. Sentiment,
always sentiment! Line and tone are everything; that is our motto.
Whoever masters them, can express the grandest things.”
“Right, right! Keep him drawing constantly. Give him mouths, eyes, and
hands to paint.”
“That must be done in Antwerp.”
“I’ll hear nothing about Antwerp! You will stay, Antonio, you will stay.
Your wife and child-all honor to them. I have seen your wife’s portrait.
Good, nourishing bread! Here you have ambrosia and manna. You know whom
I mean; Sophonisba is attached to you; the queen says so.”
“And I gratefully feel it. It is hard to leave your gracious Majesty and
Sophonisba; but bread, Sire, bread--is necessary to life. I shall leave
friends here, dear friends--it will be difficult, very difficult, to
find new ones at my age.”
“It is the same with me, and for that very reason you will stay, if you
are my friend! No more! Farewell, Antonio, till we meet again, perhaps
to-morrow, in spite of a chaos of business. Happy fellow that you are!
In the twinkling of an eye you will be revelling in colors again, while
the yoke, the iron yoke, weighs me down.”
Moor thought he should be able to work undisturbed after the king had
left him, and left the door unbolted. He was standing before the easel
after dinner, engaged in painting, when the door of the corridor leading
to the treasury was suddenly flung open, without the usual warning, and
Philip again entered the studio. This time his cheeks wore a less pallid
hue than in the morning, and his gait showed no traces of the solemn
gravity, which had become a second nature to him,--on the contrary he
was gay and animated.
But the expression did not suit him; it seemed as if he had donned a
borrowed, foreign garb, in which he was ill at ease and could not move
freely.
Waving a letter in his right hand, he pointed to it with his left,
exclaiming:
“They are coming. This time two marvels at once. Our Saviour praying in
the garden of Gethsemane, and Diana at the Bath. Look, look! Even this
is a treasure. These lines are from Titian’s own hand.”
“A peerless old man,” Moor began; but Philip impetuously interrupted:
“Old man, old man? A youth, a man, a vigorous man. How soon he will be
ninety, and yet--yet; who will equal him?”
As he uttered the last words, the monarch stopped before Sophonisba’s
portrait, and pointing to it with the scornful chuckle peculiar to him,
continued gaily:
“There the answer meets me directly. That red! The Venetian’s laurels
seem to have turned your high flown pupil’s head. A hideous picture!”
“It doesn’t seem so bad to me,” replied Moor. “There is even something
about it I like.”
“You, you?” cried Philip. “Poor Sophonisba!”
“Those carbuncle eyes! And a mouth, that looks as if she could eat
nothing but sugar-plums. I don’t know what tickles me to-day. Give me
the palette. The outlines are tolerably good, the colors fairly shriek.
But what boy can understand a woman, a woman like your friend! I’ll
paint over the monster, and if the picture isn’t Sophonisba, it may
serve for a naval battle.”
The king had snatched the palette from the artist’s hand, clipped his
brush in the paint, and smiling pleasantly, was about to set to work;
but Moor placed himself between the sovereign and the canvas; exclaiming
gaily: “Paint me, Philip; but spare the portrait.”
“No, no; it will do for the naval battle,” chuckled the king, and while
he pushed the artist back, the latter, carried away by the monarch’s
unusual freedom, struck him lightly on the shoulder with the maul-stick.
The sovereign started, his lips grew white, he drew his small but
stately figure to its full height. His unconstrained bearing was
instantly transformed into one of unapproachable, icy dignity.
Moor felt what was passing in the ruler’s mind.
A slight shiver ran through his frame, but his calmness remained
unshaken, and before the insulted monarch found time to give vent to
his indignation in words, he said quickly, as if the offence he had
committed was not worth mentioning:
“Queer things are done among comrades in art. The painter’s war is
over! Begin the naval battle, Sire, or still better, lend more charm and
delicacy to the corners of the mouth. The pupil’s worst failure is in
the chin; more practised hands might be wrecked on that cliff. Those
eyes! Perhaps they sparkled just in that way, but we are agreed in
one thing: the portrait ought not to represent the original at a given
moment, ruled by a certain feeling or engaged in a special act, but
should express the sum of the spiritual, intellectual and
personal attributes of the subject--his soul and person, mind and
character-feelings and nature. King Philip, pondering over complicated
political combinations, would be a fascinating historical painting, but
no likeness....”
“Certainly not,” said the king in a low voice; “the portrait must reveal
the inmost spirit; mine must show how warmly Philip loves art and his
artists. Take the palette, I beg. It is for you, the great Master,
not for me, the overworked, bungling amateur, to correct the work of
talented pupils.”
There was a hypocritical sweetness in the tone of these words which had
not escaped the artist.
Philip had long been a master in the school of dissimulation, but Moor
knew him thoroughly, and understood the art of reading his heart.
This mode of expression from the king alarmed him more than a passionate
outburst of rage. He only spoke in this way when concealing what was
seething within. Besides, there was another token. The Netherlander
had intentionally commenced a conversation on art, and it was almost
unprecedented to find Philip disinclined to enter into one. The blow had
been scarcely perceptible, but Majesty will not endure a touch.
Philip did not wish to quarrel with the artist now, but he would
remember the incident, and woe betide him, if in some gloomy hour the
sovereign should recall the insult offered him here. Even the lightest
blow from the paw of this slinking tiger could inflict deep wounds--even
death.
These thoughts had darted with the speed of lightning through the
artist’s mind, and still lingered there as, respectfully declining to
take the palette, he replied “I beseech you, Sire, keep the brush and
colors, and correct what you dislike.”
“That would mean to repaint the whole picture, and my time is limited,”
answered Philip. “You are responsible for your pupils’ faults, as well
as for your own offences. Every one is granted, allowed, offered, what
is his due; is it not so, dear master? Another time, then, you shall
hear from me!” In the doorway the monarch kissed his hand to the artist,
then disappeared.