_Velazquez_ (Spanish: 1599-1660).
Don Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velazquez was born at Seville of
well-to-do parents--his father's name being Silva, his mother's
Velazquez. His talent for drawing quickly showed itself, and
when only twenty he married Juana, the daughter of his second
master, Pacheco (his first being another painter of Seville,
Herrera). Pacheco's house, says one of the Spanish historians,
was "the golden prison of painting," and it was here that
Velazquez met Cervantes, and obtained his first introduction
to the brilliant circle in which he was himself to shine. In
Pacheco's company he went in 1622 to Madrid, where he had
influential friends, and next year he was invited to return
by Olivares, the king's great minister. Olivares persuaded
the king to sit to Velazquez for his portrait. The portrait
was a complete success, and the painter stepped at once into
fame and favour. This immediate success is characteristic of
his extraordinary facility. "Just think," says Ruskin, "what
is implied when a man of the enormous power and facility that
Reynolds had, says he was 'trying to do with great labour'
what Velazquez 'did at once.'" Velazquez shows indeed "the
highest reach of technical perfection yet attained in art; all
effort and labour seeming to cease in the radiant peace and
simplicity of consummate human power"[109] (_Two Paths_, § 68;
_Fors Clavigera_, 1876, p. 188). From the time of this first
portrait of Philip IV. onwards, the life of Velazquez was one
long triumph. He was not only the favourite but the friend of
the king. He was made in succession painter to the king, keeper
of the wardrobe, usher of the royal chamber, and chamberlain,
and offices were also found for his friends and relations.
He lived in the king's palace on terms of close intimacy,
painting the king and his family in innumerable attitudes, and
accompanying him on his royal progresses. When our Charles I.,
then Prince of Wales, visited Madrid in 1623, Velazquez painted
his portrait, and figured in all the royal fêtes held in the
English prince's honour. The Duke of Buckingham, it would seem,
was also his friend, and Velazquez saw much too of Rubens, when
the latter came on his diplomatic mission to Madrid. Rubens
advised Velazquez to visit Italy, and in 1630 the king gave
his consent. He travelled with recommendations from the king,
and wherever he went--Venice, Ferrara, Rome, Naples--he was
received with all the honours accorded to princes. His second
visit to Italy was in 1648, when the king sent him to buy
pictures with the view of forming a Spanish Academy. At Rome he
painted the portrait of the Pope (Innocent X.), which made so
great a mark that it was carried in triumphal procession, like
Cimabue's picture of old. His royal master, however, became
impatient for his return, and he hurried back to Madrid, after
giving commissions to all the leading artists then at Rome. On
his return he was given fresh honours and offices--especially
that of Marshal of the Court, whose duty it was to superintend
the personal lodgment of the king during excursions. It was
the duties of this office which were the immediate cause
of his death. He accompanied the king to the conference at
Irun--on the "Island of the Pheasants"--which led to the
marriage of Louis XIV. with the Infanta Maria Teresa. There is
a picture of him at Versailles by the French artist Lebrun,
which was painted on this occasion. The portrait, sombre
and cadaverous-looking, was no doubt true to life; and when
Velazquez returned to Madrid, it was found that his exertions
in arranging the royal journey had sown the seeds of a fever,
from which after a week's illness he died. Seven days later his
wife died of grief, and was buried at his side.
Though Velazquez spent all his life, as we have seen, amongst
the great ones of the earth, no trace of vanity or meanness
is discernible in his character. Ruskin (_The Two Paths_,
§§ 62, 65) connects his sweetness of disposition with the
truthfulness which was characteristic of his art. "The art
which is especially dedicated to natural fact always indicates
a peculiar gentleness and tenderness of mind, and all great and
successful work of that kind will assuredly be the production
of thoughtful, sensitive, earnest, kind men, large in their
views of life, and full of various intellectual power ... (One
instance is Reynolds). The other painter whom I would give
you as an instance of this gentleness is a man of another
nation, on the whole I suppose one of the most cruel civilised
nations in the world,--the Spaniards. They produced but one
great painter, only one; but he among the very greatest of
painters, Velazquez. You would not suppose, from looking at
Velazquez's portraits generally, that he was an especially kind
or good man; you perceive a peculiar sternness about them;
for they were as true as steel, and the persons whom he had
to paint being not generally kind or good people, they were
stern in expression, and Velazquez gave the sternness; but he
had precisely the same intense perception of truth, the same
marvellous instinct for the rendering of all natural soul and
all natural form that our Reynolds had. Let me, then, read you
his character as it is given by Mr. Stirling (afterwards Sir
W. Stirling-Maxwell): 'Certain charges, of what nature we are
not informed, brought against him after his death, made it
necessary for his executor to refute them at a private audience
granted to him by the king for that purpose. After listening
to the defence of his friend, Philip immediately made answer,
"I can believe all you say of the excellent disposition of
Diego Velazquez." Having lived for half his life in courts, he
was yet capable both of gratitude and generosity.... No mean
jealousy ever influenced his conduct to his brother artists; he
could afford not only to acknowledge the merits, but to forgive
the malice of his rivals. His character was of that rare and
happy kind, in which high intellectual power is combined
with indomitable strength of will, and a winning sweetness
of temper.'" Nothing shows his character better than his
treatment of Murillo, who came to Madrid, an unfriended youth,
in 1640. Velazquez received him to his house, gave directions
for his admission to all the galleries and for permission to
copy, presented him to the king, procured him commissions, and
offered him facilities for making the journey to Rome.
The chief characteristics of Velazquez's art have been already
incidentally alluded to. "Rejecting all influences," says Sir
Frederick Burton, "alike native and foreign, and following
nature alone, he succeeded in imitating the true appearances
of things as seen through the atmosphere that surrounds them,
with a fidelity that has never been matched. Whatever he
undertook to paint, whether the human face and figure, other
animals, or landscape scenery, the result in his hands was a
presentment intensely individualised, and yet, at the same
time, suggestive of the type." Some modern writers claim the
work of Velazquez as "impressionism"--a much abused and a
very ill-defined term. Certainly Velazquez, like every other
great artist, painted his impressions. But his sheet-anchor
was fidelity to fact; and as for his _technique_, it was
only by constant observation and practice that he attained
that lightness of hand, that felicity of touch, by which his
later work is characterised. For a painting of the master's
earliest period, see 1375. The truthfulness of Velazquez had
its reward, says Ruskin, in making him distinguished also
amongst all Spanish painters by the sparkling purity of his
colour. "Colour is, more than all elements of art, the reward
of veracity of purpose.... In giving an account of anything
for its own sake, the most important points are those of form.
Nevertheless, the form of the object is its own attribute;
special, not shared with other things. An error in giving an
account of it does not necessarily involve wider error. But
its colour is partly its own, partly shared with other things
round it. The hue and power of all broad sunlight is involved
in the colour it has cast upon this single thing; to falsify
that colour, is to misrepresent and break the harmony of the
day: also, by what colour it bears, this single object is
altering hues all round it; reflecting its own into them,
displaying them by opposition, softening them by repetition;
one falsehood in colour in one place, implies a thousand in
the neighbourhood.... Hence the apparent anomaly that the only
schools of colour are the schools of Realism.... Velazquez,
the greatest colourist, is the most accurate portrait painter
of Spain" (_Modern Painters_, vol. v. pt. ix. ch. xi. § 8
_n._).[110] It is curious that the influence of Velazquez was
in his own time and country comparatively circumscribed. He
exercised no such overpowering attraction as that of Leonardo,
or Raphael, or Michael Angelo. The real followers of Velazquez
are painters of our own day, and more especially the French
painters of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and
their imitators in the other schools of Europe and America.
A very interesting picture, both for the sparkling brilliancy of its
execution and for the truth with which it reproduces the court life
of the time. Philip IV. was as fond of the chase as he was of the
arts; and here we see some state hunting-party in a royal enclosure
(such as was arranged, no doubt, for the pleasure of our Charles I.
when he visited Madrid), with an array of huntsmen and guards, and
magnificent carriages for the ladies of the court. "The king has just
thrown his _horquilla_ [a kind of pitchfork] into the flank of a boar
tearing furiously by.... Here the heroes of the day are very slightly
sketched, but we at once recognise Philip IV. from the few touches
suggesting his face; he keeps to the right, owing to the proximity
of the ladies, and by him stands Olivares as equerry-in-chief.... In
the second carriage is Queen Isabella. Occasionally the boars made
tremendous leaps; hence the ladies are also provided with pitchforks
to turn them aside. Moreover, two huntsmen with spears keep watch by
the Queen's coach. The groups of spectators deserve minute study.
They contain studies of costume and character enough for a scrap-book
of "Castilian Types of the Seventeenth Century." Thus, notice under
the tree on the right a peasant resting with elbows and chest on
the patient back of his beloved ass--verily, another Sancho Panza!
And those two rogues on the grass, one holding the water-jug to his
mouth, look like a sketch by Murillo. The mendicant, again, in the
brown cloak, both hands resting on his stick, is surely a privileged
speculator, who solemnly invites the rich folk to increase their stock
in the next world by entrusting their investments to him. Elsewhere is
a rider slashing at the hard flanks of his obstinate mule, while his
_escudero_ shoves from behind; two cavaliers paying each other formal
compliments; a group of experts in "dog-flesh" near the master of the
hounds, thronging round the fine boar-hound, who has been ripped up by
the quarry. Notice, too, the isolated group of cavaliers in grey and
scarlet cloaks, with the clergyman, perhaps the "chaplain to the hunt."
They stand apart from the scene, having more weighty matters on hand."
"The figures do not seem very numerous, as they are scattered about
without a trace of conventional grouping. Yet, even without the heads
that are merely suggested, there are over a hundred figures, some sixty
outside and fifty inside the central enclosure. Sir Edwin Landseer
declared that he had never seen so much large art on so small a scale"
(Justi's _Velazquez and his Times_, pp. 212-14). Notice especially the
two splendid dogs near the left-hand corner. Velazquez is very great in
painting dogs; he "has made some of them nearly as grand as his surly
kings" (_Modern Painters_, vol. v. pt. ix. ch. vi. § 13).
With regard to the execution of the picture (which was bought in 1846
and was alleged to have been damaged in cleaning), Ruskin wrote:
"I have seldom met with an example of the master which gave me
more delight, or which I believed to be in more genuine or perfect
condition.... (The critic's) complaint of loss of substance in the
figures of the foreground is, I have no doubt, altogether groundless.
He has seen little southern scenery if he supposes that the brilliancy
and apparent nearness of the silver clouds is in the slightest degree
overcharged; and shows little appreciation of Velazquez in supposing
him to have sacrificed the solemnity and might of such a distance
to the inferior interest of the figures in the foreground.... The
position of the horizon suggests, and the _lateral_ extent of the
foreground _proves_, such a distance between the spectator and even
its nearest figures as may well justify the slightness of their
execution. Even granting that some of the upper glazings of the figures
had been removed, the tone of the whole picture is so light, grey,
and glittering, and the dependence on the power of its whites so
absolute, that I think the process hardly to be regretted which has
left these in lustre so precious, and restored to a brilliancy which a
comparison with any modern work of similar aim would render apparently
supernatural, the sparkling motion of its figures and the serene snow
of its sky"[111] (_Arrows of the Chace_, i. 58-60).