SPANISH ART--VELASQUEZ, 1599-1660--MURILLO, 1618-1682.
Spanish art, from its dawn to the time of Velasquez, had been of a
'severely devotional character,' austere and formal; and although one
man did not work a revolution by his independent example, he did
something to humanize and widen art. In the rich city of Seville in
1599, Diego Rodriguez, de Silva y Velasquez,--and not, as he is
incorrectly called, Diego Velasquez de Silva, was born, and, according
to an Andalusian fashion, took his mother's name of Velasquez, while his
father was of the Portuguese house de Silva. Velasquez was gently born,
though his father was in no higher position than that of a lawyer in
Seville.
The painter was well educated, though, according to his English
biographer (Sir W. Stirling Maxwell), 'he was still more diligent in
drawing on his grammars and copybooks than in turning them to their
legitimate use.' The lad's evident bent induced his father to painter.
He studied in two different Spanish studios, and married the daughter of
his second master, whom the talents, assiduity, and good qualities of
Velasquez had already strongly attached to the young painter.
From the first, Velasquez struck out what was then a new line in Spanish
art. He gave himself up to the materialistic studies, to which the
Flemish and Dutch painters were prone, painting diligently 'still life'
in every form, taking his living subjects from the streets and
way-sides, and keeping a peasant lad as an apprentice, 'who served him
for a study in different actions and postures (sometimes crying,
sometimes laughing), till Velasquez had grappled with every variety of
expression.' The result of those studies was Velasquez's famous picture
of the 'Aguador,' or water-carrier of Seville, which was carried off by
Joseph Buonaparte in his flight from Spain, taken in his carriage at
Vittoria, and finally presented by Ferdinand VII, of Spain, as a
grateful offering to the Duke of Wellington, in whose gallery at Apsley
House the picture remains. 'It is a composition of three figures,' Sir
W. Stirling Maxwell writes; 'a sunburnt way-worn seller of water,
dressed in a tattered brown jerkin, with his huge earthen jars, and two
lads, one of whom receives a sparkling glass of the pure element, whilst
his companion quenches his thirst from a pipkin. The execution of the
heads and all the details is perfect; and the ragged trader dispensing a
few maravidi's worth of his simple stock, maintains, during the
transaction, a grave dignity of deportment, highly Spanish and
characteristic, and worthy of an emperor pledging a great vassal in
Tokay.'
Just such a group may still be seen, or was to be seen till very lately,
in the quaint streets of Seville. I have read an anecdote of Velasquez
and this picture, which is quite probable, though I cannot vouch for
its accuracy. It is said that, while painting the water-carrier day
after day, when he had been engaged with his work for several hours,
Velasquez found himself vexed by perceiving, as it were, the effect of a
shadow cast by some of the drapery. Small flaw as it might have been, it
appeared to him to interfere with and spoil the picture. Again and
again, in endeavouring to do away with this 'shadow,' Velasquez undid
portions of his work, and had to repeat them next day, but always,
towards the end of his task, the invidious shadow stole upon his vision.
At last a friend, who was present and full of admiration for the
picture, heard Velasquez exclaim, 'That shadow again!' and saw him seize
a brush and prepare to dash it across the canvas. The friend
remonstrated, besought, and by main force held back the painter, and at
last induced him to leave the picture untouched till next day, when
Velasquez discovered, to his great relief, that the shadow had been in
his own wearied young eyes, and not in his admirable representation of
the 'Water-carrier.'
Velasquez was in Madrid in 1623, when he was in his twenty-fifth year,
and having been introduced by the Prime Minister, Olivares, to the King
of Spain, Philip IV., a king who was only known to smile once or twice
in his lifetime, whose government was careless and blundering, but who
had the reputation of being a man of some intelligence and very
considerable taste,--Velasquez was received into the king's service with
a monthly salary of twenty ducats, and employed to paint the royal
portrait.
From the time that he became court painter, Velasquez was largely
occupied in painting portraits of members of the royal family, with
special repetitions of the likeness of his most Catholic Majesty. With
Velasquez's first portrait of Philip in armour, mounted on an Andalusian
charger, the king was so pleased, that he permitted the picture to be
publicly exhibited, amidst the plaudits of the spectators, in front of
the church of San Felipe el Real in Madrid. Nor was the exhibition a
barren honour to the painter, for the king not only 'talked of
collecting and in future Velasquez should have the monopoly of the royal
countenance,' he paid three hundred ducats for the picture.
About this time our own Charles I., then Prince of Wales, went in his
incognito of Charles Smith to Madrid on his romantic adventure of
seeking to woo and win, personally, the Infanta of Spain, and Velasquez
is said to have gained Charles's notice, and to have at least begun a
portrait of him. If it were ever completed it has been lost, a
misfortune which has caused spurious pictures, purporting to be the real
work, to be offered to the public. Sir W. Stirling Maxwell holds, with
great show of truth, that this visit of Charles to Madrid, when its
altars were 'glowing' with the pictures of Titian, confirmed the unhappy
king's taste for art.
In 1628 Rubens came to Madrid as an envoy from the governess of the
Netherlands, and the two painters, who had many points in common, and
who had already corresponded, became fast friends. By the advice of
Rubens, Velasquez was induced to put into execution his cherished
desire of visiting Italy, the king granting his favourite painter leave
of absence, the continuance of his salary, and a special sum for his
expenses.
Velasquez went to Venice first, and afterwards to Rome, where he was
offered, and declined, a suite of apartments in the Vatican, asking only
free access to the papal galleries. There he copied many portions of
Michael Angelo's 'Last Judgment'--not a hundred years old, and 'yet
undimmed by the morning and evening incense of centuries,' and portions
of the frescoes of Raphael. At Rome Velasquez found there before him,
Domenichino, Guido Reni, alternating 'between the excitements of the
gaming table and the sweet creations of his smooth flowing pencil;'
'Nicolas Poussin, an adventurer fresh from his Norman village; and
Claude Gelée, a pastry-cook's runaway apprentice from Lorraine.'[27]
Velasquez remained a year in Rome. Besides his studies he painted three
original pictures, one of them, 'Joseph's Coat,' well known among the
painter's comparatively rare religious works, and now in the Escurial.
In this picture his biographer acknowledges, that 'choosing rather to
display his unrivalled skill in delineating vulgar forms than to risk
his reputation in the pursuit of a more refined and idealized style,'
Velasquez's 'Hebrew patriarchs are swineherds of Estramadura or
shepherds of the Sierra Morena.'
From Rome Velasquez proceeded to Naples, where he was enabled by his
prudence and forbearance to face without injury the disgraceful 'reign
of terror' which the Neapolitan artists had established in the south of
Italy. The Neapolitan artists more than any other Italian artists are
believed to have influenced Velasquez's style.
In 1639 Velasquez painted his principal religious work, 'The
Crucifixion,' for the nunnery of San Placido in Madrid, a painting in
which his power has triumphed successfully over his halting imagination.
With regard to the many court groups which Velasquez was constantly
taking, I may quote Sir W. Stirling Maxwell's amusing paragraph about a
curious variety of human beings in the Court Gallery. 'The Alcazar of
Madrid abounded with dwarfs in the days of Philip IV., who was very fond
of having them about him, and collected curious specimens of the race,
like other rarities. The Queen of Spain's gallery is, in consequence,
rich in portraits of these little monsters, executed by Velasquez. They
are, for the most part, very ugly, displaying, sometimes in an extreme
degree, the deformities peculiar to their stunted growth. Maria Barbola,
immortalized by a place in one of Velasquez's most celebrated pictures,
was a little dame about three feet and a half in height, with the head
and shoulders of a large woman, and a countenance much underjawed, and
almost ferocious in expression. Her companion, Nicolasito Pertusano,
although better proportioned than the lady, and of a more amicable
aspect, was very inferior in elegance as a royal plaything to his
contemporary, the valiant Sir Geoffrey Hudson; or his successor in the
next reign, the pretty Luisillo of Queen Louisa of Orleans. Velasquez
painted many portraits of these little creatures, generally seated on
the ground; and there is a large picture in the Louvre representing two
of them leading by a cord a great spotted hound, to which they bear the
same proportion that men of the usual size bear to a horse.'
In 1648 Velasquez again visited Italy, sent by the king this time to
collect works of art for the royal galleries and the academy about to be
founded. Velasquez went by Genoa, Milan, Venice (buying there chiefly
the works of Tintoret), and Parma, to Rome and Naples, returning to
Rome. At Rome Velasquez painted his splendidly characteristic portrait
of the Pope Innocent X., 'a man of coarse features and surly expression,
and perhaps the ugliest of all the successors of St Peter.'
Back at Madrid, Philip continued to load Velasquez and his family with
favours, appointing the painter Quarter-Master-General of the king's
household with a salary of three thousand ducats a year, and the right
of carrying at his girdle a key which opened every lock in the palace.
Philip is said to have raised Velasquez to knighthood in a manner as
gracious as the manner of Charles V, when he lifted up Titian's pencil.
In painting one of his most renowned pictures, to which I shall refer
again, 'The Maids of Honour,' Velasquez included himself at work on a
large picture of the royal family. The painter represented himself with
the key of his office at his girdle, and on his breast the red cross of
the Order of Santiago. Philip, who came every day to see the progress of
this picture, remarked in reference to the figure of the artist, that
'one thing was yet wanting, and taking up the brush painted the knightly
insignia with his own royal fingers, thus conferring the accolade with a
weapon not recognized in chivalry.'
As it is believed, Velasquez's court office, with all its prestige and
influence, helped in causing his death. King Philip went in June, 1660,
to the Isle of Pheasants in the river Bidassa, where, on ground which
was neither Spanish nor French, the Spanish and French courts were to
meet and celebrate with the greatest magnificence the marriage of the
Grand Monarque and the Infanta Maria Teresa. One of Velasquez's
official duties was to prepare lodgings for the king on his journeys,
and in this instance the lodging included not only the decoration of the
castle of Fuenterrabia, but the erection of a sumptuous pavilion in
which the interviews of the assembled kings and queens and their
revelries were to be held. Velasquez did his part of the preparations,
and doubtless shared in the royal festivities, but returned to Madrid so
worn out by his undertaking, and by constant attendance on his master,
that he was seized with tertian fever, of which he died a few days
later, while but in his sixty-first year, to the great grief of his
countrymen, and above all of his king. Velasquez's wife, Doña Juana,
died eight days after her husband, and was buried in his grave. The
couple left one surviving child, a daughter, married to a painter.
In one picture, now at Vienna, Velasquez gives a glimpse of his family
life at a time when it would seem that he had four sons and two
daughters, so that the fortunate painter's home had not been free from
one shadow--that of death, which must have robbed him of five of his
children. In this pleasant picture, 'his wife dressed in a brown tunic
over a red petticoat, sits in the foreground of a large room, with a
pretty little girl leaning on her knees, and the rest of her children
grouped around her; behind are the men in deep shadow, one of them,
perhaps, being Mazo, the lover or the husband of the eldest daughter,
and a nurse with a child; and in an alcove Velasquez himself appears,
standing before his easel, at work on a portrait of Philip IV. This is
one of the most important works of the master out of the Peninsula; the
faces of the family sparkle on the sober background like gems. As a
piece of easy actual life, the composition has never been surpassed, and
perhaps it excels even "The Meninas," inasmuch as the hoops and dwarfs
of the palace have not intruded upon the domestic privacy of the
painter's home, in the northern gallery.'[28]
Velasquez seems to have been a man of honour and amiability. He filled
a difficult office at the most jealous court in Europe with credit. He
was true to his friends, and helpful to his brother artists. His
biographer writes of Velasquez as handsome in person, and describes his
costume when he appeared for the last time with his king in the galas at
Pheasants' Isle:--'over a dress richly laced with silver he wore the
usual Castilian ruff, and a short cloak embroidered with the red cross
of Santiago; the badge of the order, sparkling with brilliants, was
suspended from his neck by a gold chain; and the scabbard and hilt of
his sword were of silver, exquisitely chased, and of Italian
workmanship.' In the likeness of Velasquez, which is the frontispiece of
Sir W. Stirling Maxwell's 'Life,' the painter appears as a man of
swarthy complexion, with a long compressed upper lip, unconcealed by his
long, elaborately trimmed moustache; his hair, or wig, is arranged in
two large frizzed bunches on each side of a face which is inclined to be
lantern-jawed. He wears a dark doublet with a 'standing white collar.'
Velasquez's excellence as a painter was to be found, like that of
Rembrandt, in his truth to nature; but the field of truth presented to
the stately Spaniard, while it had its own ample share of humour, was a
widely different field from that which offered itself to the Dutch
burgher. Together with absolute truth, Velasquez had the ease and
facility in expressing truth which are only acquired by a great master.
Like Rubens, Velasquez made essays in many branches of painting. In
sacred art, if we except his 'Crucifixion,' he did not attain a high
place. With regard to his landscapes, Sir David Wilkie bore
witness:--'Titian seems his model, but he has also the breadth and
picturesque effect for which Claude and Salvator Rosa are remarkable;'
and Sir David added of those landscapes, 'they have the very same sun we
see, and the air we breathe, the very soul and spirit of nature.'
Velasquez's _genre_ pictures, to which I shall refer by and by, are
excellent, but the fate was kind which confined him largely to portrait
painting. It was brought as a reproach against Velasquez in his
lifetime, that he could paint a head and nothing else, to which he
replied with mingled spirit, sense, and good nature, that his detractors
flattered him, 'for he knew nobody of whom it could be said that he
painted a head thoroughly well.'
Sir W. Stirling Maxwell asserts of Velasquez's portrait painting, that
no artist 'ever followed nature with more catholic fidelity; his
cavaliers are as natural as his boors; he neither refined the vulgar,
nor vulgarized the refined,' and goes on to quote this among other
criticism:--'his portraits baffle description and praise; he drew the
minds of men; they live, breathe, and are ready to walk out of the
frames.' Sir William winds up with the enthusiastic declaration, 'Such
pictures as these are real history; we know the persons of Philip IV,
and Olivares, as familiarly as if we had paced the avenues of the Pardo
with Digby and Howell, and perhaps we think more favourably of their
characters.'
I shall borrow still further from Sir W. Stirling Maxwell's graphic and
entertaining book, descriptions of two of Velasquez's _genre_ pictures,
'The Maids of Honour,' and the more celebrated 'Spinners,' both at
Madrid. 'The scene (of the first) is a long room in a quarter of the old
palace which was called the prince's quarter, and the subject, Velasquez
at work on a large picture of the royal family. To the extreme right of
the composition is seen the back of the easel and the canvas on which he
is engaged; and beyond it spalette, pausing to converse, and to observe
the effect of his performance. In the centre stands the little Infanta
Maria Margarita, taking a cup of water from a salver which Doña Maria
Augustina Sarmiento, maid of honour to the queen, presents kneeling. To
the left, Doña Isabel de Velasco, another meniña, seems to be dropping a
courtesy; and the dwarfs, Maria Barbolo and Nicolas Pertusano, stand in
the foreground, the little man putting his foot on the quarters of a
great tawny hound, which despises the aggression, and continues in a
state of solemn repose. Some paces behind these figures, Doña Marcela de
Ulloa, a lady of honour in nun-like weeds, and a _guardadimas,_ are seen
in conversation; at the far end of the room an open door gives a view of
a staircase, up which Don Josef Nieto, queen's apasentador, is retiring;
and near this door there hangs on the wall a mirror, which, reflecting
the countenance of the king and queen, shows that they form part of the
principal group, although placed beyond the bounds of the picture. The
room is hung with paintings which Palomino assures us are works of
Rubens; and it is lighted by three windows in the left wall, and by the
open door at the end, an arrangement of which an artist will at once
comprehend the difficulties. The perfection of art which conceals art,
was never better attained than in this picture. Velasquez seems to have
anticipated the discovery of Daguerre, and taking a real room, and real
chance grouped people, to have fixed them, as it were by magic, for all
time on his canvas. The little fair-haired Infanta is a pleasing study
of childhood; with the hanging-lip and full cheek of the Austrian
family, she has a fresh complexion and lovely blue eyes, and gives a
promise of beauty which as empress she never fulfilled. Her young
attendants, girls of thirteen or fourteen, contrast agreeably with the
ill-favoured dwarf beside them; they are very pretty, especially Doña
Isabel de Velasco, who died a reigning beauty, and their hands are
painted with peculiar delicacy. Their dresses are highly absurd, their
figures being concealed by long stiff corsets and prodigious hoops; for
these were the days when the mode was--
"Supporters, pooters, fardingales, above the loynes to weare;"
and the _guardainfante_, the oval hoop peculiar to Spain, was in full
blow; and the robes of a dowager might have curtained the tun of
Heidelberg, and the powers of Velasquez were baffled by the perverse
fancy of "Fribble, the woman's tailor." The gentle and majestic hound,
stretching himself and winking drowsily, is admirably painted, and seems
a descendant of the royal breed immortalized by Titian in portraits of
the Emperor Charles and his son.'
'The Spinners:' 'The scene is a large weaving-room, in which an old
woman and young one sit, the first at her spinning-wheel, and the
second winding yarn, with three girls beside them, one of whom plays
with a cat. In the background, standing within an alcove filled with the
light from an unseen window, are two other women displaying a large
piece of tapestry to a lady customer, whose graceful figure recalls that
which has given its name to Terburg's picture of "The Satin Gown." Of
the composition, the painter Mengs observed, "it seemed as if the hand
had no part in it, and it had been the work of pure thought."'
Velasquez, who must have seen many a bull fight, has left the world a
fine example of field sports in 'The Boar Hunt,' in our National
Gallery, a picture which was bought for two thousand two hundred pounds
from Lord Cowley. When ambassador at the Court of Spain, it was given to
him by Ferdinand VII. In a circular pen in the Pardo, 'Philip IV. and a
party of cavaliers display their skill in slaying boars, to a few
ladies, who sit secure in heavy old-fashioned blue coaches,' while
motley groups of courtiers and peasants, huntsmen and hounds, postilions
and their mules fill the foreground. Sir Edwin Landseer remarked of
this picture that he had never before seen 'so much large art on so
small a scale.'
Bartolomé Estévan Murillo was born at Seville in 1618, and was therefore
nearly twenty years younger than his great countryman Velasquez. Murillo
seems to have been of obscure origin, and to have begun his life in
humble circumstances. There are traditions of his being self-taught, of
his studying ragged boys, himself little more than a boy, in the gypsy
quarter of Triana in Seville; of his painting in the marketplace, where
he probably found the originals of the heads of saints and Madonnas (by
which he made a little money in selling them for South America) in the
peasants who came to Seville with their fruit and vegetables. In 1642,
Murillo, then twenty-four years of age, visited Madrid, and was kindly
received, and aided in his art by his senior and fellow artist, the
court painter, Velasquez. It had been Murillo's intention to proceed to
England to study under Van Dyck, but the death of the latter put a stop
to the project. Murillo was prevented from making the painter's
pilgrimage to Italy by want of means, but the loss of culture was so far
supplied by the instructions given to him by Velasquez.
In 1645, when Murillo was twenty-seven years of age, he returned to
Seville, and settled there, becoming as successful as he deserved; and
being acknowledged as the head of the school of Seville, where he
established the Academy of Art, and was its first president. Murillo
married, in 1648, a lady of some fortune, and was accustomed to
entertain at his house the most exclusive society of Seville.
In 1682, Murillo was at Cadiz painting a picture of the marriage of St
Catherine in the church of the Capuchins there, when, in consequence of
the accidental fall of the scaffolding, he received so severe an injury,
that he was forced to leave his work incomplete, and to return to
Seville, where he died within a few weeks, aged sixty-four years. He had
two sons, and an only daughter, who was a nun, having taken the veil
eight years before her father's death.
Murillo appears to have been in character a gentle, enthusiastic man,
not without a touch of fun and frolic. He would remain for hours in the
sacristy of the cathedral of Seville before 'the solemn awful picture of
the 'Deposition from the Cross,' by Pedro de Campana. When Murillo was
asked by the sacristan why he stood thus gazing there, the painter
answered, 'I am waiting till these holy men have finished their work.'
By his own desire, Murillo was buried before this picture. Before
another 'too truthful picture of Las dos Cadaveres' in the small church
of the hospital of the Caridad, Murillo used to hold his nose. One of
Murillo's pictures has the odd name of 'La Virgen Sarvilleta,' or the
Virgin of the Napkin. Murillo was working at the Convento de la Merced,
which is almost filled with his works, when the cook of the convent
begged a memorial of him, offering as the canvas a napkin, on which
Murillo at once painted a 'brilliant glowing Madonna,' with a child,
'which seems quite to bound forward out of the picture.'[29]
Murillo's portrait by himself represents him in a dark doublet having
wide sleeves and a square collar closed in front. His thumb is in his
pallet, and the other hand, with fingers taper and delicate as those of
a hand by Van Dyck, holds one of his brushes. The smooth face, with
regular features, is pale and thoughtful, and with the womanliness of
the aspect increased from the dark hair, which is divided slightly to
one side, being allowed to fall down in long wavy curls on the
shoulders.
In spite of the naturalistic studies of his early youth, and even of the
naturalistic treatment which he gave to his first religious work,
Murillo was possessed of greater and higher imagination than Velasquez
could claim, and the longer Murillo lived and worked the more refined
and exalted his ideas became. Unlike Velasquez, Murillo was a great
religious painter, and during the last years of his life he painted
sacred subjects almost exclusively. But, like Velasquez, Murillo was
eminently a Spanish painter--his virgins are dark-eyed,
olive-complexioned maidens, and even his Holy Child is a Spanish babe.
Without the elevation and the training of the best Italian painters,
Murillo has left abundant proofs of great original genius. The painter's
works are widely circulated, but the chief are still in Seville. Six are
in the church of the Caridad, and these six include his famous 'Moses
striking the Rock,' and his 'Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes;' seven
'Murillos' are in the Convento de la Merced, among them Murillo's own
favourite picture, which he called 'Mi Cicadro' of 'St Thomas of
Villaneuva.' 'St Thomas was the favourite preacher of Charles V., and
was created Archbishop of Valencia, where he seemed to spend the whole
of his revenues in charity, yet never contracted any debt, so that his
people used to believe that angels must minister to his temporal wants.
He is represented at his cathedral door, distributing alms, robed in
black, with a white mitre. A poor cripple kneels at his feet, and other
mendicants are grouped around.'
In the cathedral, Seville, is Murillo's 'Angel de la Guarda,' 'in which
a glorious seraph, with spreading wings, leads a little trustful child
by the hand, and directs him to look beyond earth into the heavenly
light;' and his 'St Antonio.' 'The saint is represented kneeling in a
cell, of which all the poor details are faithfully given, while the long
arcade of the cloister can be seen through the half-open door. Above, in
a transparent light, which grows from himself, the Child Jesus appears,
and descends, floating through wreaths of angels, drawn down by the
power of prayer.'[30]
Another of Murillo's renowned pictures is that of the patron saints of
Seville, 'Santa Rufina and Santa Justina,' who were stoned to death for
refusing to bow down to the image of Venus.
With regard to Murillo's pictures of flower-girls and beggar-boys, I
think my readers are sure to have seen an engraving of one of the
former, '_The_ Flower-Girl,' as it is called, with a face as fresh and
radiant as her flowers. In the National Gallery there is a large Holy
Family of Murillo's, and in Dulwich Gallery there is a laughing boy, an
irresistible specimen of brown-cheeked, white-teethed drollery.