Among the notable prophets of the new and true--Rubens, Rembrandt,
Claude Lorraine--Velasquez was the newest and certainly the truest
from our point of view. He showed us the mystery of light as God
made it.
--_Stevenson_
[Illustration: Velasquez]
There be, among writing men, those who please the populace, and also
that Elect Few who inspire writers. When Horace Greeley gave his
daily message to the world, every editor of any power in America
paid good money for the privilege of being a subscriber to the
"Tribune." The "Tribune" had no exchange-list--if you wanted the
"Tribune" you had to buy it, and the writers bought it because it
wound up their clocks--set them agoing--and they either carefully
abstained from mentioning Greeley or else went in right valiantly
and exposed his vagaries.
Greeley may have been often right, and we now know he was often
wrong, but he infused the breath of life into his words--his
sentences were a challenge--he made men think. And the reason he
made men think was because he himself was a thinker.
Among modern literary men, the two English writers who have most
inspired writers are Carlyle and Emerson. They were writers'
writers. In the course of their work, they touched upon every phase
of man's experience and endeavor. You can not open their books
anywhere and read a page without casting about for your pencil and
pad. Strong men infuse into their work a deal of their own spirit,
and their words are charged with a suggestion and meaning beyond the
mere sound. There is a reverberation that thrills one. All art that
lives is thus vitalized with a spiritual essence: an essence that
ever escapes the analyst, but which is felt and known by all who
have hearts that throb and souls that feel.
Strong men make room for strong men. Emerson and Carlyle inspired
other men, and they inspired each other--but whether there be
warrant for that overworked reference to their "friendship" is a
question. Some other word surely ought to apply here, for their
relationship was largely a matter of the head, with a weather-eye on
Barabbas, and three thousand miles of very salt brine between them.
Carlyle never came to America: Emerson made three trips to England;
and often a year or more passed without a single letter on either
side. Tammas Carlyle, son of a stone-mason, with his crusty ways and
clay pipe, with personality plus, at close range would have been a
combination not entirely congenial to the culminating flower of
seven generations of New England clergymen--probably not more so
than was the shirt-sleeved and cravatless Walt, when they met that
memorable day by appointment at the Astor House.
Our first and last demand of Art is that it shall give us the
artist's best. Art is the mintage of the soul. All the whim, foible,
and rank personality are blown away on the winds of time--the good
remains.
Of artists who have inspired artists, and who being dead yet live,
Velasquez stands first.
"Velasquez was a painters' painter--the rest of us are only
painters." And when the man who painted "Symphonies in White"
further explained that a picture is finished when all traces of the
means used to bring about the end have disappeared--for work alone
will efface the footsteps of work--he had Velasquez in mind.
The subject of this sketch was born in the year Fifteen Hundred
Ninety-nine, and died in Sixteen Hundred Sixty. And while he lived
there also lived these: Shakespeare, Murillo, Cervantes, Rembrandt
and Rubens.
As an artist and a man Velasquez was the equal, in his way, of any
of the men just named. Ruskin has said, "Everything that Velasquez
does may be regarded as absolutely right." And Sir Joshua Reynolds
placed himself on record by saying, "The portrait of Pope Innocent
the Tenth by Velasquez, in the Doria Gallery, is the finest portrait
in all Rome." Yet until the year Seventeen Hundred Seventy-six, a
date Americans can easily remember, the work of Velasquez was
scarcely known outside of Spain. In that year Raphael Mengs wrote:
"How this painter, greater than Raphael or Titian, truer far than
Rubens or Van Dyck, should have been lost to view is more than I can
comprehend. I can not find words to describe the splendor of his
art!"
But enthusiasts who ebulliate at low temperature are plentiful. The
world wagged on in its sleepy way, and it was not until Eighteen
Hundred Twenty-eight that an Englishman, Sir David Wilkie, following
up the clue of Mengs, began quietly to buy up all the stray pictures
by Velasquez he could find in Spain. He sent them to England, and
the world one day awoke to the fact that Velasquez was one of the
greatest artists of all time. Curtis compiled a list of two hundred
seventy-four pictures by Velasquez, which he pronounces authentic.
Of these, one hundred twenty-one were owned in England, thirteen in
France, twelve in Austria and eight in Italy. At least fifteen of
the English 'oldings have since been transferred to America; so,
outside of England and Spain, America possesses more of the works of
this master than any other country. But of this be sure: no
"Velasquez" will ever leave Spain unless spirited out of the country
between two days--and if one is carried away, it will not be in the
false bottom of a trunk. Within a year one "Velasquez" was so found
secreted at Cadiz, and the owner escaped prison only by presenting
the picture, with his compliments, to the Prado Museum at Madrid.
The release of the prisoner, and the acceptance of the picture, were
both a bit irregular as a matter of jurisprudence; but I am told
that lawyers can usually arrange these little matters--Dame Justice
being blind in one eye.
There seems to have been some little discussion in the De Silva
family of Seville as to whether Diego should be a lawyer, and follow
in his father's footsteps, or become an artist and possibly a
vagrom. The father had hoped the boy would be his helper and
successor, and here the youngster was wasting his time drawing
pictures of water-jugs, baskets of flowers, old women and foolish
folk about the market!
Should it be the law-school or the studio of Herrera the painter?
To almost every fond father the idea of discipline is to have the
child act just as he does. But in this case the mother had her way,
or, more properly, she let the boy have his--as mothers do--and the
sequel shows that a woman's heart is sometimes nearer right than a
man's head.
The fact that "Velasquez" was the maiden name of his mother, and was
adopted by the young man, is a straw that tells which way the vane
of his affections turned. Diego was sixteen and troublesome. He
wasn't "bad"--only he had a rollicksome, flamboyant energy that
inundated everything, and made his absence often a blessing devoutly
to be wished. Herrera had fixed thoughts about art and deportment.
Diego failed to grasp the beauty and force of these ideas, and in
the course of a year he seems to have learned just one thing of
Herrera--to use brushes with very long handles and long bristles.
This peculiarity he clung to through life, and the way he floated
the color upon the canvas with those long, ungainly brushes, no one
understood; he really didn't know himself, and the world has long
since given up the riddle. But the scheme was Herrera's, improved
upon by Velasquez; yet not all men who paint with a brush that has a
handle eight feet long can paint like Velasquez.
In Herrera's studio there were often heated arguments as to merits
and demerits, flat contradictions as to facts, and wordy warfare
that occasionally resulted in broken furniture. On such occasions,
Herrera never hesitated to take a hand and soundly cuff a pupil's
ears, if the master thought the pupil needed it.
Velasquez has left on record the statement that Herrera was the most
dogmatic, pedantic, overbearing and quarrelsome man he ever knew.
Just what Herrera thought of the young man Velasquez, we
unfortunately do not know. But the belief is that Velasquez left
Herrera's studio on request of Herrera.
He next entered the studio of the rich and fashionable painter,
Pacheco. This man, like Macaulay, had so much learning that it ran
over and he stood in the slop. He wrote a book on painting, and
might also have carried on a Correspondence School wherein the art
of portraiture would be taught in ten easy lessons.
In Madrid and Seville are various specimens of work done by both
Herrera and Pacheco. Herrera had a certain style, and the early work
of Velasquez showed Herrera's earmarks plainly; but we look in vain
for a trace of influence that can be attributed to Pacheco.
Velasquez at eighteen could outstrip his master, and both knew it.
So Pacheco showed his good sense by letting the young man go his own
pace. He admired the dashing, handsome youth, and although Velasquez
broke every rule laid down in Pacheco's mighty tome, "Art As I Have
Found It," yet the master uttered no word of protest.
The boy was bigger than the book.
More than this, Pacheco invited the young man to come and make his
home with him, so as the better to avail himself of the master's
instruction. Now, Pacheco (like Brabantio in the play) had a
beautiful daughter--Juana by name. She was about the age of
Velasquez, gentle, refined and amiable. Love is largely a matter of
propinquity: and the world now regards Pacheco as a master
matchmaker as well as a master painter. Diego and Juana were
married, aged nineteen, and Pacheco breathed easier. He had attached
to himself the most daring and brilliant young man he had ever
known, and he had saved himself the annoyance of having his studio
thronged with a gang of suitors such as crowded the courts of
Ulysses.
Pacheco was pleased.
And why should Pacheco not have been pleased? He had linked his name
for all time with the History of Art. Had he not been the teacher
and father-in-law of Velasquez, his name would have been writ in
water, for in his own art there was not enough Attic salt to save
it; and his learning was a thing of dusty, musty books.
Pacheco's virtue consisted in recognizing the genius of Velasquez,
and hanging on to him closely, rubbing off all the glory that he
could make stick to himself.
To the day of his death Pacheco laid the flattering unction to his
soul that he had made Velasquez; but leaving this out of the
discussion, no one doubts that Velasquez plucked from oblivion the
name and fame of Pacheco.
"Those splendid blonde women of Rubens are the solaces of the
eternal fighting-man," writes Vance Thompson. The wife of Velasquez
was of the Rubens type: she looked upon her husband as the ideal.
She believed in him, ministered to him, and had no other gods before
him. She had but one ambition, and that was to serve her lord and
master.
Her faith in the man--in his power, in his integrity and in his art
--corroborated his faith in himself. We want One to believe in us,
and this being so, all else matters little.
Velasquez seems a type of the "eternal fighting-man"--not the
quarrelsome, quibbling man, who draws on slight excuse, but the man
with a message, who goes straight to his destination with a will
that breaks through every barrier, and pushes aside every obstacle.
With the savage type there is no progression: the noble red man is
content to be a noble red man all his days, and the result is that
in standing still he is retreating off the face of the earth. Not so
your "eternal fighting-man"--he is scourged by a restlessness that
allows him no rest nor respite save in his work.
Beware when a thinker and worker is let loose on the planet!
In the days of Velasquez, Spain had but two patrons for art: Royalty
and the Church.
Although nominally a Catholic, Velasquez had little sympathy with
the superstitions of the multitude. His religion was essentially a
Natural Religion: to love his friends, to bathe in the sunshine of
life, to preserve a right mental attitude--the receptive attitude,
the attitude of gratitude--and to do his work: these things were for
him the sum of life. His passion was art--to portray his feelings on
canvas and make manifest to others the things he himself saw. The
Church, he thought, did not afford sufficient outlet for his power.
Cherubs that could live only in the tropics, and wings without
muscles to manipulate them, did not mean much to him. The men and
women on earth appealed to him more than the angels in Heaven, and
he could not imagine a better paradise than this. So he painted what
he saw: old men, market-women, beggars, handsome boys and toddling
babies. These things did not appeal to prelates--they wanted
pictures of things a long way off. So from the Church Velasquez
turned his gaze toward the Court of Madrid.
Velasquez had been in the studio of Pacheco at Seville for five
years. During that time he filled the days with work--joyous, eager
work. He produced a good many valuable pictures and a great many
sketches, which were mostly given away. Yet today, Seville, with her
splendid art-gallery and her hundreds of palaces, contains not a
single specimen of the work of her greatest son.
It was a rather daring thing for a young man of twenty-four to knock
boldly at the gates of Royalty. But the application was made in
Velasquez's own way. All of his studies, which the critics
tauntingly called "tavern pieces," were a preparation for the life
and work before him. He had mastered the subtlety of the human face,
and had seen how the spirit shines through and reveals the soul.
To know how to write correctly is nothing--you must know something
worth recording. To paint is nothing--you must know what you are
portraying. Velasquez had become acquainted with humanity, and
gotten on intimate terms with life. He had haunted the waysides and
markets to good purpose; he had laid the foundation of those
qualities which characterize his best work: mastery of expression,
penetration into character, the ability to look upon a face and read
the thoughts that lurk behind, the crouching passions, and all the
aspirations too great for speech. To picture great men you must be a
great man.
Velasquez was twenty-four--dark, daring, silent, with a face and
form that proclaimed him a strong and valiant soul. Strong men can
well afford to be gentle--those who know can well cultivate silence.
The young man did not storm the doors of the Alcazar. No; at Madrid
he went quietly to work copying Titians in the gallery, and
incidentally painting portraits--Royalty must come to him. He had
faith in his power: he could wait. His wife knew the Court would
call him--he knew it, too--the Court of Spain needed Velasquez. It
is a fine thing to make yourself needed.
Nearly a year had passed, and Velasquez gave it out quietly that he
was about to return to his home in Seville. Artistic Madrid rubbed
its eyes. The Minister of State, the great Olivarez, came to him
with a commission from the King and a goodly payment in advance,
begging that, as soon as he had made a short visit to Seville, he
should return to Madrid. Apartments had already been set aside for
him in the Alcazar Palace. Would he not kindly comply?
Such a request from the King was really equal to an order. Velasquez
surely had no intention of declining the compliment, since he had
angled for it most ingeniously; but he took a little time to
consider it. Of course he talked it over with his wife and her
father, and we can imagine they had a quiet little supper by
themselves in honor of the event.
And so in the month of May, Sixteen Hundred Twenty-three, Diego de
Silva Velasquez duly became a member of the Royal Household, and
very soon was the companion, friend, adviser and attendant of the
King--that post which he was to hold for thirty-six years, ere Death
should call him hence.
"The farmer thinks that place and power are fine things, but let him
know that the President has paid dear for his White House," said the
sage of Concord.
The most miserable man I ever knew was one who married a rich woman,
managed her broad acres, looked after her bonds and made report of
her stocks. If the stocks failed to pay dividends, or the acres were
fallow, my friend had to explain why to the tearful wife and sundry
sarcastic next of kin.
The man was a Jeffersonian Democrat and preached the Life of
Simplicity, because we always preach about things that are not ours.
He rode behind horses that had docked tails, and apologized for
being on earth, to an awful butler in solemn black.
The man had married for a home--he got it. When he wanted funds for
himself, he was given dole, or else was put to the necessity of
juggling the Expense-Account.
If he wished to invite friends to his home, he had to prove them
standard-bred, morally sound in wind and limb, and free from fault
or blemish.
The good man might have lived a thoroughly happy life, with
everything supplied that he needed, but he acquired the Sanitarium
Habit, for which there is no cure but poverty. And this man could
not be poor even if he wanted to, for there were no grounds for
divorce. His wife loved him dearly, and her income of five thousand
dollars a month came along with startling regularity, willy-nilly.
Finally, at Hot Springs, Death gave him treatment and he was freed
from pain.
From this o'ertrue incident it must not be imagined that wealth and
position are bad things. Health is potential power. Wealth is an
engine that can be used for good if you are an engineer; but to be
tied to the flywheel of an engine is rather unfortunate. Had my
friend been big enough to rise supreme over horses with docked
tails, to subjugate a butler, to defy the next of kin and manage the
wife (without letting her know it), all would have been well.
But it is a Herculean task to cope with the handicap of wealth.
Mediocre men can endure failure; for, as Robert Louis the beloved
has pointed out, failure is natural, but worldly success is an
abnormal condition. In order to stand success you must be of very
stern fiber, with all the gods on your side.
The Alcazar Palace looked strong, solid and self-sufficient on the
outside. But inside, like every Court, it was a den of quibble,
quarrel, envy, and the hatred which, tinctured with fear, knocks an
anvil-chorus from day-dawn to dark.
A thousand people made up the household of Philip the Fourth. Any
one of these could be dismissed in an hour--the power of Olivarez,
the Minister, was absolute. Very naturally there were plottings and
counterplottings.
A Court is a prison to most of its inmates; no freedom is there--
thought is strangled and inspiration still-born. Yet life is always
breaking through. When locked in a cell in a Paris prison, Horace
Greeley wrote, "Thank God, at last I am free from intrusion."
"Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage," laughed
Lovelace. Have not some of the great books of the world been written
in prison? Things work by antithesis; and if your discipline is too
severe, you get no discipline at all. Puritanical pretense,
hypocrisy and a life of repression, with "thou shalt not" set on a
hair-trigger, have made more than one man bold, genuine and honest.
Draw the bow far enough this way, and your arrow will go a long way
that. Forbid a man to think for himself or to act for himself, and
you may add the joy of piracy and the zest of smuggling to his life.
In the Spanish Court, Velasquez found life a lie, public manners an
exaggeration, etiquette a pretense, and all the emotions put up in
sealed cans. Fashionable Society is usually nothing but Canned Life.
Look out for explosions! Velasquez held the balance true by an
artistic courage and an audacity of private thought that might not
have been his in a freer atmosphere. He did not wear his art upon
his sleeve: he outwardly conformed, but inwardly his soul towered
over every petty annoyance, and all the vain power of the fearing
and quibbling little princes touched him not.
Spain, under the rule of Philip the Second, grew great. Her ships
sailed every sea--the world contributed to her wealth. Art comes
after a surplus has accumulated and the mere necessaries of life
have been provided. Philip built great palaces, founded schools,
gave encouragement to the handicrafts, and sent his embassies
scouring the world for the treasures of Art. The King was a
practical man, blunt, farseeing, direct. He knew the cost of things,
studied out the best ways, ascertained right methods. He had the red
corpuscle, the deep convolution, and so was King. His ministers did
his bidding.
The grim sarcasm of entailed power is a thing so obvious that one
marvels it has escaped the recognition of mankind until yesterday.
But stay! Men have always seen its monstrous absurdity--hence the
rack.
The Spanish Inquisition, in which Church and State combined against
God, seems an awful extreme to show the depths of iniquity to which
Pride married to Hypocrisy can sink. Yet martyrdom has its
compensation. The spirit flies home upon the wings of victory, and
in the very moment of so-called defeat, the man has the blessed
consolation that he is still master of his fate--captain of his
soul.
The lesson of the Inquisition was worth the price--the martyrs
bought freedom for us. The fanged dogs of war, once turned loose
upon the man who dared to think, have left as sole successor only a
fat and harmless poodle, known as Social Ostracism. This poodle is
old, toothless and given over to introspection; it has to be fed on
pap; its only exercise is to exploit the horse-blocks, doze in
milady's lap, and dream of a long-lost canine paradise. The dog-
catcher awaits around the corner.
Philip the Third was an etiolated and perfumed dandy. In him culture
had begun to turn yellow. Men who pride themselves upon their
culture haven't any of which to speak. All the beauties of art, this
man thought, were exclusively for him and his precious company of
lisping exquisites and giggling, mincing queans. The thought that
those who create beauty are also they who possess it, never dawned
upon this crack-pated son of tired sheets.
He lived to enjoy--and so he never enjoyed anything.
Surfeit and satiety overtook him in the royal hog-wallow; digestion
and zest took flight. Philip the Third speedily became a wooden
Indian on wheels, moved by his Minister of State, the Duke of Lerma.
Huge animals sustain huge parasites, and so the Court of Philip the
Third, with its fools, dwarfs, idiots and all of its dancing,
jiggling, juggling, wasteful folly, did not succeed in wrecking the
land. When Philip the Third traveled, he sent hundreds of men ahead
to beat the swamps, day and night, in the vicinity of his royal
presence, so as to silence the frogs. He thought their croaking was
a personal matter meant for him.