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THE STORY
OF SPANISH PAINTING
[Illustration:
S. JEROME EL GRECO
COLLECTION OF THE MARQUÉS DE CASTRO SERNA]
THE STORY OF
SPANISH PAINTING
BY
CHARLES H. CAFFIN
AUTHOR OF
“HOW TO STUDY PICTURES”
“THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING”
ETC.
[Illustration]
LONDON, W. C.
T. FISHER UNWIN
1, ADELPHI TERRACE
1910
Copyright, 1910, by
THE CENTURY CO.
_Published November, 1910_
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES BY THE DE VINNE PRESS
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED
WITH THE AUTHOR’S GRATITUDE TO
C. C.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I THE STORY OF THE NATION 3
II CHARACTERISTICS OF SPANISH PAINTING 25
III A PANORAMIC VIEW. PART I. TO THE END OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 40
IV A PANORAMIC VIEW. PART II. SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
TO THE PRESENT DAY 54
V DOMENICO THEOTOCOPULI (EL GRECO) 66
VI VELASQUEZ 92
VII MAZO 121
VIII CARREÑO 131
IX RIBERA (LO SPAGNOLETTO) 136
X MURILLO 148
XI CANO AND ZURBARÁN 161
XII GOYA 171
A POSTSCRIPT 191
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
S. JEROME _El Greco_ _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
THE CATHOLIC KINGS AT PRAYER _School of Castile,
XV Century_ 18
From a photograph by J. Laurent & Co., Madrid.
S. URSULA _Spanish School, XV Century_ 31
THE APPARITION OF THE VIRGIN
TO BERNARDINE MONKS ? _Pedro Berruguete_ 37
S. STEPHEN CONDUCTED TO MARTYRDOM _Juan de Juanes_ 44
From a photograph by J. Laurent & Co., Madrid.
DESCENT FROM THE CROSS _Pedro Campaña_ 51
From a photograph by Anderson, Rome.
PRESENTATION OF JESUS IN THE TEMPLE _Luis Morales_ 62
From a photograph by J. Laurent & Co., Madrid.
THE CRUCIFIXION _El Greco_ 70
SAN MAURICIO AND HIS THEBAN LEGION _El Greco_ 75
THE FUNERAL OF COUNT ORGAZ _El Greco_ 76
BAPTISM OF CHRIST _El Greco_ 81
VIRGIN AND SAINTS _El Greco_ 85
PHILIP IV, OLD _Velasquez_ 92
EQUESTRIAN PORTRAIT OF PHILIP IV _Velasquez_ 96
AN ACTOR, CALLED “DON JUAN DE AUSTRIA” _Velasquez_ 100
LAS HILANDERAS (THE WEAVERS) _Velasquez_ 109
LAS MENIÑAS (THE MAIDS OF HONOR) _Velasquez_ 114
DOÑA MARIANA DE AUSTRIA _Velasquez_ 119
{_Juan Bautista Martínez_
DOÑA MARIANA DE AUSTRIA {_del Mazo_ 122
{_Juan Bautista Martínez_
THE FOUNTAIN OF THE TRITONS {_del Mazo_ 127
CHARLES II _Carreño_ 132
From a photograph by Anderson, Rome.
HERMIT SAINT _Ribera_ 141
MIRACLE OF THE LOAVES AND FISHES }_Murillo_ 150
MOSES STRIKING THE ROCK }_Murillo_
SS. JUSTA AND RUFINA _Murillo_ 155
APOTHEOSIS OF S. THOMAS
AQUINAS _Francisco de Zurbarán_ 163
From a photograph by Anderson, Rome.
MIRACLE OF S. HUGO _Francisco de Zurbarán_ 166
From a photograph by Anderson, Rome.
CHARLES IV AND THE ROYAL FAMILY _Goya_ 171
MAIA, NUDE _Goya_ 174
QUEEN MARIA LUISA ON HORSEBACK _Goya_ 183
THE FATES _Goya_ 184
SCENE OF MAY 3, 1808 _Goya_ 189
IN THE BALCONY _Goya_ 190
THE STORY OF SPANISH PAINTING
CHAPTER I
THE STORY OF THE NATION
In 1492 the Catholic Sovereigns, Ferdinand and Isabella, entered Granada
in triumph. The last stronghold of Moorish dominion, undermined by the
dissensions of Islam, fell before the united Christian kingdoms of Léon,
Castile and Aragón. Spain became a united country and, in virtue of her
protracted struggle of nearly eight hundred years against the infidel,
stood forth as the acknowledged and self-conscious Champion of
Catholicism. In the same year Columbus, under the patronage of the
Catholic Sovereigns discovered the New World. This date, therefore,
presents an epoch that completes the past and forms the starting point
of a new era. Intimately associated with the subsequent national
development and decline is the story of Spanish painting, but it owes
most of its peculiar characteristics to the conditions that preceded the
country’s complete union.
It is always interesting and usually illuminating to picture the
historical background out of which the arts of a country have been
gradually evolved. But in the case of Spanish painting it is essential.
For the art of Spain was, bone and spirit, a part of the Spanish
character, shaped and inspired as the latter had been by the racial,
historical and geographical conditions out of which it was moulded.
Without taking all this into account one cannot understand, much less
appreciate sympathetically, the consistently individual character of
this school of painting.
* * * * *
In the first place one must realise the meaning of the fact that Spain
is a mountainous country; not only separated from the rest of Europe,
but divided against itself by precipitous barriers. They run in a
general way from West to East: abrupt colossal walls of volcanic origin,
with a grand sweep of bulk, jagged in sky-line and frequently piled with
the chaotic debris of glacial moraines. These are the watersheds of
rivers that refuse services to navigation; foaming to flood in the rainy
season, shrinking in the drought to sluggish pools amid the rocky bed.
They intersect tracts of country that vary from narrow valleys, where
cultivation huddles in cherished pockets of soil, to broadly stretching
vegas, tablelands and plains, from which by unremitting toil generous
harvests may be obtained. Here the vistas are of magnificent extent,
circling round one in far reaching sweeps of boldly undulating country,
rimmed by nobly designed stretches of smoothly beveled foothills that
form advance-posts of the ultimate barrier of the sierras.
It is a little country, only three times the size of England, contracted
within itself by natural restrictions, yet planned by nature on a big
scale; one that affects the imagination, prompting even more than
mountainous countries usually have done to independence, individualism
and hardihood. It is a country that seems made for fighting; where a
handful of resolute men could maintain themselves tenaciously against
enormous odds. In the past they did it in actual warfare; to-day in the
pacific fight which this hardy population perpetually keeps up against
the extremes of climatic conditions. Though for the most part they still
use the agricultural implements that Tubal Cain devised, they have
inherited from the Roman and Moorish occupation a system of irrigation
and of terracing that puts to shame the happy go lucky methods of
farming in many countries which consider themselves superiorly
enlightened. The necessary preoccupation with their immediate
surroundings and the exclusion from outside influence, early made of
this people a nation of individualists, realists and conservatives. So
inbred did these qualities become that when the Spaniard mixed with the
outer world, as he did particularly in his conquest of the Spanish Main
and in his wars with Europe, it was but to become more fixed in his
conservatism at home. When he borrowed from abroad, as in his art, it
was but to shape and color the acquired impression to his own
individualistic and realistic attitude toward life.
* * * * *
The earliest inhabitants of the Peninsula are known as Iberians; with
whom about 500 B.C., a branch of the Celtic family became amalgamated.
These Celtiberians remained in undisputed possession of the country,
until they were drawn into the vortex that was stirred by the rivalry of
Rome and Carthage. The latter had planted colonies along the south
coast, and gradually extended her authority into the interior, dealing
as was her wont in a spirit of suspicion and brutality with the natives.
The Romans, hot on the trail of their traditional foe, at first suffered
decisive reverses. Then it was that Scipio the Younger offered himself
to the Senate and People of Rome as general of the war. His father and
uncle had been slain in battle in Spain; he desired to avenge their
deaths and to crush the enemies of Rome. Though only twenty-four years
of age he had the genius of a military leader and of a statesman. While
putting heart into the shattered ranks of the Roman veterans and leading
them victoriously against the Carthaginians, he adopted towards the
Spaniards a policy of confidence and conciliation which won them over to
a loyal acceptance of the Roman rule. A similar policy was practised by
Suetonius in later years, when Spain had become the battle ground of the
rival factions with which Rome was torn. It was continued by Julius
Cæsar when he fought out his fight with Pompey on Spanish soil, and
later by Augustus when, having become ruler of the Roman world, he
completed pacifically the conquest of Spain.
Henceforth Spain was the most favored, loyal and prosperous province of
the Empire. At first the Roman veterans, retiring from military service,
married Spanish women and settled down as farmers, introducing
gradually the order and scientific method for which the Romans are so
justly celebrated. The settled conditions, fertility of the soil, and
the beauty of the country in time attracted the wealth and culture of
the Capital. Spain became, like “The Province” in the South of France, a
field for capitalistic enterprise as well as a resort for those who
leaned toward a life of refined leisure. She throve in the arts and
sciences and became enriched with some of the finest evidences of the
Roman genius for engineering. Her wheatfields fed the proletariat of the
Capital and her sons reinforced the ranks of statesmen and men of
letters. She became, in the finest sense of the word, more Roman than
Italy herself. This period of splendid prosperity lasted for four
hundred years, until it was submerged, like the rest of Roman
civilization, by the flood of Gothic invasion.
The branch of the German family which overran Spain was that of the
Visigoths, who maintained an ascendency and a line of kings for two
hundred years. But, although the enervation caused by provincial luxury
had rendered the Celtiberian-Roman an easy victim to the vigorous
onslaught of the northern race, he was sufficiently tenacious of the
original spirit of the mountaineer and of the acquired love of order to
avoid the chaos and prostration that overtook the rest of the Empire,
and reasserted his instinct for amalgamation. The blend, which ensued
and became the Spanish race as it is known to later history, is
characteristically represented in the language that was gradually
evolved. For this, though overlaid with Northern forms, remains at root
Roman. In this hybrid race the Spanish element proved itself to be the
most pronounced and enduring. Its conservatism, a phase of the
independence and exclusiveness that we have already noted, was
conspicuously revealed in the great Arian Controversy which threatened
the integrity of the Western Church. The Visigoths alone of all the
Germanic family, renounced the “heresy.” Reccared, their king, received
in consequence the title of the first Catholic Sovereign of Spain. How
resolutely subsequent sovereigns clung to this distinction and their
subjects conformed to the political and religious obligations that it
entailed is one of the most notable features of Spanish history. It
seriously affected the national life, its attitude toward other nations
and the development and character of Spanish art.
Meanwhile the mingling of blood could not save the Visigothic kingdom
from the fate that attended all the Germanic governments which had been
established on the ruins of the Empire. It proved no exception to the
tendency to disintegrate and thus presented an easy prey to the
onslaughts of united Islam.
In less than a hundred years after the death of Mohammed the Moslem
faith had spread from Arabia through Syria and Asia Minor to Persia and
India, while Westward it had overrun Egypt and penetrated along the
northern shore of Africa to the Pillars of Hercules. Hence in 711 A.D.
it crossed into Spain. While the leaders, under the generalship of Musa,
viceroy of the Omayyad Caliphate of Damascus, were all Arabs, they had
enlisted in their army the warlike tribes of Mauritania, the ancient
kingdom now represented by Morocco and Algeria. Hence the name of Moors
(Mauri) which distinguishes the invaders of Spain. Twenty years sufficed
to make them masters of the Peninsula, the little northwestern country
of Asturias alone retaining its independence. Twenty years later
disintegration crept also into the ranks of the conquerors.
Abd-er-Rahman established an independent caliphate in Cordova. His
ambition was to raise it to a position in the Western world such as was
held by Bagdad, Damascus and Delhi in the East; furthermore to make
Cordova the Mecca of the faithful in the West. Thus was begun by this
Caliph the Mesquita or chief Mosque, which under succeeding Caliphs was
enlarged and beautified until it became a fitting monument of the ideals
of Islam in its period of most splendid pride and noblest enlightenment.
For nearly three hundred years Cordova was the center of an ordered
government, which not only fostered the refinement of the arts and
crafts in the cities and spread its network of highly organised
agricultural labor throughout the country districts, but also a
University of philosophy and science that made it the resort of
scholars, not only Moslem but Christian. Cordova, in fact, played a
conspicuously brilliant part in that phase of the Moslem ascendency
which is apt to be overlooked; its share in perpetuating and advancing
the Hellenic culture, which otherwise might have been lost in the Dark
Ages succeeding the fall of the Roman Empire.
Meanwhile, the spirit of Christian Spain, though broken, was not
crushed. Its stronghold was at first the little kingdom of Asturias.
Alfonso I not only resisted conquest but wrested back from the Moor the
provinces of Galicia and Cantabria. From the northwest fastnesses of the
Peninsula commenced the steady pressure southward, which, while it met
with many reverses, was never abandoned until the invader had been
driven back to Africa. The story in brief is one of gradual
consolidation of the Christian power, accompanied by a corresponding
disintegration of the Moslem. Léon becomes united with the other
provinces and Castile follows suit; while on the other hand the
Caliphate of Cordova becomes broken up into several dynasties. Then,
while a rival sect, the Almoravides, arrive from Africa and make war on
their co-religionists, Alfonso IV of Castile assumes the title of
Emperor and captures Toledo and Valencia. Later, the conquests of the
Almoravides are wrested from them by other arrivals from Africa, the
fanatical sect of the Almohades. Encouraged by this dissension, the
Christian states for the first time send their representatives to a
national assembly. The first Cortes meets at Burgos. Six years later the
Christians suffer defeat, but recover themselves and inflict a heavy
blow upon the Moors at the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa. It is followed
by repeated hammering, extending over nearly forty years, until the
Moorish power is beaten back and by the year 1251 is confined entirely
to the kingdom of Granada.
Then, for the space of two hundred and forty years, there was a
comparative lull. Under the enlightened rule of the Nasride dynasty the
province of Granada enjoyed a prosperity that invited friendly relations
even with the Christians. The wealth derived from its mines, industries
and agriculture exceeded that of the ancient Caliphate of Cordova. The
period represented, in fact, the Golden Age of Moorish civilization in
Spain, the flower and symbol of which remains to-day, though shorn of
much of its magnificence, in the still exquisite palace of the Alhambra.
So skilfully by treaty and otherwise did the rulers of Granada
conciliate the Christians that their reign might have been continued
indefinitely, but for two causes: internal dissensions and the fixed
idea of Ferdinand and Isabella to fulfil their obligations as Catholic
Kings. They lived for the purpose of expelling the infidel, and the
rivalry between the two great Moorish tribes, the Zegri and the
Abencerrages, gave them the opportunity. It had resulted in the throne
being occupied by the youthful weakling, Boabdil. He fell into the hands
of Ferdinand and Isabella at the battle of Lucena, and consented to
remain neutral while they attacked the coast cities of Granada. Finally
they appeared before Granada itself and Boabdil, after a frantic but
futile effort to oppose them, was forced into a treaty of peace, by
which the city was surrendered. Ten years later the last of the Moors
had been expelled from Spain or compelled to be baptised.
Before proceeding with the story it is worth while to consider the
effect which this long struggle of seven hundred and eighty years had
had upon the Spanish character. In the first place it had fused the
nation into one; not by some sudden stroke of patriotic ardor but by a
slow and painful process, in which the patriotism had been tested in the
forge of adversity, stiffened and tempered on the anvil of endurance and
proven by long experiences. Its qualities were trenchant,
uncompromising, decisively complete. The Spaniard had become a hero to
himself; sufficient in and for himself; realising his superiority and
wrapping it about with a mantle of haughty exclusiveness. He had learned
to rely upon himself and had justified his confidence by victory, hardly
won and dearly bought; he was a Spaniard--_verbum sat._ But he had been
more than patriot; he had been a Paladin of the Faith; a Knight of the
Cross; a Soldier of Christendom, Champion of the Holy Catholic Church.
The consciousness of this had sustained him in adversity; quickened his
strength in hours of vigil, inflamed him to the attack and crowned both
victories and defeats with divine glory. An intense passion of spiritual
ecstasy burned within him. He was at once a man of action, hard and
practical, and a pietistic dreamer, a fanatic and visionary. How this
mingling of qualities affected Spanish art, causing it, on the one hand,
to be distinctively national and, on the other, a product of
naturalistic method and highly pietistic motive will appear in the
course of our story.
* * * * *
It was, perhaps, Spain’s misfortune that her victories over the Moors
were not succeeded by a period of settled conditions. For already she
had entered upon a career of brilliant enterprise in the arts of peace.
Under the patronage of Queen Isabella and of prelates, such as Cardinal
Ximenes de Cisneros, Archbishop of Toledo, whose power rivaled that of
the Crown, great architectural works were inaugurated and sculptors and
painters were drawn from Flanders and Germany to decorate them. Learning
was still further encouraged by the founding of a new University at
Alcalá de Henares to supplement the famous foundation of Salamanca, and
men of letters and artists were welcomed and honored at Court. Among
them stand out the names of Pulgar, the first historian of Castile;
Cota, the first Spanish dramatist and Rincon, the earliest of the native
painters. The sixteenth century, in fact, opened with a brilliant dawn,
full of promise for the new nation, if only it might have had leisure to
consolidate and develop naturally its resources. But it was drawn almost
immediately into the whirl of foreign conquests.
On the one hand it became involved in the affairs of the kingdom of
Naples, which was conquered by the Spanish general, Gonsalvo de Cordova;
on the other hand, by the bull of the Spanish Borgia Pope, Alexander VI,
it was put in possession of all the conquests it might make in the New
World. In both cases the immediate results may possibly be considered a
boon, but they were followed by consequences disastrous to the nation
and the Spanish character. The occupation of Naples brought the country
in touch with Italian civilization, then approaching its zenith, but
flung it into the vortex of European intrigue and warfare. Wealth began
to flow in from the Americas, but at the expense of national
demoralization. The conquest of inferior nations, inferiorly equipped
with arms of offense and defense, may easily result in cruelty and the
general sapping of the truly soldier spirit, while the lust of gold
which soon began to inspire it converted these champions of the Faith
into brutal buccaneers and plunderers. Further, it sapped the energies
of the nation at home. For, why laboriously develop the resources of the
country, when a stream of wealth was flowing into it from abroad?
National progress, therefore, was checked and in time stifled; while the
incoming wealth soon began to go out in prodigal expenditure over
useless European wars. It became a mad gamble in which the spiritual
qualities of the Spanish character were overwhelmed with the
intoxication of power, while its exclusiveness and pride blinded the
nation to the inevitable catastrophe.
A fact antecedent to all these causes of national deterioration was that
even before the conquest of Granada the Catholic Sovereigns had
established the Inquisition. With this devilish engine, operated in the
name of God and the Catholic Faith, the Spaniard attempted to check the
progress of Europe and effectively crushed his own. In time he expelled
from the Peninsula the Jews, who in Spain had been among the foremost in
learning and industrial energy; the Moors and finally the Morescoes, the
progeny of the Christianised Moors and Spaniards, who had perpetuated
the crafts in which the Moors had been so skilled. Enterprise was thus
banished and Spain deliberately committed herself to the part of a
reactionary against progress. In time England and Holland wrested from
her her resources in the New World. She shrank within the limits of her
own Peninsula, which had been already drained of initiation and
productivity. In time, all that became left to her of her proud
possessions was the dogmatic form of the Catholic religion. It had
ceased to be spiritual inspiration and passed into a phase of
sentimentalism, whence it dwindled to a mere formalism, existing amid
irreligion and moral degradation.
* * * * *
In the last sentence we have anticipated the national prostration of the
eighteenth century, following upon the exhaustion of the previous one.
It remains to summarise the events which intervened. Ferdinand and
Isabella were succeeded by their grandson, Charles I of Spain, better
known as the Emperor Charles V of Germany. He was the son of their
daughter, Joanna, who had been married to the Archduke Philip of
Austria, son of Emperor Maximilian of Germany. Thus Charles brought
Spain under the rule of the great Hapsburg family, which even to the
present time has provided monarchs for Germany and Austria. Joanna died
insane, and the taint of her disease clung to her descendants. Born in
Ghent in 1500 and educated in Flanders, Charles I at the death of his
father in 1506 inherited the Netherlands. On the death of Ferdinand in
1516 he became King of Spain, and in 1519 was elected Emperor of
Germany, the defeated competitor being Francis I of France. The rivalry
between these two led to a protracted war, fought out chiefly in Italy,
on the possession of which each had fastened his ambition. Francis was
made captive at the battle of Pavia in 1527 and forced into a treaty of
peace; but the war was renewed two years later and Charles’ troops under
the renegade Frenchman, Constable of Bourbon, entered Rome and sacked
it, taking the Pope prisoner. This, however, was but an incident in the
political game, for Charles, as became a grandson of the Catholic Kings,
was a staunch Defender of the Faith, and endeavored to impose it upon
his Protestant subjects in Germany and the Netherlands. For the good of
their souls he subjected them to the ravages of war and the horrors of
the Inquisition, and for the filling of his military chest mulcted them
by fines as well as taxation. Then at the age of fifty-five, exhausted
in mind and body by his heroic exertions on behalf of Catholicism and
his own ambitions, and by his various forms of self-indulgence, he
handed over the Imperial Crown to his brother, Ferdinand, and the
Kingdom of Spain and his “dear Netherlands” to his son, Philip. He
himself, under the plea of caring for his soul’s welfare, retired to the
monastery of San Juste, whence he continued to meddle with affairs of
State, meanwhile surfeiting his appetites and making a collection of
clocks and watches. His bedroom commanded a view of the High Altar of
the Church and was decorated with Titian’s _Gloria_, in which picture
the artist has represented the ex-Emperor in a white robe, welcomed by
the Virgin at the throne of God; while his hopeful son, Philip, is among
the mortals who gaze up devoutly at the imperial apotheosis.
Alas! for Philip; he had the doggedness but not the genius of his
father. Meanwhile the times were changing, and he did not know it.
Despotism, whether religious or political, no longer was to go
unquestioned. What the Netherlands had endured from Charles they refused
to submit to from his son. The more so that, while his father had
chastised them with whips, he, in the person of the unspeakable Alva,
chastised them with scorpions. The United Provinces revolted and the
rest of Philip’s life was spent in a vain effort to crush the Dutch
patriots and the English who had more or less espoused their cause.
Meanwhile the fleets of both countries were sweeping the Spaniards from
the high seas. When Philip died in 1598, he left to his son, Philip III,
the legacy of a fruitless foreign war, a ruined commerce, and an
impoverished treasury. As an enduring monument of himself he left the
Escoriál.
The decline of Spanish prestige and prosperity was accelerated by Philip
III, an easy-going person, who even refused to take any active part in
the selection of his own wife. He languidly continued the embellishment
of the palaces which his father had built, and posed mildly as a patron
of the arts. Under his feeble rule the power of the crown declined,
while that of the nobility correspondingly increased; and to them
probably more than to the king himself must be attributed the crime and
economical blunder of the final expulsion of the Morescoes. An
adventitious lustre is added to the reign of this king and his father by
the genius of Cervantes, Lope de Vega, the dramatist, and the great
artist, El Greco.
Succeeding to the crown at the age of seventeen, Philip IV resigned the
government to his favorite and prime-minister, the Count-Duke Olivares,
whose idea of statesmanship was to keep his royal master as far as
possible in ignorance of the impending ruin of the kingdom. To this end
he renewed the war in Holland, which had been interrupted by a twelve
years’ truce, and, with no decisive result except the squandering of
revenue, prolonged it until the final recognition of Dutch Independence
in 1648. Over eighty years had been expended in endeavoring to set back
the clock to the principles and methods of the Middle Ages and in the
process the proud empire, inaugurated by the Catholic Kings, Ferdinand
and Isabella, had been drained of its vitality. The colonial possessions
began to fall one by one into the hands of foreigners and Spain herself
was enfeebled and demoralised. Meanwhile Philip played the part of a
Maecenas in what proved to be the Golden Age of Spanish literature and
art.
Among the names which gave a lustre to the Court were the veteran Lope
de Vega; Calderon, author among other dramas of the “Comedies of Cape
and Sword”; Velez de Guevara, playwright and novelist, whose “El Diablo
Cojuelo” was the original of Le Sage’s “Le Diable Boiteux”; Luis de
Gongora, the poet; Quevedo, the satirist; Bartolomé Argensola,
historian, and Antonio de Solis, poet, dramatist and author of “The
History of the Conquest of Mexico.” Philip himself posed, with
considerable warrant, as a poet and musician, and even took part as an
actor in the musical and dramatic entertainments which
[Illustration: THE CATHOLIC KINGS SCHOOL OF CASTILE AT PRAYER XV CENTURY
THE PRADO]
enlivened the ennui of the Court in the palace of Buen Retiro. He was
also, as an amateur, skilful in drawing and painting. This doubtless
helped him to appreciate the merits of Velasquez, who to the world
outside of Spain represents the subject of most significance in his
life. Philip’s companionship with the artist, five years his elder,
which except for the brief intervals in which one or the other of them
was traveling, lasted for thirty-seven years, indeed until Velasquez’
death, is the one thing on which the student of history and of art cares
to dwell. It has secured for Philip IV a recognition which his political
importance would have denied him.
The increasing impotence of the Hapsburg family of Spanish king’s
reached its climax in Philip’s son, Charles II. One has but to glance at
the latter’s portrait, painted by Juan Carreño, to realise the physical
and mental degeneracy that the family type has undergone. The
type, as one sees it in Titian’s equestrian portrait of his
great-great-grandfather, Charles I of Spain and V of Germany, is already
abnormal. The grey eyes, for all their sternness and penetrating
character, have a pathetic cast of melancholy; the under jaw protrudes
like that of an ape. But the chin is massive, as indicative of force as
of ferocity. In Philip II, as he appears in Titian’s portrait in the
Prado, the face has lengthened; the eyes have lost their piercing gaze,
and while no less melancholy, have an expression of deliberate cruelty.
The coarseness of the lower part of the face is displayed in the
exaggerated sensuality of the out-turned lower lip, beneath which is a
tapering chin, that has a suggestion of blended weakness and petty
doggedness. In the equestrian portrait of Philip III, which is supposed
to have been painted by Bartolomé Gonzáles and effectively retouched by
Velasquez, the monarch’s head is carried a little back, a gesture which
extenuates with probable intention the protrusion of the lower part. But
the chin is feebly pointed, the under lip pendulous, while the eye
suggests an empty vacuity, that is echoed in the mild fierceness of the
upcurling moustache. It is a face vain, stupid and not a little
commonplace. The last quality, at least, is absent, from the portraits
of Philip IV. The face, especially when young, reflects the King’s
intrinsic refinement; but its length has become exaggerated, the
protruding under-lip and jaw are puffed and fleshy, weakly sensual,
while the eyes are apathetic. The expression of the whole is of a nature
nearly worn out, that can only be stirred to occasional alertness by the
stimulant of trivial excitements. Finally, in Carreño’s portrait of
Charles II, (p. 132) appears a total extinction of active faculties,
soft sensuousness rather than sensuality, a settled look of apathy and
the profound depression of a religious monomaniac.
Charles was scarcely four years old when the death of his father in 1665
made him king of a bankrupt country. It was the policy of the Queen
Mother, whose regency was marked by political incompetence and personal
amours, to keep her son as childish as possible. And, when he reached
his majority at the age of fifteen and supplanted his mother’s influence
by that of Don Juan of Austria, the latter also schemed to keep his
master in a condition of mental darkness and dependence. Thus Charles
was the victim alike of racial degeneracy and of thwarted development.
Complete incapacity to govern himself or others was the natural result.
He shunned the affairs of state, mildly supported the arts as far as the
beggared state of the treasury would permit, and sank into a religious
mania that found satisfaction in attending auto-da-fés and prostrating
himself in acts of personal penance. Dying childless in 1700, he brought
the Hapsburg line to an inglorious conclusion; and the succession passed
to a branch of the Bourbon family.
The Crown was offered by the Spanish people to Philip, grandson of Louis
XIV. He was the nephew of the late king, being the son of Philip IV’s
daughter, Maria Theresa, and Louis XIV. When, however, this marriage was
made Louis had expressly renounced all claims to the Spanish throne,
both on his own behalf and that of his heirs; and the renunciation had
been confirmed by the Cortes. Meanwhile, another sister of Charles II
had been married to Leopold, Emperor of Germany. She also had renounced
her claim to the Spanish Crown, but the understanding had not been
ratified by the Cortes. This afforded a pretext for the Elector of
Bavaria, who had married her daughter, to claim the succession in
opposition to Philip. A third claimant had been the Emperor Leopold
himself, who however, waived his rights in favor of his second son, the
Archduke Charles. The dispute had been in progress during the late
king’s life, and Louis XIV had made a treaty with England and Holland,
recognising the claims of the Elector of Bavaria. When, however, the
crown was offered to Philip and accepted on his behalf by Louis XIV,
England and Holland made a coalition with Austria and Germany to compel
the recognition of the Archduke Charles. Hence the thirteen years’ war
of the Spanish succession, in which Marlborough gained a series of
victories over the French and Bavarians, the Archduke ravaged the
Peninsula, and the English and Dutch fleets preyed on Spanish commerce
and captured Gibraltar. Finally, by the Treaty of Utrecht in 1714 the
succession of Philip V was ratified.
He had been brought up by Louis XIV to be undesirous and incapable of
taking part in political affairs. While the country continued to be
involved in disastrous foreign wars this _roi fainéant_ amused himself
with building a summer palace and laying out gardens, both in the French
style. He also imported the French portrait-painter, Van Loo. It must be
added, however, that the stock of Spanish painters had been exhausted.
Native art, indeed, for the time, was all but dead. It so remained
through the thirteen years’ reign of his son, Ferdinand VI, though he
tried to galvanize it into official life by inaugurating the Academy of
San Fernando. This king was succeeded by his brother Charles III, who
had already distinguished himself by his wise rule of the Kingdom of the
Two Sicilies. His portrait by Goya, in the costume of a sportsman, shows
him to be a man of awkward build and of homely, though kind and shrewd,
face. He proved himself a generous patron of second-rate artists,
inviting the German painter, Raphael Mengs and the Venetian, Tiepolo, to
his Court; built the present gallery of the Prado and issued an order
forbidding the exportation of paintings by the great masters of Spain.
He appears to have had some inkling of the genius of Goya, who, however,
did not come into prominence until the succession of Charles IV.
Charles IV was an amiable imbecile and his Queen, Maria Luisa, the
shameless subject of notorious scandal. One of her favorites, Manuel
Godoy, advanced from the rank and file of a regiment of the Guards to
the title of Duke of Alcudia, was entrusted with the duties of prime
minister. After embroiling the country in successive wars with France
and England, he finally attached himself to the cause of Napoleon and
favored the latter’s design to place his brother Joseph on the Spanish
throne. The French entered Spain in 1808 and compelled Charles to
abdicate. But in the same year the Spaniards rose against the invaders,
and the English came to their assistance. Then followed the Peninsular
War, during which Wellington gradually expelled the French troops, but
not until they had pillaged the cathedrals and churches and carried off
a large number of the finest works of art. For Marshal Soult, with the
predatory instincts of an unscrupulous dealer, sent his emissaries ahead
of the army. Armed with the “Dictionary of Painters and Paintings” by
Cean Bermudez, they identified and attached the most famous canvases,
which the Marshal compelled their owners to part with at his own terms.
On the conclusion of the war many of these were returned to Spain under
the terms of the treaty of peace, but a number of masterpieces had
already passed through Soult’s rapacious hands into the public and
private galleries of Europe.
This treaty of peace, which restored the Throne to Charles’ son,
Ferdinand VII, is the end of the history of Spain so far as it concerns
the growth and development and decline of her national art. She has had
painters of repute since 1814; but not in sufficient numbers to
constitute a school or even a noticeable artistic movement. Under weak
and constantly changing governments, controlled by the Church and
existing mainly for taxation, her arts, like her commerce and industries
dwindled to an almost negligible condition, from which only recently
there are indications of recovery.