run cold when you hear the names of those who wielded them--the sword of
the prince de Conde, the sword of Isabella the Catholic, the sword of
Philip II., the sword of Hernando Cortez, of the count-duke d’Olivares,
of John of Austria, of Gonzalez of Cordova, of Pizarro; the sword of the
Cid, and, a little farther along, the helmet of King Boabdil of Granada,
the shield of Francis I., and the camp-chair of Charles V. In a corner
of the hall are arranged the trophies of the Ottoman armies--helmets
studded with gems, spurs, gilded stirrups, the collars of slaves,
daggers, scimitars in velvet sheaths, with rings of gold, embroidered
and inlaid with pearl; the spoils of Ali Pacha, who was slain on the
flag-ship at the battle of Lepanto, his caftan brocaded with gold and
silver, his girdle, sandals, and shields, the spoils of his sons, and
the banners stripped from the galleys. On another side are votive
crowns, crosses, and the necklaces of Gothic princes. In another room
are articles taken from the Indians of Mariveles, the Moors of Cagyan
and Mindanao, and the savages of the most remote islands of Oceanica;
collars of snail-shells, stone pipes, wooden idols, reed flutes;
ornaments made of the claws of insects; slaves’ garments made of
palm-leaves with characters scribbled on them to serve as fetiches;
poisoned arrows and axes of the executioners. And then, wherever one
turns, there are royal saddles, coats of mail, culverins, historic
drums, shoulder-belts, inscriptions, memorials and images of every time
and every land, from the fall of the Goths to the battle of Tetuan, from
Mexico to China--a storehouse of treasures and of masterpieces from
which one goes out amazed and exhausted, to return to consciousness as
if it were a dream, with one’s memory weary and confused.
If a great Italian poet shall one day wish to sing the discovery of the
New World, nowhere will he be able to find so powerful an inspiration as
in the Naval Museum of Madrid, because in no other place will he feel so
profoundly the original air of the American wilderness and the subtle
presence of Columbus. There is a room called the “Cabinet of
Discoveries:” the poet on entering this room, if he really has the soul
of a poet, will reverently uncover his head. Wherever one’s glance falls
in the room one sees an image which stirs his blood. One is no longer in
Europe nor in the century; one is in the America of the fifteenth
century; one breathes that air, one sees those places, and lives that
life. In the middle is a high trophy of the arms taken from the Indians
of the newly-discovered land--shields covered with the skins of wild
beasts, arrows of cane with feathered notches, wooden swords with
sheaths woven of twigs, with hilts ornamented with horsehair, and
scalp-locks falling in long streamers; clubs, spears, enormous axes,
great swords with teeth like those of a saw, shapeless sceptres,
gigantic quivers, garments of monkey-skin, dirks of kings and
executioners, arms of the savages from Cuba, Mexico, New Caledonia, the
Carolinas, and the most distant islands of the Pacific--black, uncouth,
and horrible, suggesting to the imagination confused visions of terrible
struggles in the mysterious shadows of the virgin forest, in an endless
labyrinth of unknown trees. Among the spoils of the savage world are
pictures and memorials of the Conquerors: here the portrait of Columbus,
there that of Pizarro, farther on that of Hernando Cortez; on one of the
walls the map of America by Juan de la Cosa, drawn during the second
voyage of the Genoese upon an ample canvas dotted with figures, colors,
and signs which were intended to direct expeditions into the interior of
the country. Near the map is a bit of the tree under which the conqueror
of Mexico lay on that famous “night of sorrow” after he had opened a
passage through the immense army that awaited his coming in the valley
of Otumba; also a vase turned from the trunk of the tree near which the
celebrated Captain Cook died; models of the canoes, boats, and rafts
used by the natives; a circle of portraits of illustrious navigators, in
the middle of which is a large painting of the three ships of
Christopher Columbus, the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria, at the
moment when America was discovered, with all the sailors standing on the
decks waving their arms and cheering lustily, greeting the new land and
giving thanks to God. There is no word which expresses the emotion which
one feels at the sight of that spectacle, no tear worth that which then
trembles on the eyelash, no soul that does not at that moment feel
itself ennobled.
The other rooms, of which there are ten, are also full of precious
objects. In the room next to the Cabinet of Discoveries there are
collected the relics of the battle of Trafalgar--the painting of the
Holy Trinity which was in the cabin of the “Royal Trinidad,” and which
was rescued by the English a few minutes before the ship went to the
bottom; the hat and sword of Frederick de Gravina, the admiral of the
Spanish fleet, who was killed that day; a large model of the Santa Anna,
one of the few ships that escaped from the battle; banners and portraits
of admirals, and paintings which depict episodes of that tremendous
struggle. And besides the relics of Trafalgar there are many other
things which affect the mind no less powerfully, as a chalice of wood
from the tree called _ceiba_, in whose shade was celebrated the first
mass at Havana, on the 19th of March, 1519; Captain Cook’s cane; idols
of the savages; flint chisels with which the Indians of Porto Rico
fashioned their idols before the discovery of the island. And beyond
this there is another great room where, on entering, one finds one’s
self in the midst of a fleet of galleys, caravels, feluccas,
brigantines, sloops, and frigates--ships of all seas and of all ages,
armed, gayly decked, and provisioned, so that they need only a wind to
put to sea and scatter to all parts of the world. In the other rooms
there is an exhibition of machinery, ordnance, and naval armor;
paintings which represent all the maritime exploits of the Spanish
people; more portraits of admirals, navigators, and mariners; trophies
from Asia, America, Africa, and Oceanica, crowded and piled one above
another, so that one must pass them on the run to see everything before
nightfall. On coming out of the Naval Museum it seems as if you are just
returning from a voyage around the world, so much have you lived in
those few hours.
There is also at Madrid a large museum of artillery, an immense museum
of the industrial arts, a fine archeological museum, a remarkable museum
of natural history, as well as a thousand other things that are worth
seeing; but it is necessary, however, to sacrifice the description of
them for the marvellous Museum of the Fine Arts.
The day on which one enters for the first time a museum like that of
Madrid forms a landmark in a man’s life. It is an important event, like
marriage, the birth of a child, or the entrance upon an inheritance; for
one feels the effect of it to the end of one’s life. And this is true
because a museum like that of Madrid or that of Florence or that of Rome
is a world: a day passed within its walls is a year of life: a year of
life stirred by all the passions which are able to animate one in real
life: love, religion, patriotism, glory; a year of life in the enjoyment
it gives, in the instruction it imparts, in the thoughts it suggests, in
the pleasure to be derived from its memory in the future; a year of life
in which one reads a thousand volumes, feels a thousand sensations, and
meets with a thousand adventures. These thoughts were in my mind as I
approached with rapid steps the Museum of the Fine Arts, situated to the
left of the Prado as one comes from the street Alcalá; and so great was
my pleasure that on reaching the doorway I stopped and said to myself,
“Let us see: what have you ever done in your life to deserve an entrance
here? Nothing! Well, then, on that day when some misfortune comes upon
you bow your head and consider that your account is balanced.”
As I entered I unconsciously raised my hat: my heart beat fast and a
slight shiver ran through me from head to foot. In the first room there
are only some large paintings of Luca Giordano. I passed them by. In the
second I was no longer myself, and, instead of staying to look at
paintings one by one, I postponed that examination and made the circuit
of the gallery almost on the run. In the second room there are some
paintings of Goya, the last great Spanish painter; in the third, which
is as large as a square, are masterpieces of the great masters. On
entering you see on one side the Madonnas of Murillo, on the other the
saints of Ribera; a little farther on, the portraits of Velasquez; in
the middle of the hall, paintings of Raphael, Michelangelo, Andrea del
Sarto, and at the end those of Titian, Tintoretto, Paul Veronese,
Correggio, Domenichino, and Guido Reni. You turn back and enter a great
room to the right. There you see at the end other paintings of Raphael;
on the right and left, more of Velasquez, Titian, and Ribera; opposite
the entrance, Rubens, Van Dyck, Fra Angelico, and Murillo. Another is
devoted to the French school--Poussin, Daguet, Lorraine. In two other
rooms of vast size the walls are covered with paintings of Breughel,
Teniers, Jordaens, Rubens, Durer, Schoen, Mongs, Rembrandt, and Bosch.
In the other rooms, of equal size, there is a medley of the works of
Joanes, Carbajal, Herrera, Luca Giordano, Carducci, Salvator Rosa,
Menendez, Cano, and Ribera.
You walk for an hour and have seen nothing. For the first hour a war is
waging: the masterpieces struggle for the possession of your soul. The
_Conception_ of Murillo blots out Ribera’s _Martyrdom of Saint
Bartholomew_ with a flood of light; Ribera’s _Saint James_ obliterates
Joanes’ _Saint Stephen_; Titian’s _Charles V._ dooms the _Count-Duke de
Olivares_ of Velasquez; Raphael’s _Pasmo de Sicilia_ casts all the
paintings around it in the shade; the _Drunkards_ of Velasquez, with
their reflection of bacchanalian joy, somewhat disconcert the faces of
the neighboring saints and princes; Rubens overthrows Van Dyck; Paolo
Veronese triumphs over Tiepolo, and Goya kills Madrazo.
The conquered turn against those still weaker than themselves, or in
their turn win lesser victories over their conquerors. It is a struggle
of the miracles of art, in the midst of which one’s restless soul
trembles like a flame fanned by a thousand gusts of wind, and one’s
heart expands with a sense of pride in the power of the genius of man.
When the first enthusiasm has subsided one begins to admire. In the
midst of an army of such artists, each of whom would require a volume
for himself, I restrict myself to the Spaniards, and among these to the
painters who aroused within me the most profound admiration and whose
canvases I remember most distinctly. The most recent of these is Goya,
who was born toward the end of the last century. As a painter he is the
most Spanish of the Spaniards, the painter of _toreros_, of the people,
of contrabandists, hags, and robbers, of the War of Independence, and of
that old Spanish life which melted away before his very eyes. He was a
fiery son of Arragon, of iron temper, passionately devoted to
bull-fights, so that even in the closing years of his life, when he was
living at Bordeaux, he was accustomed to come once a week to Madrid with
no other reason than to witness those spectacles; and he would go back
like an arrow, not even so much as saluting his friends. A genius
rigorous, cynical, imperious, awe-inspiring--who in the heat of his
violent inspirations would in a few moments cover a wall or a canvas
with figures, giving the finishing touches with whatever came to
hand--sponges, brooms, or sticks; who in sketching the face of a person
whom he hated would insult it; who painted a picture as he would have
fought a battle; very bold in composition, an original strong colorist,
the creator of an inimitable style, with frightful shadows, hidden
lights, and resemblances distorted and yet true to life. He was a great
master in the expression of all terrible effects of anger, hate,
desperation, and the thirst for blood; an athletic, turbulent,
indefatigable painter; a naturalist like Velasquez, fantastical like
Hogarth, vigorous like Rembrandt, the last ruddy spark of Spanish
genius. There are several of his paintings in the museum of Madrid,
[Illustration: _The Immaculate Conception, by Murillo_]
and among them is a very large canvas representing the entire family of
Charles IV. But the two paintings into which he put his whole soul are
the French soldiers shooting the Spaniards on the second of May, and the
fight of the people of Madrid with the Mamelukes of Napoleon, in which
the figures are life-size. These are paintings which make one shudder.
One cannot imagine anything more terrible, nor is it possible to give
overbearing power a form more execrable, to desperation a more fearful
appearance, or to the fury of a battle an expression of greater
ferocity. In the first of these paintings there is a murky sky, the
light of a lantern, a pool of blood, a confused mass of corpses, a crowd
of men condemned to death, a row of French soldiers in the act of
firing: in the other, bleeding horses, cavaliers dragged from their
saddles, stabbed, trampled down, and mangled. What faces! what
attitudes! One seems to hear the cries and see the blood run; the actual
scene could not have been more horrible. Goya must have painted these
pictures with flashing eyes and foaming mouth, with all the fury of a
demoniac. It is the final point which painting can reach before it is
transferred into action; beyond this point the brush is flung aside and
the battle begins. Anything more terrible than these paintings must be
slaughter; after these colors comes blood.
Of Ribera--whom we know also by the name of _Spagnoletto_--there are
enough paintings to form a museum. They consist in great part of
life-size figures of saints; a martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew, full of
figures; a colossal Prometheus chained to a rock. Other paintings of his
are found in other museums, at the Escurial, and in the churches, for he
was very productive and industrious, like almost all the Spanish
artists. After seeing a painting of his, one recognizes all the others
at a glance, nor is it necessary to look at them with the eye of a
critic to do this. There are old emaciated saints with shaved heads and
naked, so that one can count their veins; with hollow eyes, fleshless
cheeks, furrowed brows, and sunken chests, through which one can see
their ribs; arms and hands which are only skin and bones; bodies worn
out and exhausted, clothed in rags--yellow with the deathly pallor of
corpses, full of sores, and covered with flood; carcases which seem to
have been just dragged from the tomb, bearing on their faces the impress
of all the spasms of pain, torture, famine, and sleeplessness; figures
from the anatomist’s table, from which you might study all the secrets
of the human organism. Admirable? Yes, for boldness of design, for
strength of color, and for the thousand other merits which won for
Ribera the fame of a most powerful painter. But true and great art--ah,
it is not that! In those faces there is none of that celestial light,
that immortal ray of the soul, which reveals with sublime pathos, noble
aspirations, those “subtle flashes” and “limitless desires”--that light
which draws the eye from the sores and calls down the thought of heaven.
There is only the crude suffering which causes repulsion and fear; there
are only weariness of life and the presentiment of death; only that
fleeting mortal life without a suggestion of the immortality drawing
near. There is not one of those saints whose image one recalls with
affection: one looks and is chilled at heart, but the heart beats none
the quicker. Ribera never loved. Yet as I hurried through the halls of
the museum, in spite of that strong repugnance which many of these
paintings inspired in me, I was obliged to look at them and could not
withdraw my eyes, so great is the attractive force of truth, even if it
be despicable. And how true are the paintings of Ribera! I recognized
those faces: I had seen them in the hospitals, in the morgues, behind
the doors of churches--the faces of beggars, of the dying, of those
condemned to death, which haunt me at night even now when I hurry along
a deserted street, pass by a graveyard, or climb a mysterious staircase.
There are some of them which I could not look at--a naked hermit,
stretched on the ground, who seemed like a skeleton covered with skin;
an old saint whose shrunken skin gave the appearance of a flayed body;
the Prometheus with his entrails bursting from his breast. Ribera
delighted in blood, mangled limbs, and butchery; it was his delight to
represent suffering; he must have believed in an Inferno more horrible
than that of Dante and in a God more terrible than that of Philip II. In
the museum of Madrid he represents religious dread, old age, torture,
and death.
More cheerful, more various, and more splendid is the great Velasquez.
Almost all his masterpieces are there. They form a world: everything is
pictured in them--war, the court, the street, the tavern, Paradise. It
is a gallery of dwarfs, idiots, beggars, buffoons, revellers, comedians,
kings, warriors, martyrs, and gods, all alive and speaking, in bold and
novel attitudes, with serene brow and smiling lip, full of animation and
vigor; the great painting of Count-Duke de Olivares on horseback, the
celebrated paintings of the Beggars, of the Weavers, of the Revellers,
the Forge of Vulcan, and of the surrender of Breda--large canvases full
of figures which seem to be stepping out of the frame, which on once
seeing you remember distinctly by some trifling characteristic, a
gesture or a shadow on the face, as though they were real persons whom
you have just met; people with whom you seem to have talked, and of whom
you think long afterward as of acquaintances of a forgotten time; people
who might inspire cheerfulness and provoke a smile of admiration,
causing you to regret that it is possible only to enjoy them with the
eyes and not to mingle with them and share a little of their exuberant
life. This is not the effect of a preconceived opinion which the name of
the great artist has given, nor need one be a connoisseur of art to
experience it. The poor ignorant woman and the boy stop before those
pictures, clap their hands, and laugh. It is Nature painted with a
fidelity higher than any imagination. One forgets the painter, does not
think of the art, nor try to discover its meaning, but says, “This is
true! This is the very thing! It is the picture I had in my mind!” One
would say that Velasquez has not put anything of himself in it, but that
his hand has only drawn the lines and put the colors on the canvas from
a likeness which reproduced the very persons whom he was painting. There
are more than sixty of his paintings in the museum of Madrid, and if one
saw them only once, and hurriedly at that, not one of them would be
forgotten. It is with the paintings of Velasquez as with the romances of
Alessandro Manzoni--when one has read them for the tenth time they
become so interwoven and confused with one’s personal memories that one
seems to have lived them. So the persons in Velasquez’s paintings melt
into the crowd of friends and acquaintances; the neighbors and strangers
of our whole life present themselves and entertain us without our even
remembering that we have seen them on the canvas.
Now let us speak of Murillo in our gentlest tones. Velasquez is in art
an eagle; Murillo is an angel. One admires Velasquez and adores Murillo.
By his canvases we know him as if he had lived among us. He was
handsome, good, and virtuous. Envy knew not where to attack him; around
his crown of glory he bore a halo of love. He was born to paint the sky.
Fortune gave him a mild and serene genius, which bore him to God on the
wings of a tranquil inspiration, and yet his most admirable paintings
breathe an air of gentle sweetness which inspires sympathy and affection
even before admiration. A simple nobility and elegance of outline, an
expression full of sprightliness and grace, an inexpressible harmony of
colors,--these are the qualities that impress one at first sight; but
the more one looks at the paintings, the more one discovers, and
surprise is transformed little by little into a delicious sense of
pleasure. His saints have a benign aspect, cheering and consoling; his
angels, whom he groups with marvellous ability, make one’s lips tremble
with a desire to kiss them; his Virgins, clothed in white, with long
flowing draperies of azure, with their great black eyes, their clasped
hands, delicate, graceful, and ethereal, make one’s heart tremble with
their beauty and one’s eyes fill with tears. He combines the truth of
Velasquez, the vigor of Ribera, the harmonious transparency of Titian,
and the brilliant vivacity of Rubens. Spain has given
[Illustration: _Virgin of the Napkin, Murillo_]
him the name of the “Painter of Conceptions” because he is unsurpassed
in the art of representing that divine idea. There are four grand
Conceptions in the museum of Madrid. I have stood for hours in front of
those four paintings, motionless and entranced. I was enraptured, above
all, by that incomplete one, with the arms folded over the Virgin’s
breast and a half moon across her waist. Many prefer the others; I
trembled on hearing this, for I was filled with an inexpressible love
for that face. More than once as I looked at it I felt the tears
coursing down my cheeks. As I stood before that painting my heart was
softened and my mind was lifted to a plane of thought higher than any I
had ever before reached. It was not the enthusiasm of faith; it was a
longing, a boundless aspiration toward faith, a hope which gave me
visions of a life nobler, richer, and more beautiful than that which I
had yet known--a new feeling of prayer, a desire to love, to do good, to
suffer for others, to make atonement, to elevate my mind and heart. I
have never been so full of faith as in those moments. I have never felt
so good and affectionate, and I believe that my soul has never shone
more clearly in my face. _The Lady of Sorrows_, _Saint Anna Teaching the
Virgin to Read_, _Christ Crucified_, _The Annunciation_, _The Adoration
of the Shepherds_, _The Holy Family_, _The Virgin of the Rosary_, and
_The Child Jesus_ are all admirable and beautiful paintings of a soft
and serene light which appeal to the soul. One should see on a Sunday
the children, the girls, and the poor women before those pictures--see
how their faces light up and hear the sweet words upon their lips.
Murillo is a saint to them, and they speak his name with a smile, as if
to say, “He is ours!” and in so saying they look as though they were
performing an act of reverence. The artists do not all regard him in the
same manner, but they love him above all others, and they are not able
to divorce their admiration from their love.
Murillo is not merely a great painter; he is a great soul. He has won
more than glory: he has won the love of Spain. He is more than a
sovereign master of the beautiful; he is a benefactor, an inspiration to
noble deeds, for a lovely image, when once seen on his canvas, is
carried in the heart throughout life with a feeling of gratitude and
religious devotion. He is one of those men whom some secret prompting
tells us we must see again, and that the meeting will be a reward: such
men cannot have disappeared for ever; in some place they still live
where their life is as a lamp of constant flame, which must one day
appear to the eyes of mortals in all its splendor. “The empty dreams of
fancy,” one may say, but, ah, what pleasant dreams!
After the works of these four great masters there are the paintings of
Joanes to admire--an artist imbued with the Italian feeling, whose
correct drawing and nobility of character have won for him the title,
although it must be spoken in an undertone, of the Spanish Raphael. He
resembles Fra Angelico in his life, not in his art, for his studio was
an oratory where he fasted and did penance. Before beginning his work he
used to take the communion.
Then there are the paintings of Alonzo Cano; the paintings of Pacheco,
the master of Murillo; the paintings of Pareja, Velasquez’s slave; of
Navarrete the mute; of Menendez, a great painter of flowers; of Herrera,
Coello, Carbajal, Collantes, and Rizi, and there are a few works of
Zurbarán, one of the greatest Spanish artists, worthy to stand beside
the three first. The corridors, the antechambers, and the halls are full
of the works of other artists, of less importance than those mentioned,
but nevertheless admirable for particular points.