Two other portraits in the La Caze Room are attributed to Velazquez.
One of these, a _Portrait of Philip IV._ (No. 1733) at the age of about
fifty, is unquestionably a wholly uninspired and fairly modern copy of
the head in the Prado (No. 1080). The other, a _Portrait of a Young
Woman_ (No. 1736), is an extremely feeble imitation of the superficial
aspect of Velazquez’s manner—so bad in drawing, especially in the
attachment of the nose to the face, that it is difficult to accept
Señor Beruete’s attribution of this picture to Juan Carreño de Miranda
(1614-1685), an able painter of the Madrid school. M. Henri Rodolphe
Elissa, who exposed the “Tiara of Saitaphernes” forgery, has asserted
that he can prove both the _Philip IV._ and the _Young Woman_ to be
the work of the Spanish painter Escosura, who died in the last decade
of the nineteenth century. There appears to be no reason to doubt his
assertion. The head of Philip, more than the other picture, appears to
be nineteenth-century work.
The _Portrait of Philip IV., King of Spain, in Hunting Costume_ (No.
1732), with a gun in his right hand and a dog sitting by his side, in
a landscape background, is only a contemporary copy of a very similar
picture in the Prado, to which it is vastly inferior in execution. It
is true that in the Prado picture the king’s hat is on his head, whilst
in the Louvre version, which is probably by Mazo, he carries it in his
left hand. It is, however, possible to detect in the Prado portrait
clear evidence of a pentimento, from which it can be seen that here,
too, the hat was originally in the same position as in the Louvre
canvas. Presumably Velazquez subsequently made the alteration; but the
copy was executed at an earlier date.