CHAPTER VIII

THE SPANISH SCHOOL

VELAZQUEZ

THESE considerations naturally lead us on to Velazquez, of all masters the least mannered, in some aspects nearer to nature in his interpretations than any other. In every sense a realist, he stated the large facts with the broadest touch, and boiled them down to their utmost simplicity. This breadth of view was the goal he reached only in his mature years; and in following his development, which is fairly illustrated by the small collection of his works in these galleries, we shall see that he shed one by one the shackles that constrained his earlier manner-constraints, however, which prepared his hand and his mind to understand and to execute, with an unerring draughtsmanship and a just appreciation of values, the masterly painting which places him high up in the first rank of the masters. "Christ in the House of Martha " is an early example of his naïve composition and harsh and heavy treatment ; only in the still life do we realise his promise.

"Christ at the Column" is little more than a [207] grisaille on a dark canvas with a light base. Breadth there is in it, but none of the light of his riper efforts.

An earlier work than this, I imagine, is the full length of Philip IV., which to an extent recalls the less developed painting of the sixteenth century, when the prejudice against positive shadows in the flesh prevailed. I turn to this, for, hanging as it does as a pendant to the "Admiral Pulido-Pareja," we are able to compare his early with his fully matured outlook and accomplishment- the flatness and thinness of the Philip with the roundness and solidity of the other.

The Admiral is bathed in air. The solidifying force of finely contrasted values and subtle colour-contrasts is now the master's secret, which henceforth is to be a model throughout the generations. He now knows that a living illusion is not enhanced by rigid draperies accentuated equally throughout, but that movement is imparted by free handling, that real texture of surfaces was more perfectly suggested by colour and tone-relations than by minute imitation of the passages detached from the general envelopment.

The Admiral is a living character whose pose is as determined as his face, which is rendered in very definite planes, and is "flesh and bone," by force of that justness of tone and the weight-giving truth of colour. Let us examine more closely its execution. The ground, as with some of the Dutch masters, is grey, subsequently warmed, [208] graduating to the ochre-coloured floor, over which the whole figure appears to have been painted; for the blacks are thinly imposed on it, and the baton in the gloved hand is again so meagrely touched in as to show the background and the black drapery through it. The cast shadow on the floor is a mere wash of dark over the prepared ground, but nothing can exceed the fascination such qualities have for the craftsman, the full-brushed light on the sleeves, with the few deliberate high-standing impastos resolutely laid on them, and the liquid treatment of the gloves.

The picture is a masterpiece of construction, bigness, and tonal relief, a fine example of Velazquez's later direct or nearly direct manner, and this in spite of the doubts expressed by certain critics with regard to its authorship.

Those who assert-and there are many-that Rubens, who spent nine months in Madrid with Velazquez at the impressionable age of twenty-nine, exerted no influence on the younger man, cannot have examined with any care either the "Venus and Cupid" or the small "Philip IV." They are distinctly in the Rubens manner, or adaptations of it in the hands of a realist, who very possibly had little sympathy with what he would have considered the mannerisms of the Flemish master.

We shall find, on looking closely at it, that the Venus, like the Admiral, is on a toned canvas. The figure is first prepared in white, and probably [211] Indian red and black. In few places is the canvas really lost under the whites. In one place-behind the knees-it is, however, filled-a very wonderful and supple rendering of flesh, completed in the thin glazes and semi-opaque manner of Rubens. This is clearly shown by the subsequent widening of the shoulder through which the background asserts itself. The colour and the glazes on the Cupid are somewhat red, for such a red curtain as his setting usually influences the greys of the flesh towards its complement green. The small " Philip IV." is one of our treasures, and should be copied. It is also painted over a preparation that appears to have been made in white and Indian red, and finished in the Rubens manner. The eyelids, which Velazquez did not at this stage outline as with Van Dyck, show a thin painting over the dark of the pupils, and the pink greys of the flesh point to a use of Indian red both in the ground and the last painting.

The " Betrothal " is, of course, a direct colour sketch over a dark canvas, and although very spirited, has none of the brilliancy of the Philip or the Venus, which are better calculated, because of their pure white preparations, to resist the darkening action of Time.

In "The Boar Hunt," the landscape seems to have been laid in in brown over a warm ground, which, by the way, shows through the half-tones of the horses. The more solid lights have resisted its influence. The most interesting portions of [212] this fine picture are the foreground groups of men and hounds, where the beauty of impasto is brought home to us as in few other works.

To be thoroughly understood and appreciated, Velazquez must be seen in Madrid at the Prado Gallery, in which magnificent collection are the two portraits accompanying these notes.

"The Sculptor" is in a similar light to the Admiral, and has much in common with it, but the colour is fairer. The oneness of the head, the perfect construction of the forehead and the planes of the temple, the eye so absolutely in its setting, the complete finish of the ear, and the freely touched beard, are among a few of its excellences.

The "Dwarf "in the original is highly and smoothly finished, not detail finish, but of a homogeneous surface, which is the higher order of completeness. It is soft and pulpy. Note the part played in the roundness of its modelling by the delicate tone running down by the nose, on the shadow side, the local colour of the tip of the nose, and thé solidity and learned drawing of the lighted eyelid. Nothing could well be finer than the rotundity of this head or its fleshiness, to which the melting edges of the shadows into the lights contribute so much.