Velasquez came to Court in the year in which Charles I., as Prince of Wales, went to Madrid to woo the sister of Philip IV. He painted her portrait twice, and made an unfinished sketch of Charles, which has unfortunately been lost. Five years afterwards Rubens was a visitor at the Spanish Court on a diplomatic errand. The painters took a fancy to one another, and corresponded for the remainder of their lives. They must have talked long about their art, and the elder painter, Rubens, is thought to have promoted in Velasquez a desire to see the great treasures of Italy. At all events we find that in the next year he has obtained permission and money from Philip to undertake the journey, which kept him away from Spain for two years.
There is an amusing page, in doggerel verse, which I remember to have read some years ago. I trust the translator will pardon the liberty I am taking in quoting it. It reports a perhaps imaginary conversation between Velasquez and an Italian painter in Rome. 'The Master' in this rhyme is Velasquez.
The Master stiffly bowed his figure tall
And said, 'For Raphael, to speak the truth,
—I always was plain-spoken from my youth,—
I cannot say I like his works at all.'
'Well,' said the other, 'if you can run down
So great a man, I really cannot see
What you can find to like in Italy;
To him we all agree to give the crown.'
Velasquez answered thus: 'I saw in Venice
The true test of the good and beautiful;
First, in my judgment, ever stands that school,
And Titian first of all Italian men is.'
Velasquez in Rome was already a ripening artist, whose vision of the world was quite uncoloured and unshaped by the medieval tradition. Raphael's pictures with their superhumanly lovely saints, their unworldly feeling, and their supernaturally clear light, doubtless imparted pleasure, but not a sympathetic inspiration. Tintoret's immense creative power and the colours of Titian's painting which inspired Tintoret's ambition, as we remember—these were the effective influences Velasquez experienced in Italy. His purchases and his own later canvases afford that inference. On his return from Italy he painted a ceremonial picture as wall decoration for one of the palaces of Philip, and in it we can trace the influence of the great ceremonial paintings of the Venetians. The picture commemorates the surrender of Breda in North Brabant, when the famous General Spinola received its keys for Philip IV. It is far more than a series of separate figures. Two armies, officers and men, are grouped in one transaction, in one near and far landscape. It is a picture in which the foreground and the distances, with the lances of the soldiers and the smoke of battle, are as indispensable to the whole as are the central figures of the Dutchman in front handing the city keys to the courtly Spanish general.
Don Balthazar Carlos was born while Velasquez was in Italy. On his return he painted his first portrait of him at the age of two. The little prince is dressed in a richly-brocaded frock with a sash tied round his shoulder. His hair has only just begun to grow, but he has the same look of determination upon his face that we see four years later in the equestrian portrait. A dwarf about his own height stands a step lower than he does, so as again to give him prominence. Another picture of Don Balthazar a little older is in the Wallace Collection in London.
Velasquez's power with his brush lay in depicting vividly a scene that he saw; thus in portraiture he was at his best. He knew how to pose his figures to perfection, so as to make the expression of their character a true pictorial subject. In our picture it is on high ground that the hoofs of the pony of Don Balthazar Carlos tread. So to raise the little Prince above the eye of the spectator was a good stroke, suggesting an importance in the gallant young rider. The boy's erect figure, too, firmly holding his baton as a king might hold a sceptre, and the well-stirruped foot, are all perfect posing. Velasquez does not give him distinction in the manner of Van Dyck, by delicate drawing and gentle grace, but in a sturdier fashion, with speed and pose and a fluttering sash in the wind. All the portraits of this lad are full of charm. He was heir to the throne, but died in boyhood.
DON BALTHAZAR CARLOS
From the picture by Velasquez, in the Prado Museum, Madrid
Velasquez paid another visit to Italy, twenty years after his first, for the purpose of buying more pictures to adorn Philip's palaces. Again we find him in Venice, where he bought two Tintorets and a Veronese, and again he made a long stay in Rome, this time to paint the portrait of the Pope. When he returned to Spain in 1651 he had still nine years of work before him. There were portraits of Philip's new Queen to be painted—a young girl in a most uncomfortable dress—and portraits of her child, the Infanta Marguerita. Bewitching are the pictures of this little princess at the ages of three, of four, and of seven, with her fair hair tied in a bow at the side of her head, and voluminous skirts of pink and silver. But sweetest of all is the picture called 'The Maids of Honour' ('Les Meninas'), in which the princess, aged about six, is being posed for her portrait. She is petulant and tired, and two of her handmaidens are cajoling her to stand still. Her two dwarfs and a big dog have been brought to amuse her, and the King and Queen, reflected in a mirror at the end of the room, stand watching the scene. Velasquez himself, with his easel and brushes, is at the side, painting. The picture perpetuates for centuries a moment of palace life. In that transitory instant, Velasquez took his vivid impression of the scene, and has translated his impression into paint. Everything is simple and natural as can be. The ordinary light of day falls upon the princess, but does not penetrate to the ceiling of the lofty room, which is still in shadow. All seem to have come together haphazard without being fitted into the canvas. There is little detail, and the whole effect seems produced by the simplest means; yet in reality the skill involved is so great that artists to-day spend weeks copying the picture, in the endeavour to learn something of the secret of Velasquez.