A VALENCIAN BEAUTY.
BULL-FIGHTERS AT THE TAVERN.
A PICADORÉ.
The Picture Gallery, Madrid.
IN returning to the subject of the Museo of Madrid, and its priceless treasures, my object is not to pen a dissertation on Spanish art, but to add a few lines by way of an accompaniment to the excellent photographs of some of the principal pictures which I am privileged to reproduce. In a collection which contains numerous canvasses by Rubens, Vandyke, and Rembrandt, no less than forty of Titian’s best productions, ten pictures by Raffaele, including the Spasimo, considered by many to be his greatest work, and, among the Dutch and Flemish specimens, more than 200 of Teniers alone, the artist is concerned almost entirely with the masterpieces of the Spanish school. Here are sixty paintings of the superb Velasquez, who was Court painter under Philip the Fourth; nearly as many pictures by that gentle and serene genius Murillo; and many magnificent specimens of the fiery temperament of Goya. Here are miracles of art from the sixteenth-century genius of Antonio Moro and Coello to Valdés Leal and Lopez of but a century ago. The catalogue of this collection would make a formidable appendix to a book of this size; an adequate appreciation could not be contained in two such volumes. The most famous gems of the Madrid gallery are familiar not only to students, but to the men in the streets of every city of the world—even Goya’s “Family of Charles IV.,” the least known of the few that I have selected for reproduction, has been copied by scores of enthusiasts. The passionate, fulminating genius of Goya, which found its supreme nourishment in the spectacle of the bull-fight, and its highest expression in scenes of war, and blood, and laceration, was scarcely at home as a courtier. He brought the terrible realism of his execution scenes and battle pieces to the portraiture of the Royal Family, and the members of the family of Charles IV. will, consequently, go down to posterity as the most unamiable and unattractive group of royalties that has ever been put on canvas. The faces are worse than plain, they are hideous; but the details are treated in the artist’s vigorous and effective style, and the whole composition compels a belief in his fidelity to nature.
THE FAMILY OF CHARLES V., BY GOYA.