noble ones of Titian’s, which are pervaded with what is, comparatively speaking, a studio lighting. Velasquez is in a sense even more naturalistic than his contemporaries, the Holland masters of landscape, for, although they rendered nature more intimately, they were disposed to translate the actual hues of nature into a tonality of their own. Velasquez, on the contrary, recorded what seemed to him to be the facts of sight. He, therefore, reappears among the moderns of the nineteenth century, in landscape as in portraiture, one of themselves, because their mutual study was the light of nature.

One of Mazo’s most important landscapes, known to be his by documentary evidence, is the View of Zaragoza. It hangs in the Velasquez gallery of the Prado, because the master added the figures which are distributed in three planes throughout the foreground. But the river beyond, dotted with sailboats, the bridge and distant view of the city are unquestionably by Mazo. The silvery deep olive-green of the water and the accurate definition of the buildings, which nevertheless are felt as masses, recall the finest manner of Il Canaletto, while the suggestion of light in the sky is more naturalistic than the Venetian ever attained. It is a picture that interests one to compare with the single landscape of Jan Vermeer: his View of Delft in the Hague Gallery. Each gives one an extraordinary realisation of the actuality of the scene; but, while the Holland artist’s picture breathes an intimate domesticity, the work of the Spaniard is psychologically different, suggesting a certain hauteur and exclusiveness; partly, no doubt, through the introduction of the choice groups of figures by Velasquez.

The three landscapes originally attributed to Velasquez, but now included by the Director of the Gallery among Mazo’s are: The Fountain of the Tritons (p. 122), Calle de la Reina de Aranjuez, and The View of Buen Retiro. In the first named the tree-stem on the left-foreground, sprinkled with leaves, is reminiscent of Velasquez, and the beautiful little figures, so suggestively rendered, may have been added by him. But the handling of the grey-green foliage of the further trees, softly blurred against a bluish grey sky, is unlike the method of Velasquez as seen in any of his landscape backgrounds. On the other hand, the soft faint masses of tone, subsequently worked over with little curly strokes, can be found to a greater or less extent in the foliage parts of all Mazo’s landscapes in this room. The latter, it should be observed, vary in subject, including views of buildings, romantic scenes of rocks and waterfalls, sea-shore in combination with cliffs and temple-ruins, and views more simply naturalistic. To each the artist has adopted a technique suitable to the occasion, so that it is not at first sight easy to recognise them as the work of one man.

Mazo, in fact, in his approach to landscape, shows nothing of the timidity and indecision and tendency to follow closely his master, such as characterise his portraits. Here he shows himself an original experimenter, freely pursuing his own motive. In the case of The Fountain of the Tritons it has brought him to a method that anticipates the impressionistic style of Corot. The peeps of sky through the soft screen of trees; their very coloring, the single tree-stem in the foreground and the envelope of cool grey atmosphere—Corot might have painted them.

The Calle de la Reina has again a strangely modern air, somewhat that of a Jules Dupré, when he is not stirred to emotional effects. The avenue, leading to the palace of Aranjuez, recedes in the shadow of tall trees, which tower up in dark masses against a fine twilight sky. Its light is dimly reflected in the grey-blue water of a shadowed lake on the left of the foreground; the rest of the latter being enlivened with figures which form the retinue of two arriving coaches. All these sprinkled forms count as dark spots upon the pale-lighted sandy road. In its truth of observation and simple nobility of feeling this landscape would do honor to any school of any period.

To assist his appreciation of Mazo’s romantic and mythological landscapes, the visitor to the Prado will do well to step into an adjoining gallery, devoted to the works of Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin. It is true they are not represented here at their best; yet perhaps sufficiently well to suggest the character of their work and certainly its spirit. Particularly in the case of Claude Lorrain it is slighter, shallower than the spirit of Mazo’s corresponding scenes; less reinforced by close observation of nature; or, it may be, inspired by softer influences. For the source of the difference is perhaps the contrast of character of the Spanish as compared with the Italian landscape. Mazo has noted to good purpose the stirring cloud effects that pile high above the gaunt sierras, and their grandeur and bigness have inspired his feeling. By comparison, the mellow skies of the French-Italian landscapes, seem trivial, and communicate their slighter feeling to the formal, classically composed foregrounds, so that they seem mannered. In Mazo’s on the other hand, the grandeur of the sky’s suggestion spreads to the mountains, rocks and water, investing the whole with a sense of structural power and therefore of sincerity. In fact, in these romantic, mythological subjects Mazo stands alongside Turner rather than Claude and Poussin.

CHAPTER VIII
CARREÑO

AMONG the painters who were contemporaries of Velasquez and after his death helped to stem for a little while the decline of the School of Madrid, special notice is due to Juan Carreño de Miranda. He came of a noble family of the province of Asturias, his father being Alcade de los Hijosdalgos or Chief of the Council of Nobles, in the town of Aviles, where Juan was born in 1614. When he was still a boy he accompanied his father to Madrid, and made up his mind to be an artist. His father, at last acquiescing, placed him with Pedro de las Cuevas, who had also been the teacher of José Leonardo and Pereda. Carreño afterwards worked with a painter, Bartolomé Roman; but by the time that he was twenty years old had so distinguished himself that he was entrusted with several important commissions. Velasquez recognised his talent and, thinking he should be employed in the King’s service, commissioned him to paint some frescoes for the royal palace. These were destroyed in the fire of 1734.

In 1669 Carreño was appointed one of the Court Painters, a post which he continued to hold after the succession of the young king, Charles II, when the regency was in the hands of the Queen-Mother, Mariana de Austria. In this capacity Carreño executed portraits of the royal family which represent his best work.