The Story of Spanish Painting

by Charles H. Caffin

The decline of Spanish prestige and prosperity was accelerated by Philip III, an easy-going person, who even refused to take any active part in the selection of his own wife. He languidly continued the embellishment of the palaces which his father had built, and posed mildly as a patron of the arts. Under his feeble rule the power of the crown declined, while that of the nobility correspondingly increased; and to them probably more than to the king himself must be attributed the crime and economical blunder of the final expulsion of the Morescoes. An adventitious lustre is added to the reign of this king and his father by the genius of Cervantes, Lope de Vega, the dramatist, and the great artist, El Greco.

Succeeding to the crown at the age of seventeen, Philip IV resigned the government to his favorite and prime-minister, the Count-Duke Olivares, whose idea of statesmanship was to keep his royal master as far as possible in ignorance of the impending ruin of the kingdom. To this end he renewed the war in Holland, which had been interrupted by a twelve years’ truce, and, with no decisive result except the squandering of revenue, prolonged it until the final recognition of Dutch Independence in 1648. Over eighty years had been expended in endeavoring to set back the clock to the principles and methods of the Middle Ages and in the process the proud empire, inaugurated by the Catholic Kings, Ferdinand and Isabella, had been drained of its vitality. The colonial possessions began to fall one by one into the hands of foreigners and Spain herself was enfeebled and demoralised. Meanwhile Philip played the part of a Maecenas in what proved to be the Golden Age of Spanish literature and art.

Among the names which gave a lustre to the Court were the veteran Lope de Vega; Calderon, author among other dramas of the “Comedies of Cape and Sword”; Velez de Guevara, playwright and novelist, whose “El Diablo Cojuelo” was the original of Le Sage’s “Le Diable Boiteux”; Luis de Gongora, the poet; Quevedo, the satirist; Bartolomé Argensola, historian, and Antonio de Solis, poet, dramatist and author of “The History of the Conquest of Mexico.” Philip himself posed, with considerable warrant, as a poet and musician, and even took part as an actor in the musical and dramatic entertainments which

THE CATHOLIC KINGS AT PRAYER	SCHOOL OF CASTILE XV CENTURY
THE PRADO

enlivened the ennui of the Court in the palace of Buen Retiro. He was also, as an amateur, skilful in drawing and painting. This doubtless helped him to appreciate the merits of Velasquez, who to the world outside of Spain represents the subject of most significance in his life. Philip’s companionship with the artist, five years his elder, which except for the brief intervals in which one or the other of them was traveling, lasted for thirty-seven years, indeed until Velasquez’ death, is the one thing on which the student of history and of art cares to dwell. It has secured for Philip IV a recognition which his political importance would have denied him.

The increasing impotence of the Hapsburg family of Spanish king’s reached its climax in Philip’s son, Charles II. One has but to glance at the latter’s portrait, painted by Juan Carreño, to realise the physical and mental degeneracy that the family type has undergone. The type, as one sees it in Titian’s equestrian portrait of his great-great-grandfather, Charles I of Spain and V of Germany, is already abnormal. The grey eyes, for all their sternness and penetrating character, have a pathetic cast of melancholy; the under jaw protrudes like that of an ape. But the chin is massive, as indicative of force as of ferocity. In Philip II, as he appears in Titian’s portrait in the Prado, the face has lengthened; the eyes have lost their piercing gaze, and while no less melancholy, have an expression of deliberate cruelty. The coarseness of the lower part of the face is displayed in the exaggerated sensuality of the out-turned lower lip, beneath which is a tapering chin, that has a suggestion of blended weakness and petty doggedness. In the equestrian portrait of Philip III, which is supposed to have been painted by Bartolomé Gonzáles and effectively retouched by Velasquez, the monarch’s head is carried a little back, a gesture which extenuates with probable intention the protrusion of the lower part. But the chin is feebly pointed, the under lip pendulous, while the eye suggests an empty vacuity, that is echoed in the mild fierceness of the upcurling moustache. It is a face vain, stupid and not a little commonplace. The last quality, at least, is absent, from the portraits of Philip IV. The face, especially when young, reflects the King’s intrinsic refinement; but its length has become exaggerated, the protruding under-lip and jaw are puffed and fleshy, weakly sensual, while the eyes are apathetic. The expression of the whole is of a nature nearly worn out, that can only be stirred to occasional alertness by the stimulant of trivial excitements. Finally, in Carreño’s portrait of Charles II, (p. 132) appears a total extinction of active faculties, soft sensuousness rather than sensuality, a settled look of apathy and the profound depression of a religious monomaniac.

Charles was scarcely four years old when the death of his father in 1665 made him king of a bankrupt country. It was the policy of the Queen Mother, whose regency was marked by political incompetence and personal amours, to keep her son as childish as possible. And, when he reached his majority at the age of fifteen and supplanted his mother’s influence by that of Don Juan of Austria, the latter also schemed to keep his master in a condition of mental darkness and dependence. Thus Charles was the victim alike of racial degeneracy and of thwarted development. Complete incapacity to govern himself or others was the natural result. He shunned the affairs of state, mildly supported the arts as far as the beggared state of the treasury would permit, and sank into a religious mania that found satisfaction in attending auto-da-fés and prostrating himself in acts of personal penance. Dying childless in 1700, he brought the Hapsburg line to an inglorious conclusion; and the succession passed to a branch of the Bourbon family.