Cervantes and Velázquez are our own."
—Duke of Rivas: For the Tercentenary.
The celebration, as planned, was comparatively simple, but enthusiasm grew with what it fed upon. The Knights of Santiago held the first place upon the programme, for into that high and exclusive order the artist had won entry by special grace of Philip IV. Even Spain has been affected by the modern movement for the destruction of traditions, and certain erudite meddlers, who have been delving in the State archives, declare that there is no truth in the following story, which, nevertheless, everybody has to tell.
The legend runs that Velázquez became a knight of St. James by a royal compliment to the painter of Las Meninas. This picture, which seems no picture, but life itself, eternizes a single instant of time in the palace of Philip IV, that one instant before the fingers of the little Infanta have curved about the cup presented by her kneeling maid, before the great, tawny, half-awakened hound has decided to growl remonstrance under the teasing foot of the dwarf, before the reflected faces of king and queen have glided from the mirror, that fleeting instant while yet the courtier, passing down the gallery into the garden, turns on the threshold for a farewell smile, while yet the green velvet sleeve of the second dwarf, ugliest of all pet monsters, brushes the fair silken skirts of the daintiest of ladies-in-waiting, while yet the artist, so much more royal than royalty, flashes his dark-eyed glance upon the charming group.
But if Velázquez looks prouder than a king, Philip proved himself here no uninspired painter. Asked if he found the work complete, the monarch shook his head, and, catching up the brush, marked the red cross of St. James on the pictured breast of the artist. So says the old wives' tale. At all events, in this way or another, the honor was conferred, with the result that on the three hundredth birthday of Velázquez, June 6, 1899, dukes and counts and marquises flocked to the Church of Las Señoras Comendadoras, where the antique Gregorian mass was chanted for the repose of their comrade's soul.
By the latest theology, the "Master of all Good Workmen" would not have waited for this illustrious requiem before admitting the painter to "an æon or two" of rest, but the Knights of Santiago have not yet accepted Kipling as their Pope.
On the afternoon of the same day the Sala de Velázquez was inaugurated in the Museo del Prado, taking, with additions, the room formerly known as the Sala de la Reina Isabel, long the Salon Carré of Madrid, where Raphaels, Titians, Del Sartos, Dürers, Van Dycks, Correggios, and Rembrandts kept the Spanish Masters company. Portico and halls were adorned in honor of the occasion; the bust of Velázquez, embowered in laurels, myrtles, and roses, was placed midway in the Long Gallery, fronting the door of his own demesne; but the crown of the fiesta consisted in the new and far superior arrangement of his pictures. The royal family and chief nobility, the Ministers of Government, the Diplomatic Corps, and delegations of foreign artists made a brilliant gathering. The address, pronounced by an eminent critic, reviewed what are known as the three styles of Velázquez. Never was art lecture more fortunate, for this Museo, holding as it does more than half the extant works of the great realist, with nearly all his masterpieces, enabled the speaker to illustrate every point from the original paintings. A rain of aristocratic poems followed, for a Spaniard is a lyrist born, and turns from prose to verse as easily as he changes his cuffs. As Monipodio says, in one of Cervantes' "Exemplary Tales": "A man has but to roll up his shirt-sleeves, set well to work, and he may turn off a couple of thousand verses in the snapping of a pair of scissors." These Dukes of Parnassus and Counts of Helicon did homage to the painter in graceful stanzas, not without many an allusion to Spain's troubled present. If only, as one sonneteer suggested, the soldiers of Las Lanzas had marched out from their great gilt frame and gone against the foe! A programme of old-time music was rendered, and therewith the Sala de Velázquez was declared open.
To this, as to all galleries and monuments under State control, the public was invited free of charge for the week to come. The response was appreciative, gentility, soldiery, ragamuffins, bevies of schoolgirls with notebooks, and families of foreigners with opera glasses grouping themselves in picturesque variety, day after day, before the art treasures of Madrid, while beggars sat in joyful squads on the steps of the museums, collecting the fees which the doorkeepers refused.
During these seven days, artistic and social festivals in honor of Velázquez abounded, not only in Madrid, but throughout Spain. Palma must needs get up, with photographs and the like, a Velázquez exposition, and Seville, insisting on her mother rights, must arrange a belated funeral, with mass and sermon and a tomb of laurels and flowers, surmounted by brushes, palette, and the cloak and helmet of the Order of Santiago. In the capital the Circulo de Bellas Artes sumptuously breakfasted the artists from abroad. The dainties were spiced with speeches, guitars, ballet, gypsy songs and dances, congratulatory telegrams, and a letter posted from Parnassus by Don Diego himself. Two valuable new books on Velázquez suddenly appeared in the shop windows, and such periodicals as La Ilustración, Blanco y Negro, La Vida Literaria, and El Nuevo Mundo vied with one another in illustrated numbers, while even the one-cent dailies came out with specials devoted to Velázquez biography and criticism. The Academy of San Fernando rendered a musical programme of Velázquez date, the Queen Regent issued five hundred invitations to an orchestral concert in the Royal Palace, and there was talk, which failed to fructify, of a grand masquerade ball, where the costumes should be copied from the Velázquez paintings and the dances should be those stepped by the court of Philip IV.
The closing ceremony of the week was the unveiling of the new statue of Velázquez. Paris owes to Fremiot an equestrian statue of the painter, who, like Shakespeare in his Paris statue, is made to look very like a Frenchman, but the horse is of the most spirited Spanish type. A younger Velázquez may be seen in Seville, at home among the orange trees, and the Palacio de la Biblioteca y Museos Nacionales in Madrid shows a statue from the hand of Garcia. Still another, an arrogant, striding figure, was standing in the studio of Benlliure, ready for its journey to the Paris exposition. The tercentenary statue, by Marinas, is also true to that haughty look of Velázquez. It represents him seated, brush and palette in hand, the winds lifting from his ears those long, clustering falls of hair, as if to let him hear the praises of posterity. Little he cares for praises! That artist's look sees nothing but his task.