I have mentioned that one of the presents given by Olivares to the Prince of Wales on his departure was a set of paintings, but these were by no means the only pictures that Charles took back with him to enrich the royal galleries of England. The unfortunate murdered Count Villa Mediana's great collection was still being dispersed by almoneda at the time, and here Charles bought several specimens. Lope de Vega says that the Prince "collected with remarkable zeal all the paintings that could be had, paying for them excessive prices." He was unable to persuade Quevedo's friend Espina to sell him the gem of his collection, two volumes of original drawings by Leonardo da Vinci, which, however, eventually came to England as the property of Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel.[[19]] Many other paintings and precious objects were secured by Charles during his stay by purchase and gift; and it may be fairly assumed that so great an art lover as he must have found his principal solace for his long absence from home in the inspection and acquisition of objects he prized so highly. In the Calle Mayor, against the wall of the Oñate Palace, opposite Liars' Walk, on the raised path along the side of St. Philip's Church, the Spanish painters of the day, on the lookout for patrons, were wont to exhibit their canvasses for sale,[[20]] and some of the modern Spanish pictures that Charles took home with him were doubtless seen and bought in the course of his daily promenade through the fashionable street of the capital.
Valezquez in Madrid
There was one young painter of the day, a stripling of twenty-four, though already married and with two children when he arrived in Madrid at the same time as the Prince of Wales, who at least had no need to seek purchasers for his canvasses upon the rough side walk, though he did exhibit them there for the admiring criticism of the connoisseurs opposite. To have come from Seville, as he did, was, to begin with, a good credential in the time of Olivares, whose own noble house was of Andalucia, and who himself was Sevillano to the marrow. But this young man, Diego Velazquez, had married the daughter of his master, Pacheco, the best known painter in Seville, and the bosom friend of Francisco de Rojas, the literary henchman and devoted adherent of Olivares. Three years before this, Diego had come to Court full of high hopes and ambitions; for the painting of convent altar-pieces in Seville was a narrow field for genius, and Diego yearned for the wide recognition that the "Court" alone could give. But though he had the help of the Sevillians who abounded in Olivares' household, and notably that of Dr. Fonseca, the Court chaplain and King's "curtain-drawer" in the royal chapel, business was so pressing, both for King and minister, in the early days of the reign, that there was no time to be spared for portrait painters, and Velazquez returned home disappointed.
But in the spring of 1623, whilst Charles Stuart was in Madrid, Fonseca, at Olivares' bidding, wrote to the artist telling him that he might now with good hope return to Madrid, and sending him fifty ducats for his travelling expenses. He needed no further urging, nor did his famous father-in-law, who, if he was not a genius himself, at least realised genius when he saw it, and together they set forth, with the assurance that young Diego was going to conquer Madrid. There was no heart-breaking struggle for him, though his triumph was not so immediate as he would have wished. The effort to get to the palace, the fountain of all patronage, was universal; and the rivalry of competitors was keen. Poets, dramatists, actors, placemen, and artists were all struggling eagerly to catch the eye of royalty, or the ministers of royalty, and for a time even Fonseca could not secure for his protégé an admission to the King's presence. In the meanwhile Velazquez painted a portrait of the priestly patron Fonseca, in whose house he lived. As soon as it was finished the chamberlain of the Cardinal Infante Fernando, the Count de Peñaranda, visited the house by chance, saw the picture, and insisted upon carrying it off with him to the palace. Everybody at Court knew the reverend "royal curtain-drawer" in chapel, and within an hour the portrait had been seen by all the palaciegos, from the King downward, and praised to the skies.
Promises were sent to the young painter that he should be commissioned to portray the King and his brother; but the King's work and play, more momentarily pressing, still delayed the anticipated honour until the end of August, when Philip, on his prancing charger—for the King was a splendid and intrepid horseman—carracoled in the garden of the palace before the grave, lean young painter with the jet black hair and flashing Andaluz eyes, who for the first time fixed there upon canvas the face and form which his genius was to immortalise. Philip was a good judge of art, and when he saw the picture, though no muscle of his impassive face moved, he expressed his satisfaction with courteous condescension. Olivares, vehement as usual, and proud that a Sevillian should have succeeded, swore that no one else had ever painted the King as he was, and that in future Diego Velazquez alone should paint his Majesty. When the last touch was given to it, the great life-sized equestrian portrait of Philip was exhibited upon the pavement opposite Liars' Walk, not for sale, but for the astonishment and delight of loyal Madrileños.[[21]]
Diego Velazquez's fortune was made. Within a few weeks he was appointed Court painter, with a salary of twenty ducats a month, with extra payment for each picture and a studio in the palace, and thenceforward pensions and favours of all sorts testified to Olivares' pride in his fellow-countryman and the King's recognition of a genius. From the time of the great Emperor and his son the tradition had existed that intimate familiarity was permissible between the King of Spain and those household servants whom he cared thus to honour. Both the Emperor and Philip II. had allowed the greatest liberty to their jesters, dwarfs, and body servants, and had extended their friendship to the artist craftsmen who had served them. Philip IV. bettered the instruction, for he at heart was a poet and an artist himself; and whilst he delighted in the company of clever people generally, he distinguished with life-long regard and considerate kindness the young artist, only a few years older than himself, who did so much to ennoble and illustrate his Court. In Velazquez's studio in the palace a leather armchair was always kept sacred for the King, who was wont to come in unannounced when the fancy seized him, and watch the painter at work. Indeed, during his stay in Madrid he hardly missed a day in his visits, and would often come accompanied by his wife to the studio. There he witnessed, gradually growing under the magic brush, the counterfeit presentments of those who made up his life, his wives, brothers, and children, the latter in their chubby babyhood, stiff with irksome splendour; the distorted and deformed beings who ministered to the merriment of those whose surroundings were otherwise far from merry; the poets who solaced his life, the women he loved, the famous captains of his armies; Spinola, Pimentel, Pulido-Pareja, and the rest of them; the great Olivares himself, and all the rout of glittering satellites who revolved around the Planet King.
A literary court
Philip enjoyed almost as much the society of Quevedo as that of Velazquez, but the satiric wit was less careful than the painter, and his medium was more risky; so that, though his biting verse and malicious prose had in the King an appreciative listener, the poet was almost as often in exile as in favour.[[22]] The literary contests and discussions which amused Philip as he grew older always, when Quevedo was not in disgrace, benefited by his ready wit. Philip himself took part in these literary orgies in the palace, frequently proposing a subject for an impromptu play in the facile blank verse which comes so trippingly upon Spanish lips. The subject would sometimes be a sacred one, in which case the treatment was such as would shock modern ears, though for abject lip devotion the persons who spoke so slightingly of sacred things were never surpassed. It is related that on one such occasion Philip set the Creation of the World as the subject for an impromptu play, assigning to himself the character of the Maker. The poet, whom he had cast for Adam, made his part unduly long, and Philip elaborately expressed his grief, as the Eternal Father, that ever he should have afflicted the world with such a long-winded Adam. But though these literary diversions had already become attractive to him at the period at which we are now writing (1626-1630), the gloomy old Alcazar was not a congenial setting for frivolity; and it was not until later, when the new suburban palace of the Buen Retiro was specially devised by Olivares for the purpose, that the poetic and dramatic exercises of the Court reached their zenith, as will be related in a future chapter.
But from the first Philip's devotion to the theatre never wavered, and in this his people, high and low, agreed with him. The two public theatres of the capital, the Corral de la Pacheca (on the site of the present Teatro Espanol) and the Corral de la Cruz, in the street of the same name, were crowded every day, and sometimes twice a day; the performance before noon being attended mainly by women, and that of the afternoon by men, and women of a better class. The appurtenances of the stage were extremely rough, and the scenery widely adaptable where it existed at all, as the constant changes of comedy made special scenery impossible. The plays presented, hundreds of which are still extant, are marvellous in the inventive fertility of their plots; the intrigues that spring from mistaken personality, marital wiles, and lovers' stratagems furnishing the foundations of most of them. The speeches, according to modern ideas, appear intolerably pompous and long, but the mere sound of the flowing rhythm pleased the ears of Spaniards, as similar speeches do to-day, and the Madrileños never grew weary of their shows.
Madrid theatres