“That is a canine dog,” said Patsy. “Dogs in pictures almost always have a human expression. These of Velasquez look as dogs must look to each other; it is as if they were painted by one of themselves!”
The Meninas has a separate room to itself. Look at the picture long enough, and the illusion seizes you that you are really looking into a room of the gloomy old palace of the Alcazar, the Court of Philip IV, where Velasquez lived and worked the greater part of his working life. You can walk into that room where he stands at work before a big canvas, look over his shoulder, see the portrait he is painting of the King and Queen; you can even touch him on the arm that supports his palette.
“He paints pictures no longer,” cried little Don Luis the Valencian. “Like a god he creates a world with light and atmosphere, plains and mountains. Into that world he puts kings and queens, buffoons and beggars.”
“And soldiers and horses!” said Villegas, stopping before the “Surrender of Breda,” a great spacious picture with a gray-blue sky, and room enough in it for all the sublimity of victory, the tragedy of defeat. In the background the distant town of Breda still smokes from the besiegers’ shells. In the nearer distance, marching up the hill, is a company of the victorious soldiers armed with the long lances that give the picture its nickname. The men’s faces are grave, they show no exultation to the group of the defeated enemy standing opposite to them. In the foreground Justino de Nassau, the defender of Breda, offers the key of the city to the victorious general Spinola. De Nassau’s knee is slightly bent—it is a stubborn knee and hard to bend—as he holds out the key. Spinola has neither hand free to take it; one holds his baton, the other is laid in what seems almost an embrace, on De Nassau’s shoulder. “Take back your key,” he seems to say. “To-day it was our turn to win; to-morrow it may be yours.”
What was it Grant said to Lee about needing the horses for the spring plowing? There you have the magnanimous spirit of Velasquez’s “Surrender of Breda” in a nutshell.
“My friend,” said Villegas to a stout German artist, who was working away in grim earnest at a copy of the “Lances”; “your color is too hot, remember the cool silver-grays; always try for them!”
“Ach Gott, you have said it!” cried the poor man, squinting from his copy to the original; “why could I not myself before have seen it?” Then he broke into profuse thanks to the Herr Director, who hurried on to escape them.
“I have a plan,” said Villegas, “for a new arrangement of this room.” We had passed into the long gallery of the Spanish School, from which the Velasquez room opens. “Here, opposite this entrance, I shall hang the Titian portrait of Charles V on his war-horse; it is too much sacrificed where it is now. Near this I shall hang some Tintorettos and some Grecos. In this way it will be possible to trace the influence of each of these masters on the other: the influence of Titian on Tintoretto, of Tintoretto on Greco, of Greco on Velasquez.”
The head porter, who had come hurrying up to Villegas, now delivered his message.
“They have telephoned from the Palace that the King of Portugal will be at the Museum in half an hour.”