“Or a Coello or a Pantoja. It is not a Moro! Thou hast some patience thyself; it is not bad, thy copy!” Don Luis looked critically at it; “a little crude. How many glazes hast thou given it?”
“Only eight.”
“Ah! thou seest? thou wilt get the tone soon. There is nothing wrong with the drawing; the worst of the work is over with that.”
“Blessed be thy mouth!”
Don John, the Conqueror of Lepanto, is a young man standing with the lion of Alcazaba at his side. He wears a shirt of mail the rings as fine as those of a lady’s purse, and every ring is painted. The fringe of the cushion is painted thread by thread, you can almost count the hairs in the moustache.
“How can you know where to begin?” I asked. The copying of this life-sized full length, painted with the detail of a miniature, seemed a desperate undertaking.
“I know how the devil worked! I studied and studied him till I got his secret; ah, there is no one like him; he is a despair! See, first I draw everything in black, white and gray, down to the last detail, then I get my tone with a series of thin glazes. Each one must be quite hard and dry before I give it the next. It takes a lifetime, you may say!”
A delightful copy of the Velasquez portrait of little Prince Baltasar with the gun and the dog stood against the wall. “Thou hast a good thing there,” said Don Luis; “and once Velasquez was hard for thee to copy!”
