The soundly painted Portrait of Don Pedro de Altamira, Doyen of the Chapel Royal at Toledo, afterwards Cardinal (No. 1737), inscribed on the background “æt 54 dv, 1633,” is a good character-study of an energetic and rather worldly-looking Church dignitary, but does not appear to be either by Velazquez or one of his immediate followers.

There is in the Spanish section of the Louvre another superbly painted, but very problematic, Head of a Man (No. 1747), which, on no more plausible grounds than an accidental likeness to one of the figures in The Forge of Vulcan, has by some critics been believed to be by Velazquez. The rich impasto and the careful finish of the painting are utterly unlike Velazquez’s manner; nor does the picture appear to be of his period. But whoever may be its author, it is one of the most remarkable paintings in this section of the Louvre.

MURILLO

By far the best represented of all the masters at the Spanish school is Bartolomé Estéban Murillo (1618?–1682). He was born at Seville, of poor parents, and studied as a boy under Juan del Castillo. Forced before he had reached manhood to gain his livelihood, he took to manufacturing artistically worthless devotional pictures on saga-cloth, for sale at the weekly fairs in the poor quarter of Seville. This early practice of rather mechanical production, and the habit, acquired by necessity, of working to please the public, clung to him in after life and are responsible for much that the modern mind finds distasteful in his art—a certain sickly sentimentality that often takes the place of real sentiment, and an artificiality of arrangement even where the types are realistic renderings of the people among whom he spent his days.

With his small savings from the proceeds of his crude popular pictures Murillo proceeded to Madrid, where Velazquez assisted him by deed, advice, and example, though the two artists were probably never in the relation of master and pupil. After about two years thus profitably spent at Madrid, Murillo returned to Seville, where he continued to work until his death in 1682, and rose to the very summit of fame and popularity. At his best Murillo was a colourist of great charm and a technician of the rarest skill. His art is most admirable where he adheres most closely to the realistic tradition of his country. It is scarcely to be credited that the same hand which produced so many vaporous and vapid Madonnas is responsible for a picture painted with such superb breadth and incisive vigour as The Young Beggar (No. 1717), which is almost worthy of the brush of Velazquez in his Sevillan period. The decidedly unsavoury subject is made acceptable by the consummate artistry of the treatment.

“THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION”

It is not, however, to pictures of this type that Murillo owed his widespread popularity. Generations of enthusiastic admirers have stood in silent awe before his large painting of The Immaculate Conception (No. 1709, [Plate XXVI.]), which is certainly one of the best of innumerable versions of the same subject—the Virgin standing on a crescent moon, with ecstatic gaze, and hands pressed to her breast, and surrounded by swarms of joyous angel-children—painted by Murillo to meet an apparently insatiable demand. There is something of real ecstasy in this conception. To find a similar morbidezza of pigment one must turn to certain famous works by Andrea del Sarto: it is a quality which is generally conspicuously absent from Spanish painting and which, if carried a step farther, as it sometimes was carried by Murillo, would result in fuzzy vapidness. This famous picture has the distinction of being the most costly purchase ever made for the Louvre, the price paid for it at the Marshal Soult sale in 1852—that is many years before American competition had established the vastly enhanced standards of value which now prevail—being as much as 615,300 fr., or £24,612.

PLATE XXVI.—MURILLO
(1618?–1682)
SPANISH SCHOOL
No. 1709—THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION
(La Conception immaculée de la Vierge)

The Virgin, wearing a white robe with a blue mantle over her left shoulder, has her hands crossed over her breast; she is standing in the hollow of a two-horned crescent, and gazing heavenwards. About twenty-one cherubs and ten heads are seen in different parts of the composition.