I shall borrow still further from Sir W. Stirling Maxwell's graphic and entertaining book, descriptions of two of Velasquez's genre pictures, 'The Maids of Honour,' and the more celebrated 'Spinners,' both at Madrid. 'The scene (of the first) is a long room in a quarter of the old palace which was called the prince's quarter, and the subject, Velasquez at work on a large picture of the royal family. To the extreme right of the composition is seen the back of the easel and the canvas on which he is engaged; and beyond it stands the painter, with his pencils and palette, pausing to converse, and to observe the effect of his performance. In the centre stands the little Infanta Maria Margarita, taking a cup of water from a salver which Doña Maria Augustina Sarmiento, maid of honour to the queen, presents kneeling. To the left, Doña Isabel de Velasco, another meniña, seems to be dropping a courtesy; and the dwarfs, Maria Barbolo and Nicolas Pertusano, stand in the foreground, the little man putting his foot on the quarters of a great tawny hound, which despises the aggression, and continues in a state of solemn repose. Some paces behind these figures, Doña Marcela de Ulloa, a lady of honour in nun-like weeds, and a guardadimas, are seen in conversation; at the far end of the room an open door gives a view of a staircase, up which Don Josef Nieto, queen's apasentador, is retiring; and near this door there hangs on the wall a mirror, which, reflecting the countenance of the king and queen, shows that they form part of the principal group, although placed beyond the bounds of the picture. The room is hung with paintings which Palomino assures us are works of Rubens; and it is lighted by three windows in the left wall, and by the open door at the end, an arrangement of which an artist will at once comprehend the difficulties. The perfection of art which conceals art, was never better attained than in this picture. Velasquez seems to have anticipated the discovery of Daguerre, and taking a real room, and real chance grouped people, to have fixed them, as it were by magic, for all time on his canvas. The little fair-haired Infanta is a pleasing study of childhood; with the hanging-lip and full cheek of the Austrian family, she has a fresh complexion and lovely blue eyes, and gives a promise of beauty which as empress she never fulfilled. Her young attendants, girls of thirteen or fourteen, contrast agreeably with the ill-favoured dwarf beside them; they are very pretty, especially Doña Isabel de Velasco, who died a reigning beauty, and their hands are painted with peculiar delicacy. Their dresses are highly absurd, their figures being concealed by long stiff corsets and prodigious hoops; for these were the days when the mode was—
"Supporters, pooters, fardingales, above the loynes to weare;"
and the guardainfante, the oval hoop peculiar to Spain, was in full blow; and the robes of a dowager might have curtained the tun of Heidelberg, and the powers of Velasquez were baffled by the perverse fancy of "Fribble, the woman's tailor." The gentle and majestic hound, stretching himself and winking drowsily, is admirably painted, and seems a descendant of the royal breed immortalized by Titian in portraits of the Emperor Charles and his son.'
'The Spinners:' 'The scene is a large weaving-room, in which an old woman and young one sit, the first at her spinning-wheel, and the second winding yarn, with three girls beside them, one of whom plays with a cat. In the background, standing within an alcove filled with the light from an unseen window, are two other women displaying a large piece of tapestry to a lady customer, whose graceful figure recalls that which has given its name to Terburg's picture of "The Satin Gown." Of the composition, the painter Mengs observed, "it seemed as if the hand had no part in it, and it had been the work of pure thought."' Velasquez, who must have seen many a bull fight, has left the world a fine example of field sports in 'The Boar Hunt,' in our National Gallery, a picture which was bought for two thousand two hundred pounds from Lord Cowley. When ambassador at the Court of Spain, it was given to him by Ferdinand VII. In a circular pen in the Pardo, 'Philip IV. and a party of cavaliers display their skill in slaying boars, to a few ladies, who sit secure in heavy old-fashioned blue coaches,' while motley groups of courtiers and peasants, huntsmen and hounds, postilions and their mules fill the foreground. Sir Edwin Landseer remarked of this picture that he had never before seen 'so much large art on so small a scale.'
Bartolomé Estévan Murillo was born at Seville in 1618, and was therefore nearly twenty years younger than his great countryman Velasquez. Murillo seems to have been of obscure origin, and to have begun his life in humble circumstances. There are traditions of his being self-taught, of his studying ragged boys, himself little more than a boy, in the gypsy quarter of Triana in Seville; of his painting in the marketplace, where he probably found the originals of the heads of saints and Madonnas (by which he made a little money in selling them for South America) in the peasants who came to Seville with their fruit and vegetables. In 1642, Murillo, then twenty-four years of age, visited Madrid, and was kindly received, and aided in his art by his senior and fellow artist, the court painter, Velasquez. It had been Murillo's intention to proceed to England to study under Van Dyck, but the death of the latter put a stop to the project. Murillo was prevented from making the painter's pilgrimage to Italy by want of means, but the loss of culture was so far supplied by the instructions given to him by Velasquez.
In 1645, when Murillo was twenty-seven years of age, he returned to Seville, and settled there, becoming as successful as he deserved; and being acknowledged as the head of the school of Seville, where he established the Academy of Art, and was its first president. Murillo married, in 1648, a lady of some fortune, and was accustomed to entertain at his house the most exclusive society of Seville.
In 1682, Murillo was at Cadiz painting a picture of the marriage of St Catherine in the church of the Capuchins there, when, in consequence of the accidental fall of the scaffolding, he received so severe an injury, that he was forced to leave his work incomplete, and to return to Seville, where he died within a few weeks, aged sixty-four years. He had two sons, and an only daughter, who was a nun, having taken the veil eight years before her father's death.
Murillo appears to have been in character a gentle, enthusiastic man, not without a touch of fun and frolic. He would remain for hours in the sacristy of the cathedral of Seville before 'the solemn awful picture of the 'Deposition from the Cross,' by Pedro de Campana. When Murillo was asked by the sacristan why he stood thus gazing there, the painter answered, 'I am waiting till these holy men have finished their work.' By his own desire, Murillo was buried before this picture. Before another 'too truthful picture of Las dos Cadaveres' in the small church of the hospital of the Caridad, Murillo used to hold his nose. One of Murillo's pictures has the odd name of 'La Virgen Sarvilleta,' or the Virgin of the Napkin. Murillo was working at the Convento de la Merced, which is almost filled with his works, when the cook of the convent begged a memorial of him, offering as the canvas a napkin, on which Murillo at once painted a 'brilliant glowing Madonna,' with a child, 'which seems quite to bound forward out of the picture.' [29]
Murillo's portrait by himself represents him in a dark doublet having wide sleeves and a square collar closed in front. His thumb is in his pallet, and the other hand, with fingers taper and delicate as those of a hand by Van Dyck, holds one of his brushes. The smooth face, with regular features, is pale and thoughtful, and with the womanliness of the aspect increased from the dark hair, which is divided slightly to one side, being allowed to fall down in long wavy curls on the shoulders.
In spite of the naturalistic studies of his early youth, and even of the naturalistic treatment which he gave to his first religious work, Murillo was possessed of greater and higher imagination than Velasquez could claim, and the longer Murillo lived and worked the more refined and exalted his ideas became. Unlike Velasquez, Murillo was a great religious painter, and during the last years of his life he painted sacred subjects almost exclusively. But, like Velasquez, Murillo was eminently a Spanish painter—his virgins are dark-eyed, olive-complexioned maidens, and even his Holy Child is a Spanish babe.