Velázquez en el museo del Prado

by A. de Beruete y Moret

It was in these melancholy days for Spanish painting that a young man, born in Seville in 1699, began his artistic education. His name was Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez.

From eleven years of age he had been the pupil of Francisco Pacheco, the painter whose highly trained intelligence attracted all those who formed, in the Andalusian capital, the aristocracy of art and letters.

The teaching of Pacheco, his artistic maxims, crystallised from the pseudo-classicism which was then fashionable, made no impression on the temperament and natural tendencies of the young man, who had already devoted himself to the faithful interpretation of nature. No conventions of the studios; no embellishment of the rude form which the living model offers to the vision of a soul that often aspires to some higher ideal; to follow nature as she reveals herself to his eyes, without conventionalising or falsifying, such was the principle to which he always remained faithful, and which he was able to observe, thanks to the serene aloofness of his artistic temperament and the marvellous correctness of his eye. His first attempts were numerous crayon and colour studies executed with great seriousness. While still in his teens he painted several of those works so remarkable for their realism, for their masterly drawing (which with Velázquez was an innate gift), for their sculptural relief and precision: the Old Woman Frying Eggs (of the Cook collection) and the Seville Water-Carrier (in the possession of the Duke of Wellington). Both these pictures, now in England, show that vigour with which the artist treated popular subjects. Typical of his religious works are the Immaculate Conception, St. John in Patmos, Christ in the House of Martha, all three, like the preceding ones, in England; St. Peter, in a private collection at Madrid; the Adoration of the Magi in the Prado; and Christ with the Pilgrims of Emmaus, which has been recently acquired by an American collector.

The art revealed by these pictures and the others which Velázquez painted at Seville in his years of apprenticeship, are in direct contradiction with the principles professed by Pacheco. Yet, far from seeking to dissuade his pupil from following the tendencies he manifested, he encouraged him to realise a style of painting frankly naturalistic; and, won by the moral qualities of Velázquez, made him his son-in-law before the young painter had completed his nineteenth year. A little later, Pacheco, after having made in 1622 an unsuccessful attempt, succeeded in 1623 in introducing Velázquez to the court of Philip IV. The painter remained his whole life in the service of his sovereign.

The portrait of Fonseca, the first which the young Sevillian painted at the Court, put his talent to the proof in a manner so brilliant that when this portrait had been shown to the King, to his brothers the Infantes and to the courtiers, Velázquez obtained a salaried position at Court and was at once commissioned to paint the portrait of the sovereign.

Fonseca’s portrait is lost, but there are in existence several portraits of the King, the Infante D. Carlos, the Count-Duke Olivares, painted in the first years spent by Velázquez in Madrid. These are masterly works and so personal that they are sufficient to explain the jealousy which the young intruder aroused in the mediocre group of painters around Philip IV. Nevertheless the position of Velázquez grew stronger from day to day, and particularly after his triumph in 1625 with an equestrian portrait of the King which has disappeared, and his victory in the competition for a picture showing the expulsion of the Moors. Here he was matched against three of the King’s other painters, Vincente Carducho, Eugenio Caxes and Angel Nardi. Velázquez obtained the prize by the unanimous decision of a jury composed of artists. This painting was also lost in the burning of the Alcazar at Madrid in 1734. There remains another, The Topers, finished two years later, the high water mark of Velázquez’s production during these years. This picture shows all the qualities of the works executed at Seville in the first years of apprenticeship, but in a higher degree. Nowhere has the picaresque spirit which played so brilliant a part in Spanish literature at that time, found a more original expression than on this extraordinary canvas. The artist here reveals himself with a vigour that has not been surpassed for characterization of types and energy of expression. If Velázquez had died the day after finishing The Topers, this work alone would have been enough to ensure his supremacy and to give him the title of founder of a school in a milieu still lacking in definite orientation and in personality.

These brilliant beginnings of Velázquez at Court dimly foreshadowed the glory which awaited him. His first travels in Italy which took place the year that he finished the painting of The Topers, in 1629, marks a perfecting of his natural qualities, which develop by the study of the great Italian masters and by the constant determination to realize an interpretation more precise and more faithful to nature.

It was then in Italy and in classical surroundings that he painted Vulcan’s Forge, a mythological work, which if it does not show a very close acquaintance with the consecrated canons, reveals all the mastery of the artist in the execution of the nude. Then also it was that Velázquez painted the two landscapes of the Villa Medici at Rome, where he showed in simple studies how he understood and treated landscape, as the forerunner of the modern schools of open-air painting.

Between the year 1631, the date of his return from Italy, and the year 1649 the date of his second journey to Rome, begins the period during which the artist’s production is most marvellous, not for copiousness which never characterised Velázquez, but for the variety and refinement of his works.

The painting of The Lances unequalled for nobility, where the painter’s genius reproduces all the chivalrous spirit of the race; the equestrian portraits of the King, Queen and princes; the other canvases where the same personages are seen dressed for the chase, and which have as background the mountainous country of the Pardo with its ancient oaks planted in a soil as picturesque as it is poor—these landscapes, the horizon of which is bounded by the range of the Sierra de Guadarrama, and by the snowy summits of Castile glittering in the sun; and other portraits also like that of the Count-Duke Olivares; that of the King in military uniform painted at Fraga in 1644 and discovered in 1912; those of the court jesters; that of a Spanish woman, typical of its class, which is one of the treasures of the Wallace collection; Christ on the Cross; the scenes of the chase; all works which give an idea of the power which the painter’s personality acquired. During these eighteen years of maturity developed what the critics call the second manner of Velázquez, larger than that of his youth, even more finely coloured and enriched with those harmonies in grey and silver with which nothing else can compare.