There Has Never Been A Chapter Written Which So Clearly Shows
The Drunkard's Nature As This Vulgar Anacreontic.
A thousand men have
painted drunken frolics, but never one with such distinct spiritual
insight as this.
To me the finest product of Jordaens' genius is his
Bohnen Koenig in the Belvedere, but there you see only the incidents of
the mad revel; every one is shouting or singing or weeping with maudlin
glee or tears. But in this scene of the Borrachos there is nothing
scenic or forced. These topers have come together to drink, for the love
of the wine, - the fun is secondary. This wonderful reserve of Velazquez
is clearly seen in his conception of the king of the rouse. He is a
young man, with a heavy, dull, somewhat serious face, fat rather than
bloated, rather pale than flushed. He is naked to the waist to show the
plump white arms and shoulders and the satiny skin of the voluptuary;
one of those men whose heads and whose stomachs are too loyal ever to
give them Katzenjammer or remorse. The others are of the commoner type
of haunters of wine-shops, - with red eyes and coarse hides and grizzled
matted hair, - but every man of them inexorably true, and a predestined
sot.
We must break away from Velazquez, passing by his marvellous portraits
of kings and dwarfs, saints and poodles, - among whom there is a dwarf of
two centuries ago, who is too like Tom Thumb to serve for his twin
brother, - and a portrait of Aesop, which is a flash of intuition, an
epitome of all the fables.
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