He stands before his
easel, his pencils in his hand.
The little princess is stiffly posing in
the centre. Her little maids are grouped about her. Two hideous dwarfs
on the right are teasing a noble dog who is too drowsy and magnanimous
to growl. In the background at the end of a long gallery a gentleman is
opening a door to the garden. The presence of royalty is indicated by
the reflection of the faces of the king and queen in a small mirror,
where you would expect to see your own. The longer you look upon this
marvellous painting, the less possible does it seem that it is merely
the placing of color on canvas which causes this perfect illusion. It
does not seem possible that you are looking at a plane surface. There is
a stratum of air before, behind, and beside these figures. You could
walk on that floor and see how the artist is getting on with the
portrait. There is space and light in this picture, as in any room.
Every object is detached, as in the common miracle of the stereoscope.
If art consist in making a fleeting moment immortal, if the True is a
higher ideal than the Beautiful, then it will be hard to find a greater
painting than this. It is utterly without beauty; its tone is a cold
olive green-gray; there is not one redeeming grace or charm about it
except the noble figure of Velazquez himself, - yet in its austere
fidelity to truth it stands incomparable in the world. It gained
Velazquez his greatest triumph. You see on his breast a sprawling red
cross, painted evidently by an unskilful hand. This was the gracious
answer made by Philip IV. when the artist asked him if anything was
wanting to the picture. This decoration, daubed by the royal hand, was
the accolade of the knighthood of Santiago, - an honor beyond the dreams
of an artist of that day. It may be considered the highest compliment
ever paid to a painter, except the one paid by Courbet to himself, when
he refused to be decorated by the Man of December.
Among Velazquez's most admirable studies of life is his picture of the
Borrachos. A group of rustic roysterers are admitting a neophyte into
the drunken confrerie. He kneels to receive a crown of ivy from the
hands of the king of the revel. A group of older tipplers are filling
their cups, or eyeing their brimming glasses, with tipsy, mock-serious
glances. 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. Before leaving the Spaniards we must look at
the most pleasing of all Ribera's works, - the Ladder-Dream of Jacob.
The patriarch lies stretched on the open plain in the deep sleep of the
weary. To the right in a broad shaft of cloudy gold the angels are
ascending and descending. The picture is remarkable for its mingling the
merits of Ribera's first and second manner. It is a Caravaggio in its
strength and breadth of light and shade, and a Correggio in its delicacy
of sentiment and refined beauty of coloring. He was not often so
fortunate in his Parmese efforts. They are usually marked by a timidity
and an attempt at prettiness inconceivable in the haughty and impulsive
master of the Neapolitan school.
Of the three great Spaniards, Ribera is the least sympathetic. He often
displays a tumultuous power and energy to which his calmer rivals are
strangers. But you miss in him that steady devotion to truth which
distinguishes Velazquez, and that spiritual lift which ennobles Murillo.
The difference, I conceive, lies in the moral character of the three.
Ribera was a great artist, and the others were noble men. Ribera passed
a youth of struggle and hunger and toil among the artists of Rome, - a
stranger and penniless in the magnificent city, - picking up crusts in
the street and sketching on quiet curbstones, with no friend, and no
name but that of Spagnoletto, - the little Spaniard. Suddenly rising to
fame, he broke loose from his Roman associations and fled to Naples,
where he soon became the wealthiest and the most arrogant artist of his
time. He held continually at his orders a faction of bravi who drove
from Naples, with threats and insults and violence, every artist of
eminence who dared visit the city.
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