It Has Two Lovely Little Landscapes By Murillo, Showing How
Universal Was That Wholesome Genius.
Also one of the largest landscapes
of Velazquez, which, when you stand near it, seems a confused mass of
brown daubs, but stepping back a few yards becomes a most perfect view
of the entrance to a royal park.
The wide gate swings on its pivot
before your eyes. A court cortege moves in, - the long, dark alley
stretches off for miles directly in front, without any trick of lines or
curves; the artist has painted the shaded air. To the left a patch of
still water reflects the dark wood, and above there is a distant and
tranquil sky. Had Velazquez not done such vastly greater things, his few
landscapes would alone have won him fame enough. He has in this room a
large number of royal portraits, - one especially worth attention, of
Philip III. The scene is by the shore, - a cool foreground of sandy
beach, - a blue-gray stretch of rippled water, and beyond, a low
promontory between the curling waves and the cirrus clouds. The king
mounts a magnificent gray horse, with a mane and tail like the broken
rush of a cascade. The keeping is wonderful; a fresh sea breeze blows
out of the canvas. A brilliant bit of color is thrown into the red,
gold-fringed scarf of the horseman, fluttering backward over his
shoulder. Yet the face of the king is, as it should be, the principal
point of the picture, - the small-eyed, heavy-mouthed, red-lipped, fair,
self-satisfied face of these Austrian despots. It is a handsomer face
than most of Velazquez, as it was probably painted from memory and
lenient tradition. For Philip III. was gathered to his fathers in the
Escorial before Velazquez came up from Andalusia to seek his fortune at
the court. The first work he did in Madrid was to paint the portrait of
the king, which so pleased his majesty that he had it repeated ad
nauseam. You see him served up in every form in this gallery, - on foot,
on horseback, in full armor, in a shooting-jacket, at picnics, and
actually on his knees at his prayers! We wonder if Velazquez ever grew
tired of that vacant face with its contented smirk, or if in that loyal
age the smile of royalty was not always the sunshine of the court?
There is a most instructive study of faces in the portraits of the
Austrian line. First comes Charles V., the First of Spain, painted by
Titian at Augsburg, on horseback, in the armor he wore at Muhl-berg, his
long lance in rest, his visor up over the eager, powerful face, - the eye
and beak of an eagle, the jaw of a bull-dog, the face of a born ruler, a
man of prey. And yet in the converging lines about the eyes, in the
premature gray hair, in the nervous, irritable lips, you can see the
promise of early decay, of an age that will be the spoil of superstition
and bigotry.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 62 of 132
Words from 31477 to 31992
of 67759
