Sunshine And Shadow In Spain

(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:

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These, then, were the principal influences alive in Spanish art when Diego de Silva y Velazquez was born at Seville in 1599. His family was not of Sevillian or even of Spanish origin, for his grandfather Diego Rodriguez de Silva came from Oporto, the home of the Silva family. The name which he made world famous he took from his mother, Gernima Velazquez, who belonged to an old Seville family. His father Juan de Silva raised no objections when his son desired to study art, and when he was thirteen or fourteen Velazquez was placed in the studio of Francisco de Herrera (1576-1654), who showed something of the fanaticism of El Greco in the flashing eyes and majestic gestures of the saints in his religious pictures. Herrera is said to have been bad-tempered, and after enduring his roughness for about a year Velazquez changed masters and entered the studio of Francisco Pacheco (1571-1654). There he remained five years, and though his master had no great originality or power, he was probably a good teacher, for he was himself a careful draughtsman, a scholar, and the author of a book on painting. Presumably there was also another attraction, for on April 23, 1618, Velazquez married Pacheco’s daughter Juana de Miranda. Henceforward Pacheco did everything he could to advance the interests of his son-in-law.

Within three years occurred the opportunity of a lifetime. Philip III died on March 31, 1621, and the young king Philip IV dismissed the Duke of Lerma and made Count Olivarez his prime minister. Now Olivarez, a son of the Governor of Seville, had lived in that city till 1615 and had made himself popular there as a patron of painters and poets. Several of his protégés at Seville united to praise to the new minister the extraordinary talent of their young fellow townsman. Velazquez went to Madrid and, after some vexations delays, in 1623 Olivarez persuaded the young king to give Velazquez a sitting. He conquered at his first brush stroke. The equestrian portrait he painted is now lost, but it pleased Philip so much that forthwith the painter of twenty four was appointed Court Painter to a king of eighteen.

From the beginning Philip treated Velazquez in the most friendly manner. The king is said by a contemporary to have come to his studio ‘almost every day,’ by ‘those secret passages, hung with pictures, which led from the king’s rooms to every part of the old Alcazar.’ The monotony of the stiff routine of the Court was broken in the autumn of 1628 by the arrival of Rubens, who, as stated in the last chapter, came to Madrid on a diplomatic mission, and for nine months was constantly with the king and Velazquez. According to Pacheco and others, Rubens thought highly of Velazquez, and delighted in his society, while his views of the king appears in a letter Rubens wrote to a friend:

He evidently takes quite a special pleasure in painting, and, in my opinion, this prince is endowed with the finest qualities. I already know him from personal intercourse, as I have a room in the palace, so that he almost daily visits me.

Philip IV appears to have been genuinely interested in painting, a result probably of his intimacy with Velazquez, and after Ruben’s visit, and undoubtedly on his advice, the King permitted Velazquez to go to Italy with the great soldier and statesman Spinola, who was to be the Spanish governor of Milan and commander-in-chief in Italy. Velazquez arrived at Milan in the early autumn of 1629 and soon went to Venice, where he made a special study of the work of Tintoretto, who died, it will be remembered, five years before Velazquez was born. From Venice he went to Rome—missing Florence—and after some months there passed on to Naples, where he met Ribera, and returned to Madrid early in 1631. At Naples he painted Philip’s sister, Mary of Hungary, and this portrait he brought back with him together with his painting ‘The Forge of Vulcan.’

It is customary to divide the art of Velazquez into three periods, of which the first ends with this visit to Italy. Most critics agree that the finest and most typical painting of his first period is the bacchanalian scene known as ‘The Topers’. In the strongly laid shadows of this painting we see the influence of Caravaggio, and while we admire the virile rendering of form and the well-balanced grouping of the figures, yet we feel that the scene, as R A M Stevenson, the cousin of ‘R.L.S’ wrote in his classic book on Velazquez, ‘was never beheld as a whole vision in the mind’s eye.’ The painter’s complete mastery of his art was yet to come.

Sunshine And Shadow In Spain (continued)