Sunshine And Shadow In Spain

(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:

While admitting that ‘The Surrender of Breda’ challenges the greatest masters on their own ground, rivalling the highest achievements of Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese both in its dignity as illustration and in its beauty as decoration, yet Mr Stevenson has affirmed that ‘it is not the complete expression of the Velazquez eyesight.’ In a sense it is not; it has not the amazing actuality of some of the painter’s later works, but it may be questioned whether it is desirable that it should have this quality. This painting, we must remember, was first and foremost a decoration painted to adorn a certain wall in a given apartment, and the experience of centuries has shown that ultra-realism does not produce the most effective forms of decoration, which need a certain deliberate convention to emphasize their beauty as patterns. In ‘The Surrender of Breda’ Velazquez gives us the greatest amount of realism compatible with the success of the picture as a decoration: it fulfills its purpose to perfection, and than this no higher praise can be given.

Just about the time of this painting, Velazquez was introduced to a new sitter, the king’s little son Balthasar Carlos. Of the many portraits he made of this prince none is more delightful than the one which shows him on horseback. This quaint and rather pathetic little figure on his prancing steed, with the whole of Spain seemingly summed up and expressed in the landscape behind him, is the most adorable picture ever painted of a small boy. For all his pomp and importance (emphasized by the marshal’s baton in his hand), the stern, set face—so like his father’s—makes us feel sorry for him. He is very human; we feel that he is a lonely child, and somehow the painter with prophetic insight seems to suggest that he has not long to live. Poor little Balthasar Carlos, born in 1629, did not live to be twenty. In 1646 he caught a cold at Saragossa and died. Thereafter Velazquez had no royal prince to paint, and Philip IV had to lavish all his domestic affection on a little princess, the Infanta Maria Teresa, who had been born in 1638. Soon after her arrival troubles came thick upon Spain. Olivarez mismanaged matters badly and was disgraced in 1643; and the same year those lances of Spain, hitherto invincible, which we see in ‘The Surrender of Breda,’ themselves suffered the agony of defeat and were utterly crumpled up and crushed at Rocroi by the great French commander Condé. Domestic griefs accompanied these public misfortunes, for two years before he lost his son, Philip lost his wife, the Queen Isabella.

In 1649 Velazquez again visited Italy, no longer the follower of an all conquering army but the agent of a monarch whose power was waning. He landed at Genoa on January 2, and passing through Milan made for Venice, where he purchased several pictures for the King. This indeed, was the principal object of his journey. From Venice he went to Rome, where he painted the splendid portrait of Innocent X which now hangs in the Doria Palace, Rome, and met several artists of note—among them being Salvator Rosa (1615-73), the Neapolitan painter of brigands and wild scenery, and Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665), the polished Frenchman, who in his classical subjects carried on the tradition of the great Renaissance and in his landscapes was a real pioneer.

In the summer of 1651 Velazquez returned to Madrid, where still further honors awaited him. He was made Marshal of the Palace, and as Philip IV had married again during his absence—married his own niece Mariana of Austria, a girl of fourteen—the new Marshal was kept busy organizing festivities and tournaments for the amusement of the young Queen. By this second wife Philip had the Princess Margaret, born 1651, who is the central figure in the world famous ‘Las Meninas’. This picture in English ‘The Maids of Honor,’ marks the culmination of the third period of Velazquez and is the supreme achievement of his life.

Sunshine And Shadow In Spain (continued)