breathe, the very soul and spirit of nature."1 His studies of the scenery at Aranjuez are amongst the most agreeable views of groves and gardens ever committed to canvas. Lord Clarendon2 possesses a small picture by him of the old Alameda, or public walk of Seville, with its twin Hercules columns and alleys of trees, and many carefully painted figures, sparkling with life and animation. A larger but inferior repetition of this subject was lately in the Louvre. The same nobleman has a woodland prospect by the same hand, taken in the Pardo, where Philip IV., in a shooting dress and white hat, brings his gun to his shoulder with his accustomed gravity and deliberation. Sometimes Velazquez strays into the savage scenery of Salvator Rosa, delighting in beetling crags— Or woods with knots and knares deform'd and old, Of this style the Louvre boasted a fine specimen, 1 Life of Wilkie, vol. ii. pp. 519, 524. 2 At No. 1, Grosvenor-crescent, London. 3 Found near the hospital of Santa Marta, and supposed to belong to an ancient temple of Hercules, and erected on their present site in 1574, when the Alameda was planted. Ortiz de Zuñiga; Annales de Sevilla, p. 543. They are still called 'Los Hercules.' Noticia de los Monumentos de Sevilla, small 8vo. Sev. 1842, p. 44. 4 Dryden Palamon and Arcite: book ii. a large composition of broken ground and shattered trees in the chase of the Escorial, with distant view of the palace-convent, seen by the light of the setting sun.1 He has also left some spirited sketches of Venice; and of architectural scenes, apparently recollections of Rome, and moonlight musings amongst the cypresses and pines of the Colonna and Medici gardens. The first sketches of his works, says Cean Bermudez, were chiefly executed in water colours, or with a coarse pen. They are now rare and of a high value. The Standish collection in the Louvre had four specimens, and three are in the print-room of the British Museum. No artist of the seventeenth century equalled Velazquez in variety of power. He tried all Rubens, in subjects, and he succeeded in all. deed, treated as many themes, and on each perhaps produced a greater number of pictures. But he approached all kinds of composition in the same spirit, a spirit of the earth, earthy, of Flanders, Flemish. Whether it be a sacred story of Bethlehem, a fable of Greek mythology, a passage in the life of Henry IV., we have the same faces and forms brought upon the stage. Even in portraiture, individuality of character is 1 Gal. Esp. No. 289. 2 Cook's Sketches, vol. ii. p. 195. wanting; his men are generally burgomasters; his women are all, like Juno, 'ox-eyed,' which he conceived to be essential to beauty. The Virgins of his altar-pieces are the sisters of the nymphs of his allegories; his apostles and centurions are equally prone to leer like satyrs; and in his Silenus, St. Peter may be detected, like Sir Roger de Coverley in the Saracen's head over the village inn.1 Grand in design and vigorous in conception, his large compositions are majestic and imposing. Like Antæus, he walks the earth a giant; but his strength forsakes him when he rises to the delineation of intellectual dignity and celestial purity and grace. 6 Velazquez, it must be owned, rarely attempted the loftiest flights. Of his few religious subjects, some are purposely treated as scenes of everyday life; as for example, Joseph's coat," the 'Adoration of the Shepherds,"3 and that still earlier work, the powerful 'St. John Baptist,' formerly in the collection of Mr. Williams at Seville, and more lately in the Standish gallery of the Louvre. In the 'Christ at Emmaus,' a work 1 Spectator, No. 122. 2 Page 119. 3 Page 37. • Catalogue, No. 133, in the Sale Catalogue, London, 1853, No. 93, called on both occasions a work of the school of Murillo. can. of great power, formerly in the Louvre and now in the collection of lord Breadalbane, the two disciples seated at table with Our Lord, are a pair of peasants who may be recognised in the drunken circle surrounding Bacchus in the 'Borrachos." Once, indeed, he has signally failed in reaching the height to which he aspired, in the unfortunate Apollo of 'The Forge of Vul."2 But the Crucifixion' of the nunnery of San Placido shows how capable he was of dealing with a great and solemn subject, and what his works would have been had it been his vocation to paint the saints of the calendar instead of the sinners of the court. Of the religious pictures of his early days, when he lived amongst the churchmen of Seville, several are destroyed or forgotten; such as the 'Virgin of the Conception,' and 'St. John writing the Apocalypse,' painted for the Carmelites of his native city; 'Job and his Comforters sitting amongst the ashes,' once in the Chartreuse of Xeres; and the Nativity of Our Lord,' which 2 Page 118. 1 Page 92. 3 Page 131. 4 Ponz, tom. xvii. p. 279, says that at first sight he took this picture for a work by Luca Giordano, painted in imitation of Velazquez. perished by fire in 1832, with the chapter-house of Plasencia.' He was almost the only Spanish artist that ever attempted to delineate the naked charms of Venus. Strong in interest at court, and with the Holy Office, he ventured upon this forbidden ground at the desire of the duke of Alba, and painted a beautiful picture of the queen of Love, reclining with her back turned, and her face reflected in a mirror, as a companion-piece to a Venus in a different attitude of repose, by Titian.2 Both came to England after the war of independence. The Venus of Titian is said to have found her way back to Spain; while the Venus of Velazquez, purchased by the advice of Sir Thomas Lawrence for 500l., went to the collection of Mr. Morritt, at Rokeby, Yorkshire, where she still remains. Painted in the master's happiest manner, the 1 Hand-Book, p. 550. 2 Ponz: tom. v. p. 317. Mr. Buchanan, Memoirs of Painting, vol. ii. p. 243, says that these Italian and Spanish Venuses were the property of Godoy, prince of the Peace, when they came to England, and that the pair were valued at 4000 guineas. Mr. B. (vol. ii. p. 13) rashly asserts that Velazquez painted 'a grand and capital' portrait of Clement XIII., who became pope just 98 years after his death? Did he mean Giulio Rospigliosi, Clement IX.? |