good, frank faces; and in the high, narrow foreheads and close-set eyes of the Spaniards, I read cruelty, deceit, and intolerance. Rubens, who is so generally cited as a type of the unideal Fleming, had certainly more imagination, and idealised more, than Velasquez. His “Virgin learning to read,” in the Antwerp gallery, and his “Holy Family with the Parrot,” in the same place, have more grace and delicacy—coarse Fleming though he be—than the Spanish hidalgo’s portraiture of a rough peasant and his wife, whose ugly waddling baby is playing with a cur, is dignified with the title of Holy Family. Distance must certainly have lent enchantment to the view, and the great authorities who have praised Velasquez to the seventh heaven, must have relied on the Pyrenees being too insurmountable a barrier for their assertions to be put to the test by idle tourists. The court dwarfs were favourite subjects with Velasquez, and he seems to revel in giving a true impression of their hideosities and imperfections. Poor little creatures, as one looks at their stunted forms and misshapen features, Luther’s notion of beings with only half a soul, recurs to the mind.
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Palace at Madrid.
Velasquez must have wearied with the endless painting of royalty, such royalty as it was. The special clay out of which kings are made, did not turn out particularly beautiful at Madrid. Those heavy features, flabby cheeks, pendulous lips, and small eyes, savour much of cretinism. In every variety of dress and position you see the royal forms, even kneeling at prayers, the posture and clasped hands alone indicating the occupation. Velasquez has been compared to Rembrandt for the force and vigour of his portraits, but to the mysterious effects and delicacy of colouring of the great master of “impasto” he never attained.
Close to the life-like picture of the young Infanta, surrounded by her maids, known as “Las Meninas,” called by Luca Giordano the Gospel of Painting, hangs a picture misnamed “Artemisia,” by Rembrandt, and, thus placed in juxta-position, the respective merits of these great artists can be studied at leisure. The wonderful handling of Rembrandt in this, one of his least-known pictures, certainly eclipses the famous “Meninas.” The magical effect of light and shade, the marvellous opal-like draperies, and the soft round flesh and floating golden locks of the fair dame, who it is supposed is just going to banquet on her husband’s ashes (presented by a little maiden in a vase worthy of Cellini), render doubly apparent the dashing, careless style of Velasquez. Many of his pictures, too, have a mealy, smeared appearance, as if blotting-paper had been pressed on the wet paint; and the paint itself, though thinly put on, after the manner of Titian, leaves much to be desired in way of finish.
Inexhaustible gallery, never-failing source of interest, months might be spent in roaming from one masterpiece to the other. Divine Virgins by Murillo seem to float in a heavenly atmosphere, and the perfect innocence and fascinating grace of the Infant Saviour and little St. John, must be seen to be understood. What Murillo’s pictures must have been before they were scraped and repainted, it is difficult to imagine, as even after all they have gone through they are unutterably beautiful. One rises from contemplation of those transported, ecstatic figures, those faces full of awe and heavenly meditation, with a feeling similar to what one experiences when, in some old cathedral, the organ peals forth its melody carrying the mind