Old world masters in new world collections

Spanish Painting developed slowly although there were schools in all the provinces. Even in the Fourteenth Century little was known about Spanish Art in other countries. Starnina, who spent nine years in Spain (having taken refuge from his part in civil disturbances in Florence), painting pictures in the Escurial for John of Castile, had much to tell when he returned to Florence in 1387 and introduced Spanish costumes into the frescoes he made in the Carmine.

Other Italian painters followed Starnina and Italian ideas dominated Spanish Art until the Emperor Charles V became King of Spain. Charles, although heir of Maximilian and of the Holy Roman Empire, was also a direct descendant of the Dukes of Burgundy, the great-grandson of Charles the Bold. Charles V was born in Ghent and spent his first sixteen years in the Netherlands, brought up by his aunt, Margaret of Austria. Charles’s devotion to his birthplace is well-known; and his pun that he could put the whole of Paris into his Gant (glove), shows how far superior he considered Ghent to Paris. Charles took with him to Spain a vast horde of artists and artisans from the Low Countries; and he also imported the punctilious and traditional etiquette of the old Burgundian Court, which, absorbed into Spain, eventually became known as “Spanish etiquette.”

Spanish artists were profoundly affected with Flemish technique and realism. The leading early Spanish painters are Bartolomé Vermejo, active in the late Fifteenth Century, a native of Cordova in Andalusia, who combined Flemish and Arabian ideas with native traditions; Pedro Berruguete (active 1483–1504); Luis de Vargas (1502–1568); and Luis de Morales (1509?–1586).

Then again an important foreigner arrived—Antonio Moro (or Mor), who, after serving Cardinal Granvella, was sent by Mary of Hungary to Madrid, where he became Court-Painter to the House of Hapsburg. Thenceforward Moro was constantly employed by Philip II to paint portraits in various Courts, although his headquarters seem to have been in Utrecht.

Moro trained the Spaniard, Alonso Sanchez Coello (1515?–1590), who, like himself, was rather stiff and hard, but able to paint a satisfactory portrait.

Then in 1575 another foreign painter arrived. This time it was a Greek, Domenico Theotocopoulos (1545?–1614), a native of Crete and said to have studied under Titian in Venice. “El Greco,” however, caught none of the glowing colors of Venice on his palette. Austere and gloomy, he settled in austere and gloomy Toledo, where he lived all the rest of his life painting religious pictures and portraits from a strange and morbid point of view.

Francisco de Ribalta (1551?–1628), revolting against Classic taste, founded his style on Caravaggio and painted darkly in the “tenebroso” manner. His pupil, Jusefe Ribera (1589–1652), called “Lo Spagnoletto,” born near Valencia, settled in Naples, where he filled many orders for Philip IV.

Francisco Pacheco (1571–1654), and Francisco de Herrera the Elder (1576–1656) are chiefly notable because they were the masters of Velasquez. Herrera originated the “bodegones” (shop-pictures), which are scenes of popular life.

Francisco Zurbaran (1598–1662), of the School of Seville, was called “the Spanish Caravaggio.” Through the influence of his friend, Velasquez, he entered the service of the King. It is said that Philip IV called him “Pintor del Rey y Rey de los Pintores” (Painter of the King and King of the Painters). Zurbaran painted the great altar-piece in the Cathedral of Seville.

Don Diego de Silva y Velasquez (1599–1660), a native of Seville, became painter to Philip IV in 1623 and continued in his service all his life. His works range from such groups as Las Meninas and Las Hilanderas to portraits of kings, queens, princes, princesses, ladies, gentlemen, dwarfs, and idiots.

Bartolomé Estéban Murillo (1617–1682), a native of Seville, came of the poor, laboring class and developed into a beloved painter, particularly famous for his Holy Families and Immaculate Conceptions.

After Velasquez and Murillo there was no important painter until the original, versatile, and prolific Goya y Lucientes (1746–1828), a native of Aragon, who rose from a laborer in the fields to Court-Painter. Goya had a profound influence on modern art, greatly affecting, for instance, Manet and John Singer Sargent.

CARDINAL QUIROGA.

This picture, oil on canvas (37½ × 43¼ inches), was discovered, coated with the dust and dirt of ages, in a dark corner of the sacristy of the Cathedral of Valladolid, where it had evidently been hidden for centuries. A Parisian dealer, having heard of it, purchased it, and from him it passed through several hands until it reached its present home. The subject represents a Cardinal seated before a table on which a volume is lying and the Cardinal’s hands are conspicuously posed upon opposite pages. The right thumb pointed downwards emphatically upon a certain verse might possibly point to a special text that the Cardinal was associated with as betokening a famous sermon delivered by him, or, perhaps, an important controversy with which his name was associated. The figure, face, and hands are very elongated, as in all of El Greco’s performances; but the general effect is more reposeful than usual with this painter. Perhaps El Greco pulled the Cardinal out on his bed of Procrustes as far as he dared, but the Cardinal was long and thin and attenuated anyway, so that he was a model, as it were, ready made. It is one of El Greco’s best works. The silvery hair and mist of beard are marvellously painted, as are also the piercing eyes, keen and searching, yet betraying the philosopher and man of much reading. The face is intensely intellectual, but hard and cruel. No one would care to attempt to break a lance with this gentleman in any kind of an argument. With all his high-bred atmosphere, as both gentleman and student, Quiroga expresses a narrow bigotry and remorseless cruelty.

The picture is also known as St. Jerome; and there are five replicas of it, one of them being in the National Gallery, London.

“El Greco” is the name by which Domenico Theotocopoulos became known to his contemporaries. He was born in Crete, and in 1570, when he was about twenty-five or thirty, he went to Venice, and, it is said, studied under Titian. About 1575 he settled in Toledo, where he lived for thirty-four years until his death in 1614, and where “La casa del Greco” is still shown to tourists. El Greco painted a number of pictures, chiefly religious, notwithstanding the fact that “the individuality and strangeness of his work always more or less disconcerted his patrons.” El Greco also painted portraits and seems to have elongated every sitter to conform to his own ideas. Everything that he painted proclaims his own fervor and love of motion. El Greco also designed the dome for the then unfinished tower of the west front of the Toledo Cathedral, which presents a very strange contrast with its companion, the ornate Gothic tower.

Hugh Stokes says:

“El Greco stands apart, both in his portraiture and his large subject compositions. A Greek by family, Theotocopoulos does not fail to remind us of the archaic Byzantines. At first his limited palette, his crudity, his angularity excite repulsion. All his figures are muscularly distended as if they had recently passed the ordeal of the rack. Gradually these very defects attract. There is a movement and passion in his pictures which can be found in very few purely Spanish works. These agitated patriarchs and apostles, with draperies caught by every wind of heaven, are almost demoniac. Nature herself assists, for each horizon in the background frowns with a gathering maelstrom of black thunderclouds.”

THE VIRGIN APPEARING TO ST. DOMINIC.

The Virgin, in the traditional red robe and blue mantle, has floated on a cloud into the church where St. Dominic has been praying. The vision, as told here by El Greco, seems as real to us as it does to the astonished monk. Dominic de Guzman, who founded the Dominican Order of Preaching Friars in 1215, was born in Calaroga, Old Castile, in 1170. St. Dominic went on a mission to the Albigenses in Languedoc. and the Dominican Order grew out of the volunteers who joined him there. The rest of his life was spent in Toulouse and Rome. He died in 1221 and was canonized in 1234 by Gregory IX. The Dominican Order was known in England as the Black Friars (from their black habit) and in France as Jacobins, because their chief house in Paris was in the rue St. Jacques.

This picture, oils on canvas (24 × 39¼ inches) came from the Collection of Henri Rouats of Paris and shows El Greco’s ecstasy with less exaggeration and eccentricity than is customary with him. Elie Faure has well defined the characteristics of El Greco: “Remorse at having been born,” he says “pursues the painter until the end, but when he expresses it in his art, the magnificence which it takes on atones for his terrors. At the end of his life he painted like one in an hallucination, in a kind of ecstatic nightmare, where preoccupation with expressing the spirit engrossed him. Deformation appears in his pictures more and more, lengthening the bodies, attenuating the fingers, and hollowing the faces. His blues, his wine-like reds, and his greens seem lit by some livid reflection sent to him from the near-by tomb and from Hell, caught sight of from eternal bliss. If there is a place where shadows wander, if in some sinister valley there are corpses that stand upright and living spectres that have not yet lost their form, Domenico Theotocopoulos alone after Dante has found it. One would say that he is exploring a dead planet, that he is descending into extinct volcanoes, where ashes accumulate and a pale half moon sheds her light.”

MARIANNE OF AUSTRIA.

This picture (14½ × 19 inches) was for many years a valued possession of the Zenon Gallery, Cadiz, and represents the little girl, daughter of Ferdinand II, who became the wife of Philip IV in 1649 and who had first been betrothed to Philip’s son, Don Balthazar Carlos. The latter died in 1646. Three years later Philip IV sent for the little Grand Duchess to be his second wife. The reason for this marriage was a dynastic one, for it united the Spanish branch of the House of Hapsburg with the German branch of the House of Hapsburg, Marianne being a descendant of Ferdinand, brother of Charles V, and, therefore, of exactly the same blood as Philip IV.

Velasquez was one of those painters favored by the gods. Like Rubens, he early attracted Royal patronage and held it all his life. There were no struggles of genius for recognition: all he had to do was to complete and develop his gifts and talents. In 1623 he was introduced to Philip IV by Olivares and Philip took him into his service. Rubens, visiting Madrid in 1628, begged Velasquez to go to Italy. Velasquez did so and spent a year in Rome, visited Naples, where he met his countryman, Ribera. On his return to Madrid, he was given a painting-room in the Royal Palace. Velasquez visited Italy several times in the future; and on one visit to Rome painted the famous portrait of Pope Innocent X, now in the Doria Gallery (with a replica in The Hermitage). Back again in Madrid, Velasquez was decorated with the Cross of St. Iago by Philip IV, who made him Aposentador Major (grand marshal of the palace). To the last period belong his most important portraits, the series of court freaks, and the famous Las Hilanderas and Las Meninas.

Velasquez died in Madrid in 1660.

PHILIP IV OF SPAIN.

This portrait known as the “Parma Velasquez,” because it belonged to the Grand Duke of Parma, is painted in oils on canvas (38¾ × 52½ inches). It was painted in 1644 in Cataluna, where Philip had gone to try to raise the siege of Lerida invested by the French. Velasquez went with the King and painted the picture in a dilapidated hovel, which was fitted up for the purpose of a studio. A contemporary record says: “The King dressed as a soldier posed to Velasquez in fitted hose edged with silver embroidery, sleeves of same, plain buck jerkin, red sash edged with silver, cape of red fustian, falling collar, and black sombrero with crimson plumes.”

The King was kept amused by his dwarf, El Primo, while the portrait was being painted. The costume is the one that Philip usually appeared in before his army as commander-in-chief.

“From the figure itself,” says Carl Justi, “it is evident that it was taken far from the atmosphere of the Alcazar. It is freer than those tall figures in black, which are perpetually receiving despatches, and which are the incarnation of unrelenting monotony, of the weariness of etiquette. To this effect the color contributes much, for the picture is all light and brightness. The legs seem to stand in profile, but the body and head face to the right; the white bâton in the right hand is planted against the hip; the elbow of the left which holds the hat, rests on the hilt of the sword, and, curiously enough, both arms are disposed in a somewhat parallel position. The lines of the King’s features, now in his thirty-ninth year, are firmer, the color fresher than hitherto. The otherwise inseparable golilla is here replaced by a broad lace collar falling on the shoulders; the hands are white in unison with the white sleeves, the most luminous parts of the whole picture—well nurtured, royal hands, ringless, but by no means ‘washed out,’ as has been supposed by those unacquainted with the master’s habit of dispensing with shade to indicate the fingers.

“Philip wears a rich, light red doublet with hanging sleeves, the narrow opening showing the leather jerkin underneath. Of like color and also covered with silver embroidery are the bandolier and hose. The only patch of gold is the Golden Fleece, all else—collar, sleeves of jerkin (pearl tone), lace cuffs, lace ruffle of boots, silver sheath—being white. This white on the red produces the well-known effects of a lighter or ‘camellian red.’ The hat alone is black, which is not in keeping with the costume, and may probably be due to license on the part of the artist, who here wished to avoid white on white, and who needed a dark part in softening contrast to the silvery red of the whole. At the same time the red of the bandolier and plume on the red of the doublet shows the painter’s indifference to such matters. To all this must be added the full flood of daylight which even projects an oblique shadow from the mustachios on to the cheek. The stupendous relief is effected by the empty, dark-grey surface of the ground and by the spare brown shadows, which help to bring out the collar, arm, and hat.”

When the portrait was finished “it was hung in the church under a canopy embroidered in gold where much people congregated to see it.” The record adds that “copies thereof are already being made.” The one in the Dulwich Gallery, England, is one of these.

The picture was sent by Ferdinand VI, King of Spain, to his step-brother, the Grand Duke of Parma; and it remained in the Parma Palace until recent times, when it was sold by Prince Elias.

Philip IV was born in 1605, died in 1665, and ascended the throne when he was only sixteen. He was a solemn person, with coarse tastes and was fond of horse-play. He, however, gave his patronage to Velasquez, Calderon, and Lope de Vega, which is much to his credit.

GENERAL NICOLAS GUYE.

The Spanish General represented in oils on canvas (33⅜ × 41¾ inches) wears a brilliantly colored uniform resplendent with gold lace and decorated with medals. His knee-breeches are white, and he holds his chapeau bras in his hand. The picture was given to Vincent Guye, the General’s brother, in 1810.

Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes was born in Fuendetodos in Aragon, March 30, 1746. His parents were humble cottagers and he worked in the fields until he was eighteen. Through the interest of a monk he was sent to Zaragoza to the studio of José Martinez. Goya distinguished himself both in the studio and in quarrels, which sometimes resulted in bloodshed. After a fight Goya fled to Madrid, where he copied Velasquez and became embroiled in more disturbances. He escaped to Italy; and in 1772 took the second prize for painting at the Academy in Parma. Back in Zaragoza in 1771, he painted a fresco in the Cathedral. Revisiting Italy he formed a friendship with Jacques Louis David. In 1774 he returned to Spain, married the sister of a painter, and began to paint furiously. In 1789 Goya became painter of the Chamber—“pinter de camera”—to Charles IV, with a large salary. During the occupation of Spain by the French and the expulsion of the latter by Wellington, Goya lived quietly without taking any part in the exciting events; but he had been observing. On the return of Ferdinand VII, he published his series of Desastres de la Guerra, in which the horrors and bestialities of war are set forth in so frank a manner and with such commanding technique that they make a magnificent appeal for the abolition of war.

Goya had previously published his series of prints, Los Caprichos, a most amazing presentation of humanity in brutal and revolting caricatures, the origin and significance of which are neither fully known nor understood; but, mingled with the demonology and repulsiveness, there are occasional gleams of beauty. Equally celebrated are his plates, the Tauromachia, dealing with the bull-ring.

Goya had an uncanny facility for every medium,—etching, lithographs, drawings, and aquatints, as well as oil-paintings. Goya spent the year 1825 in Bordeaux and returned to Madrid, where he died in 1828.

“My only masters have been Nature, Velasquez, and Rembrandt,” Goya said. Being so independent Goya left no pupils and founded no school. He was always hostile to the academic: “Always lines and never body,” he exclaimed when criticising his contemporaries, “but where do we find these lines in Nature? I can only see masses in light and masses in shadow, planes which advance or planes which recede, reliefs or backgrounds. My eye never catches outlines or details. I do not count the hairs on the head of the man who passes me in the street. The buttons on his coat are not the chief object to catch my glance. My brush ought not to have better eyesight than its master!”

PEPITO COSTA Y BONELLA.

This delightful picture, oils on canvas (33¼ × 41⅝ inches), is brilliant with many colors delightfully harmonized and contrasted. The little boy, with fair hair and dark complexion, wears a green velvet jacket with gilt braid, lace collar, white trousers, rose-colored stockings, light-yellow slippers, and red and white plumes in his dark hat. The drum is blue.

The picture comes from the Collection of the Countess Uda de Gandomar of Madrid.