DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.63331#0011
THE ART OF VELAZQUEZ
7
Even when he deliberately tried to rival some other master, he gave free
play to his own personality, and so his imitations—for his Coronation of the
Virgin, his Crucifixion, his Mars, his Adoration of the Magi, are little
more — are never without dignity and interest. Essentially, however,
none of these things—and with others like them they make up no small
portion of his total production—differ in anything but the stronger person-
ality behind them from much that was done in the Spain and Italy of the
seventeenth century. Examined in the light by his later work, we see,
of course, that their producer took his art very seriously indeed, and that
from every figure he painted he learnt something to be used in the next.
But, speaking generally, the first steps of Velazquez show that he, like
other people, had to work long and hard before he mastered what his
seniors had to tell him, and could go on to make his own great contri-
bution to a structure which had been rising, more or less continuously,
ever since the revival of learning.
The most difficult problem to be faced by the would-be critic of
Velazquez is that of disentangling his own genuine creations from the
copies, imitations, and more or less controlled replicas turned out by
his pupils. Velazquez had almost as many scholars as Rembrandt.
Several of these had the credit, during the master’s lifetime, of repeating
his work with such skill as to deceive good contemporary judges. One
pupil, the master’s son-in-law, Juan Bautista del Mazo-Martinez, was
an excellent painter. The pictures acknowledged as his in the Museo
del Prado vary greatly in excellence, but some approach so closely to
the master as to leave us in no kind of doubt that Mazo set posterity
a very ticklish problem indeed when he repeated Velazquez. We must
remember that the forty years covered by the master’s career in Madrid
were by no means devoted exclusively to painting. Four were spent in
Italy, where he used his eyes more than his hands. The last eight were
partly given up to the duties of the Aposentador Mayorship, which was
very far from being a sinecure. Besides all this, Velazquez busied
himself energetically as director of the royal collections, which kept him
continually trotting backwards and forwards between Madrid and the
Escorial.1 All this time his atelier was going on. His pupils, according
to the practice of every time but our own, were multiplying his works,
1 See Life of Velazquez. (Portfolio for July 1896), p. 81.
7
Even when he deliberately tried to rival some other master, he gave free
play to his own personality, and so his imitations—for his Coronation of the
Virgin, his Crucifixion, his Mars, his Adoration of the Magi, are little
more — are never without dignity and interest. Essentially, however,
none of these things—and with others like them they make up no small
portion of his total production—differ in anything but the stronger person-
ality behind them from much that was done in the Spain and Italy of the
seventeenth century. Examined in the light by his later work, we see,
of course, that their producer took his art very seriously indeed, and that
from every figure he painted he learnt something to be used in the next.
But, speaking generally, the first steps of Velazquez show that he, like
other people, had to work long and hard before he mastered what his
seniors had to tell him, and could go on to make his own great contri-
bution to a structure which had been rising, more or less continuously,
ever since the revival of learning.
The most difficult problem to be faced by the would-be critic of
Velazquez is that of disentangling his own genuine creations from the
copies, imitations, and more or less controlled replicas turned out by
his pupils. Velazquez had almost as many scholars as Rembrandt.
Several of these had the credit, during the master’s lifetime, of repeating
his work with such skill as to deceive good contemporary judges. One
pupil, the master’s son-in-law, Juan Bautista del Mazo-Martinez, was
an excellent painter. The pictures acknowledged as his in the Museo
del Prado vary greatly in excellence, but some approach so closely to
the master as to leave us in no kind of doubt that Mazo set posterity
a very ticklish problem indeed when he repeated Velazquez. We must
remember that the forty years covered by the master’s career in Madrid
were by no means devoted exclusively to painting. Four were spent in
Italy, where he used his eyes more than his hands. The last eight were
partly given up to the duties of the Aposentador Mayorship, which was
very far from being a sinecure. Besides all this, Velazquez busied
himself energetically as director of the royal collections, which kept him
continually trotting backwards and forwards between Madrid and the
Escorial.1 All this time his atelier was going on. His pupils, according
to the practice of every time but our own, were multiplying his works,
1 See Life of Velazquez. (Portfolio for July 1896), p. 81.