DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.63331#0077
CHAPTER VII
THE “THIRD MANNER OF VELAZQUEZ ”
The fashion of cutting up a painter’s career into lengths and dubbing
those lengths manners, is a little less futile than usual in the case of
Velazquez. His two long absences from his native country mark with
some precision points at which new waves of influence flowed in upon
him. But even with him there is no such easily-perceived line of
cleavage as the usual phraseology would imply. Offshoots from one
manner project into the next, and he seems to have had a peculiar
faculty for taking up a style for the nonce, induced thereto by accidental
conditions. For the Crucifixion and the Christ at the Pillar, for the
Forge of Vulcan and the Joseph's Coat, he adopted a manner based upon
what he had seen in certain Roman studios ; for the Coronation of the
Virgin and the Mars, and perhaps for the Venus, he did much the same
thing at, I believe, a much later date. In fact, when he had to step
outside the bent of his own genius, he seems deliberately to have taken
technical as well as imaginative hints from those he thought more au
fait at the work. But in spite of all this, a little patient examination
will disclose the steps of his development, and then the only problem is
where to draw the line between one style and another. The series of
dwarfs and buffoons is generally ascribed to his last manner, even to his
last years. I have ventured to place them at the junction of his second
and third styles, and to group them about the second Italian visit, doing
so mainly on the evidence of style, but partly in the light of other
considerations. In this connection another small point is perhaps worth
making. Velazquez was no sooner back in Spain than he began to
work for the appointment he afterwards received of the king’s Quarter-
THE “THIRD MANNER OF VELAZQUEZ ”
The fashion of cutting up a painter’s career into lengths and dubbing
those lengths manners, is a little less futile than usual in the case of
Velazquez. His two long absences from his native country mark with
some precision points at which new waves of influence flowed in upon
him. But even with him there is no such easily-perceived line of
cleavage as the usual phraseology would imply. Offshoots from one
manner project into the next, and he seems to have had a peculiar
faculty for taking up a style for the nonce, induced thereto by accidental
conditions. For the Crucifixion and the Christ at the Pillar, for the
Forge of Vulcan and the Joseph's Coat, he adopted a manner based upon
what he had seen in certain Roman studios ; for the Coronation of the
Virgin and the Mars, and perhaps for the Venus, he did much the same
thing at, I believe, a much later date. In fact, when he had to step
outside the bent of his own genius, he seems deliberately to have taken
technical as well as imaginative hints from those he thought more au
fait at the work. But in spite of all this, a little patient examination
will disclose the steps of his development, and then the only problem is
where to draw the line between one style and another. The series of
dwarfs and buffoons is generally ascribed to his last manner, even to his
last years. I have ventured to place them at the junction of his second
and third styles, and to group them about the second Italian visit, doing
so mainly on the evidence of style, but partly in the light of other
considerations. In this connection another small point is perhaps worth
making. Velazquez was no sooner back in Spain than he began to
work for the appointment he afterwards received of the king’s Quarter-