DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.63331#0108
CHAPTER IX
CONCLUSION
In the foregoing pages an attempt has been made to trace the develop-
ment of Velazquez as it appears in those pictures, chiefly at Madrid,
which are incontestably by his own hand. With a very few exceptions
every picture mentioned belongs to the great series painted for the Spanish
Court, so that, with their help, we get a clear idea of the direction taken
by the master’s powers from the beginning to the end. The conclusions
to which we are led differ in many respects from those which seemed
plausible before Madrid was visited. In the first place Velazquez never
“ shows off.” From first to last it is almost impossible to find an authentic
picture in which he indulges in any sort of paint-slinging for its own sake.
With the one exception of the head of JEsop, he never fails to adapt his
methods to the forms before him. In that particular picture the impasto
is unreasonably solid, and suggests the idea that he was experimenting
with the later style of Spagnoletto ; but as an almost invariable rule, his
handling, his impasto, his use of glazing, and so on, are governed entirely
by the objective problems he set himself. As life went on and his
faculties developed, he grew into an extraordinary power of grasping
those essential features in an object to which it owed its character ; but
this gift, or rather achievement, was the result of long years of patient
imitation, and down to the very end of his life it never led him into the
exaggerated brush-gesture which is too often thought to be one of his
merits.
The best way, perhaps, to give a true idea of the total impression left
by Velazquez is to describe his method of setting about a picture as we
gather it from the results. In the first place, he seems never to have felt
CONCLUSION
In the foregoing pages an attempt has been made to trace the develop-
ment of Velazquez as it appears in those pictures, chiefly at Madrid,
which are incontestably by his own hand. With a very few exceptions
every picture mentioned belongs to the great series painted for the Spanish
Court, so that, with their help, we get a clear idea of the direction taken
by the master’s powers from the beginning to the end. The conclusions
to which we are led differ in many respects from those which seemed
plausible before Madrid was visited. In the first place Velazquez never
“ shows off.” From first to last it is almost impossible to find an authentic
picture in which he indulges in any sort of paint-slinging for its own sake.
With the one exception of the head of JEsop, he never fails to adapt his
methods to the forms before him. In that particular picture the impasto
is unreasonably solid, and suggests the idea that he was experimenting
with the later style of Spagnoletto ; but as an almost invariable rule, his
handling, his impasto, his use of glazing, and so on, are governed entirely
by the objective problems he set himself. As life went on and his
faculties developed, he grew into an extraordinary power of grasping
those essential features in an object to which it owed its character ; but
this gift, or rather achievement, was the result of long years of patient
imitation, and down to the very end of his life it never led him into the
exaggerated brush-gesture which is too often thought to be one of his
merits.
The best way, perhaps, to give a true idea of the total impression left
by Velazquez is to describe his method of setting about a picture as we
gather it from the results. In the first place, he seems never to have felt