International studio (34.1908)

Hispanic Society of America

library of 50,000 volumes which is situated in the
basement. Such a basement! Such a library!
Even that fox-hunting English squire who, when
asked to visit a picture-gallery, cried “By Gad, no,
sir; I’d rather read a book!” even he would be
interested in the method and arrangement of this
library. I compare it with the cumbersome litter
of catalogues and books in certain great British
libraries and blush for my country. This under-
ground city of books is as orderly as a bank; the
books are delivered to readers with the promptitude
of a cash machine in a store. Every detail has
been thought out in the library and in the museum.
Each of the glass cases in the upper gallery has its
private electric button; you press, and the case is
flooded from concealed lights. Do you desire to
see the obverses of rare coins? You turn a screw
and the glass cylinder containing the coins slowly
revolves. Space has been economized in a way that
is little short of miraculous. The collection of maps,
prints, drawings, charts, etc., if placed end to end
might reach from one end of Audubon Park to the
other; but by an ingenious arrangement of fold-
ing wall frames, swinging doors superimposed on
swinging doors, these multifarious objects are all
packed within the wall of one of the ground floor
corridors. Delightful drawings and pictures by
Daniel Vierge are arrayed on a similar plan. When
you have enjoyed those on the outside frames, vou
swing back one door, then another and another,
ever finding new treasures.
The three tombs from a demolished church at
Cuellar, in the Province of Segovia, the sculptures
and the Greek and Roman torsos excavated at
Santiponce, near Seville, need all the space allotted
to them under the east gallery. This corridor of
marbles, blocked at one end by a magnificent tomb,
is like a lonely side chapel in a cathedral. Standing
in this diminutive temple of silence and reconcilia-
tion, it is difficult to believe that one is in the neigh-
borhood of One Hundred and Fifty-sixth Street,
New York. That mute woman in nun’s robe and
rope girdle! That silent warrior in armor with a
lion crouching at Ins feet! Plow still they are, yet
how eloquent of a past long vanished, yet persua-
sively with us!
Although the pictures are not all of the first rank,
in their environment and regal position on the
walls they seem to recreate Spain with a force
more vivid than is produced by the Spanish master-
pieces adorning the galleries of London and Vienna.
I linger before a portrait by Juan de Pareja, first
slave and then servant of Velasquez, who accom-
panied his master to Rome when he visited the
civ

Eternal City for the second time. In that year
Velasquez produced the incomparable portrait of
Pope Innocent X, which hangs in a room of the
Doria Palace. Velasquez’s brush had been idle
for months, and “to get his hand in” he painted
a trial picture of his servant. It created a sensation.
The Romans when they saw it, said: “All else
seems painting, this alone truth.” When this head
of Juan de Pareja was exhibited at the Old Masters’
Exhibition in London a few years ago it again
created a sensation. On the walls of the Hispanic
Society, Juan appears as an artist on his own
account, and many worse works are produced to-
day by eminent painters than this portrait by the
body-servant of Velasquez, who “practised painting
in secret,” and did not blush to find it known.
To students of Velasquez the Head and Shoulders
of a Cardinal is of surpassing interest. It is a
magnificent piece of work, distinguished by the
apparent ease of the recondite craftsmanship, the
just values and the reticent but forcible color that
we associate with Velasquez.
It is one of those “other portraits” that his
biographer, Palomino, states that Velasquez
painted in Rome during his second visit. Mr.
Francis Lathrop, Art Director of the Hispanic
Society, says that this picture has been “ positively
identified as being from the hand of Velasquez.”
Senor A. de Beruete, of Madrid, the latest author-
itative critic of Velasquez, who refuses to acknowl-
edge certain works that other connoisseurs accept
without question, has assured Mr. Lathrop “of his
recognition of this painting as being one by Velas-
quez.” Senor Beruete also gave permission to M.
Nicolle to quote him as vouching for its authen-
ticity in an article published in La Revue de VArt;
and Professor A. Venturi also referred to it in
IS Arte as a Velasquez at the time of its discovery
in a Roman private collection. Little did this
Cardinal Pamfilio, who sat to the grave Spaniard
some time in the year 1650, dream of the pictorial
notoriety that would be his in future centuries.
Students of the literature and arts of Spain will
find a variety of subjects suitable for research
work. In this article no attempt at specialist
criticism has been made. I thought it better to
give a general impression of the contents, so that the
public, as well as students and connoisseurs, may
know what they will find in the museum and library
of the Hispanic Society of America. C. L. H.
The Albright Art Gallery, Buffalo, has shown
a collection of photographs by Edward S. Curtis,
representing types of the North American Indian.