Studio: international art (80.1920)

THE PALETTE OF VELASQUEZ

" VIEW IN THE GARDEN
OF THE VILLA MEDICI
ROME." BY VELASQUEZ

(Prado, Madrid—Photo*
Anderson, Rome)

realism—realism and nothing else—and the
Italian ideal. But Velasquez brought back
from Italy two small pictures, apparently
of no great importance, yet in reality of
transcendent quality : the two little land-
scapes of the Villa Medicis, so luminous, so
vibrating as to show them to be the origin
of the most modern interpretations of light
and plein air. 0000

Thenceforth the technical advance of
Velasquez was very rapid, tending ever
towards simplification, and, at the same
time, the artist, it would seem, was making
his way along two well-marked routes : on
the one his chief preoccupation was colour ;

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on,the other he was mainly concerned with
solidity of form ; and eventually the two
courses met in his master-work, Las
Meniiias (" The Maids of Honour,") 0
Characteristic of these tendencies is the
portrait of the sculptor Martinez Montanes,
done on a ground-work not merely grey
but even whitish, overlaid with touches of
bone black. And in Sehor de Beruete's
opinion the hand in this portrait is one of
the most real bits of Velasquez in existence,
serving as the proof, the sign, the personal
cachet of the painter in the midst of the
entire Spanish School. To the same period
belong The Lances (better known out of