Charles H. Caffin

“ This colossal travesty of life, as nothing but inchoate, chaotic, brute nature, swayed by elemental lust, is painted with such amazing brutality, that the pigments seem as if they might have been laid on with a trowel. The crudity is intentional, producing a texture that fits the monstrous irony of the conception. Moreover, before this picture one loses sense of color, as consisting of specific hues. It is, in fact, an apt illustration of Goya’s own paradox, that color does not exist, that everything is light and shade of varying values. ”

“ Both are palaces, memorials of the greatest epoch in the history of each race; but one is a palace of the dead and of preparation for death, the other a lordly pleasure house, redolent of the joy of living; the Escoriál is a monument of sternness; the Alhambra a miracle of beauty.
Yet for the student of humanity and of art in relation thereto what a poignant interest attaches to the Escoriál! True, it is the self-expression of one man; but the imagination may not be astray in discovering in it some expression also of the race and its time. ”

“ We recognise in them an extraordinary illusion of life; but in front of Philip IV in the National Gallery, of Moenippus and Las Meniñas in the Prado, not to mention other examples, the consciousness of illusion does not enter our thoughts. We are face to face with truth; “verdad, no pintura,” as Velasquez himself used to say was his ideal—“truth, not painting.” On the other hand, the truth is saved from being merely lifelike, obvious, by the rarifying quality of Velasquez’s own aloofness. His portraits quiver on the razor-edge of truth and abstraction. ”

“ They have been roused out of sleep by the shock of the rending tomb and, still dazed, confront the miracle. One has fallen backward in his fear, some shield their eyes from the light, while others carve the air with their swords in frantic efforts. With the exception of one fine young figure that reaches up his hand, as if in acknowledgment of the miracle, they are all nude, the bodies wrought to extreme tension of expression. ”

“ Not so with Las Meniñas. Here one forgets to analyse—there is no need to do so—one simply accepts the scene and feels its consummate truth. How consummate it is, only familiarity with the original can reveal. It is a truth that grows upon the consciousness, stimulating it to demand more and yet more difficult tests of its truthfulness, and satisfying every one. And the unity which is the secret of the truth has not been obtained by monotony of hue. The canvas is alive with color, strong notes of most vivacious hue. ”

“ To tell such a man that he is wrong would be not only cruel but false. From his own standpoint he is not wrong; he is very much in the right, if the end of art is the heightening of a man’s nature through contemplation of the beautiful. This thing is beautiful to him, and through the beauty he sees in it he finds his nature refreshed, purified and enlarged. What more could you advise for him at that particular stage of his artistic development? It is true to the standpoint of his own instinct. Would you have him substitute your standpoint for his? ”

“ A spirited small creature bears the little Don Carlos; a showy, powerful brute the swaggering Olivares; a beast, trained in stately menage, the proud and reserved king. With Goya, however, there is little apparent study of the structure or character of the animal; it is felt for its value as a handsome mass. And the rider’s figure seems to have been felt in the same way; as if by emphasising its mass the artist could evade the inevitable commonplace of the face. ”

“ In the glow of religious fervor a vision shaped itself before the eyes of his spirit and he set it upon the canvas. The noble heads of the general and his lieutenants are clearly portraits of contemporaries, of men who no doubt believed themselves capable of imitating the example of the saint, if occasion required it. At the outset, therefore, the picture is based, not on a mere representation of certain persons, but of the latter in their relation to the idea involved. ”

“ It is a mosaic of splendidly executed items—faces, nude forms, costumes and still-life—each of which merits and indeed demands individual study. As a pattern the composition holds together as a unit, but it does not present a unit of sight. One cannot see it as a whole; the eye travels from point to point, resting on each and enjoying it separately. The picture is a masterpiece of its kind; but it is not of the kind that Velasquez at length achieved in the single, unified vision of Las Meniñas. ”

“ But, although this nude is painted with a naturalism that could scarcely be exceeded, the web of evanescent shadow in which it is clothed invests the nudity with a veil of idealism. These shadows, absolutely indescribable in their delicacy, are the result of a most perfect sense of values and of a technique as sure as it is facile. They are the despair of painters who try to copy the picture. Goya, in fact, in these two canvases, particularly in the nude, has caught the volatile essence of young femininity; has succeeded, as it were, in painting the fragrance of the flower. ”

“ For, if a man or a nation is to have an ideal it must be something above the necessary matter of life, correlating the spiritual sense to what it conceives of spirit in the universe. It was so that the Greek, learning of Egypt and the Orient, drawing inspiration, in fact, from the deep wells of human consciousness, established his ideal and interpreted it under the symbol of beauty. ”

“ Each differing slightly from the others, they cling together in pendent masses, here projecting like a bunch of swarming bees, there receding into the mystery of a fairy grotto; all the while mounting up the curve of the ceiling, which undulates like a vine yielding to the weight of its grapes; climbing higher and higher in endless frolic of invention until they draw together at the ceiling’s peak. Enough gold still adheres to the myriad facets to suggest to the imagination the mysterious lustre of the ceiling, when it was lighted by a suspended lantern with its clusters of crystal lights. ”

“ On the contrary, the palace of the Moorish kings grew cell to cell by accretion, expressive of an accumulating sense of the power and joy of life, alive with the breath of artistic imagination. It dominates its own hill, looking across, on the one hand, to the protecting barrier of higher hills, and on the other, over a smiling hospitable vega, a far reaching garden of luxuriant fertility. The hill itself is a paradise of refreshment. ”

“ But though Velasquez was compelled to be habitually a naturalist, he not only avoided the commonplace which so frequently attaches to naturalism, but proved himself the greatest naturalist in the whole story of painting. He lifted naturalism to its highest pitch of expression. His representations of life are characterised not only by living actuality, but by consummate justness, high distinction and extraordinary beauty. There is in all a union of mental supremacy and of supreme technical artistry. ”

“ Another point to be observed in El Greco’s use of color is that he did not spread his pigment thin over an underpainting of light and dark, but actually modeled in color, obtaining the chiaroscuro by means of values.
It is with a feeling of strangeness that one views a number of El Greco’s portraits such as is gathered in the Prado. Almost invariably the eyes are fixed on us, but with no look of recognition or sympathy.{80} Though the face thrills with life, it is impassive. Behind each living mask is an impenetrable mind, wrapped completely in the seclusion of its own spirit. ”

“ How marvellously the light and obscurity are interwoven! What a strange diversity of plastic forms and subtlety of sober coloring are wrought into the composition! Strangeness is certainly the first impression one experiences; then, following it, a realisation of intense inspiration and of masterful creativeness. One is in the presence of the unusual, of a great imaginative spirit.
Similarly ecstatic is the vision of The Coming of the Holy Ghost in the Prado. At the top, the Dove in Glory; under it, a horizontal row of figures, the Virgin in the center, the heads of all tipped with flame ”

“ Hence the thousands of canvases by men of all countries which in their point of view are neither more nor less than photographic. Their authors remained content to vie with the camera; and then, because they had superior opportunities in color, were proud and scornful when they beat the camera at its own game. Meanwhile, there were painters who began to wish to play a game of their own; to rid painting of the obsession in the matter of representation, and to make their pictures more expressive of their own abstract sense of beauty. To these men Goya came as a revelation. ”

“ It is the product, alike, of elevated mentality and of supreme technical accomplishment. The latter brings us in touch with the cause of its extraordinary beauty.
What does beauty mean to us? If it is beauty of face and form—the easy way to artistic beauty and to lay appreciation thereof—we shall seldom find it in Velasquez’s pictures. The people whom it was his lot to paint were mostly plain-featured, to use no harsher terms; their costumes outrageously extravagant and not in the direction of elegance; the coloring was sombre, only sparingly relieved with gaiety of color. ”

“ In all these subjects the type of Madonna is drawn from the people. But it is not left in its stolid plainness as by Velasquez in his Adoration of the Kings, or sentimentalised as by Murillo. By El Greco it has been rarified, purged alike of grossness and earthly emotion; in fact, spiritualized. We may also assign to this period the small Santiago of the Metropolitan Museum, New York; exquisitely choice in its tonal scheme of blue, slightly relieved by dull ochre yellow, yet virile in handling and inspired by an exalted purity of imagination. ”

“ It is a face vain, stupid and not a little commonplace. The last quality, at least, is absent, from the portraits of Philip IV. The face, especially when young, reflects the King’s intrinsic refinement; but its length has become exaggerated, the protruding under-lip and jaw are puffed and fleshy, weakly sensual, while the eyes are apathetic. The expression of the whole is of a nature nearly worn out, that can only be stirred to occasional alertness by the stimulant of trivial excitements. ”

“ Artists, on the one hand, began to realise that there are internal as well as external facts, facts of the spirit as well as facts of matter; and, on the other, that the chief value of a picture is not in its making something look like life, but in extracting from the life represented its fullest amount of expression. Expression, among progressive modern artists, has taken precedence of mere representation. It is therefore, our own day that is giving special honor to El Greco and Goya ”

“ It seems to be the Spanish instinct to close himself round with interest in what is nearest to him, so that he abandons breadth or height of vision—imagination, in fact—in favor of the immediately present, which he invests with all the fervor of his pent up nature. This leads inevitably to a materialistic point of view and to the baldly naturalistic method; in a word, to the obviousness which we have noted.
Spain, in fact, with its large admixture of Germanic blood, exhibits in its art the trait that affects other races akin to the Teutonic: the German itself, the English and American. ”

“ And you may say that he finds life and the beauty of life not only in the face and figure, action and gesture, of his subjects, but in the clothes they wear and the accessories that surround them. All are contributory to the sense of life with which the subject inspires him, so that he extracts from fabrics and objects of still-life a raciness of character or subtlety of expression that lifts them above the ordinary and gives them the distinction of beauty. ”

“ While the priests and faithful friends, portrait-studies of El Greco’s contemporaries, assist at the solemn function, some turn their eyes to the vision above, where amid the hosts of prophets, apostles, saints and angels, with the Blessed Virgin interceding, the naked soul of the Count appears at the feet of his Redeemer. Was ever nakedness expressed so literally and yet with such abstraction? The whole vision is illuminated by a cold light which comes from within the scene itself. ”

“ During the first twenty-five years of his reign he had continued the patronage of Titian, commenced by his father, Charles V. The latter, after he had sat to the great Venetian, loaded him with marks of favor, including an order of nobility, and vowed that no other artist was worthy to paint Cæsar. Philip’s pride equally demanded the services of the artist who was accounted the greatest of his day, and Titian was willing to give them. “Is not my aim in life,” he wrote, “to refuse the services of other princes and to cling to that of your majesty?” ”

“ The face droops to an inordinate length, as if the vacuous brain could no longer hold it in position; the mental distortion is reflected in the grotesquely exaggerated features; the expression of the pallid mask is one in which hope and joy of life are extinguished and reasonless fear is habitually present. Such was the last of the proud Hapsburg line of Spanish Sovereigns.
Carreño’s most important work, however, is the Portrait of Queen Mariana of Austria, in the Munich Old{135} Pinakothek, of which there is an unsatisfactory replica in the Prado. ”

“ Too frequently its stateliness is invaded by a homeliness which borders on the commonplace. One finds little or nothing of the aristocrat in Murillo’s equipment. He views his subject with the naiveté of an untutored mind and represents it with a simple disregard of anything that might lift it above the commonplace. And this is practically as true of his technique as of his mental approach. There are beautiful passages of color scattered through his works; fine rendering of textures, and precious morceaux of still-life. ”

“ The Spaniard had become a hero to himself; sufficient in and for himself; realising his superiority and wrapping it about with a mantle of haughty exclusiveness. He had learned to rely upon himself and had justified his confidence by victory, hardly won and dearly bought; he was a Spaniard—verbum sat. But he had been more than patriot; he had been a Paladin of the Faith; a Knight of the Cross; a Soldier of Christendom, Champion of the Holy Catholic Church. ”

“ I doubt if the student of Spanish painting, particularly if he visits Spain, can escape the feeling that it exhibits a certain oppressive obviousness. How is this to be accounted for? In the first place, surely, by the influence of the Church, ever more intent on making art a handmaid of its own purposes than on developing its own inherent beauties. And, if this was true under the conditions in Italy, where the Church itself was penetrated with Humanism, how much more is it to be expected under those which existed in Spain! ”