Baroque and Rococo

 

Diego Velazquez



 

The Face of Spain


 

A Humane Equilibrium
 

 

Velazquez shows all the deformities of these comical or feeble-minded members of court society - as well as all the individual features deriving from violent emotion, congenital mental handicap and from age. He also painted a masterly picture of The Buffoon Don Cristobal de Castaheda y Pernia, who was first in rank among the court jesters. He gave himself airs as a great military expert, thus earning the nickname of Barbarroja (Barbarossa or Red-beard). His red robe is almost Turkish in style, and his head-dress suggests a fool's cap. He glares fiercely into space, and while he grips the sheath of his sword firmly, the sword itself is held in a relaxed position.
 

Velazquez
The Buffoon Don Cristobal de Castaneda y Pernia (Barbarroja)
1637-40
Oil on canvas, 200 x 121 cm
Museo del Prado, Madrid
 

Velazquez
The Buffoon Don Cristobal de Castaneda y Pernia (detail)
1637-40
Oil on canvas
Museo del Prado, Madrid
 

Velazquez began this portrait towards the end of the 1630s and left it unfinished; another painter later worked on it, in particular on the grey cloak. Despite their handicaps the dwarfs and jesters depicted by Velazquez are also acute observers of worldly power. The fascinating penetration imparted by the artist to their eyes in particular suggests that, looking out from their own intermediate world, they can see through all the conventions of a society that believes itself superior, and view it more clearly than many a "normal" courtier. The artist's intellectual attitude here helps to explain the similarities between these human outsiders and his pictures of philosophers.
His Aesop is now almost unanimously dated to around 1639-1641, and it is thought to have been painted for the Torre de la Parada, with the Menippus of the same period. Aesop, the classical author who reflected human life in the guise of animal fables, and the philosopher Menippus, a cynic and satirist, are both shown full length and would have made suitable counterparts to the pictures of Democritus and Heraclitus by Rubens in the Torre de la Parada. Velazquez gave Aesop's face the fleshy features of the human "ox-head type" described in the physiognomical doctrines of the Italian Giovanni Battista della Porta, published in 1586, which again calls Aesop's animal fables to mind.
Of greater importance, however, are the eyes: one almost feels that in the landscape of Aesop's face they are all that is left of the grounding of the canvas. They are deep-seated and probing, turned on the observer with a slight touch of contempt. Like the eyes of many of Velazquez' dwarfs and fools, their gaze is full of the irony that sees through convention. Aesop, who lived from about 620 to 560 BC, began life as a slave and died a violent death. In this picture his face, marked by suffering, shows the same simple dignity as that of the court jesters or country folk painted by Velazquez.
 

Velazquez
Aesop
1639-41
Oil on canvas, 179 x 94 cm
Museo del Prado, Madrid

The classical author of the famous fables holds his hand close to his chest,
which in the figurative language of the time may refer to the character type of the phlegmatic man.
The barrel at Aesop's feet is also an indication that this type was supposed to have
a special affinity with water.
 

Velazquez
Menippus
1639-41
Oil on canvas, 179 x 94 cm
Museo del Prado, Madrid
 

For instance, if one compares the face of The Buffoon Pablo de Valladolid, painted around 1636/37, with the face of the much earlier Democritus, it is easy to see similarities suggesting the possible use of the same model. In the nineteenth century, Edouard Manet was inspired to produce a paraphrase of this picture not so much by the jester's intense facial expression as by the strong tension of his outline.
 

Velazquez
The Buffoon Pablo de Valladolid
1636-37
Oil on canvas, 214 x 125 cm
Museo del Prado, Madrid

The court jester, posing like an actor, stands in a curiously indeterminate space showing no floor-line. Later painters such as Goya and Manet were enthusiastic about this masterpiece, not least for its originally glowing tones of grey in the background, now turned to an unattractive ochre.
 

As a court painter, Velazquez was of course required to paint group portraits as well as these actual or fictional portraits of individual figures. He organized a workshop of competent artists, and in 1633 recruited the services of his son-in-law Juan Bautista Martinez del Mazo (1610/15-1667). Mazo probably did a good deal of work on the picture of around 1636 showing Prince Baltasar Carlos with the Count-Duke of Olivares at the Royal Mews. The Count-Duke stands in the middle ground to the right of the picture, with his master-at-arms; figures on the balcony above him include Philip IV, Queen Isabel and several courtiers who cannot be identified for certain.
 

Velazquez
Prince Baltasar Carlos with the Count-Duke of Olivares at the Royal Mews
c. 1636
Oil on canvas, 144 x 96,5 cm
Collection of the Duke of Westminster, London

The belly of the horse on which the little prince is mounted is disproportionately
convex and in fact so coarsely depicted that one suspects the unskilful hand
of an apprentice rather than a deliberate distortion.
 

Another of the tasks required of Velazquez, though to a lesser extent, was the painting of altarpieces. The Coronation of the Virgin was painted around 1645, possibly for the queen's oratory in the Alcazar in Madrid. Angelic putti carry the virginal Madonna up to heaven on clouds; Christ and God the Father hold a wreath of roses over her head, and the dove of the Holy Ghost hovers above her in an aureole of light. The glory of the coronation of the Mother of God and her perfect features are signs of her virginity.

Around ten years earlier the painting of St. Anthony Abbot and St. Paul the Hermit had been commissioned, possibly for the Hermitage in the Buen Retire Various models have been suggested for this composition, including a woodcut by Albrecht Durer (1471-1528) for the group of figures. The woodcut also shows the raven flying down to bring the hermits a loaf of bread, in the same attitude as in Velazquez' painting. A model for the landscape, of which we have an aerial view, has been traced in the so-called "world landscapes" of the Dutch artist Joachim Patinir (c. 1485-1524; ill. above), and the sketch-like dynamics of the brushwork and transparency of the colouring are reminiscent of similar pictures by Rubens. Magnificently as the landscape in particular is painted in this picture, the colouring of the later altarpiece seems aesthetically superior and more mature by comparison.
When he painted The Coronation of the Virgin, Velazquez was on the threshold to his late work and the peak of his artistic achievement, to which his likenesses of the Spanish Habsburgs, not least, made a considerable contribution. They are among the finest examples of court portraiture ever painted.
 

Velazquez
The Coronation of the Virgin
1645
Oil on canvas, 178 x 135 cm
Museo del Prado, Madrid

The virginal face of the Madonna reflects the emotions aroused in Spain
between 1613 and 1620 by the postulated Immaculate Conception of the Virgin.
In this context Pacheco encouraged painters to create emphatically youthful depictions of Mary.
 

Velazquez
The Coronation of the Virgin (detail)
1645
Oil on canvas
Museo del Prado, Madrid
 

Velazquez
St Anthony Abbot and St Paul the Hermit
c. 1635
Oil on canvas, 260 x 192 cm
Museo del Prado, Madrid

This picture shows several scenes from the legend of these saints simultaneously. In the background, St. Anthony is asking a centaur the way to the hermit Paul. As he goes on he meets a horned monster with goat's feet, and on the right he is knocking on the door to the cave. The main scene shows the raven bringing the two saints a loaf of bread from heaven. To the left, we see the closing sequence: two lions are digging a grave for St. Paul while St. Anthony prays beside his corpse.
 

Velazquez
St Anthony Abbot and St Paul the Hermit (detail)
c. 1635
Oil on canvas
Museo del Prado, Madrid