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But it was not until Velazquez that a picture was painted that was founded entirely on visual appearances, in which a basis of objective outlines was discarded and replaced by a structure of tone masses. When he took his own painting room with the little Infanta and her maids as a subject, Velazquez seems to have considered it entirely as one flat visual impression.
The Viscount de la Tresminière, crowned by the Academy as the author of a study on one of his ancestors who had been a companion of Condé, and highly appreciated by the antique dealers on the left bank of the Seine, who sold him all the bad canvases they had in store, called him Velazquez, satisfied that the swarthy, somewhat olive complexion of the count, his black, heavy mustache and his grave eyes, gave him the right to display his thorough acquaintance with Spanish art.
He sat down on a little three-legged stool she had brought with her, and held her box open on his knee. In a minute or two they were talking as though nothing had happened. She was giving him a fresh lecture on Velazquez, and he had resumed his role of pupil and listener.
From Madrid to Aranjuez you meet the usual landscapes of dun hillocks and pale-blue vegetation, such as are only seen in nature in Central Spain, and only seen in art on the matchless canvas of Velazquez. But from the time you cross the tawny flood of the Tagus just north of Aranjuez, the valley is gladdened by its waters all the way to the Primate City.
In the eighteenth century, one imagines, Rembrandt's presence by the side of Raphael would have been thought little less than a scandal. To-day it is Raphael's place that would be contested, and he would be superseded, likely enough, by Velazquez.
In Santo Domingo there was opposition to the plan by interested parties and by persons not sufficiently mindful of past errors and present dangers. The Dominican Congress mutilated the contracts with the bankers, who not only refused to accept the modifications, but declined to treat further with Minister Velazquez unless he were first invested with plenary powers.
Also one of the largest landscapes of Velazquez, which, when you stand near it, seems a confused mass of brown daubs, but stepping back a few yards becomes a most perfect view of the entrance to a royal park. The wide gate swings on its pivot before your eyes.
But after a bit she looked up with a seriousness, nay, a bitterness, in her siren's face, which astonished him. 'It is not amusing to take you in you are too ignorant. What do you suppose Henri Regnault matters to me? His world is as far above mine as Velazquez' art is above my art. But how can a foreigner understand our shades and grades?
At the present moment perhaps the most prominent political figure is Federico Velazquez, a man of unusual force of character, who as minister of finance under Caceres, enforced the settlement of the Dominican debt and gave what was probably the most honest administration of public revenues in the Republic's history.
He was not a colorist as Titian was a colorist, or a painter as Velazquez was a painter he was just so much of a colorist and a painter as is compatible with being the greatest of decorative designers.
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