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Updated: June 4, 2025
When the dispute between Cortez and Velazquez came to be decided upon in Spain, in 1522, the father of Cortez, and those who had come from New Spain as his procurators, obtained permission from cardinal Adrian, at that time governor of the realm, to prosecute a public accusation of the bishop.
"A stupendous portrait by Velazquez." "I warn you that I know nothing about pictures." "Nobody does," Cortes declared roundly. "Everybody says what he thinks." "Is the gallery near here?" "Yes, just a step." In company with Cortes and the German with the green hat with the cock's feather, Caesar went to the Piazza del Collegio Romano, where the Doria palace is.
It is a handsomer face than most of Velazquez, as it was probably painted from memory and lenient tradition. For Philip III. was gathered to his fathers in the Escorial before Velazquez came up from Andalusia to seek his fortune at the court. The first work he did in Madrid was to paint the portrait of the king, which so pleased his majesty that he had it repeated ad nauseam.
The great masters of the Renaissance, from Giotto to Veronese, were men of their time, sharing and interpreting the ideals of those around them, and were recognized and patronized as such. Rembrandt's greatest contemporary, Rubens, was painter in ordinary to half the courts of Europe, and Velazquez was the friend and companion of his king.
In order that people might look at it comfortably, a sofa had been installed facing it. "Is this the Velazquez portrait?" asked Caesar. "This is it." Caesar looked at it carefully. "That man had eaten and drunk well before his portrait was painted," said Caesar; "his face is congested." "It is extraordinary!" exclaimed Cortes. "It is something to see, the way this is done. What boldness!
In any event the tower and the terraces below it are the oldest fortifications constructed by white men in America. Cortez and Pizarro, Velazquez, Ponce de Leon, Narvaez and many others passed out of the Ozama River under the shadow of this building, full of hope for the future.
You see him served up in every form in this gallery, on foot, on horseback, in full armor, in a shooting-jacket, at picnics, and actually on his knees at his prayers! We wonder if Velazquez ever grew tired of that vacant face with its contented smirk, or if in that loyal age the smile of royalty was not always the sunshine of the court?
Leonardo, Raphael, Michael Angelo, Titian, and the Venetians were all faithful to it as the means of holding their pictures together; although the Venetians, by fusing the edges of their outline masses, got very near the visual method to be introduced later by Velazquez.
That he should ever need defending or re-explaining to a generation grown cold to him would have seemed incredible. Then came the rediscovery of an earlier art that seemed more frank and simple than his; still later the discovery of Rembrandt and Velazquez the romanticist and the naturalist and Raphael, as a living influence, almost ceased to exist.
The dog might without exaggeration be pronounced the best, the truest in movement, to be found in Venetian art indeed, in art generally, until Velazquez appears. Herr Carl Justi's happy conjecture helps us, if we accept it, to get over some of these difficulties and seeming contradictions.
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