Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 14, 2025
Such a picture would be more rare than the greatest that he ever painted. After selling his six pictures Murillo started a-foot, not to London but on a terrible journey across the Sierra Mountains, to Madrid the home of Velasquez. Murillo knew that this native of Seville had become a famous artist.
A bearded patriarch, who looked as if he had stepped out of a picture by Velasquez, stepped forward and delivered a flowery speech of welcome, then comely maidens and dark-visaged youths performed a picturesque dance to the accompaniment of stringed instruments.
He does not possess what are called "general ideas"; he sounds no tragic chords; he has no spoor of poetry, but he sees the exterior world steadily; he is never obvious, and he is a sympathetic interpreter in the domestic domain and of character. His palette is as aristocratic as that of Velasquez: the music he makes, like that of the string quartet, borders on perfection.
Thus we have pictures of strange groups dwarfs, little princesses, dressed precisely as the elders were dressed, favourite dogs, and Velasquez himself at his easel. In 1618, while still with his master, Pacheco, he had married the master's daughter, a big, portly woman. Before he left Seville he bad two daughters.
Velasquez, however, is to be really seen nowhere so well as here. I do not know how many pictures there are here by him, but a great quantity, it seems to me: Philips without number, in childhood, youth, and age; Dons with curled moustaches; Queens with large hoops and disfigured heads; an actor, full of life and character, one of his very best.
It is useless to try and copy some one else's greatness; that is like trying to look like some one else's portrait, even if it be a portrait by Velasquez. Not that modesty is inseparable from greatness; there are abundance of great men who have been childishly and grotesquely vain; but in such cases it has been a greatness of performance, a marvellous faculty, not a greatness of soul.
The only difference between him and Rembrandt or Velasquez is that these, as a general rule, stay their hand at an earlier stage of impressionism. Giotto There are few modern painters who are not greater technically than Giotto, but I cannot call to mind a single one whose work impresses me as profoundly as his does.
In Pacheco's studio there was a peasant boy whose face was very mobile, showed every passing feeling; and Velasquez used to make him laugh and weep, till, surprising some good expression, he would quickly sketch him. With this excellent model, Velasquez did a surprising amount of good work.
So there is many a Veronese, Tintoretto and Titian now in the Prado that was copied by Velasquez. Think of the value of a Titian copied by Velasquez! And so faithfully was the copying done, even to inserting the signature, initials and date, that much doubt exists as to what pictures are genuine and what copies.
The most wonderful Rembrandt, Velasquez, Turner, Hobbema, Van Dyck, Raphael, Frans Hals, Romney, Gainsborough, Whistler, Corot, Mauve, Vermeer, Fragonard, Botticelli, and Titian reproductions followed in such rapid succession as fairly to daze the magazine readers. Four pictures were given in each number, and the faithfulness of the reproductions astonished even their owners.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking