Chapter XLV (3)

Morales, the first great devotional painter of Castile, on whom his admiring countrymen bestowed the soubriquet of "divine"--with more propriety, it must be confessed, than their descendants have shown in conferring it upon Arguelles--contributed but one picture to the court, and none to the Escurial; but in Alonzo Sanchez Coello, born at Benifayrô, in Valencia, we find a famous native artist decorating the superb walls of the new palace. While at Madrid he was lodged in the Treasury, a building which communicated with the palace by a door, of which the King kept a key; and often would the royal Mæcenas slip thus, unobserved by the artist, into his studio. Emperors and popes, kings and queens, princes and princesses, were alike his friends and subjects; but we are now only concerned to relate that, in 1582, he painted "five altar-pieces for the Escurial, each containing a pair of saints." Far more of interest, however, attaches itself to the name and memory of Juan Fernandez Navarete, "whose genius was no less remarkable than his infirmities, and whose name--El Mudo, the dumb painter--is as familiar to Europe as his works are unknown," (vol. i. p. 250.) Born at Logroño in 1526, he went in his youth to Italy. Here he attracted the notice of Don Luis Manrique, grand-almoner to Philip, who procured him an invitation to Madrid. He was immediately set to work for the Escurial; and in 1571 four pictures, the Assumption of the Virgin, the Martyrdom of St James the Great, St Philip, and a Repenting St Jerome, were hung in the sacristy of the convent, and brought him five hundred ducats. In 1576 he painted, for the reception-hall of the convent, a large picture representing Abraham receiving the three Angels. "This picture," says Father Andres Ximenes, quoted by Mr Stirling, (vol. i. p. 255) "so appropriate to the place it fills, though the first of the master's works that usually meets the eye, might, for its excellence, be viewed the last, and is well worth coming many a league to see." An agreement, bearing date the same year, between the painter and the prior, by which the former covenanted to paint thirty-two large pictures for the side altars, is preserved by Cean Bermudez; but El Mudo unfortunately died when only eight of the series had been painted. On the 28th of March 1579 this excellent and remarkable painter died in the 53d year of his age. A few years later, Juan Gomez painted from a design of Tibaldi a large picture of St Ursula, which replaced one of Cambiaso's least satisfactory Escurialian performances.

While acres of wall and ceiling were being thus painted in fresco, or covered by large and fine pictures, the Escurial gave a ready home to the most minute of the fine arts: illuminators of missals, and painters of miniatures, embroiderers of vestments, and designers of altar-cloths, found their labours appreciated, and their genius called forth, no less than their more aspiring compeers. Fray Andrez de Leon, and Fray Martin de Palencia, enriched the Escurial with exquisite specimens of their skill in the arts of miniature-painting and illuminating; and under the direction of Fray Lorenzo di Monserrate, and Diego Rutiner, the conventual school of embroidery produced frontals and dalmatics, copes, chasubles, and altar-cloths, of rarest beauty and happiest designs. The goldsmiths and silversmiths, too, lacked not encouragement in this greatest of temples. Curious was the skill, and cunning the hand, which fashioned the tower of gold and jasper to contain the Escurial's holiest relique,--a muscle, singed and charred, of St Laurence--and no doubt that skill was nobly rewarded.

In 1598, clasping to his breast the veil of Our Lady of Monserrat, in a little alcove hard by the church of the Escurial, died its grim, magnificent founder. He had witnessed the completion of his gigantic designs: palace and convent, there it stood--a monument alike of his piety and his pride, and a proof of the grandeur and resources of the mighty empire over which he ruled. But he appears to have thought with the poet--

"Weighed in the balance, hero-dust
Is vile as mortal clay;"

for he built no stately mausoleum, merely a common vault, to receive the imperial dead. This omission, in 1617, Philip III. undertook to supply; and Giovanni Battista Crescenzi, an Italian, was selected as the architect. For thirty-four years did he and his successors labour at this royal necropolis, which when finished "became, under the name of the Pantheon, the most splendid chamber of the Escurial."--(Vol. i. p. 412.)

Mr Stirling's second volume opens with a graphic account of the decay of Spanish power under Philip IV., and an equally graphic description of this, the chief architectural triumph of his long inglorious reign. The Pantheon was "an octagonal chamber 113 feet in circumference, and 38 feet in height, from the pavement to the centre of the domed vault. Each of its eight sides, excepting the two which are occupied by its entrance, and the altar, contain four niches and four marble urns; the walls, Corinthian pilasters, cornices and dome, are formed of the finest marbles of Toledo and Biscay, Tortosa and Genoa; and the bases, capitals, scrolls, and other ornaments, are of gilt bronze. Placed beneath the presbytery of the church, and approached by the long descent of a stately marble staircase, this hall of royal tombs, gleaming with gold and polished jasper, seems a creation of Eastern romance.... Hither Philip IV. would come, when melancholy--the fatal taint of his blood was strong upon him--to hear mass, and meditate on death, sitting in the niche which was shortly to receive his bones." Yet this was the monarch whose quick eye detected the early genius of Velasquez, and who bore the palm as a patron from all the princes of his house, and all the sovereigns of Europe. Well did the great painter repay the discriminating friendship of the king, and so long as Spanish art endures, will the features of Philip IV. be known in every European country; and his fair hair, melancholy mien, impassive countenance and cold eyes, reveal to all time the hereditary characteristics of the phlegmatic house of Austria.

Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velasquez was born at Seville in 1599. Here he entered the school of Herrera the Elder, a dashing painter, and a violent man, who was for ever losing alike his temper and his scholars. Velasquez soon left his turbulent rule for the gentler instruction of Francisco Pacheco. In his studio the young artist worked diligently, while he took lessons at the same time of a yet more finished artist--nature; the nature of bright, sunny, graceful Andalusia. Thus, while Velasquez cannot be called a self-taught painter, he retained to the last that freedom from mannerism, and that gay fidelity to nature, which so often--not in his case--compensate for a departure from the highest rules and requirements of art.

While he was thus studying and painting the flowers and the fruits, the damsels and the beggars, of sunny Seville, there arrived in that beautiful city a collection of Italian and Spanish pictures. These exercised no small influence on the taste and style of the young artist; but, true to his country, and with the happy inspiration of genius, it was to Luis Tristan of Toledo, rather than to any foreign master, that he directed his chief attention; and hence the future chief of the Castilian school was enabled to combine with its merits the excellencies of both the other great divisions of Spanish art. At the end of five years spent in this manner, he married Pacheco's daughter, who witnessed all his forty years' labours and successes, and closed his dying eyes. At the age of twenty-three, Velasquez, anxious to enlarge his acquaintance with the masterpieces of other schools, went to Madrid; but after spending a few months there, and at the Escurial, he returned to Seville--soon, however, to be recalled at the bidding of the great minister and Mæcenas, Olivarez. Now, in 1623, set in the tide of favour and of fame, which henceforward was not to flag or ebb till the great painter lay stretched, out of its reach, on the cold bank of death. During this summer he painted the noble portrait of the king on horseback, which was exhibited by royal order in front of the church of San Felipe, and which caused the all-powerful Count-duke to exclaim, that until now his majesty had never been painted. Charmed and delighted with the picture and the painter, Philip declared no other artist should in future paint his royal face; and Mr Stirling maliciously adds that "this resolution he kept far more religiously than his marriage vows, for he appears to have departed from it during the life-time of his chosen artist, in favour only of Rubens and Crayer." (Vol. ii. p. 592.) On the 31st of October 1623, Velasquez was formally appointed painter in ordinary to the king, and in 1626 was provided with apartments in the Treasury. To this period Mr Stirling assigns his best likeness of the equestrian monarch, of which he says--"Far more pleasing than any other representation of the man, it is also one of the finest portraits in the world. The king is in the glow of youth and health, and in the full enjoyment of his fine horse, and the breeze blowing freshly from the distant hills; he wears dark armour, over which flutters a crimson scarf; a hat with black plumes covers his head, and his right hand grasps a truncheon."--(P. 595.)

In 1628, Velasquez had the pleasure of showing Rubens, who had come to Madrid as envoy from the Low Countries, the galleries of that city, and the wonders of the Escurial; and, following the advice of that mighty master, he visited Italy the next year. On that painter-producing soil, his steps were first turned to the city of Titian; but the sun of art was going down over the quays and palaces of once glorious Venice, and, hurrying through Ferrara and Bologna, the eager pilgrim soon reached Rome. In this metropolis of religion, learning, and art, the young Spaniard spent many a pleasant and profitable month: nor, while feasting his eyes and storing his memory with "its thousand forms of beauty and delight," did he allow his pencil a perfect holiday. The Forge of Vulcan and Joseph's Coat were painted in the Eternal City. After a few weeks at Naples, he returned to Madrid in the spring of 1631. Portrait-painting for his royal patron, who would visit his studio every day, and sit there long hours, seems to have been now his main occupation; and now was he able to requite the friendly aid he had received from the Count-duke of Olivarez, whose image remains reflected on the stream of time, not after the hideous caricature of Le Sage, but as limned by the truthful--albeit grace-conferring--pencil of Velasquez.

In 1639, leaving king and courtiers, lords and ladies, and soaring above the earth on which he had made his step so sure, Velasquez aspired to the grandest theme of poet, moralist, or painter, and nobly did his genius justify the flight. His Crucifixion is one of the sublimest representations conceived by the intellect, and portrayed by the hand of man, of that stupendous event. "Unrelieved by the usual dim landscape, or lowering clouds, the cross in this picture has no footing upon earth, but is placed on a plain dark ground, like an ivory carving on its velvet pall. Never was that great agony more powerfully depicted. The head of our Lord drops on his right shoulder, over which falls a mass of dark hair, while drops of blood trickle from his thorn-pierced brows. The anatomy of the naked body and limbs is executed with as much precision as in Cellini's marble, which may have served Velasquez as a model; and the linen cloth wrapped about the loins, and even the fir-wood of the cross, display his accurate attention to the smallest details of a great subject."--(Vol. ii. p. 619.) This masterpiece now hangs in the Royal Gallery of Spain at Madrid.

The all-powerful Olivarez underwent, in 1643, the fate of most favourites, and experienced the doom denounced by the great English satirist on "power too great to keep, or to resign." He had declared his intention of making one Julianillo, an illegitimate child of no one exactly knew who, his heir; had married him to the daughter of the Constable of Castile, decked him with titles and honours, and proposed to make him governor of the heir-apparent. The pencil of Velasquez was employed to hand down to posterity the features of this low-born cause of his great patron's downfall, and the portrait of the ex-ballad singer in the streets of Madrid now graces the collection of Bridgewater House. The disgrace of Olivarez served to test the fine character of Velasquez, who not only sorrowed over his patron's misfortunes, but had the courage to visit the disgraced statesman in his retirement.

The triumphal entrance of Philip IV. into Lerida, the surrender of Breda, and portraits of the royal family, exercised the invention and pencil of Velasquez till the year 1648, when he was sent by the king on a roving mission into Italy--not to teach the puzzled sovereigns the mysterious privileges of self-government, but to collect such works of art as his fine taste might think worthy of transportation to Madrid. Landing at Genoa, he found himself in presence of a troop of Vandyck's gallant nobles: hence he went to Milan, Padua, and Venice. At the latter city he purchased for his royal master two or three pictures of Tintoret's, and the Venus and Adonis of Paul Veronese. But Rome, as in his previous visit, was the chief object of his pilgrimage. Innocent X. welcomed him gladly, and commanded him to paint, not only his own coarse features, but the more delicate ones of Donna Olympia, his "sister-in-law and mistress." So, at least, says our author; for the sake of religion and human nature, we hope he is mistaken. For more than a year did Velasquez sojourn in Rome, purchasing works of art, and enjoying the society of Bernini and Nicolas Poussin, Pietro da Cortona and Algardi. "It would be pleasing, were it possible, to draw aside the dark curtain of centuries, and follow him into the palaces and studios--to see him standing by while Claude painted, or Algardi modelled, (enjoying the hospitalities of Bentivoglio, perhaps in that fair hall glorious with Guido's recent fresco of Aurora)--or mingling in the group that accompanied Poussin in his evening walks on the terrace of Trinità de Monte."--(Vol. ii. p. 643.) Meanwhile the king was impatiently waiting his return, and at last insisted upon its being no further delayed; so in 1651 the soil of Spain was once more trod by her greatest painter. Five years later, Velasquez produced his extraordinary picture, Las Meniñas--the Maids of Honour, extraordinary alike in the composition, and in the skill displayed by the painter in overcoming its many difficulties. Dwarfs and maids of honour, hounds and children, lords and ladies, pictures and furniture, are all introduced into this remarkable picture, with such success as to make many judges pronounce it to be Velasquez's masterpiece, and Luca Giordano to christen it "the theology of painting."

The Escurial, from whose galleries and cloisters we have been thus lured by the greater glory of Velasquez, in 1656 demanded his presence to arrange a large collection of pictures, forty-one of which came from the dispersed and abused collection of the only real lover of the fine arts who has sat on England's throne--that martyr-monarch whom the pencil of Vandyck, and the pens of Lovelace, Montrose, and Clarendon, have immortalised, though their swords and counsels failed to preserve his life and crown. In 1659 the cross of Santiago was formally conferred on this "king of painters, and painter of kings;" and on St Prosper's day, in the Church of the Carbonera, he was installed knight of that illustrious order, the noblest grandees of Spain assisting at the solemn ceremonial. The famous meeting on the Isle of Pheasants, so full of historic interest, between the crowns and courts of Spain and France, to celebrate the nuptials of Louis XIV. and Maria Theresa, was destined to acquire an additional though melancholy fame, as the last appearance of the great painter in public, and the possible proximate cause of his death. To him, as aposentador-mayor, were confided all the decorations and arrangements of this costly and fatiguing pageant: he was also to find lodging on the road for the king and the court; and some idea of the magnitude of his official cares may be derived from the fact, that three thousand five hundred mules, eighty-two horses, seventy coaches, and seventy baggage-waggons, formed the train that followed the monarch out of Madrid. On the 28th of June the court returned to Madrid, and on the 6th of August its inimitable painter expired.

The merits of Velasquez are now generally appreciated in England; and the popular voice would, we think, ratify the enthusiastic yet sober dictum of Wilkie, "In painting an intelligent portrait he is nearly unrivalled." Yet we have seen how he could rise to the highest subject of mortal imagination in the Crucifixion; and the one solitary naked Venus, which Spanish art in four hundred years produced, is his. Mr Stirling, though he mentions this picture in the body of his book, assigns it no place in his valuable and laboriously compiled catalogue, probably because he was unable to trace its later adventures. Brought to England in 1814, and sold for £500 to Mr Morritt, it still remains the gem of the library at Rokeby. Long may the Spanish queen of love preside over the beautiful bowers of that now classic retreat! We sum up our notice of Velasquez in Mr Stirling's words:--"No artist ever followed nature with more catholic fidelity; his cavaliers are as natural as his boors; he neither refined the vulgar, nor vulgarised the refined.... We know the persons of Philip IV. and Olivarez as familiarly as if we had paced the avenues of the Pardo with Digby and Howell, and perhaps we think more favourably of their characters. In the portraits of the monarch and the minister,

'The bounding steeds they pompously bestride,
Share with their lords the pleasure and the pride,'

and enable us to judge of the Cordovese horse of that day, as accurately as if we had lived with the horse-breeding Carthusians of the Betis. And this painter of kings and horses has been compared, as a painter of landscapes, to Claude; as a painter of low life, to Teniers: his fruit-pieces equal those of Sanchez Cotan or Van Kessel; his poultry might contest the prize with the fowls of Hondekooter on their own dunghill; and his dogs might do battle with the dogs of Sneyders."--(Vol. ii. p. 686.)

While Velasquez, at the height of his glory, was painting his magnificent Crucifixion, a young lad was displaying hasty sketches and immature daubs to the venders of old clothes, pots, and vegetables, the gipsies and mendicant friars that frequented the Feria, or weekly fair held in the market-place of All Saints, in the beautiful and religious city of Seville. This was Bartolemè Estevan Murillo, who, having studied for some time under Juan del Castillo, on that master's removal to Cadiz in 1640, betook himself to this popular resource of all needy Sevillian painters. Struck, however, by the great improvement which travel had wrought in the style of Pedro de Moya, who revisited Seville in 1642, the young painter scraped up money sufficient to carry him to Madrid, and, as he hoped, to Rome. But the kindness of Velasquez provided him a lodging in his own house, and opened the galleries of the Alcazar and the Escurial to his view. Here he pursued his studies unremittingly, and, as he thought, with a success that excused the trouble and expense of an Italian pilgrimage. Returning, therefore, in 1645 to Seville, he commenced that career which led him, among the painters of Spain, to European renown, second only to that of Velasquez. The Franciscans of his native city have the credit of first employing his young genius, and the eleven large pictures with which he adorned their convent-walls at once established his reputation and success. These were painted in what is technically called his first or cold style; this was changed before 1650 into his second, or warm style, which in its turn yielded to his last, or vapoury style. So warm, indeed, had his colouring become, that a Spanish critic, in the nervous phraseology of Spain, declared his flesh-tints were now painted with blood and milk. In this style did he paint for the chapter The Nativity of the Blessed Virgin, in which the ladies of Seville admired and envied the roundness of a ministering maiden's naked arm; and a large picture of St Anthony of Padua, which still adorns the walls of the cathedral baptistery. Of this famous gem some curious stories are told: Don Fernando Farfan, for instance, relates that birds had been seen attempting to perch upon some lilies in a vase by the side of the kneeling saint; and Monsieur Viardot (_Musées d'Espagne_, p. 146) informs us that a reverend canon, who showed him the picture, recounted how that, in 1813, the Duke of Wellington offered to purchase it for as many gold onzas as would cover its surface; while, in 1843, Captain Widdrington was assured that a lord had expressed his readiness to give £40,000 for the bird-deluding picture. The belief in the gullibility of travellers is truly remarkable and wide-spread; thus, at Genoa, in 1839, our excellent cicerone gratified us with the information, that, sixteen years before, the English Duke Balfour had in vain offered £1600 for Canova's beautiful basso-relievo of the Virgin Clasping the Corpse of our Saviour, which graces the ugly church of the poor-house in that superb city. In 1658, Murillo laboured to establish a public academy of art; and, in spite of the jealousies and contentions of rival artists, on the 1st of January 1660, he witnessed its inauguration. The rules were few and simple; but the declaration to be signed by each member on admission would rather astonish the directors of the Royal Academy in London. We would recommend it to the consideration of those Protestant divines who are so anxious to devise a new test of heresy in the Church of England: thus it ran--"Praised be the most holy sacrament, and the pure conception of Our Lady." Nothing, perhaps, can show more strongly the immense influence religion exercised on art in Spain than the second clause of this declaration. It was the favourite dogma of Seville: for hundreds of years sermons were preached, books were written, pictures painted, legends recorded in honour of Our Lady's spotless conception; and round many a picture by Cano, or Vargas, or Joanes, is yet to be read the magic words that had power to electrify a populace,--"Sin Pecado Concebida." The institution thus commenced flourished for many years, and answered the generous expectations of its illustrious founder.

The attention of the pious Don Miguel Mañara de Leca, the "benevolent Howard" of Seville, was attracted about 1661 to the pitiable state of the brotherhood of the holy charity, and its hospital of San Jorge: he resolved to restore it to its pristine glory and usefulness; and, persevering against all discouragements and difficulties, in less than twenty years, at an expense of half-a-million of ducats, he accomplished his pious design. For the restored church Murillo painted eleven pictures, of which eight, according to Mr Stirling, are the finest works of the master. Five of these were carried off by plundering Soult, but "the two colossal compositions of Moses, and the Loaves and Fishes, still hang beneath the cornices whence springs the dome of the church, "like ripe oranges on the bough where they originally budded." Long may they cover their native "walls, and enrich, as well as adorn, the institution of Mañara! In the picture of the great miracle of the Jewish dispensation, the Hebrew prophet stands beside the rock in Horeb, with hands pressed together, and uplifted eyes, thanking the Almighty for the stream which has just gushed forth at the stroke of his mysterious rod.... As a composition, this wonderful picture can hardly be surpassed. The rock, a huge, isolated, brown crag, much resembles in form, size, and colour, that which is still pointed out as the rock of Moses, by the Greek monks of the convent of St Catherine, in the real wilderness of Horeb. It forms the central object, rising to the top of the canvass, and dividing it into two unequal portions. In front of the rock, the eye at once singles out the erect figure of the prophet standing forward from the throng; and the lofty emotion of that great leader, looking with gratitude to heaven, is finely contrasted with the downward regards of the multitude, forgetful of the Giver in the anticipation or the enjoyment of the gift. Each head and figure is an elaborate study; each countenance has a distinctive character, and even of the sixteen vessels brought to the spring, no two are alike in form."--(Vol. ii. p. 859.) But Cean Bermudez, who enjoyed the privilege of seeing all these eight masterpieces hanging together in their own sacred home, preferred The Prodigal's Return, and St Elizabeth of Hungary--with whose touching history the eloquent pens of the Count Montalembert and Mr A. Phillipps have made us familiar--to all the rest.

The Franciscan convent, without the city walls, was yet more fortunate than the hospital of Mañara, for it possessed upwards of twenty of this religious painter's works. Now, not one remains to dignify the ruined halls and deserted cloisters of that once magnificent convent: but seventeen of these pictures are preserved in the Seville Museum; among them Murillo's own favourite--that which he used to call "his own picture"--the charity of St Thomas of Villanueva. In 1678, Murillo painted three pictures for the Hospital de los Venerables, two of which, the Mystery of the Immaculate Conception, and St Peter Weeping, were placed in the chapel. "The third adorned the refectory, and presented to the gaze of the Venerables, during their repasts, the blessed Virgin enthroned on clouds, with her divine Babe, who, from a basket borne by angels, bestowed bread on three aged priests." These were nearly his last works; for the art he so loved was now about to destroy her favourite son: he was mounting a scaffolding to paint the higher parts of a great altar-piece for the Capuchin church at Cadiz, representing the espousals of St Catherine, when he stumbled, and ruptured himself so severely, as to die of the injury. On the 3d of April 1682, he expired in the arms of his old and faithful friend, Don Justino Neve, and was buried in the parish church of St. Cruz, a stone slab with his name, a skeleton and "Vive moriturus," marking the spot--until the "Vandal" French destroyed the last resting-place of that great painter, whose works they so unscrupulously appropriated. Was the last Lord of Petworth aware of this short epitaph, when he caused to be inscribed on the beautiful memorial to his ancestors which adorns St Thomas's Chapel in Petworth Church, the prophetic,[18] solemn words--"Mortuis moriturus?"

[18] He died the year following.

We have ranked Murillo next to Velasquez: doubtless there are many in England who would demur to this classification; and we own there are charms in the style of the great religious painter, which it would be vain to look for in any other master. In tenderness of devotion, and a certain soft sublimity, his religious pictures are unmatched; while in colouring, Cean Bermudez most justly says--"All the peculiar beauties of the school of Andalusia--its happy use of red and brown tints, the local colours of the region, its skill in the management of drapery, its distant prospects of bare sierras and smiling vales, its clouds, light and diaphanous as in nature, its flowers and transparent waters, and its harmonious depth and richness of tone--are to be found in full perfection in the works of Murillo."--(Vol. ii. p. 903.) Mr Stirling draws a distinction, and we think with reason, between the favourite Virgin of the Immaculate Conception and the other Virgins of Murillo: the ἠθὸς of the former is far more elevated and spiritualised than that of any of the latter class; but, even in his most ordinary and mundane delineation of the sinless Mary, how sweet, and pure, and holy, as well as beautiful, does our Lord's mother appear! But perhaps it is as a painter of children that Murillo is most appreciated in England; nor can we wonder that such should be the case, when we remember what the pictures are which have thus impressed Murillo on the English mind. The St John Baptist with the Lamb, in the National Gallery; Lord Westminster's picture of the same subject; the Baroness de Rothschild's gem at Gunnersbury, Our Lord, the Good Shepherd, as a Child: Lord Wemyss's hardly inferior repetition of it; the picture of our Lord as a child, holding in his hands the crown of thorns, in the College at Glasgow; with the other pictures, in private collections, of our Lord and St John as children, have naturally made Murillo to be regarded in England as emphatically the painter of children: and how exquisite is his conception of the Divine Babe and His saintly precursor! what a sublime consciousness of power, what an expression of boundless love, are seen in the face of Him who was yet

"a little child,
Taught by degrees to pray
By father dear, and mother mild,
Instructed day by day."

The religious school of Spanish painting reached its acmé in Murillo; and, at the risk of being accounted heterodox, we must, in summing up his merits, express our difference from Mr Stirling in one respect, and decline to rank the great Sevillian after any of the Italian masters. Few of Murillo's drawings are known to be in existence. Mr Stirling gives a list of such as he has been able to discover, nearly all of which are at the Louvre. We believe, in addition to those possessed by the British Museum and Mr Ford, there are two in the collection at Belvoir Castle: one, a Virgin and Child; the other, an old man--possibly St Francis--receiving a flower from a naked child.

After Velasquez and Murillo, it may seem almost impertinent to talk of the merits of other Spanish painters; yet Zurbaran and Cano, Ribera and Coello, demand at least a passing notice. Francisco de Zurbaran, often called the Caravaggio of Spain, was born in Estremadura in 1598. His father, observing his turn for painting, sent him to the school of Roelas, at Seville. Here, for nearly a quarter of a century, he continued painting for the magnificent cathedral, and the churches and religious houses of that fair city. About 1625, he painted, for the college of St Thomas Aquinas, an altar-piece, regarded by all judges as the finest of all his works. It represents the angelic doctor ascending into the heavens, where, on clouds of glory, the blessed Trinity and the Virgin wait to receive him; below, in mid air, sit the four doctors of the Church; and on the ground are kneeling the Emperor Charles V., with the founder of the college, Archbishop Diego de Deza, and a train of ecclesiastics. Mr Stirling says of this singular picture, "The colouring throughout is rich and effective, and worthy the school of Roelas; the heads are all of them admirable studies; the draperies of the doctors and ecclesiastics are magnificent in breadth and amplitude of fold; the imperial mantle is painted with Venetian splendour; and the street view, receding in the centre of the canvass, is admirable for its atmospheric depth and distance."--(Vol. ii. p. 770.) In 1650, Philip IV. invited him to Madrid, and commanded him to paint ten pictures, representing the labours of Hercules, for a room at Buen-retiro. Almost numberless were the productions of his facile pencil, which, however, chiefly delighted to represent, the legends of the Carthusian cloister, and portray the gloomy features and sombre vestments of monks and friars; yet those who have seen his picture of the Virgin with the Infant Saviour and St John, at Stafford House, will agree with Mr Stirling that, "unrivalled in such subjects of dark fanaticism, Zurbaran could also do ample justice to the purest and most lovely of sacred themes."--(Vol. 11. p. 775)

Alonzo Cano, born at Grenada in 1601, was, like Mrs Malaprop's Cerberus, "three gentlemen in one;" that is, he was a great painter, a great sculptor, and a great architect. As a painter, his powers are shown in his full-length picture of the Blessed Virgin, with the infant Saviour asleep on her knees, now in the Queen of Spain's gallery; in six large works, representing passages in the life of Mary Magdalene, which still adorn the great brick church of Getafe, a small village near Madrid; and in his famous picture of Our Lady of Belem, in the cathedral of Seville. Mr Stirling gives a beautifully-executed print of this last Madonna, which, "in serene, celestial beauty, is excelled by no image of the Blessed Virgin ever devised in Spain."--(P. 803.)

Cano was, perhaps, even greater in sculpture than in painting; and so fond of the former art, that, when wearied of pencil and brush, he would call for his chisel, and work at a statue by way of rest to his hands. On one of these occasions, a pupil venturing to remark, that to substitute a mallet for a pencil was an odd sort of repose, was silenced by Cano's philosophical reply,--"Blockhead, don't you perceive that to create form and relief on a flat surface is a greater labour than to fashion one shape into another?" An image of the Blessed Virgin in the parish church at Lebrija, and another in the sacristy of the Grenada cathedral, are said to be triumphs of Spanish painted statuary.--(Vol. iii., p. 805) After a life of strange vicissitudes, in the course of which, on suspicion of having murdered his wife, he underwent the examination by torture, he died, honoured and beloved for his magnificent charities, and religious hatred of the Jews, in his native city, on the 3d of October 1667.

The old Valencian town of Xativa claims the honour of producing Josè de Ribera, el Spagnoletto; but though Spain gave him birth, Italy gave him instruction, wealth, fame; and although in style he is thoroughly Spanish, we feel some difficulty in writing of him as belonging wholly to the Spanish school of art, so completely Italian was he by nurture, long residence, and in his death.

Bred up in squalid penury, he appears to have looked upon the world as not his friend, and in his subsequent good fortunes to have revelled in describing with ghastly minuteness, and repulsive force, all "the worst ills that flesh is heir to." We well recollect the horror with which we gazed spell-bound on a series of his horrors in the Louvre--faugh! At Gosford House are a series of Franciscan monks, such as only a Spanish cloister could contain, painted with an evident fidelity to nature, and the minutest details of dress that is almost offensive--even the black dirt under the unwashed thumb nail is carefully represented by his odiously-accurate and powerful pencil.

"Non ragioniam di lor
Ma guada e passa."

Had the bold buccaneers of the seventeenth century required the services of a painter to perpetuate the memory of their inventive brutality, and inconceivable atrocities, they would have found in El Spagnoletto an artist capable of delineating the agonies of their victims, and by taste and disposition not indisposed to their way of life. Yet in his own peculiar line he was unequalled, and his merits as a painter will always be recognised by every judge of art. He died at Naples, the scene of his triumphs, in 1656.

The name of Claudio Coello is associated with the Escurial, and should have been introduced into the sketch we were giving of its artists, when the mighty reputation of Velasquez and Murillo broke in upon our order. He was born at Madrid about the middle of the seventeenth century, and studied in the school of the younger Rigi. In 1686 he succeeded Herrera as painter in ordinary to Charles II. This monarch had erected an altar in the great sacristy of the Escurial, to the miraculous bleeding wafer known as the Santa Forma; and on the death of its designer, Rigi, Coello was called upon to paint a picture that should serve as a veil for the host. On a canvass six yards high, by three wide, he executed an excellent work, representing the king and his court adoring the miraculous wafer, which is held aloft by the prior. This picture established his reputation, and in 1691 the chapter of Toledo, still the great patrons of art, appointed him painter to their cathedral. Coello was a most careful and painstaking painter, and his pictures, says our author, (vol. iii., p. 1018) "with much of Cano's grace of drawing, have also somewhat of the rich tones of Murillo, and the magical effect of Velasquez." He died, it is said, of disappointment at the success of his foreign rival, Luca Giordano, in 1693.

With Charles II. passed away the Spanish sceptre from the house of Austria, nor, according to Mr Stirling, would the Genius of Painting remain to welcome the intrusive Bourbons:--

Old times were changed, old manners gone,
A stranger filled the Philips' throne;
And art, neglected and oppressed,
Wished to be with them, and at rest.

But we must say that Mr Stirling, in his honest indignation against France and Frenchmen, has exaggerated the demerits of the Bourbon kings. Spanish art had been steadily declining for years before they, with ill-omened feet, crossed the Pyrenees. It was no Bourbon prince that brought Luca da Presto from Naples to teach the painters of Spain "how to be content with their faults, and get rid of their scruples;" and if the schools of Castile and Andalusia had ceased to produce such artists as those whose praises Mr Stirling has so worthily recorded, it appears scant justice to lay the blame on the new royal family. _Pictor nascitur, non fit_--no, not even by the wielders of the Spanish sceptre. In a desire to patronise art, and in munificence towards its possessors, Philip V., Ferdinand VI., and Charles III., fell little short of their Hapsburg predecessors, but they had no longer the same material to work upon. The post which Titian had filled could find no worthier holder under Charles III., than Rafael Mengs, whom not only ignorant Bourbons, but the _conoscenti_ of Europe regarded as the mighty Venetian's equal; and Philip V. not only invited Hovasse, Vanloo, Procaccini, and other foreign artists to his court, but added the famous collection of marbles belonging to Christina of Sweden to those acquired by Velasquez, at an expense of twelve thousand doubloons. To him, also, is due the completion of the palace of Aranjuez, and the design of La Granja; nor, when fire destroyed the Alcazar, did Philip V. spare his diminished treasures, in raising up on its time-hallowed site a palace which, in Mr Stirling's own words, "in spite of its narrowed proportions, is still one of the largest and most imposing in Europe."--(Vol. iii., p. 1163.)

Ferdinand VI. built, at the enormous expense of nineteen millions of reals the convent of nuns of the order of St Vincent de Sales, and employed in its decoration all the artistic talent that Spain then could boast of. Nor can he be blamed if that was but little; for if royal patronage can produce painters of merit, this monarch, by endowing the Academy of St Ferdinand with large revenues, and housing it in a palace, would have revived the glories of Spanish art.

His successor, Charles III., an artist of some repute himself, sincerely loved and generously fostered the arts. While King of the Two Sicilies, he had dragged into the light of day the long-lost wonders of Herculaneum and Pompeii; and when called to the throne of Spain and the Indies, he manifested his sense of the obligations due from royalty to art, by conferring fresh privileges on the Academy of St Ferdinand, and founding two new academies, one in Valencia, the other in Mexico. If Mengs and Tiepolo, and other mediocrities, were the best living painters his patronage could discover, it is evident from his ultra-protectionist decree against the exportation of Murillo's, pictures, that he fully appreciated the works of the mighty dead; and, had his spirit animated Spanish officials, many a masterpiece that now mournfully, and without meaning, graces the Hermitage at St Petersburg, or the Louvre at Paris, would still be hanging over the altar, or adorning the refectory for which it was painted, at Seville or Toledo. Even Charles IV., "the drivelling tool of Godoy," was a collector of pictures, and founder of an academy. In his disastrous reign flourished Francisco Goya y Lucientes, the last Spanish painter who has obtained a niche in the Temple of Fame. Though portraits and caricatures were his forte, in that venerable museum of all that is beautiful in Spanish Art--the cathedral at Toledo--is to be seen a fine religious production of his pencil, representing the Betrayal of our Lord. But he loved painting at, better than for the church; and those who have examined and wondered at the grotesque satirical carvings of the stalls in the cathedral at Manchester, will be able to form some idea of Goya's anti-monkish caricatures. Not Lord Mark Kerr, when giving the rein to his exuberant fancy, ever devised more ludicrous or repulsive "monsters" than this strange successor to the religious painters of orthodox Spain. But when the vice, and intrigues, and imbecility of the royal knives and fools, whom his ready graver had exposed to popular ridicule, had yielded to the unsupportable tyranny of French invaders, the same indignant spirit that hurried the water-carriers of Madrid into unavailing conflict with the troops of Murat, guided his caustic hand against the fierce oppressors of his country; and, while Gilray was exciting the angry contempt of all true John Bulls at the impudence of the little Corsican upstart, Goya was appealing to his countrymen's bitter experience of the tender mercies of the French invaders. He died at Bordeaux in 1828. Mr Stirling closes his labours with a graceful tribute to those of Cean Bermudez, "the able and indefatigable historian of Spanish art, to whose rich harvest of valuable materials I have ventured to add the fruit of my own humble gleanings--" a deserved tribute, and most handsomely rendered. But, before we dismiss this pleasant theme of Spanish art, we would add one artist more to the catalogue of Spanish painters--albeit, that artist is a Bourbon!

Near the little town of Azpeitia, in Biscay, stands the magnificent college of the Jesuits, built on the birth-place of Ignatius Loyola. Here, in a low room at the top of the building, are shown a piece of the bed in which he died, and his autograph; and here among its cool corridors and ever-playing fountains, in 1839, was living the royal painter--the Infante Don Sebastian. A strange spectacle, truly, did that religious house present in the summer of 1839: wild Biscayan soldiers and dejected Jesuits, red boynas and black cowls, muskets and crucifixes, oaths and benedictions, crossed and mingled with each other in picturesque, though profane disorder; and here, released from the cares of his military command, and free to follow the bent of his disposition, the ex-commander-in-chief of the Carlist forces was quietly painting altar-pieces, and dashing off caricatures. In the circular church which, of exquisite proportions, forms the centre of the vast pile, and is beautiful with fawn-coloured marble and gold, hung a large and well-painted picture of his production; and those who are curious in such matters may see a worse specimen of his royal highness's skill in Pietro di Cortona's church of St Luke at Rome. On one side of the altar is Canova's beautiful statue of Religion preaching; on the other the Spanish prince's large picture of the Crucifixion; but, alas! it must be owned that the inspiration which guided Velasquez to his conception of that sublime subject was denied to the royal amateur. In the academy of St Luke, adjoining the church, is a well-executed bust of Canova, by the Spanish sculptor Alvarez. We suspect that, like Goya, the Infante would do better to stick to caricature, in which branch of art many a pleasant story is told of his proficiency. Seated on a rocky plateau, which, if commanding a view of Bilbao and its defenders, was also exposed to their fire, 'tis said the royal artist would amuse himself and his staff with drawing the uneasy movements, and disturbed countenances, of some unfortunate London reporters, who, attached to the Carlist headquarters, were invited by the commander-in-chief to attend his person, and enjoy the perilous honour of his company. Be this, however, as it may, we think we have vindicated the claim of one living Bourbon prince to be admitted into the roll of Spanish painters in the next edition of the _Annals_.

In these tumultuous days, when

"Royal heads are haunted like a maukin,"

over half the Continent, and even in steady England grave merchants and wealthy tradesmen are counselling together on how little their sovereign can be clothed and fed, and all things are being brought to the vulgar test of _L. s. d._, it is pleasant to turn to the artistic annals of a once mighty empire like Spain, and see how uniformly, for more than five hundred years, its monarchs have been the patrons, always munificent, generally discriminating, of the fine arts--how, from the days of Isabella the Catholic, to those of Isabella the Innocent, the Spanish sceptre has courted, not disdained, the companionship of the pencil and the chisel. Mr Stirling has enriched his pages with many an amusing anecdote illustrative of this royal love of art, and suggestive, alas! of the painful reflection, that the future annalist of the artists of England will find great difficulty in scraping together half-a-dozen stories of a similar kind. With the one striking exception of Charles I., we know not who among our sovereigns can be compared, as a patron of art, to any of the Spanish sovereigns, from Charles V. of the Austrian to Charles III. of the Bourbon race. Lord Hervey has made notorious George II's ignorance and dislike of art. Among the many noble and kingly qualities of his grandson, we fear a love and appreciation of art may not be reckoned; and although, in his intercourse with men of genius, George IV. was gracious and generous, what can be said in favour of his taste and discernment? The previous life of William IV., the mature age at which he ascended the throne, and the troublous character of his reign, explain why art received but slight countenance from the court of the frank and noble-hearted Sailor Prince; but we turn with hope to the future. The recent proceedings in the Court of Chancery have made public a fact, already known to many, that her Majesty wields with skilful hand a graceful graver, and the Christmas plays acted at Windsor are a satisfactory proof that English art and genius are not exiled from England's palaces. The professors, then, of that art which Velasquez and Rubens, Murillo and Vandyck practised, shall yet see that the Crown of England is not only in ancient legal phrase, "the Fountain of Honour," but that it loves to direct its grateful streams in their honoured direction. Free was the intercourse, unfettered the conversation, independent the relations, between Titian and Charles V., Velasquez and Philip IV.; let us hope that Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle, will yet witness a revival of those palmy days of English art, when Inigo Jones, and Vandyck, and Cowley, Waller, and Ben Jonson, shed a lustre on the art-loving court of England!

The extracts we have given from Mr Stirling's work will have sufficiently shown the scope of the _Annals_, and the spirit and style in which they are written. There is no tedious, inflexible, though often unmanageable leading idea, or theory of art, running through these lively volumes. In the introduction, whatever is to be said on the philosophy of Spanish art is carefully collected, and the reader is thenceforward left at liberty to carry on the conclusions of the introduction with him in his perusal of the _Annals_, or to drop them at the threshold. We would, however, strongly recommend all who desire to appreciate Spanish art, never to forget that she owes all her beauty and inspiration to Spanish nature and Spanish religion. Remember this, O holyday tourist along the Andalusian coast, or more adventurous explorer of Castile and Estremadura, and you will not be disappointed with her productions. Mr Stirling has not contented himself with doing ample justice to the great painters, and slurring over the comparatively unknown artists, whose merits are in advance of their fame, but has embraced in his careful view the long line of Spanish artists who have flourished or faded in the course of nearly eight hundred years; and he has accomplished this difficult task, not in the plodding spirit of a Dryasdust, or with the curt dulness of a catalogue-monger, but with the discriminating good taste of an accomplished English gentleman, and in a style at once racy and rhetorical. There are whole pages in the _Annals_ as full of picturesque beauty as the scenes or events they describe, and of melody, as an Andalusian summer's eve; indeed, the vigorous fancy and genial humour of the author have, on some few occasions, led him to stray from those strict rules of ἀιδὼς, which we are old-fashioned enough to wish always observed. But where the charms and merits are so great, and so many, and the defects so few and so small, we may safely leave the discovery of the latter to the critical reader, and satisfy our conscience by expressing a hope that, when Mr Stirling next appears in the character of author--a period not remote, we sincerely trust--he will have discarded those few scentless flowers from his literary garden, and present us with a bouquet--

"Full of sweet buds and roses,
A box where sweets compacted lie."

But if he never again put pen to paper, in these annals of the artists of Spain he has given to the reading public a work which, for utility of design, patience of research, and grace of language, merits and has won the highest honours of authorship.

THE DODO AND ITS KINDRED.[19]

[19] _The Dodo and its Kindred; or, the History, Affinities, and
Osteology of the Dodo, Solitaire, and other Extinct Birds of the
Islands Mauritius, Rodriguez, and Bourbon._ By H. E. STRICKLAND,
M.A. F.G.S., F.R.G.S., President of the Ashmolean Society, &c., and
A. G. MELVILLE, M.D., Edinburgh, M.R.C. One vol., royal quarto:
London, 1848.

What was the Dodo? When was the Dodo? Where is the Dodo? are all questions, the first more especially, which it is fully more easy to ask than answer. Whoever has looked through books on natural history--for example, that noted but now scarce instructor of our early youth, the _Three Hundred Animals_--must have observed a somewhat ungainly creature, with a huge curved bill, a shortish neck, scarcely any wings, a plumy tuft upon the back--considerably on the off-side, though pretending to be a tail,--and a very shapeless body, extraordinarily large and round about the hinder end. This anomalous animal being covered with feathers, and having, in addition to the other attributes above referred to, only two legs, has been, we think justly, regarded as a bird, and has accordingly been named the Dodo. But why it should be so named is another of the many mysterious questions, which require to be considered in the history of this unaccountable creature. No one alleges, nor can we conceive it possible, that it claims kindred with either of the only two human beings we ever heard of who bore the name: "And after him (Adino the Eznite) was Eleazar the son of Dodo, the Ahohite, one of the three mighty men with David, when they defied the Philistines that were there gathered together to battle, and the men of Israel were gone away." Our only other human Dodo belonged to the fair sex, and was the mother of the famous Zoroaster, who flourished in the days of Darius Hystaspes, and brought back the Persians to their ancient fire-worship, from the adoration of the twinkling stars. The name appears to have been dropped by both families, as if they were somewhat ashamed of it; and we feel assured that of such of our readers as admit that Zoroaster must have had a mother of some sort, very few really remember now-a-days that her name was Dodo. There were no baptismal registers in those times; or, if such existed, they were doubtless consumed in the "great fire"--a sort of periodical, it may be providential, mode of shortening the record, which seems to occur from time to time in all civilised countries.