y were ugly and deformed
they came quite naturally into the court environment. The earliest
portrait of Don Balthasar Carlos shows him in company with a dwarf, and
there were about the court many other unfortunate creatures whom
Velazquez painted between 1650 and 1659.

There is more than a suspicion in the minds of many of his biographers
that the half-concealed contempt with which Velazquez was regarded in
court circles left him small choice of company; that he was rated with
dwarfs and outcasts because he worked with his hands; and of course no
hidalgo, who was a perfect master of the art of time-wasting, could
take seriously any low-blooded creature who earned his right to live by
working. If Velazquez had been on the same footing as Rubens--had he
enjoyed the same position that Goya, with no greater official
appointment, was to hold a little more than a century after his
death--we may presume that the dwarfs would not have been painted, and
that Velazquez' art would have been given to the service of the
blue-blooded gentlemen who were making as big a muddle of Spanish
interests as their country's worst enemies could desire. One hesitates
to say that they would have been less interesting sitters, because we
know that nobody, however dull and stupid in appearance, could fail to
become interesting at the hands of the painter. It is fair to
remember, too, in defence of the Spanish attitude, that the years were
given not to the arts of peace but to those of war; that leisure was
scanty, intrigue unceasing, and the austerity of life was made greater
by the strong and merciless grip of the Church. Formality and
superstition marched hand in hand in a court whose ruler, if we may
judge by his portraits, had forgotten how to smile. Then again, the
atmosphere of the Madrid court, for all its dulness and secrecy and
unhealthy ways, was not as it became under Charles III., when Godoy
played the part of Count Olivarez, and the Countess Benavente, the
Duchess of Alba, and other women as frail as they were beautiful, did
not hesitate to indulge in open intrigue with the king's painter. Turn
to the canvases of Velazquez and you will not find a woman who was
fascinating enough to have been worth the trouble and danger of an
intrigue. The wives of Philip IV. could not but have been virtuous,
and would have had but small sympathy with pretty women. To be sure
Philip IV. had many mistresses, but he did not ask his court painte