a greyhound at their feet, and we recognize
in these wan figures of kings, queens, and infantas, with pale faces,
red lips, and massive chins the degeneracy of Charles V. and the falling
away of exhausted dynasties. Although a court-painter, he has not
flattered his royal models. However, despite the brainlessness of the
type, the quality of these high personages would never be doubted. It is
not that he did not know how to paint genius; the portrait of the
Count-Duke of Olivares, so noble, so imperious, and so full of
authority, unanswerably proves that, unable to lend any fire to these
sad lords, he gives them a cold majesty, a wearied dignity, a gesture
and pose of etiquette, and then envelops all with his magnificent
colour; that was full payment for the protection of his crowned friend.
M. Paul de Saint-Victor has somewhere called Victor Hugo "The Spanish
Grandee of poetry;" may we not be permitted to call Velasquez "The
Spanish Grandee of painting"? No qualification would suit him better.

As we have said, Velasquez was Court Chamberlain, and it was he who was
charged with the preparation of the lodgings of the King in the trip
that Philip IV. made to Irun to deliver the Infanta Dona Maria-Teresa to
the King of France. It was he who had decorated and ornamented the
pavilion where the interview of the two kings took place in the Ile des
Faisans. Velasquez was distinguished among the crowd of courtiers by his
personal dignity, the elegance, the richness, and the good taste of his
costumes on which he arranged with art the diamonds and jewels,--gifts
of the sovereigns; but on his return to Madrid, he fell ill with
fatigue and died on the 7th of August, 1660. His widow, Dona Juana
Pacheco, only survived him seven days and was interred near him in the
parish of San Juan. The funeral of Velasquez was splendid; great
personages, knights of the military orders, the King's household, and
the artists were present sad and pensive, as if they felt that with
Velasquez they were interring Spanish art.

_Guide de l'Amateur au Musee du Louvre_ (Paris, 1882).

FOOTNOTES:

[20] Private audiences of the King.

THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION

(_MURILLO_)

AIME GIRON

After her 3,700 battles with the Moors and the conquest of Granada,
Spain had a splendid outburst of literary and artistic glory. In
painting, the four schools of Valencia, Toledo, Madrid, and Seville
suddenly shone forth with that conception of the real