and the portrait of Pope Innocent X. The painter might have
found outside court circles far more inspiring sitters than those whom
he was compelled to paint, for it takes all that even a Velazquez can
give to a portrait to make a Philip IV., a Mariana of Austria, or even
an Isabella of Bourbon, reveal their dominant characteristics without
caricature; indeed one feels that the interest belongs to the picture
and not to the sitter. The success is one of tone, of harmony and of
line, of sure handling directed by an inward vision.

Because of gifts lying beyond praise, the painter has preserved
seventeenth-century Spain for us as far as court circles represent it;
but among the many charges laid to the account of Philip IV. must be
added that of limiting the range and crippling the capacity of an
artist who cannot be placed second to any man.

When we come to analyse his work we find that its qualities are not of
a sensational kind. Velazquez makes no appeal through the medium of
brilliant pigment; his great contemporary Rubens used colour in far
more striking fashion. Velazquez loved grey and silvery tints, and in
the years of his maturity understood relative values perfectly. He
knew, too, exactly how far he could go, and never made experiments in
search of qualities that were not his. Although he had a certain
quality of delicate imagination, he was a realist, and could not paint
without a model; he never acquired a mannerism, or applied to one
sitter the treatment that some artists seem to keep for types. Every
figure he set upon canvas has its own individuality, and, while
Velazquez, like other artists, had manners and methods that belong to
fixed periods of his life, it is not easy to set down in cold print an
analysis of the causes that make up his effects. He had no tricks;
everything that he did was clear, simple, and withal inimitable.
Hundreds of men have copied his pictures; none has been able to copy
his method. With his death his influence upon art ceased. His genius
lay buried in the grave with him, and did not suffer complete
resurrection until the nineteenth century was turning towards its
successor, though Raphael Mengs had done all he could to make his
merits known a hundred years before. Even to-day, we may be said to be
in the first stage of our enjoyment of the master's work. There are at
least fifty good books upon the subject of Velazquez' life and art,
written in three or four language