f composing into
the unity of a group all its parts, and keeping their perfections within
such limits as best co-operate in the transcendent perfection of the
whole--this was the labour and the crown of both their lives.
Velasquez's best and greatest groups are such a realized vision of
life that they have remained the despair of artists to this day.

Velasquez came to Court in the year in which Charles I., as Prince
of Wales, went to Madrid to woo the sister of Philip IV. He painted
her portrait twice, and made an unfinished sketch of Charles, which
has unfortunately been lost. Five years afterwards Rubens was a visitor
at the Spanish Court on a diplomatic errand. The painters took a fancy
to one another, and corresponded for the remainder of their lives.
They must have talked long about their art, and the elder painter,
Rubens, is thought to have promoted in Velasquez a desire to see the
great treasures of Italy. At all events we find that in the next year
he has obtained permission and money from Philip to undertake the
journey, which kept him away from Spain for two years.

There is an amusing page, in doggerel verse, which I remember to have
read some years ago. I trust the translator will pardon the liberty
I am taking in quoting it. It reports a perhaps imaginary conversation
between Velasquez and an Italian painter in Rome. 'The Master' in this
rhyme is Velasquez.

The Master stiffly bowed his figure tall
And said, 'For Raphael, to speak the truth,
--I always was plain-spoken from my youth,--
I cannot say I like his works at all.'

'Well,' said the other, 'if you can run down
So great a man, I really cannot see
What you can find to like in Italy;
To him we all agree to give the crown.'

Velasquez answered thus: 'I saw in Venice
The true test of the good and beautiful;
First, in my judgment, ever stands that school,
And Titian first of all Italian men is.'

Velasquez in Rome was already a ripening artist, whose vision of the
world was quite uncoloured and unshaped by the medieval tradition.
Raphael's pictures with their superhumanly lovely saints, their
unworldly feeling, and their supernaturally clear light, doubtless
imparted pleasure, but not a sympathetic inspiration. Tintoret's
immense creative power and the colours of Titian's painting which
inspired Tintoret's ambition, as we remember--these were the effective
influences Velasquez experienced in Italy. His purchases and hi