tion of the
spectator to admire it, whereas the unfamiliar setting of our picture is
apt at first sight to repel.

The most important composition undertaken by Velasquez in this middle
period of his career--that is to say between his two visits to Italy in
1629 and 1649--is the famous _Surrender of Breda_, or, as it is
sometimes called, _The Lances_. Soon after his arrival in Madrid he had
once painted an historical subject, _The Expulsion of the Moors_, in
competition with his rivals who had asserted that he could paint nothing
but heads. In this competition the prize was awarded to him, but as the
picture has perished we are unable to judge of its merits for ourselves.
But apart from this, and such unimportant groups of figures as we have
mentioned, he had been occupied wholly in painting single portraits, and
it is a marvellous proof of his genius that he should produce such a
masterpiece of composition as _The Lances_ with so little practice in
this branch of his art. Here, at least, we might have expected to trace
the influence of Rubens, but there is actually no sign of it; and if he
sought any inspiration at all from other painters, it was from what he
recalled of Tintoretto's work which he had seen and studied in Venice.

In the king's eldest boy, _Baltazar Carlos_, who was born in 1629,
Velasquez found a model for two or three of his most charming pictures.
One is at Castle Howard; a second the equestrian portrait, on a
galloping pony, at the Prado; and a third the full length hunting
portrait, also at the Prado, in which we see the little prince standing
under a tree, gun in hand, with an enormous dog lying beside him.
Another is at Vienna, representing him as of about eleven years old,
full length, with his hand resting on the back of a chair. All of these
owe some of their charm to the youth and attractive personality of the
subject; but if we want to see the power of Velasquez without any
outside element to help us to appreciate it, there is the portrait of
the sculptor _Martinez Montanes_ at the Prado. "The head is wonderful in
its colour and its modelling," writes Senor Beruete; "and what a lesson
in technique! The eyes, lightly touched with colour, are set deep in
their sockets, and surmounted by a strongly marked forehead. The high
lights are of a rich _impasto_, manipulated with extraordinary skill;
the greyer tones of the flesh, so true and so delicate, are painted in a
way that brings out with marve