Estremadura gave to Spain and the world Francisco Zurbaran, realist, unequaled portrayer of monastic types; COrdova, a number of naturalistic painters. To the latter school be longed Antonio de Saavedra y Castillo and his pupil Juan de Valdes Leal (afterward identified with the school of Seville). Especially repre sentative of the school of Granada at the be ginning of this period are Alonso Cano (who had previously devoted his attention to sculp ture at Seville) and his two pupils — or, it may be, only his most able immediate suc cessors—Juan de Sevilla and Fray Atanasio, surnamed Bocanegra. But the school of Se ville gave to Spain and to the world Bartolome Esteban Murillo and Diego Velazquez, or Velasquez. (The latter signed his own name — and distinctly enough — in 1650 D.D., that is, Diego de Silva, Velasquez. His mother's family name was Velazquez, but he substituted .5 for the first z at that time).
For our present purpose it is less essential to describe Murillo and Velasquez as the greatest of Spanish painters than to realize how differently they were affected by the 17th century influences at Seville — the new move ment favoring freedom in choice of subject and realism in its treatment, while the old repres sive ecclesiastical policy discouraged such free dom. Two striking passages in Mr. Tyler's book (see Bibliography) show that writer's clear apprehension of the dissimilar manifesta tions: "There lin Seville] sat Pacheco, appointed censor by the Inquisition, proclaiming that the one aim of art was to excite men to de votion. . . . Murillo seems to have had a temperament that naturally expressed itself through pious subjects; thus there was nothing in the air of Seville that made it stifling for him. But what of men like Herrera el Mozo and Valdes Leal? They both had detestable characters and great aptitude, especially the latter; but 17th century Seville, which was so pleasant to Zurbarin and Murillo, drove them to every sort of bitter excess." And again, the turning-point in the career of the school "was reached when the twenty-year-old Velazquez went to Madrid. Though his master Pacheco was a pedant, he seems to have been a friend to art after his own manner, and there were enough painters in the Andalusian capital to have kept a brilliant school alive, had it not been for the exaggerated atmosphere of devotion that prevailed thei e. Whether Velazquez would have become the man we know had he stayed there instead of travelling in Italy is open to grave doubts; at any rate the atmosphere of Seville was too close for him. He went to court, and those who stayed had to devote themselves to religious subjects or starve. Velazquez was able to paint as he
pleased at Madrid." Professor Carl Justi has made the correct observation that Murillo was originally as essentially a realist as Velazquez; but for the simple reason that he continued to live in a Roman Catholic provincial town and painted for conventual churches, he "had to represent the subjects that pleased the devout of his day, such as the Immaculate Conception, the visions of the monk's cell, the mysteries and ecstasies of asceticism. He could not de vote his entire energy to the reproduction of the mere visual phenomena. He had to depict what was never seen. . . . His artistic greatness, the secret of his wonderful success, lies in the fact that he recognized the unique character and special charm of the human nature of southern Spain, adapted it to the palette and the brush, and ventured to in troduce it into paintings of religious subjects." Velazquez, after wrenching himself free from provincialism, discovered in himself the very special powers of another Cristobal Andino, that greatest and most honored 16th century ironworker of Burgos, Seville and Toledo. Let us read what was written by Bonnat in his preface to Beruete's 'Velazquez' (see Bibliog raphy): "The methods which Velazquez em ployed to obtain such startling results are surprisingly simple. Armed with a palette on which only a strictly limited number of colors appear, and with a few long and slender brushes in his hand, he painted in everything at the first touch. The shadows, much simpli fied, arc merely rubbed in, and only the high lights are thickly painted; and the whole, with its fine gradations of tone, is so broadly and rapidly executed, and is so precise in color and proportion, so exact in its values, and so true in drawing, that the illusion is complete and the resulting work a marvel." Yet it is only proper to say that Bonnat, so far as we know, had not given thought to the analogue or explanation that we have offered. At Madrid, the contemporaries of Velazquez, forming the Madrid School, were Fray Juan Rizi (1595 1675) ; Antonio Pereda (1599-1669); Francisco Rizi (1608-85) ; Juan Carrefio (1614-85), Velasquez's successor as court-painter; Jose Leonardo (1616-56), and Diego Polo (1620 55). A little later came Juan Antonio Escalante (1630-70) ; Mateo Cerezo (1635-75) ; Jose Antolinez (1639-76) ; Claudio Ccello (c. 1630 or 1635-93), and Sebastian Munoz (1650 90). The capital, with its collections of paint ings for study, with its more liberal patronage and interesting life, became the centre of artistic activity by 1625 and retained that pre eminence to the end of the 17th century.