AMONG the painters who were contemporaries of Velasquez and after his death helped to stem for a little while the decline of the School of Madrid, special notice is due to Juan CarreÑo de Miranda. He came of a noble family of the province of Asturias, his father being Alcade de los Hijosdalgos or Chief of the Council of Nobles, in the town of Aviles, where Juan was born in 1614. When he was still a boy he accompanied his father to Madrid, and made up his mind to be an artist. His father, at last acquiescing, placed him with Pedro de las Cuevas, who had also been the teacher of JosÉ Leonardo and Pereda. CarreÑo afterwards worked with a painter, BartolomÉ Roman; but by the time that he was twenty years old had so distinguished himself that he was entrusted with several important commissions. Velasquez recognised his talent and, thinking he should be employed in the King’s service, commissioned him to paint some frescoes for the royal palace. These were destroyed in the fire of 1734.

In 1669 CarreÑo was appointed one of the Court Painters, a post which he continued to hold after the succession of the young king, Charles II, when the regency was in the hands of the Queen-Mother, Mariana de Austria. In this capacity CarreÑo executed portraits of the royal family which represent his best work.

Meanwhile his popularity was based upon his decorations and altar-pieces. His decorative ability, which had been recognised, as we have seen, by Velasquez, included a familiarity with the technique of fresco painting, a branch of the art which had few representatives among Spanish painters. The taste for it had been introduced by the Italians summoned to decorate the EscoriÁl, and perpetuated by other foreigners who were employed in decorating the principal churches and convents. From them CarreÑo acquired a knowledge of the process. He seems (for I am not acquainted with CarreÑo’s mural decorations) to have been distinguished in his use of it by a combination of Italian decorative composition with types and motives characteristically Spanish, and by very delicate and spiritual schemes of color.

Perhaps the character and quality of the latter may be discovered in the altar-piece by this artist in the Hispanic Museum, New York. It is a Conception; the subject being presented in the usual way prescribed by the Church. But the composition is looser, if one may say so, than Murillo’s in similar pictures, with lines more flowing and masses distributed more gaily. It is the arrangement, in fact, of a painter accustomed to the liberty of decoration on a large surface. It has a sweep and elegance that make it akin to the compositions of Antolinez and particularly of Cerezo, whom we briefly discussed in the fourth chapter. In its color-scheme also, it favors theirs. All these artists, in fact, represent

a reaction from the more sober and restricted color-schemes, imposed upon Velasquez and other Court painters. At the same time, they are characteristic of the decline which had already begun. The coloring of this Conception of CarreÑo’s is distinguishably prettified; pearly pinks and blues, soft greys and greens, perilously suggestive of the bonboniÉre style. And the sentiment of the whole is correspondingly suave, almost, if not completely, to insipidity. Similarly sentimental are this artist’s Magdalen in the Desert in the Academy of San Fernando in Madrid, and his San Sebastian of the Prado. The Magdalen looks like a matured Ariadne, abandoned by her lover. She is posed upon a rocky seat, so that her beautiful arms may be seen to advantage and the long line of her graceful figure duly emphasised. Meanwhile she lifts her tearful gaze to the sky, at a carefully calculated angle that will impress the beauty of her neck upon the sympathetic spectator. As for the San Sebastian, it should make a gentle lady weep to behold how this tender body has been abused. In fact, the student who has discovered the true sources of greatness in the Spanish School of painting will not take CarreÑo very seriously when he is in these moods. Fortunately for his present reputation there is a graver and more dignified side to his art.

In his portraits, especially those of the members of the royal family, CarreÑo shows himself to have absorbed no little of the influence of Velasquez. These portraits of Charles II and his mother, Queen Mariana, vary in quality; for he was called upon to repeat them, and the replicas display a lack of interest and falling off in technical distinction. Perhaps the handsomest portrait of the King, painted when he was still a lad of twelve, is the one in the Kaiser-Friedrich Museum, Berlin. The boy, as usual in a black velvet suit, with long blond cavalier locks descending over his shoulders, stands resting his left hand on a marble-topped table, which is supported on a lion and ball pedestal. His face has not yet acquired the expression of settled melancholy and is gracious and lovable. The coloring is rich and luminous, and the concavity behind the figure, full of atmospheric suggestion. The replica of this in the Prado is tighter and drier in treatment, lacking in quality of tone and lighting.

Another portrait of this period, showing the figure at half length is owned by SeÑor Beruete. Judged by the photograph of it, reproduced in his “School of Madrid,” it is a very superior canvas, distinguished by graciousness and dignity. It is a terrible contrast to turn from the weak yet winning beauty of the boy to the portrait in which CarreÑo has depicted the man (p. 132). In all the range of portrait-painting can we find a face so degenerate as this? The face droops to an inordinate length, as if the vacuous brain could no longer hold it in position; the mental distortion is reflected in the grotesquely exaggerated features; the expression of the pallid mask is one in which hope and joy of life are extinguished and reasonless fear is habitually present. Such was the last of the proud Hapsburg line of Spanish Sovereigns.

CarreÑo’s most important work, however, is the Portrait of Queen Mariana of Austria, in the Munich Old Pinakothek, of which there is an unsatisfactory replica in the Prado. But the Munich portrait, once seen, impresses itself indelibly on the memory. It is a cold, implacable indictment. The surly sadness of the girl-wife, painted by Velasquez (p. 119), who had our sympathy for the cruel grossness of her lot, has hardened into callous obstinacy and weak self-indulgence. Her widowhood has brought authority without a sense of responsibility, she has betrayed her maternal trust in order that through her child’s feebleness she may hold on to power; she has dallied between her lover and confessor, and is now devote. Clothed in black and white weeds that resemble a nun’s garb, she sits squarely at a table, a loveless, forbidding woman. Yet strangely haunting because of CarreÑo’s analysis and fearless exposition.