During the years between 1650 and 1660 the monarchy’s most celebrated staff artist was especially stretched by his royal household duties, as chamberlain, curator, and decorator-in-chief. Velázquez performed the minimal tasks as royal painter, making the portraits we’ve seen of Princess Margarita, her mother (the king’s second wife) Mariana, Mariana’s stepdaughter María Teresa, and the new heir Felipe Próspero. The French reduced their hostility enough to ask for copies of the portrait Velázquez had made of María Teresa, so that Louis XIV could get acquainted with her looks. Velázquez was kept busy in both the Alcázar and Escorial palaces—the latter in greater use than for some time. Philip IV’s renewed interest in the fate of his soul, and therefore in the consolations of religion, seemed to generate a zeal for improvements at his grandfather’s giant monastic palace. The Hapsburg crypt, the Pantheon, was there and Velázquez was put in charge of furnishing and redecorating its sacristy. He made over one room into a gallery of Italian masters, a gallery in which Titian starred. Other chambers were redone to his orders. At the Alcázar, the king continued to look in and chat about painters and attributions with his collection’s chief curator, who was concerned to ensure that His Majesty was seen by the court in as grand a setting as could be contrived. When a delegation from the French court arrived to discuss the arrangements for the proposed wedding of María Teresa and Louis XIV, who was Philip’s nephew, Velázquez organized their reception in the Alcázar’s Hall of Mirrors. This contained works by Rubens, Tintoretto, and Veronese, and four of his own paintings, including the Mercury and Argus.
The marriage was to seal a peace treaty between Spain and France, between a declining power and a reinvigorated one, both Catholic. Splendid ceremony and ornate decoration might make it look like a more equal union. An armistice in the quarter-century-long war between the two countries had been signed in May 1659, and Spain did not come too badly out of the articles in the treaty, which became known as the Peace of the Pyrenees, concluded in June 1660. Parts of Catalonia and of Flanders were to be given up by Spain to France. The surrender of María Teresa to Louis presumably wasn’t going to mean a conjunction of the two monarchies, since Spain had a Hapsburg heir to hand, at least for now, in the frail form of Felipe Próspero, not yet three. The two kings were to meet between the lines, as it were, on the Bidasoa River, which divided their countries. There in midstream lay the Isle of Pheasants, close to where the river flowed into the Bay of Biscay and near what is now the town of Hendaye, west of Saint Jean de Luz. Velázquez, being chamberlain, was dispatched in advance in early April 1660 to organize the nuptial event. He was assigned a personal litter for the journey, a privilege given to only three other courtiers. His ground crew included the Surveyor of the Royal Works, José de Villareal, the Queen’s Chamberlain, José Nieto, and various artisans—one being a carpenter who was ordered to ensure that there were working locks on the doors of the houses where the Spanish royal party was going to stay. The party went by way of Alcalá, Guadalajara, and Burgos, a journey of some twenty stages in twenty-three days. There were thus at least twenty halts for which the chamberlain had to reserve lodgings for the advance team and the lengthy, slow-moving royal caravan-sary that followed. The king’s household traveled in fourteen coaches each pulled by a half dozen mules. Clothes, jewels, and costly trappings filled several hundred trunks, and fortunately—how armed the convoy was we don’t know—no bandits stepped forth to raid it. The price of everything to eat and drink rose en route; for locals it was as if a plague of locusts was devouring everything in the royal path as the king and company stopped by on their journey. The royal procession barely accomplished six miles a day and took six weeks to cover the two hundred and fifty miles from Madrid to Fuenterrabía, where Velázquez had arranged lodgings for the king in the castle.
The main venue for the wedding was to be on the Isle of Pheasants. A conference hall needed to be refurbished, a bridge constructed, and everything splendidly decorated for the celebration. Palomino tells us that Velázquez went to the island by barge in order to prepare for the big day, June 7, on which the infanta was to be handed over to the Most Christian King of France, Louis XIV. Among the principal guests was one who could be seen as a previous example of Spain’s reaching out to France, Philip IV’s sister Anna, mother of Louis XIV and mistress of Cardinal Mazarin, who also attended. But an air of competition was strong. No expense had been spared by the Spaniards, who tried to put on as good a show as they could. Velázquez had brought tapestries to liven up the walls. The French had also brought tapestries of the struggle between Scipio and Hannibal, and these were displayed as if in a duel with the Spanish tapestries, four scenes from the Apocalypse. The underlying message of these was presumably one advertising their monarch Philip as a defender of the one true faith (even if he was effectively handing over the overlordship of Europe to Louis). The partygoers from both sides were sumptuously dressed but the French males won the battle of fashion in their long periwigs, fancy lace, and red high heels. Velázquez did his best among the Spaniards, so Palomino later reported. He had been asked to look after Philip’s gift to Louis, a diamond-encrusted watch, and Velázquez added to what Palomino called “his gentlemanly bearing and comportment, which were courtly … his natural grace and composure,” and a distinction in dress. He seems to have liked dressing up. On festive occasions at the Alcázar palace he was noted wearing around his neck an exquisite gold chain the Duke of Modena had given him in 1638. Here at Fuenterrabía Velázquez’s costume was trimmed “with rich Milanese silver point lace, according to the fashion of the time, which favoured the golilla.… On his cloak he wore the red insignia of Santiago. At his side was a very fine rapier with silver guard and cap, with exquisitely chased designs in relief, made in Italy. Around his neck was a heavy gold chain with a pendant badge adorned with many diamonds, on which were enameled the insignia of Santiago, and the rest of his apparel was worthy of such a precious decoration.” A very perfect knight, in fact. Velázquez watched the king, with tears in his eyes, surrendering María Teresa to his nephew. As he did so, Philip told Louis he was handing him a piece of his own heart. It would have made a picture to hang alongside the affecting image of Justin and Spinola as the Dutch gave up Breda.
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IT WAS ANOTHER twenty days for the return journey from Fuenterrabia via Guadarrama, Valladolid, and the Escorial to Madrid. This time Velázquez’s assistant José de Villareal went ahead preparing lodgings for the royal party while Velázquez kept in close attendance on the king. However, the journeys and his work for the ceremonies evidently took it out of the painter. Gold chains and silverpoint lace didn’t balance the human scales that were weighed down with overwork and exhausting travel. Despite his claim on getting back to the capital at daybreak on June 26, that he was in good shape, he seems to have been very run down. Nevertheless his family was overjoyed to see him; there had been a rumor at court of his death while away.
From what we know, Velázquez lived up to Palomino’s description of him as being “very pithy in his remarks and repartee”; he left very little correspondence; a rare letter from Velázquez—one of only two extant pieces from him—was sent on July 3, to a painter he had called on in Valladolid. This informed Diego Valentín Díaz, an old friend of Pacheco’s, that Velázquez had returned to Madrid, tired but in good health. (The other letter, to Camillo Massimi of March 28, 1654, concerned some bronze fire dogs he seems to have commissioned in Rome, that had apparently just arrived in Spain.) Velázquez told Valentín that he had found his family all well, “thank God.” Queen Mariana, “looking very pretty,” had gone to meet the king who had returned on the same day; the royal couple had gone on to mass at the church of Our Lady of Atocha. Velázquez then told Valentín about a bullfight he had been to in the Plaza Mayor a few days after getting back, a straightforward fight without horsemen that made him remember the bullfight they had seen in Valladolid. He asked about the health of Valentín and his wife, and inquired what he could do
for them. He ended:
Nothing is going on here of interest to you, unless it is that I pray God to preserve you for many years, as is my desire.
Yours honours
Diego de Silva Velázquez
g.s.m.b.
(That was the abbreviation for the Spanish phrase, “who kisses your hand.”)
Health seemed to be uppermost in his mind, perhaps because he had intimations that his own was not good. But we don’t know if he knew how imminent the peril was. As one gets older, one gets used to the idea that life is speeding up, and one may not notice until the last seconds—if then—that no time is left. A little over a month after his return to court, on the last day of July 1660, Velázquez was struck down by sickness. It was the feast day of Saint Ignatius Loyola. Velázquez had been in attendance on the king all morning, and he made his excuses to withdraw. The artist had severe burning pains in his chest and stomach. He was examined by his family doctor, Vicencio Molas, and the king sent another two court physicians to take a look at him as well. Palomino tells us that they diagnosed the beginnings of “an acute syncopal tertian fever, a condition very dangerous on account of the great weakening of the vital functions.” Things looked particularly bleak because Velázquez was suffering from a constant raging thirst. Tertian ague, from which the poet Andrew Marvell is also said to have died, was the name then given to an illness which was probably malaria, but Velázquez’s problem, despite the diagnosis of the royal doctors, sounds more like typhus or even yellow fever. In any event, the physicians at Velázquez’s bedside in the Casa del Tesoro were soon replaced by priests. The seriousness of his condition was made clear by their high status: The king sent the Archbishop of Tyre, Patriarch of the Indies, who subjected the artist, as he lay dying, to a long sermon “for his spiritual comfort.” Velázquez took the opportunity to name his old friend the Keeper of Records, Gaspar de Fuensalida, as his executor.
Then he received the Last Rites. These would have been consoling for a just-conscious believer, which by rote from childhood he may well have been. But what if there were no afterlife? What if this was it, the only life, parts of it dreamlike, and one went hereafter into dreamless nothingness? Then one had to be able to say or at least think now, I have done what I could. I have made some paintings that I hope may last for as long as paint and canvas hold together. Meanwhile, bury me in my robes as a knight of Santiago.
One imagines that as the mists formed he saw some of those pictures again: a black girl leaning over a kitchen table; a Virgin on a cloud; Juana; the field outside of Breda; an Italian Venus; his studio with the infanta and her companions. On August 6, at two o’clock in the afternoon Velázquez breathed his last. It was the cold sleep of death. No more paint; no more flema. He was sixty-one, and—Palomino added—a “wonder of the world.”
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THE REST OF Palomino’s report on Velázquez’s death is formal but nonetheless moving. “They put on his body the humble underclothing of the dead and then dressed him as if he were alive, as was customary with knights of military orders with the capitular cloak, with the red insignia on the breast, and with hat, sword, boots, and spurs. He was placed that night on his own bed in a darkened room, large candelabra with tapers on either side and more lights on the altar, where there was a crucifix, and he remained there until the Saturday, when they moved the body to a coffin with gilt nails and corner plates, and with two keys, lined with plain black velvet, trimmed and garnished with gold passementerie and surmounted by a cross with the same garniture.”
Palomino might have paused here, to catch his breath or relieve any choking sensation he felt, before he went on: “When night came, and with its darkness put everyone into mourning, they carried him to his last resting place in the parish church of San Juan Bautista (near the Alcázar), where he was received by His Majesty’s Gentlemen of the Bedchamber. They carried him to the catafalque that had been made ready in the middle of the principal chapel and the body was placed there on top. On both sides there were twelve large silver candelabra with tapers, and a great number of flames. The whole of his burial service was carried out with great ceremony, with excellent music from the Royal Chapel, with the softness and measure, the number of instruments and voices that were customary at functions of such great solemnity.” All this was apparently based on an account given to Palomino by Juan de Alfaro, the painter from Córdoba who had been one of Velázquez’s assistants. Alfaro also took the chance to sketch in black chalk Velázquez on his deathbed. The coffin containing Velázquez’s body was borne by the Gentlemen of the Bedchamber to the burial vault belonging to his friend the Keeper of Records, Gaspar de Fuensalida. It was the funeral of a courtier, the elaborate ceremony owed to a high court official and knight of a military order. Alfaro called it a solemn event and in an epitaph wrote of Velázquez as “so great a man” who was now lying “in the company of heroes.”
It was a time of deaths; a severe illness was clearly going around. The Italian fresco painter Agostino Mitelli, who had been working at court, had died four days before. And Juana Pacheco, Velázquez’s wife, died a week after her husband—whether from the same sickness as that of Mitelli and Velázquez or simply because the shock and loss was too much for her. Sad to relate, we have little knowledge about their marriage apart from the fact of their two daughters. Were they by and large happy? He had painted her as a sibyl but how much Juana foresaw of their lives together, who knows? One suspects that he—like most geniuses—was not the easiest of men to live with; many of the concerns and niggles of his courtier’s job would have been passed on to her; and then, too, he was an artist, which meant he was in pursuit of perfection, a striving in which could lie the seeds of much domestic disgruntlement.
The king, under whom Spain was going so rapidly downhill, stuck with Velázquez beyond the end. One wonders if Philip realized that his greatest achievement as monarch was his employment of the painter who ensured the king’s image for posterity. But in the weeks after Velázquez’s death the tongues of ill-disposed and envious colleagues in the household went on wagging. Velázquez’s accounts were said to be in disarray. It was claimed that he owed the royal household’s department of works a thousand ducats, and this was going to have to be repaid. Alongside a memorandum telling the king of these problems, a distressed Philip IV scribbled “Quedo abatido.” “I am still overwhelmed.” The Alcázar studio room in which Velázquez had painted Las Meninas was officially examined so that the crown could attach some of the painter’s possessions to cover his liabilities. It appeared that he had put aside some of the cash meant for salaries, for staff such as cleaners and sweepers. But Velázquez’s defenders soon stood up to be counted. Fuensalida was among those who spoke for Velázquez’s probity. The king himself said he thought Velázquez was “most prudent.” Although some of his property was seized postmortem to cover the alleged debts, and not returned for several years, and the auditors found that he had indeed held on to 3,200 ducats for staff payments, he had been owed 1,600 ducats when he died (some of it for obligations to him going back seventeen years), and his estate eventually had to repay the crown only half the amount he had kept. Indeed, when the accounts were finally settled, it was reckoned that the royal exchequer owed Velázquez far more for overdue bills than he owed it. But the times were generally straitened: When Philip IV died in 1665 the city of Seville was broke and unable to commemorate immediately his death with the proper ceremonies.
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INVENTORIES ARE INVALUABLE; they are often made at moments of crisis, when people become insolvent, have to move, or die. Velázquez’s executors included his son-in-law del Mazo, who inherited Velázquez’s post as court painter, Gaspar de Fuensalida, and Francisco de Rojas, the replacement aposentador, and they did a thorough job of listing his possessions. Velázquez’s painting rooms in the Cuarto del Principe in the Alcázar and his family apartment in the Casa del Tesoro made clear both his worldly success and the sudden onset of his mortal illness. His studio contai
ned a lay figure, some building plans, a model of a church, some pieces of sculpture, several bronze measuring devices, and much painting material, such as frames and stretchers. The canvases would now remain unpainted, at least as far as Velázquez was concerned—forever bare. There were also some paintings belonging to the king, possibly left for repair, and these included a Titian, Spain Coming to the Aid of Religion. In the studio there were paintings belonging to Velázquez, among them three portraits by El Greco, who had been taken up briefly by Philip II but then, falling out of favor with the king, had chosen his own way and retired to Toledo, proud of his independence. (Philip II preferred the Netherlands’ painter of infernal scenes, Hieronymus Bosch, whose works decorated the royal bedroom.) Velázquez’s two jobs, as court official and painter, were demonstrated in his studio by his account books as superintendent of special works and as chamberlain; the books were taken away for examination. In his apartment in the Casa del Tesoro a trunk was found to contain clothes not yet unpacked from his journey to the Isle of Pheasants. The inventory listed a great deal of silver, tapestries, draperies, and carpets. There was also jewelry aplenty, including gold medals (two were those given him by Innocent X, bearing the pope’s profile), chains, broaches, two gold scallop shells, and a ring set with nine diamonds. There were ten mirrors, much costly furniture, and several intricately decorated watches and clocks, one of which may have been that shown in the portrait he had painted of Queen Mariana in 1652.
Velázquez and the Surrender of Breda Page 24