ascribed to his father-in-law. There is a picture in the Wallace Collection known as the "Lady with the Fan," which is thought by no less a critic than Señor Beruete to represent the young Francesca Velazquez, who became the Señora del Mazo when she was only fifteen years old.

Shortly after his return to Madrid, Velazquez came under the influence of El Greco, who had died in 1614, and left some wonderful pictures that may be seen to-day in Toledo. This fact is important, not that the influence resulted in imitation, but because it was distinctly inspiring, and Greco is a painter who is coming slowly before the public. It cannot be doubted that his influence on artists through Velazquez has been very deep and abiding, particularly in portraiture.

In the years following the return from Italy, Velazquez painted some of the pictures of the little prince Don Balthasar Carlos, the king's son, who was born in 1629, and died in 1646, the year of his betrothal to Mariana of Austria. There are many pictures of this interesting lad who, had he lived, might have done so much to save his country. The earliest was painted as soon as Velazquez returned from Italy, and is at present in Boston. The next in date would seem to be the one in the Wallace Collection, and following this comes the well-known picture of Don Balthasar in hunting dress, now in the Prado, the one with the small greyhound seen on the right, just coming into the canvas. Then we have the famous picture of the young prince on his spirited Andalusian pony, which is perhaps the most popular of all; and succeeding that in the order of the painting comes the portrait that, in the writer's opinion, is the best of the series. It hangs in the Imperial Museum in Vienna, and was painted when the prince was about eleven years old. Doubtless there are other portraits of the ill-fated boy, whose features seem to suggest that he had inherited from his mother some of the qualities that his father lacked, and that had he been spared to succeed his father in 1665, he would have handled affairs with vigour and intelligence.

In 1638 Philip's daughter Maria Teresa was born, and the history of the artist's life in Madrid becomes uneventful or lost. Probably on account of the increasing unrest abroad and the decline of the Spanish fortunes, Velazquez' earliest patron, the Count of Olivarez, was disgraced in 1643, the year in which Condé helped to break the power of Spain at Rocroi.

Although the condition of the Spanish Empire was very unfavourable, and Philip IV. must have known long hours of anxiety and unrest, there is no reason to believe that he withdrew his company or his favour from the best beloved of his court painters. Spinola had taken Breda from Justin of Nassau, and the surrender was promptly immortalised by Velazquez in the picture "Las Lanzas," which draws so many pilgrims to Madrid to-day. It was painted for the palace of Buen Retiro, and curiously enough—since it records one of the few successes of Spain in the Low Countries—the subject passed out of men's memory, and for many years nobody knew why the artist had painted it, or what it was all about. Some time between the painting of this picture and the fall of Olivarez, Murillo came to Madrid and became a pupil of Velazquez, who had just received a grant of five hundred ducats to be paid annually by order of the king. In 1644 Velazquez accompanied Philip on a journey through Aragon, and two or three years later he was appointed Inspector of Buildings, a post involving much tedious work, and helping to keep the painter from his studio. He seems to have bestowed a certain amount of labour on portraits painted by other men, in order to bring them into harmony with the collection that Philip was making. It is difficult to deal with this matter within limited space because the details are distinctly controversial, but it is as well to remember that some of the portraits attributed to Velazquez in the Prado Gallery are of people who were dead before Velazquez was painting, so they could not have sat for him; and in the days of Philip IV. it was considered no disgrace for a man to repaint another artist's canvases. Moreover, a painter to the court of Spain was not supposed to carry an uneasy conscience about with him. It was his duty to obey orders and to accept from his superiors as much guidance and direction as they were gracious enough to give him.

In 1649 the king granted Velazquez permission to return to Italy in order to find pictures for a Royal Academy of Fine Art to be established in Madrid. By this time Philip was a widower, though he was on the point of marrying his niece, Mariana of Austria. She had been affianced to the Infante Don Balthasar Carlos, but he had been dead for three years, and the Spanish throne was without an heir. Velazquez visited Genoa, Venice, Milan, and Padua, and brought back pictures by Veronese and Tintoretto. Rome and Naples were revisited, and the famous portrait of Pope Innocent X., of which one copy is in St. Petersburg, and the other in the Doria Palace in Rome, was painted. The former is a bust and a study; the latter is a three-quarter length, and is painted with a wonderful blend of red and white. It was copied by Sir Joshua Reynolds, who declared that it was the finest work he had seen in Rome. What would he have thought of the later masterpieces by the same hand? The portrait was copied by other men too, and there is no doubt that the copies were in some cases sold for originals.

By the time Velazquez returned to Madrid in 1651, at the urgent request of his royal master, the court of Spain was en fête. Philip's wife, to whom he had been married two years, was only seventeen, and required amusement. Functions of every sort, excursions, entertainments on a most sumptuous scale, were the order of the day, and because Velazquez was now at the summit of his achievement, because he could paint pictures that will endure as long as men care for art, it is difficult indeed to forgive Philip IV. for making him Marshal of the Palace. To be sure the post was well paid, the salary being about £400 a year with lodging in the Treasure House, but the duties were endless. The king's action was on a par with the custom that prevails in our own Foreign Office, of sending a man who understands China thoroughly to serve the country in Peru, and one who has mastered Russian politics to Portugal.

PLATE V.—ANTONIO THE ENGLISHMAN

This was one of the dwarfs in the service of the king. His is one of the last portraits painted by Velazquez. The figure is life size, and hangs in the Prado at Madrid.

Happily Velazquez, for all that he was regarded in Madrid as a rather lazy man, found time when he was Marshal of the Palace to paint the best of all his portraits. He was honoured by Queen Mariana of Austria, the king's second wife, who sat for him on several occasions, and the results may be seen in Paris, Vienna, New York, and Madrid. Some of the portraits, painted without a suspicion of flattery, show the absurd head-dress, the false hair, and the extraordinary crinoline that were worn at the time, in all their ugliness, and force us to see how great was the distance lying between the royal house and any sense of beauty. Velazquez was not perhaps very happy with this work, because Nature had endowed Philip's wife with a face that was almost as dull and unresponsive to emotion as that of her lord and master; but after a time children were born, and the court painter had a more sympathetic task. He has left portraits that are quite charming of the Infanta Margarita and the Infante Philip Prosper; he painted both of the children while they were very young. In point of fact, neither lived to grow up; doubtless they would have been uninteresting enough if