We have seen how Rembrandt, Peter de Hoogh, Cuyp, Rubens, and Van Dyck were all contemporaries, born within an area of ground smaller far than England.  Yet the range of their subjects was widely different, and each painter gave his individuality full play.  The desires of the public were not stereotyped and fixed, as they had been when all alike wanted their religious aspirations expressed in art.  The patrons of that epoch had various likings, as we have to-day, and the painter developed along the lines most congenial to himself.  Unless he could make people like what he enjoyed painting, he could not make a living.  If they had no eyes to learn to see, he might remain unappreciated, like Rembrandt, until long after his death.  Yet Van Dyck’s portraits were popular.  People could scarcely help enjoying an art that showed them off to such advantage.  Having found a style that suited him, he adhered to it consistently, thenceforward making but few experiments.  This little picture before us is an admirable example of the gentle poetic grace and refinement always recalled to the memory by the name of Van Dyck.  So long as men prize the aspect of distinction, which he was the first Northern painter to express in paint, Van Dyck’s reputation will endure.

CHAPTER XII

VELASQUEZ

During the years in which Van Dyck was painting his beautiful portraits of the Royal Family of England, another painter, Velasquez, was immortalizing another Royal Family in the far-away country of Spain.  Cut off by the great mountains of the Pyrenees from the rest of Europe, Spain did not rank among the foremost powers until after the discovery of America had brought wealth to her from the gold mines of Mexico and Peru.  In the sixteenth century the King of Spain’s dominions, actual or virtual, covered a great part of Western Europe, excepting England and France.  Germany, Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands, owned the sovereignty of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V. His son was Philip II. of Spain, the husband of our Queen Mary of England, and his great-grandson was King Philip IV., the patron of Velasquez, as Charles I. was of Van Dyck.

It is the little son of Philip IV., Don Balthazar Carlos, whose portrait is before us—­as manly and sturdy looking a little fellow as ever bestrode a pony.  He was but six years old when Velasquez painted the picture here reproduced.  Certainly he was not fettered and cramped and prevented from taking exercise like his little sisters.  The princesses of Spain were dressed in wide skirts, spread out over hoops and hiding their feet, from the time they could walk.  The tops of the dresses were as stiff as corselets, and one wonders how the little girls were able to move at all.  As they grew older the hoops became wider and wider, until in one picture of a grown-up princess, the skirts are broader than the whole height of her body.  Stringent Court etiquette forbade a princess to let her feet be seen, but so odd may such conventions be, that it was nevertheless thought correct for the Queen to ride on horseback astride.