effective influences Velasquez experienced in Italy.  His purchases and his own later canvases afford that inference.  On his return from Italy he painted a ceremonial picture as wall decoration for one of the palaces of Philip, and in it we can trace the influence of the great ceremonial paintings of the Venetians.  The picture commemorates the surrender of Breda in North Brabant, when the famous General Spinola received its keys for Philip IV.  It is far more than a series of separate figures.  Two armies, officers and men, are grouped in one transaction, in one near and far landscape.  It is a picture in which the foreground and the distances, with the lances of the soldiers and the smoke of battle, are as indispensable to the whole as are the central figures of the Dutchman in front handing the city keys to the courtly Spanish general.

Don Balthazar Carlos was born while Velasquez was in Italy.  On his return he painted his first portrait of him at the age of two.  The little prince is dressed in a richly-brocaded frock with a sash tied round his shoulder.  His hair has only just begun to grow, but he has the same look of determination upon his face that we see four years later in the equestrian portrait.  A dwarf about his own height stands a step lower than he does, so as again to give him prominence.  Another picture of Don Balthazar a little older is in the Wallace Collection in London.

Velasquez’s power with his brush lay in depicting vividly a scene that he saw; thus in portraiture he was at his best.  He knew how to pose his figures to perfection, so as to make the expression of their character a true pictorial subject.  In our picture it is on high ground that the hoofs of the pony of Don Balthazar Carlos tread.  So to raise the little Prince above the eye of the spectator was a good stroke, suggesting an importance in the gallant young rider.  The boy’s erect figure, too, firmly holding his baton as a king might hold a sceptre, and the well-stirruped foot, are all perfect posing.  Velasquez does not give him distinction in the manner of Van Dyck, by delicate drawing and gentle grace, but in a sturdier fashion, with speed and pose and a fluttering sash in the wind.  All the portraits of this lad are full of charm.  He was heir to the throne, but died in boyhood.

[Illustration:  DON BALTHAZAR CARLOS From the picture by Velasquez, in the Prado Museum, Madrid]

Velasquez paid another visit to Italy, twenty years after his first, for the purpose of buying more pictures to adorn Philip’s palaces.  Again we find him in Venice, where he bought two Tintorets and a Veronese, and again he made a long stay in Rome, this time to paint the portrait of the Pope.  When he returned to Spain in 1651 he had still nine years of work before him.  There were portraits of Philip’s new Queen to be painted—­a young girl in a most uncomfortable dress—­and portraits of her child, the Infanta Marguerita.  Bewitching