In the Spanish section Ribera comes at you the strongest. He was a personality as well as a powerful painter. Consider his Martyrdom of St. Bartholomew. Zurbaran follows next in interest, though morbid at times; but of Berragueta, Borgona, Morales, Juanes, Navarette, Coello--an excellent portraitist, imitator of Moro--La Cruz, Alfonso Cano, Luis de Tristan, Espinosa, Bias del Prado, Orrente, Esteban de March--two realistic heads of an old man and an old woman must be set down to his credit--Ribalta, influenced by Caravaggio, in turn influencing Ribera--Juan de las Roelas (el Clerigo), Del Mazo--son-in-law of Velasquez, and responsible for dozens of false attributions--Carreño de Miranda, José Leonardo, Juan Rizi V. Iriarte, the two Herreras, the elder a truculent charlatan, the younger a nonentity, and others of the Spanish school may be dismissed in a word--mediocrities.
The secret of Titian's colour, the "Venetian secret," was produced, some experts believe, by first painting a solid monochrome in tempera on which the picture was finished in oil. Unquestionably Titian corrected and amended his work as much as did Velasquez. It is a pleasing if somewhat theatric belief that Titian and Velasquez, duelled with their canvases, their rapier a brush. After inspecting many of the Hals portraits the evidences of direct painting, swift though calculated, are not to be denied. This may account, with the temperamental equation, for the less profound psychological interest of his portraiture when compared with the Raphael, Titian, Velasquez, and Rembrandt heads. Yet, what superiority in brush-work had Hals over Raphael and Rembrandt. The Raphael surfaces are as a rule hard, dry, and lustreless, while Rembrandt's heavy, troubled paint is no mate for the airy touch of the Mercutio of Haarlem. But Titian's impasto is lyric. It sings on the least of his canvases. No doubt his pictures in the Prado have been "skinned" of their delicate glaze by the iconoclastic restorer; yet they bloom and chant and ever bloom. The Bacchanal, which bears a faint family resemblance to the Bacchus and Ariadne of the London National Gallery, fairly exults in its joy of life, in its frank paganism. What rich reverberating tones, what powers of evocation! The Garden of the Loves is a vision of childhood at its sweetest; the surface of the canvas seems alive with festooned babies. The more voluptuous Venus or Danaë do not so stir your pulse as this immortal choir of cupids. The two portraits of Charles V--one equestrian--are charged with the noble, ardent gravity and splendour of phrasing we expect from the greatest Venetian of them all. We doubt, however, if the Prado Entombment is as finely wrought as the same subject by Titian in Paris; but it sounds a poignant note of sorrow. Rembrandt is more dramatic when dealing with a similar theme. The St. Margaret with its subtle green gown is a figure that is touching and almost tragic. The Madonna and Child, with St. Bridget and St. Hulfus, has been called Giorgionesque. St. Bridget is of the sumptuous Venetian type; the modelling of her head is lovely, her colouring rich.