As a general thing it is well to distrust a Spaniard’s
superlatives. He will tell you that his people
are the most amiable in the world, but you will do
well to carry your revolver into the interior.
He will say there are no wines worth drinking but
the Spanish, but you will scarcely forswear Clicquot
and Yquem on the mere faith of his assertion.
A distinguished general once gravely assured me that
there was no literature in the world at all to be
compared with the productions of the Castilian mind.
All others, he said, were but pale imitations of Spanish
master-work.
Now, though you may be shocked at learning such unfavorable
facts of ’Shakespeare and Goethe and Hugo, you
will hardly condemn them to an Auto da fe, on the
testimony even of a grandee of Spain.
But when a Spaniard assures you that the picture-gallery
of Madrid is the finest in the world, you may believe
him without reserve. He probably does not know
what he is talking about. He may never have crossed
the Pyrenees. He has no dream of the glories of
Dresden, or Florence, or the Louvre. It is even
possible that he has not seen the matchless collection
he is boasting of. He crowns it with a sweeping
superlative simply because it is Spanish. But
the statement is nevertheless true.
The reason of this is found in that gigantic and overshadowing
fact which seems to be an explanation of everything
in Spain,—the power and the tyranny of
the House of Austria. The period of the vast increase
of Spanish dominion coincided with that of the meridian
glory of Italian art. The conquest of Granada
was finished as the divine child Raphael began to
meddle with his father’s brushes and pallets,
and before his short life ended Charles, Burgess of
Ghent, was emperor and king.
The dominions he governed and transmitted to his son
embraced Spain, the Netherlands, Franche-Comte, the
Milanese, Naples, and Sicily; that is to say, those
regions where art in that age and the next attained
its supreme development. He was also lord of
the New World, whose inexhaustible mines poured into
the lap of Europe a constant stream of gold.
Hence came the riches and the leisure necessary to
art.
Charles V., as well as his great contemporary and
rival, Francis I., was a munificent protector of art.
He brought from Italy and Antwerp some of the most
perfect products of their immortal masters. He
was the friend and patron of Titian, and when, weary
of the world and its vanities, he retired to the lonely
monastery of Yuste to spend in devout contemplation
the evening of his days, the most precious solace of
his solitude was that noble canvas of the great Venetian,
where Charles and Philip are borne, in penitential
guise and garb, on luminous clouds into the visible
glory of the Most High.
