Note (return) — Chapter IX

Velasquez went to Venice first, and afterwards to Rome, where he was offered, and declined, a suite of apartments in the Vatican, asking only free access to the papal galleries. There he copied many portions of Michael Angelo's 'Last Judgment'—not a hundred years old, and 'yet undimmed by the morning and evening incense of centuries,' and portions of the frescoes of Raphael. At Rome Velasquez found there before him, Domenichino, Guido Reni, alternating 'between the excitements of the gaming table and the sweet creations of his smooth flowing pencil;' 'Nicolas Poussin, an adventurer fresh from his Norman village; and Claude Gelée, a pastry-cook's runaway apprentice from Lorraine.' 27 Velasquez remained a year in Rome. Besides his studies he painted three original pictures, one of them, 'Joseph's Coat,' well known among the painter's comparatively rare religious works, and now in the Escurial. In this picture his biographer acknowledges, that 'choosing rather to display his unrivalled skill in delineating vulgar forms than to risk his reputation in the pursuit of a more refined and idealized style,' Velasquez's 'Hebrew patriarchs are swineherds of Estramadura or shepherds of the Sierra Morena.'