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But Olivarez knew Velasquez could paint, and the artist’s handsome face, stalwart frame and fearless riding did the rest. The young King was considered the best horseman in Madrid: Velasquez and Olivarez took pains never to outdo him in the joust.

The biography of Olivarez as a study of life is a better subject far than either the life of Velasquez or the King. Their lives were too successful to be interesting. Olivarez is a fine example of a man growing great through exercise. Read history and behold how commonplace men have often had greatness thrust upon them and met the issue. I have seen an absurd Class B lawyer elevated into a judgeship, and rise to the level of events, keeping silence, looking wise, hugging his dignity hard, until there came a time when the dignity really was a fair fit. Trotters often need toe-weights to give them ballast and balance–so do men need responsibility. We have had at least three commonplace men for President of the United States, who live in history as adequately great–and they were. Various and sundry good folk will here arise and say the germ of greatness was in these men all the time, awaiting the opportunity to unfold. And the answer is correct, right and proper; but a codicil should then be added to the effect that the germ of greatness is in every man, but we fall victims of arrested development, and success or society, like a worm i’ the bud, feeds on our damask cheek.

Philip was nipped in the bud by falling into the protecting shadow of Olivarez. The Prime Minister provided boar-hunts and tourneys and masquerades and fetes. Philip’s life of simplicity faded off into dressing in black–all else went on as before. Philip glided into the line of least resistance and signed every paper that he was told to sign by his gracious, winning, inflexible Minister–the true type of the iron hand in the velvet glove. From his twentieth year, after that first little flurry of pretended power, the novelty of ruling wore away; and for more than forty years he never either vetoed an act or initiated one. His ministers arranged his recreations, his gallantries, his hours of sleep. He was ruled and never knew it, and here the Richelieu-like Olivarez showed his power. It was anything to keep the King from thinking, and Spain, the Mother of Magnificence, went drifting to her death.

There were already three Court Painters when Velasquez received his appointment. They were Italians appointed by Philip the Third. Their heads were full of tradition and precedent, and they painted like their masters, who had been pupils of men who had worked with Titian–beautiful attenuations three times reduced. We only know their names now because they raised a pretty chorus of protest when Velasquez appeared at the palace. They worked all the wires they knew to bring about his downfall, and then dwindled away into chronic Artistic Jealousy, which finally struck in; and they were buried. That the plots, challenges and constant knockings of these underling court painters ever affected Velasquez, we can not see. He swung right along at prodigious strides, living his own life–a life outside and beyond all the pretense and vanity of place and power.

The King came by a secret passage daily to the studio to watch Velasquez work. There was always a chair for him, and the King even had an easel and sets of brushes and palette with which he played at painting. Pacheco, who had come up to Madrid and buzzed around encroaching on the Samuel Pepys copyright, has said that the King was a skilled painter. But this statement was for publication during the King’s lifetime.

When Velasquez could not keep the King quiet in any other way, it seems he made him sit for his picture. The studio was never without an unfinished portrait of the King. From eighteen to fifty-four he sat to Velasquez–and it is always that same tall, spindle-legged, impassive form and the dull, unspeaking face. There is no thought there, no aspiration, no hope too great for earth, no unrequited love, no dream unrealized. The King was incapable of love as he was of hate. And Velasquez did not use his art to flatter: he had the artistic conscience. Truth was his guiding star. And the greatness of Velasquez is shown in that all subjects were equally alike to him. He did not select the classic or peculiar. Little painters are always choosing their subjects and explaining that this or that may be pretty or interesting, but they will tell you it is “unpaintable” –which means that they can not paint it.