THE NATIONAL GALLERY 401

it had undergone its discipline, but I have seldom met with an example of the master which gave me more delight, or which I believed to be in more genuine or perfect condition. I saw no traces of the retouching which is hinted at by your correspondent “Verax,” nor are the touches on that canvass such as to admit of very easy or untraceable interpolation of meaner handling. His complaint of loss of substance in the figures of the foreground is, I have no doubt, altogether groundless. He has seen little southern scenery if he supposes that the brilliancy and apparent nearness of the silver clouds is in the slightest degree overcharged, and shows little appreciation of Velasquez in supposing him to have sacrificed the solemnity and might of such a distance to the inferior interest of the figures in the foreground. Had he studied the picture attentively, he might have observed that the position of the horizon suggests, and the lateral extent of the foreground proves, such a distance between the spectator and even its nearest figures as may well justify the slightness of their execution.

Even granting that some of the upper glazings of the figures had been removed, the tone of the whole picture is so light, gray, and glittering, and the dependence on the power of its whites so absolute, that I think the process hardly to be regretted which has left these in lustre so precious, and restored to a brilliancy, which a comparison with any modern work of similar aim would render

take his execution as nearly as possible, and my own style of painting enabled me to keep pretty near the mark” (!). But he particularly added that the high lights of the sky (on which Ruskin here lays special stress) were untouched by him. So that there Ruskin was right. The picture, when restored to its owner, gave complete satisfaction, and Lance’s share in it was kept a secret. A year or two later he must have felt a proud man. The picture was being exhibited at the British Gallery. In front of it Lance met two cognoscenti of his acquaintance. “It looks to me,” he said, testing them, “as if it had been a good deal repainted.”-“No! you’re wrong there,” they said; “it is remarkably free from repaints.” It should be added that soon after the Parliamentary inquiry referred to above, a tracing of Goya’s copy, procured from Madrid, showed in fact that the restored work differed but slightly from the copy, and Lance’s work was probably far less important and extensive than he asserted. An idea of the original condition of the picture may be had from a reduced replica, or first sketch, now in the Wallace Collection.]

XII. 2 c

[Version 0.04: March 2008]