Tintoret's
immense creative power and the colours of Titian's painting which
inspired Tintoret's ambition, as we remember--these were the effective
influences Velasquez experienced in Italy. His purchases and his own
later canvases afford that inference. On his return from Italy he
painted a ceremonial picture as wall decoration for one of the palaces
of Philip, and in it we can trace the influence of the great ceremonial
paintings of the Venetians. The picture commemorates the surrender
of Breda in North Brabant, when the famous General Spinola received
its keys for Philip IV. It is far more than a series of separate figures.
Two armies, officers and men, are grouped in one transaction, in one
near and far landscape. It is a picture in which the foreground and
the distances, with the lances of the soldiers and the smoke of battle,
are as indispensable to the whole as are the central figures of the
Dutchman in front handing the city keys to the courtly Spanish general.
Don Balthazar Carlos was born while Velasquez was in Italy. On his
return he painted his first portrait of him at the age of two.
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