Spain -- Description and travel; Spain -- Social life and customs
There is a most instructive study of faces in the portraits of the
Austrian line. First comes Charles V., the First of Spain, painted by
Titian at Augsburg, on horseback, in the armor he wore at Muhl-berg, his
long lance in rest, his visor up over the eager, powerful face,--the eye
and beak of an eagle, the jaw of a bull-dog, the face of a born ruler, a
man of prey. And yet in the converging lines about the eyes, in the
premature gray hair, in the nervous, irritable lips, you can see the
promise of early decay, of an age that will be the spoil of superstition
and bigotry. It is the face of a man who could make himself emperor and
hermit. In his son, Philip II., the soldier dies out and the bigot is
intensified. In the fine portrait by Pantoja, of Philip in his age,
there is scarcely any trace of the fresh, fair youth that Titian painted
as Adonis. It is the face of a living corpse; of a ghastly pallor,
heightened by the dull black of his mourning suit, where all passion and
feeling have died out of the livid lips and the icy eyes. Beside him
hangs the portrait of his rickety, feebly passionate son, the
unfortunate Don Carlos. The forehead of the young prince is narrow and
ill-formed; the Austrian chin is exaggerated one degree more; he looks a
picture of fitful impulse. His brother, Philip III., we have just seen,
fair and inane,--a monster of cruelty, who burned Jews and banished
Moors, not from malice, but purely from vacuity of spirit; his head
broadens like a pine-apple from the blond crest to the plump jowls.
Every one knows the head of Philip IV.,--he was fortunate in being the
friend of Velazquez,--the high, narrow brow, the long, weak face, the
yellow, curled mustache, the thick, red lips, and the ever lengthening
Hapsburg chin. But the line of Austria ends with the utmost limit of
caricature in the face of Charles the Bewitched! Carreno has given us an
admirable portrait of this unfortunate,--the forehead caved in like the
hat of a drunkard, the red-lidded eyes staring vacantly, a long, thin
nose absurd as a Carnival disguise, an enormous mouth which he could not
shut, the under-jaw projected so prodigiously,--a face incapable of any
emotion but fear. And yet in gazing at this idiotic mask you are
reminded of another face you have somewhere seen, and are startled to
remember it is the resolute face of the warrior and statesman, the king
of men, the Kaiser Karl. Yes, this pitiable being was the descendant of
the great emperor, and for that sufficient reason, although he was an
impotent and shivering idiot, although he could not sleep without a
friar in his bed to keep the devils away, for thirty-five years this
scarecrow ruled over Spain, and dying made a will whose accomplishment
bathed the Peninsula in blood. It must be confessed this institution of
monarchy is a luxury that must be paid for.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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