He is usually called a realist. But modern thought is investing this term with a meaning that differentiates it from naturalism. Its use of the word is akin to the philosophic meaning of realism, which recognises the reality not only of the species or individual but also of the genus, and considers the individual as a phase of the universal process which causes it. Modern thought, in fact, applies the word realist to one who views the particular in relation to the horizon at the back of it, to the universal process of which it is a temporary manifestation. Thus it calls Ibsen a realist, because, for example, in “A Doll’s House,” he treats _Nora_ and her husband as phases of the universal problem of marital relations. On the contrary, the playwright who presents merely a cross-section of life, characters and incidents that are true to life but are not treated in relation to the large horizon of ideas, governing our principles of living, it calls a naturalist. The distinction is a vital one and so clarifying to thought and understanding, [Illustration: PHILIP IV, OLD VELASQUEZ THE NATIONAL GALLERY] that to have once comprehended it should be to adopt it. In the light of this distinction is Velasquez a naturalist or a realist? In his portraits, which represent his supreme achievement, is one conscious of anything but the absorbing realisation of an individual personality? Do we think of them as typical of their time and country, as are the subjects of El Greco’s portraits? Most certainly there is a great exception in the marvelous _Portrait of Pope Innocent X_. Behind his grim face extends a wide horizon of correlated ideas. The psychological revelation and universal suggestion of this portrait seem to declare that Velasquez was in mind a realist, but compelled by the circumstances of his life to be a naturalist. Tethered to the Court, he was chiefly occupied with painting the royal personages and their immediate entourage. His was a scene, closed in, like a stage-scene by the artificial routine of ceremony and punctiliousness, in which the puppets, from Philip down to his dwarf play-things, posed. How could a realist portray them in relation to the horizon of ideas involved except by making them contemptible or ridiculous? But his duty as a Court painter compelled Velasquez to close out the horizon, and to represent these individuals with as much of dignity as possible. It is a noteworthy fact that the _Innocent X_ was painted during the artist’s second visit to Italy; while he was for a brief space quit of the cramped conditions of his life, able to look out on men and things and study them in relation to large issues. Also, the fact of it being his second visit and that he was in the full maturity of his powers, implies much. He was less preoccupied with individual impressions, more capable and disposed to view even the Pope himself in relation to the political and spiritual conditions of Rome and of the World.