the king, who was so well pleased with it that he took the young artist into his service. Thus, in 1623 began that mutual friendship of monarch and painter, which resulted in a close companionship of nearly thirty-seven years. It was interrupted only by the king’s occasional journeys of state and by Velasquez’s two visits to Italy. In 1628 Rubens arrived as an ambassador extraordinary from the King of England. His visit was prolonged for nine months, during which he painted several pictures for the King. Velasquez was deputed to act as his escort in the visits which he paid to the Escoriál and to the royal picture galleries. He was thus brought into touch with the most renowned painter of the day at the period of his most splendid achievement. The association must have broadened the young man, but it did not cause him to falter in his own attitude toward nature and art. Rubens urged him to go to Italy and study the great masters, and the King endorsed the advice. The first visit was made in 1629 under circumstances of importance. For Velasquez started in the train of the Marquis Spinola, the most renowned Captain-General of the age, whom he was to immortalize in the _Surrender of Breda_, and on his arrival in Italy presented letters from the Count-Duke de Olivares which procured him admission to the most famous galleries. He copied some of the works of Michelangelo, Raphael and Tintoretto, and brought back five original canvases: _The Forge of Vulcan_, _Joseph’s Coat_, two views of the _Villa Medici_ and a _Portrait of Doña Maria_. The first, notwithstanding its classic subject, is naturalistic. Velasquez has taken advantage of the story of Apollo announcing the infidelity of Venus to her husband, while he is at work with his assistants, in order to make a study of the nude form, as a vehicle for the expression of action and emotion. But the composition has nothing of the method of Italian idealism, while it abounds with charming passages of still-life painting, thoroughly Spanish. The Villa Medici studies are particularly interesting evidence of Velasquez’s preoccupation with nature, even among the masters in Rome, and his serious regard for landscape, which forms an important feature in many of his portraits. His return to Madrid in 1631 marks the end of what is regarded as the first period of his career. The remainder is similarly divided into two parts. The chief works of the first period beside those already mentioned are the early _Adoration of the Shepherds_ (National Gallery), _The Lady with the Fan_ (Wallace Collection), _The Adoration of the Kings_, _Los Borrachos_ or _The Topers_, and _Philip IV. Young_, all of which are in the Prado.