The Sun Over Breda

We both laughed a little at the old joke. At the time, Velázquez was faced with the daunting task of furnishing paintings for the Hall of Realms in the new Buen Retiro palace. That and other graces had been granted directly by the king, and Velázquez was pleased to have them. It did, however, he sometimes lamented, rob him of the space and peace to work at his own pace. Which was why he had just passed on the duties of usher of the chamber to Juan Bautista del Mazo, as Velázquez was content to accept the honored but less demanding role of keeper of the wardrobe.

“And how is Captain Alatriste?” the painter inquired.

“Well. He sends you his greetings. He has gone to Calle de Francos with don Francisco de Quevedo and Captain Contreras to visit Lope at home.”

“And how is our phoenix?”

“Poorly. The flight of his daughter Antoñita with Cristóbal Tenorio was a harsh blow. He has not yet recovered.”

“I must find a free moment to visit him. Is he much worse, then?”

“Everyone fears that he will not make it through this winter.”

“A pity.”

I drank a couple of sips more. The broth was scalding hot, but it was also reviving me.

“It seems there will be a war with Richelieu,” Velázquez commented.

“That is what I have heard on the steps of San Felipe.”

I went to set the jug on a table, and on the way I paused before a painting on an easel, which was finished, lacking only a coat of varnish. Angélica de Alquézar was breathlessly beautiful in Velázquez’s portrait, dressed in white satin trimmed with gold frogs and tiny pearls, with a mantilla of Brussels lace around her shoulders. I knew it was from Brussels because I had given it to her. Her blue eyes stared out of the portrait with a sardonic gaze, and they seemed to follow my movements around the room, as in fact they had done through so many years of my life. Finding her here made me smile inside; it had been only hours since I left her, gaining the street just before dawn, muffled in my cape and with my hand on the hilt of my sword should her uncle’s hired assassins be waiting for me. I still had her delicious fragrance on my fingertips, on my mouth and skin. I also had on my body the now-healed remembrance of her dagger, and in my thoughts her words of love and loathing, one as sincere as the other was deadly.

“I have brought you,” I said to Velázquez, “a sketch of the Marqués de los Balbases’ sword. An old comrade who saw it many times remembers it well.”

I turned my back to Angélica’s portrait. Then I took out the paper I had folded inside my doublet and handed it to the painter.

“The grip was of bronze and hammered gold. Here, Your Mercy, you will see how the guards were fashioned.”

Velázquez, who had put down his cloth and brushes, contemplated the sketch with a satisfied air.

“As for the plumes on his hat,” I added, “they were undoubtedly white.”

“Excellent,” he said.

He put the paper on the table and looked at the painting, an expansive depiction of the surrender at Breda. It was destined to decorate the Hall of Realms and was enormous; here in the studio it hung on a special frame attached to the wall, with a ladder set before it so that Velázquez could work on the upper portion.

“I finally listened to you,” he added pensively. “Lances instead of standards.”

It was I who had provided him with these details during long conversations we’d had in recent months, after don Francisco de Quevedo had suggested that my cooperation would be helpful in documenting the particulars of the scene. To accomplish his painting Diego Velázquez decided to dispense with the fury of combatants, the clash of steel—all the obligatory subject matter of traditional battle scenes—and instead sought serenity and grandeur. He wanted, as he told me more than once, to achieve a tone that was at once magnanimous and arrogant and also interpreted in the manner he painted: reality not like it was but as he depicted it, expressing things that conformed with truth but were not explicit, so that all the rest, the context and the spirit suggested by the scene, would be the work of the person who viewed it.

“What do you think of it?” he asked softly.

I knew perfectly well that he did not give a fig about my artistic judgment, especially coming, as it did, from a twenty-four-year-old soldier. He was asking for something different; I knew that from the way he was looking at me, not quite trusting and slightly calculating, as my eyes ran over the painting.

“It was like this and not like this,” I said.

I regretted my words the minute they left my lips, for I was afraid I had offended him. But he limited himself to a faint smile.

“Good,” he said. “I am aware that there is no hill of this height near Breda and that the perspective of the background is a little forced.” He took a few steps and stood looking at the painting with his fists on his hips. “But the scene works, and that is what matters.”

“I was not referring to those things.”

“I know what you were referring to.”