The Portfolio - 1896 Author:Philip Gilbert Hamerton Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: picture, which he describes as a work of the Dutch School. In this opinion I concur, and would ask those who cling to the ascription to The Adoration of the S... more »hepherds. National Gallery. Velazquez to explain the presence of a copy after a landscape by J. van Artois on the globe on which the so-called beggar leans. Two famous religious subjects were painted by Velazquez when he was barely out of his apprenticeship, and was still more or less under the eye of Pacheco. These are the Epiphany in the Prado, and the Adoration of the Shepherds in our own National Gallery. The first bears the date 1619. The second, undated, is of the same period, perhaps a little later, to judge by a greater breadth and vigour in the brushing. The catalogue describes it as " an early work in the simple, naturalistic manner of the painter, in the style of Spagnoletto " ; and Justi goes so far as to say that the types are directly copied from those of the Valencian master. The evident reminiscences of Ribera make it, indeed, a work apart in the very individual teuvre of Velazquez, and have sometimes caused it to be looked upon with suspicion. A Spanish critic has even pronounced it an early Zurbaran. It was bought by Baron Taylor for Louis Philippe from the Conde del Aquila, in whose family it had remained from the time when it was painted, and was acquired by the National Gallery at the sale of the French king's collection in London in 1853. Contemporary with these two pictures were the companion pieces painted for the Chapter-House of the Carmelite Friars, St. "John the Evangelist at Patmos, and the Woman pursued by the Dragon. A great impetus had been given to devotional painting by the Dominican movement in support of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, sanctioned by Paul V. in a brief...« less