Titian, and in many a heated argument with Ruskin, unaware of our
controversy, I had it out with that most prejudiced partisan of
Tintoretto. I always got the better of him, as one does in such
dramatizations, where one frames one's opponent's feeble replies for
him; but now in the Prado, sadly and strangely enough, I began to wonder
if Ruskin might not have tacitly had the better of me all the time. If
Hay was right in holding that the best Titians in the world were in the
Prado, then I was wrong in having argued for Titian against Tintoretto
with Ruskin. I could only wish that I had the "Assumption" there, or
some of those senators whose portraits I remembered in the Academy at
Venice. The truth is that to my eye he seemed to weaken before the
Spanish masters, though I say this, who must confess that I failed to
see the room of his great portraits. The Italians who hold their own
with the Spaniards are Tintoretto and Veronese; even Murillo was more
than a match for Titian in such pictures of his as I saw (I must own
that I did not see the best, or nearly all), though properly speaking
Murillo is to be known at his greatest only in Seville.

But Velasquez, but Velasquez! In the Prado there is no one else present
when he is by, with his Philips and Charleses, and their "villainous
hanging of the nether lip," with his hideous court dwarfs and his pretty
princes and princesses, his grandees and jesters, his allegories and
battles, his pastorals and chases, which fitly have a vast salon to
themselves, not only that the spectator may realize at once the rich
variety and abundance of the master, but that such lesser lights as
Rubens, Titian, Correggio, Giorgione, Tintoretto, Veronese, Rembrandt,
Zurbaran, El Greco, Murillo, may not be needlessly dimmed by his
surpassing splendor. I leave to those who know painting from the
painter's art to appreciate the technical perfection of Velasquez; I
take my stand outside of that, and acclaim its supremacy in virtue of