A painting for a declining empire
The year is 1625, and the Spanish Empire is at its apogee.
So far, “Spain had been steadily losing the Eighty Years’ War against the Netherlands” (Dorsey 12). But a surprising turn of fortune happens: in what is now the Netherlands against the Dutch Republic, a nine-month siege culminates in conquering the fortified city of Breda. Under the leadership of the remarkable General Ambrosio Spinola, King Philip IV of Spain and his Army of Flanders has scored a decisive success in capturing the city. The equally brilliant Dutch general Justinus van Nassau surrendered Breda after heavy losses, the Dutch are pushed away from the hinterland, and fewer than 3,500 Dutch soldiers survive the siege (Duffy 96). It shows Europe that Spain is still a formidable fighting force; “Spain is victorious,” it says triumphantly, “Spain will conquer the Dutch revolt.”
The victory, though, is ultimately a pyrrhic one. As David Dorsey writes:
Spain lost Breda only a few years after the surrender and went on to lose the entire war in 1648. This moment in 1625 was only a brief setback for The Netherlands. From here onward, the declining Spanish Hapsburg empire gradually ceded its primacy on the world stage to another rising imperial star: the Dutch (Dorsey 12).
In a little over two decades, Spain will suffer grave political losses in the Peace of Westphalia, which guarantees independence to the Netherlands. “The regime of… Philip IV,” writes Peter Schjeldahl, “… was overstretched abroad, sclerotic at home, and, what with the Dutch and English predation on its shipments… often broke. The Golden Age of Spanish art and literature… was sputtering out” (Schjeldahl 11). Indeed, the Dutch ended up recapturing Breda in 1637, two years after this painting was finished.
But we are not there yet. We are still in a period when Spain feels confident and triumphant. And, when Philip IV begins to build a new palace outside of Madrid, the Buen Retiro, in the early 1630s, Spain’s power, though increasingly diminishing, still remains. The war is not lost just yet.
One series of commissions in particular stands out: “a series of twelve paintings for the Hall of Realms, where royal audiences and other ceremonies took place,” depicting, by the hands of different artists, “recent Spanish victories, some won just a year or two earlier” (Annenberg). Artistic greats such as Zurbarán and Castello are called in from Italy and Castille. And the King gives the commission for the greatest Spanish military triumph in recent memory, the surrender of Breda, to the court’s most prestigious and illustrious painter, Diego Velázquez.
By this point, Vélazquez was very safely ensconced within the favor of the court of Philip IV. He never lacked commissions or offers, and was indeed friendly with both the King and Queen; “No other painter in history was better situated than Velasquez,” says Dorsey, “to paint the life of empire and the tenuous nature of political power” (Dorsey 12). It is no surprise, then, that Vélazquez obtained this most important commission for the Hall of Realms.
And he delivered. The Surrender of Breda (often called Las Lanzas for the prominence of the wall of Spanish lances pointing to the sky) is still considered “one of the most famous and accomplished war pictures in the history of art” (Wolf 22). But its value doesn’t come entirely from its impressive depiction of individuality and surface texture; rather, Vélazquez’s brilliant balancing of humanity, power, and propaganda lends his work the quality of a masterpiece.
The merciful surrender
It is difficult to overstate just how important the successful Siege of Breda was to the Spanish and their spirits. The surrender, after all, was “a rare late success for the Spaniards in the war” (Schjeldahl 11). Breda’s extraordinary importance in Brabant made the Spanish triumph especially significant. News of the victory spread throughout Catholic Europe quickly and was met with great joy, as Norbert Wolf writes:
Many contemporary witnesses felt sure that the long struggle for the Netherlands would determine the future position of Spain… and the strategic significance of the place [Breda] was correctly assessed by Philip IV’s best commander in the Thirty Years’ War, Ambrosio Spinola… After a four-month siege and when all the provisions in the fortress had run out, he [Justinus van Nassau, the commander of the fortress of Breda] was forced to petition for an honorable surrender. Spinola allowed him to leave under conditions that were extremely generous for the period…
News of the victory was greeted with relief and delight in Madrid, and by Pope Urban VIII in Rome. The Pope congratulated Spinola on washing his hands in the blood of the heretics (Wolf 22).
What made this surrender in particular remarkable was that the Spanish commander, the brilliant General Ambrosio Spinola, was incredibly merciful, or rather magnanimous, to the defeated Dutch, and especially to the Dutch commanding officer, Justinus van Nassau. Normally, surrender was a humiliating act of the vanquished; “the tradition of surrender scenes,” writes Professor Jonathan Brown, was one “where the winning general sat upon the horse, in front of him was the kneeling losing general, who handed over the keys to the city to the victorious general” (Annenberg). But, according to Dorsey,
Eyewitnesses said Spinola dismounted in order to greet Nassau as an equal and saluted him as he approached. It was reported that he praised Nassau’s courage and his people’s endurance, during the siege. Spinola’s behavior would seem to be history’s noblest act of what we’d call good sportsmanship. There were no victory dances in the end zone here. Only a scene in which the victor humbles himself before the vanquished (Dorsey 12).
But, although this was a uniquely kind and surprisingly warm gesture towards the vanquished enemy, Spinola hid another gesture within that of mercy: one of magnanimity. That Spinola chose to be generous with the Dutch indicates not only military power but, in willful mercy, also displays a kind of moral superiority over the enemy. Comparable with the Roman depiction of the Dacians in Trajan’s Column, the message in this battle was not one of degrading and utterly humiliating the enemy (as was previously the case in surrenders); rather, it was one of carefully chosen magnanimity and, by extension, Spanish excellence.
We must also note here that Velázquez was intimately connected to General Spinola himself; indeed, the two were good friends and had previously traveled to Italy together. Spinola “died a few years before the commission of the painting” (de Dios 15); it is no surprise, then, that Velázquez wanted to especially emphasize the magnanimity and kindness of Spinola the man, making The Surrender of Breda a kind of tribute for his friend.
With such an emphasis on the mercy and moral superiority of the Spanish, then, in the battle itself, Velázquez’s composition naturally parallels and magnifies this emphasis. The painting overwhelmingly emphasizes the magnanimity of the Spanish over the defeat of the Dutch or the raw military power of the empire.
A painting about magnanimity
For all its magnificence and detail, The Surrender of Breda, when broken down, has a surprisingly simple composition. Velázquez essentially breaks the painting into two halves of military groups, placing the defeated Dutch on the left and the triumphant Spanish on the right. “Though the painting depicts a military victory,” Dr. Jimena Berzal de Dios writes, “Velázquez removed the bloody and violent aspects of the battle from the canvas” (Dios 15), simultaneously deemphasizing the violence and brutality of the Spanish siege while highlighting the specific moment of the aftermath of the battle. The only signs of the war are shown in the silent battlefield in the distance, smoke rising from fires far away.
Velázquez makes a clear visual distinction between the two groups of soldiers. On the right, the Dutch soldiers stand, weather-beaten, disorganized, and few. “The group of defeated men,” writes Wolf, “is constructed more loosely and with more variety of lighting and colour than the well-disciplined company of victors” (Wolf 22). They provide a distinct foil to the Spanish troops on the right, “presented as a large, well-organized, and seasoned group” (de Dios 15). In sharp contrast to the Dutch, the Spanish soldiers seem more elegant, more competent, and more victorious.
Velázquez emphasizes the might of the Spanish particularly strongly in the depiction of the lances, a veritable forest of dense spikes pointing to the sky. They dominate the Spanish half of the composition, and serve to both “create a sense that there are more Spanish troops than we can actually see” (de Dios 15) as well as emphasize the military superiority and competence of the Spanish. The Dutch pikes are few and crooked; the Spanish lances are ordered, straight, and greater in number. This dense forest of lances so dominates the overall composition that it gives the painting itself its well-known subtitle, Las Lanzas. The order and military might of the Spanish military also provide a subtle foil to the generous and merciful act that happens in the center of the painting, the central act of the moment, to which the viewer’s eyes are inevitably drawn.
The massive composition is centered on a slight, momentary gesture of kindness. Justinus van Nassau, his head slouched wearily and bowing before Ambrosio Spinola, proffers the keys of the city to the Spanish general. Spinola bends down to van Nassau and lays his hand on his shoulder tenderly, almost affectionately, and looks at him with a slight smile, “a sympathetic and a noble gesture” (Wolf 22). De Dios writes that Spinola puts his hand over van Nassau’s shoulder “most likely in order to stop him from kneeling” (de Dios 15), further emphasizing the human tenderness and the surprising mercy of the moment. Perhaps Spinola says something to the defeated general, who looks up and meets his eyes in surprise; his rod of command and hat, both symbols of authority, dangle from his hand as if forgotten at the moment.
This momentary gesture of kindness and affection is the clear center of the entire painting; Velázquez deemphasizes the battle itself (only painted in the distant background, almost as an afterthought) in favor of Spinola’s, and Spain’s, magnanimity, shown in this singular moment. “The entire composition,” as the painting’s page on the Prado says, “is designed to emphasize this gesture, and both the group of Dutch soldiers… and the Spaniards serve to frame, accompany and shelter this principal motif, drawing our attention directly to it” (Prado). The visual message here isn’t one of triumphant victory, but one of the mercy of the Spanish, shown “with extraordinary efficiency” (Prado) in the depiction of this gesture that must have lasted mere seconds.
By depicting a singular moment in time (one recalls Caravaggio’s hic et nunc philosophy) in remarkable visual detail, Velázquez makes the viewer feel as if they are a witness to the surrender as well. The photorealistic detailing of the armor of Spinola and van Nassau, the remarkable individuality of all the soldiers present in the composition, and Velázquez’s “inexhaustibly rich orchestration of their feelings and their states of mind” (Wolf 22) all serve to make the scene as realistic as can be. His brushwork and color is impeccable in its realistic technique:
Velazquez achieves… a new perception of light and a subtle counterposition of luminous colored planes… Matter has become impalpable, seeming to soak in light and at the same time radiate it, achieving a sensation of palpitation, of true life, created not through tactile techniques—outlines are no longer sharply defined—but rather through exclusively visual means (Ortiz et al. 89).
Especially noteworthy here is the fact that Velázquez removed all allegorical or mythological references to victory or triumph, making the work “indisputably the first purely historical picture in modern European painting” (Wolf 22). Such lack of symbolism further reinforces the main message of the work, which is definitively not concerned with military triumph. “As numerous scholars have pointed out,” the Prado says, “this is no ordinary pictorial celebration of victory or martial ideals” (Prado). Velázquez concentrates our attention on the foreground, to the scene of the triumphant general reaching out in surprising kindness.
If Spinola is talking to van Nassau in this second, what does he say? Opinions differ. Perhaps he says something along the lines of “‘Don’t bow down to me, friend. We are one and the same, you and I. Our enemy is everything that’s happening around us’” (Dorsey 12). Or maybe “he says something like ‘We both know that this is only the outcome of today’” (Schjeldahl 11). Perhaps the gesture is one of “destined consent” (Koppelman 16), as Eli Siegel commented on the work. Or maybe “the hand he places on his opponent’s shoulder is ambivalent—a concurrent show of respect and condescension” (Annenberg).
We just don’t know. But I like to imagine Spinola’s gesture as one that goes beyond kindness and into comforting the enemy general; an unprecedented act of affection that speaks volumes in mercy and magnanimity. Or, at least, that’s what Velázquez wants us to see.
The work as propaganda
As much as we would like to imagine otherwise, this emotionally moving meeting between Spinola and van Nassau never actually happened. Indeed, though many details of the composition (the armor, the flags, the equipment, etc., etc.) are drawn from Velázquez’s research and real life, the truth is that Spinola’s magnanimous gesture and van Nassau’s humility are fictional. As Jimena Berzal de Dios writes,
… we should not let Velázquez’s naturalistic style deceive us. The Surrender of Breda is not a faithful reproduction of the event. It is highly unlikely that the encounter between the two commanders took place as depicted. The painter, who was not present at the siege of Breda, carefully constructed the scene to commemorate Spinola’s magnanimous character, not to document an event…
The painting presents a humane encounter in the midst of the chaos and cruelty of war. But we should not think that there are no ulterior motives for the presentation of this seemingly virtuous moment (de Dios 15).
The aim of the painting, in its emphasis on magnanimity and Spanish moral superiority, becomes clear in its original context, within the halls of the Buen Retiro. Recalling the fact that the Hall of Realms was where royal receptions and ceremonies took place, it becomes clear that The Surrender of Breda is, at its core, a propagandistic painting. Its message is one of mercy and magnanimity rather than of Spanish military power, yes, but none of its purposes include naturalistically and realistically depicting an actual event. The painting “operates at multiple levels: it is a rhetorical exaltation of Spanish national identity, a symbol of Philip IV and his army, and a tribute to Spinola” (de Dios 15). Indeed, this is true of the other paintings commissioned for the Buen Retiro:
The Surrender of Breda and the other images in the Buen Retiro series served a dual purpose. On the one hand, they offered evidence of Spain’s power to contemporary audiences; on the other, they commemorated the success of Philip’s reign for posterity. In order to meet these objectives effectively, they sometimes played with the facts (Annenberg).
The “point” of The Surrender of Breda shows itself clearly. It isn’t depicting a historical event accurately and truthfully; rather, it’s extolling the magnanimity and power of General Spinola, and, by extension, the greatness of Philip IV and the Spanish Empire as a whole. That Velázquez was able to depict such abstract concepts as honor and magnanimity so efficiently is less a degradation of his work (just because a work is propaganda doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily “bad”!) than it is a testament to his genius. In the words of the Prado: “the simple gesture of the two generals is enough to transmit a theory of State and a view of history” (Prado).
“I was so moved by these two men,” says Dorothy Koppelman, “taking their hats off to one another, that I wanted to be like them, yielding and victorious” (Koppelman 16). Perhaps that is the key to The Surrender of Breda: an emphasis on the beauty of submission and pride, the triumph of magnanimity and mercy, the inherent power within choosing to refrain from exercising power.
Did The Surrender of Breda “work”? Probably not. At the end of the day, Velázquez and Philip IV took a gamble in depicting the triumph of an event “that had not yet withstood the test of time” (Annenberg) in decorating the Buen Retiro. And they lost that gamble: within scarcely a decade, Spain’s position on the continent was lost, its dominance lost to the English, the French, and the Dutch. Within two years, most of Spain’s victories in Brabant and Flanders, including Breda itself, were reversed for good. The Buen Retiro was ruinously costly and ended up becoming “a sepulchre of imperial dreams” (Schjeldahl 11); Philip IV’s passion project was razed during the 19th century, leaving behind what is today the Retiro Park in Madrid. And Spain itself sank into a constant economic plunge, plagued by bankruptcy and a parasitic nobility.
But, timelessly, The Surrender of Breda still “works” for us. Velázquez’s effect of magnanimity and his message of Spanish moral superiority still speak to us; more importantly, the tenderness of the composition still takes us by surprise and invites us, almost as eyewitnesses, to this singular moment in time. Velázquez’s unique ability to apply a distinct message with his talent for applying paint perpetuates a fictionalized past that, almost four centuries later, still feels present and real. Peter Schjeldahl is entirely correct when he writes that “He conquered time” (Schjeldahl 11).
The Spanish Empire lost the Eighty Years’ War, and its Golden Age died soon after Velázquez completed this work. The victory at Breda was all too fleeting, and both Spain and the Buen Retiro fell into decline. But we can forget all of that when we look at this fictional hill on the outskirts of Breda, when we see epic intimacy and the triumph of ordinary humanity in the slight, kind gesture of a simple hand on the shoulder. Velázquez’s ontology of history is ever present, ever real. The Surrender of Breda continues to speak in the present tense; Spinola still comforts van Nassau with the soldiers and the lances, and the power of magnanimity confronts us, infinitely here.
Sources cited
Duffy, Christopher. Siege Warfare: The fortress in the early modern world, 1494–1660. Routledge, 1996.
Wolf, Norbert. Velázquez. Taschen, 2022.
Ortiz, Antonio Domínguez, et al. Velázquez. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1989.
Koppelman, Dorothy. “What Will Make Us Truly Proud of Ourselves? A Study in the Art of Diego Velázquez.” Terrain Gallery, 10 January 2016, https://terraingallery.org/aesthetic-realism-art-criticism/what-will-make-us-truly-proud-of-ourselves/.
de Dios, Jimena Berzal. “Diego Velázquez, The Surrender of Breda.” Smarthistory, 8 August 2015, https://smarthistory.org/velazquez-the-surrender-of-breda/.
“Art: Surrender of Breda.” Annenberg Learner, 22 March 2019, https://www.learner.org/series/art-through-time-a-global-view/history-and-memory/surrender-of-breda/.
“The Surrender of Breda.” Museo del Prado, https://www.museodelprado.es/en/the-collection/art-work/the-surrender-of-breda/0cc7577a-51d9-44fd-b4d5-4dba8d9cb13a.
Dorsey, Dave. “Awakening from the nightmare of history.” Represent the Painting Life, 10 February 2012, https://thedorseypost.com/?p=1076.
Schjeldahl, Peter. “The Reign in Spain.” The New Yorker, 25 December 2011, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/01/02/velazquez-the-reign-in-spain-peter-schjeldahl.