Those grand Venetian colorists of the Sixteenth Century, Titian, Tintoretto, and Paul Veronese, and the great Flemish colorist of the Seventeenth Century, Peter Paul Rubens, for the most part gloried in harmonies of splendour, Velasquez, however, Rubens's contemporary, whose life was spent in the service of Philip IV of Spain, proved himself to be one of the world's greatest colorists by the soberness and subtlety of his harmonies.
