To assist his appreciation of Mazo’s romantic and mythological landscapes, the visitor to the Prado will do well to step into an adjoining gallery, devoted to the works of Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin. It is true they are not represented here at their best; yet perhaps sufficiently well to suggest the character of their work and certainly its spirit. Particularly in the case of Claude Lorrain it is slighter, shallower than the spirit of Mazo’s corresponding scenes; less reinforced by close observation of nature; or, it may be, inspired by softer influences. For the source of the difference is perhaps the contrast of character of the Spanish as compared with the Italian landscape. Mazo has noted to good purpose the stirring cloud effects that pile high above the gaunt sierras, and their grandeur and bigness have inspired his feeling. By comparison, the mellow skies of the French-Italian landscapes, seem trivial, and communicate their slighter feeling to the formal, classically composed foregrounds, so that they seem mannered. In Mazo’s on the other hand, the grandeur of the sky’s suggestion spreads to the mountains, rocks and water, investing the whole with a sense of structural power and therefore of sincerity. In fact, in these romantic, mythological subjects Mazo stands alongside Turner rather than Claude and Poussin.
Among the painters who were contemporaries of Velasquez and after his death helped to stem for a little while the decline of the School of Madrid, special notice is due to Juan Carreño de Miranda. He came of a noble family of the province of Asturias, his father being Alcade de los Hijosdalgos or Chief of the Council of Nobles, in the town of Aviles, where Juan was born in 1614. When he was still a boy he accompanied his father to Madrid, and made up his mind to be an artist. His father, at last acquiescing, placed him with Pedro de las Cuevas, who had also been the teacher of José Leonardo and Pereda. Carreño afterwards worked with a painter, Bartolomé Roman; but by the time that he was twenty years old had so distinguished himself that he was entrusted with several important commissions. Velasquez recognised his talent and, thinking he should be employed in the King’s service, commissioned him to paint some frescoes for the royal palace. These were destroyed in the fire of 1734.