shades and degrees of lighter and darker black, in fact, a scale of tints out of which he composed a harmony. It was the same way with the grays and drabs. We often call these neutral colors, by which we mean that there is no particular color in them. But Velasquez did not look at grays and drabs in this way. Having to paint them he searched them for possibilities of beauty, and found them in the nuances, occasioned by the action of light. And out of the scale of these nuances he composed harmonies.