A notorious example that Magalotti’s interests were directed more to the scientific field than to the aesthetic one is the short-sightedness that he shows when narrating the journey of the Duke and his entourage through El Buen Retiro Park, where they visited some of the hermitages that were there. When referring to the one of San Antonio, he says “it is the most sumptuous of many that are scattered throughout the garden.” But how to explain, if not for a regrettable lack of sensitivity, that he did not even mention the wonderful painting by Velázquez, “Saint Antonio Abad and San Pablo Ermitaño”, who was still in that chapel for which it had been specifically commissioned by the king?
The Hermitage