Hispanic Research Journal, Vol. 8, No. 3, June 2007, 233–240

Francisco López de Zárate’s ‘Canción real’ in Vicencio Carducho’s Diálogos de la Pintura (1633): An Annotated Edition of the Poem with an Introduction and English Translation Pablo Pérez d’Ors, Tyler Fisher, and Kathleen Mountjoy University of Oxford A poem called ‘Canción real’ by Francisco López de Zárate (c. 1580–1658), in praise of painting and the contemporary artist Vicencio Carducho, deserves to be better known. Its historical and ideological context, furthermore, needs clarification. It was printed in Carducho’s Diálogos de la pintura (1633), and like other poetical works by Zárate expresses the author’s keen interest in painting, stimulated no doubt by the culture of art collecting and patronage at the Spanish Court at the period. Three main ideas about painting emerge in this work: the notion of painting as a language, an interest in the effects of a painting on its viewers, and an awareness of the painter’s religious and supernatural role and responsibilities. These themes suggest that Zárate was well versed in the artistic theory of his time and was almost certainly familiar with Cardinal Gabriele Paleotti’s Discorso intorno alle imagini sacre e profane (1582). Our annotated edition of the Spanish text, with a short introduction and a verse translation into English, seeks to provide the basis for a better understanding of the poem. It was customary for authors of early modern treatises to include short contributions by other writers or poets to complement the main text, much as illustrations would, highlighting the tratadista’s connections and the intellectual standing of his work. Francisco López de Zárate’s ‘Canción real’ is one such complementary piece, composed to accompany the text of the Diálogos de la pintura (1633), a treatise on painting written by the Italian-born court painter Vicencio Carducho (c. 1576–1638).1 In Carducho’s treatise, laudatory poems by various contemporaries are printed at the end of all but the first of his eight dialogues, and it is in the context of these — and more particularly the seventh, which it accompanies — that Zárate’s ‘Canción real’ is best understood. The very title of the printed version, ‘Canción real de Francisco López de Zárate en alabança deste assunto, y del autor’, calls for a frame of reference. With this in mind, we offer the reader 1 Carducho 1633. Zárate’s ‘Canción Real’ occupies fols 128v–129v. For modern editions, see Sánchez Cantón 1933, and Calvo Serraller 1979. The poem is also preserved in manuscript (British Library, MS Add. 10331), reproduced in Simón Díaz 1976: 49–51.

Address correspondence to Tyler Fisher, Magdalen College, Oxford OX1 4AU, UK. © Queen Mary, University of London, 2007

DOI: 10.1179/174582007X190132

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an annotated edition of the text of the poem, with a brief introduction as well as an English translation. López de Zárate (c. 1580–1658) was born at Logroño, in the Ebro valley. After receiving his early education from the Jesuits, he went on to read law at Salamanca and afterwards considered embarking on a military career. His life took a different direction, however, when he was appointed to the office of secretary in the Consejo de Estado by the Duke of Lerma. Unfortunately, the downfall of Rodrigo Calderón and Lerma, Zárate’s protectors, made his position at the court uncertain during the last years of the reign of Philip III; and this uncertainty was heightened with the accession of Philip IV to the throne in 1621, since the favour of Calderón automatically put his future in doubt with Olivares. Zárate managed to remain at court, however, thanks to the support of the Duke of Medina Sidonia, which he earned by praising the Duke’s victories over the Ottoman Turks in his poem ‘La galeota reforzada’ (1619) (González de Garay 1981: 51–58). Philip III’s court, like that of his father, was marked by the king’s strong interest in the arts. Although his activities as a patron are less renowned than Philip II’s commissions for the Escorial or Philip IV’s projects for the Buen Retiro and the Torre de la Parada, his decoration of the royal palace in Valladolid and redecoration of the fire-damaged palace of El Pardo, among other endeavours, mark the advancement of the visual arts during his reign (Lapuerta Montoya 2002: 7–13). In this context, Zárate reached the height of his favour at court. And even as Zárate’s political fortunes waned in the 1620s, Spain’s reputation as a hub of artistic activity reached a new high point. Spanish pre-eminence for collections of paintings, drawings and sculpture, as both Carducho and Ceán Bermúdez record, would be signalled by the acquisitions made and gifts received by the Prince of Wales (the future Charles I of England) during his 1623 visit to Madrid — acquisitions which sparked an international vogue for paintings from the Spanish capital (Ceán Bermúdez 1800: ii, 148–51). In this context, it is not surprising that many of Zárate’s poems emphasize themes related to painting.2 His ‘Canción real’, in particular, stands out as a condensed reflection on some of the ideas about art and artists frequently debated by seventeenth-century Spanish painters and theorists: the notion of painting as a means for communication, for instance; a preoccupation with the effects that paintings produce in the viewer; and a conception of the sacred, supernatural, role of the painter. Carducho himself, and the manuscript of his Diálogos, might have introduced the poet to these issues, but it is likely that Zárate was familiar with the work of others on the subject, especially Cardinal Gabriele Paleotti’s Discorso intorno alle imagini sacre e profane (1582), and he would doubtless have been involved in discussions about these ideas in court circles. In praising the artist, Zárate’s ‘Canción real’ commends those qualities of painting that achieve communication, rather than those which merely constitute beautiful objects. Painting is conceived of as a language, and therefore akin to lyrical or literary creation; hence the poem conflates writing and music, writing and painting, ‘con ambos plectros’ (stanza II, line 6), and ‘con dos plumas’ (IV, 11). In this regard, the assertion that painting is poesía muda pervades Golden-Age treatises on the subject. The painter is ‘sin lengua, y 2 See, for example, ‘Al retrato de Inocencio X’, ‘A una hermosa retratada con una calavera’, and ‘A un retrato no muy perfecto de una difunta muy hermosa’, in Simón Díaz 1947: ii, 33, 126, and 134; ‘La acción de Alexandro con Apeles, dándole a Campaspe’ and ‘A Pedro Pablo Rubens, famoso pintor flamenco’, in Simón Díaz 1976: 71–72 and 55–56.

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sin voz tan eloquente’ (I, 5), and ‘aun más, que si hablara, sentencioso’ (I, 10). The almost obsessive preoccupation among Zárate’s contemporaries about the propriety of paintings reflects their recognition that the same qualities which make painting a powerful and effective language could also allow it to communicate spiritual and intellectual problems and concerns. In his conception of paintings as tools for communication, Zárate is particularly interested in the emotional responses (afectos) which paintings prompt in viewers. The brush is described as ‘eloquente’ because it can convey to the viewer a whole range of afectos, as exemplified in I, 7–9. A similar interest in afectos can be found in Zárate’s sonnet to Rubens, whom he might have met at court when the latter first travelled to Spain as an emissary of the Duke of Mantua in 1605. The first lines of the sonnet recall lines 6–9 of the first stanza of the ‘Canción real’: Rubens que elevas con lo dulce, espantas quando acciones aplicas a furores siendo tan soberanos tus primores, que aun cuando en plumas finjes, tu honor cantas. (Simón Díaz 1976: 55–56)

Further on in the ‘Canción real’, Zárate writes that the sight of ‘pagan’ paintings can arouse a physical response from the viewer, to the viewer’s detriment (‘irrita, se irrita, y deshonora’, III, 7). The poet also speaks of the rhetorical qualities of paintings that, as a discourse, persuade the viewer, as in the case of other artists finding themselves swayed to follow the painter’s ideals (‘obliga [...] a que [...] le siga’, III, 2,5). This leads to the main theme of the poem, that of the ‘Christiano Artífice’ (III, 5). Its emphasis on this theme sets it apart from the seven other poems included in the treatise. While Antonio Herrera Manrique’s and Juan Pérez de Montalbán’s poems address the divine origins of painting, and others among the contributing poets take up the topos of pictura poema silens, Zárate stresses the implications that these two ideas together have for painters of sacred subjects in terms of moral responsibility and artistic decorum. It is not by accident that Zárate’s poem is placed at the end of the book’s seventh dialogue, ‘De las diferencias, y modos de pintar los sucessos e historias sagradas con la decencia que se deve’, and that an engraving of St Luke painting Christ and the Virgin immediately follows the poem (fol. 130r). Zárate’s characterization of Carducho follows the ideal of the ‘Christian painter’, as opposed to a ‘mere painter’. The contrast appears clearly in II, 8–9, which describes Carducho as ‘Siendo (no Apeles sólo) / Lucas, divino Apeles’. Zárate borrows this distinction from Paleotti’s 1582 Discorso, which Carducho clearly had also read, for he quotes Paleotti in the Diálogos. Among his quotations from the Discorso, however, Carducho does not use the phrase ‘christiano artífice’, and Zárate’s wording is close enough to Paleotti’s (‘artefice cristiano’) to suggest that Zárate may have been directly familiar with the Discorso (209). The Christian painter is aware that his artistic talent is a supernatural gift, and therefore endeavours to employ all the powers of his skill in producing paintings that will turn other people towards God (‘Assi a tan alto don agradecido, / Restituye á su autor lo recibido’, II, 12–13). This he believes to be the proper use of an otherwise powerful but neutral tool. The way to excel as a Christian painter involves not only mastering the painterly techniques and using them in the service of religious art, but also a moral perfection of the artist and even a certain kind of sanctity: ‘Como vive, pintando; / Viviendo, como pinta’ (III, 8–9); ‘Siendo en pintar, como en vivir exemplo’ (IV, 2). St Luke, whom tradition held to be a painter, was for

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Zárate the obvious model of ‘christiano artífice’ and also of a sacred painter-writer, hence the many allusions to Luke in the ‘Canción real’ (III, 2, 10; IV, 10; V, 3) and in the Diálogos themselves. In the translation, we have chosen to adapt the original hendecasyllables to an approximation of English blank verse, with five stresses, and have rendered the heptasyllables as shorter lines with three stresses. We follow the printed version of 1633, rather than the manuscript, noting when the two vary. In our presentation of the Spanish poem, we have maintained the author’s capitalization, spelling, and punctuation throughout. Golden-Age typographical conventions, such as the alternations of u and v, as well as the diacritical marks and instances of long s, have been modernized. Cancion real de Francisco Lopez de Zarate, en alabança deste Assunto, y del autor. I.

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Si ofende a las virtudes, el que canta Los vicios: y el pinzel es tan valie[n]te, Que convirtiendo en mármores colores, Jaspeadas pirámides levanta, Y es sin lengua, y sin voz tan eloquente, Que explica las essencias, los primores; En lo marcial mostrando los furores, En la piedad lo blando, Almas en lo amoroso, Y da glorias, callando, Siendo aun más, que si hablara, sentencioso; No eches a mal, o tú, que tanto alcanças, (Con sujetos indignos) alabanças. Imita el exemplar, que te propone Este, que con su cuna honró a Florencia, Cuyo nombre se aclama la vitoria; El que con vida, y con pinzel se opone Del tiempo assolador a la inclemencia;

line I.1 This verse is missing in the MS (Simón Díaz 1976: 49). line I.2 ‘El Pincel con virtud es tan valiente’ in the MS (Simón Díaz 1976: 49). line I.3 Zárate is perhaps playing on the double meaning of mármor here, as both ‘marble’ or ‘marblework’ and ‘a printer’s imposing stone’ or ‘press stone’. José Giráldez defines mármol as a ‘mesa con tablero de piedra en que antiguamente se imponían las formas’. In early modern wooden presses, the mármol was ‘la superficie plana y convenientemente pulimentada que servía de platina’ (1884: 270). See also Moll 2000: 23. The multiple meaning of mármor or mármol allows Zárate subtly to conflate representations of literary communication and artistic creation. line I.10 The phrase ‘da glorias’ may be an allusion to the rompimiento de glorias, the convention found in Renaissance and Baroque painting which represents theophanies or other divine revelations by sunlit openings in the clouds, often accompanied by cherubim or radiant beams. It could also perhaps evoke the opening of Psalm 115, ‘Non nobis Domine, non nobis, sed nomini tuo da gloriam’, in keeping with Zárate’s insistence that any artistic ability or accomplishments be devoted to the Creator (cf. lines II.13 and IV.1). line I.11 ‘Poderoso’ in the MS (Simón Díaz 1976: 49). line II.3 Zárate here plays with the etymology of Carducho’s first name. Vicencio, like the Latin name Vincentius and the English name Vincent, derives from the Latin participle vincens ‘vanquishing’, ‘conquering’. Other poems included in Carducho’s book, such as those by José de Valdivielso and Lope de Vega, likewise pun on his name

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El que con ambos plectros su memoria Dedica a eterna fama, eterna gloria; Siendo (no Apeles solo) Lucas, divino Apeles; A quien luzes Apolo, Apolo celestial dio por pinzeles; Assí a tan alto don agradecido, Restituye à su autor lo recibido. Como con el pinzel, y con la pluma Tintos siempre en verdad, Lucas obliga (Empleándolos en Christo, y en su Aurora, Que son de todas perfecciones suma) A que el Christiano Artífice le siga; No proponiendo a Venus, Lamia, o Flora; Pues irrita, se irrita, y deshonora. Como vive, pintando; Viviendo, como pinta, A Lucas imitando, De quien usa Vicencio pluma, y tinta, Con el Arte, y costumbres documenta; Que en todo, al que propone, representa.

line II. 6 and 7 ‘Su memoria dedica’, is more easily understood if ‘memoria’ — one of the three ‘potencias del alma’ — is taken as a synecdoche for the mind. line II.9 The author follows here the apocryphal tradition, very popular in his time, that St Luke was a painter by profession. This association of Luke with painting is attested as early as the sixth century in the writings of Theodore Lector. According to the tradition, Luke painted the Virgin from life, and an icon of the Virgin in Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome was thought to be one of such portraits. Apelles was the most celebrated Greek painter of antiquity. Covarrubias identifies him as the ‘Pintor excellentíssimo de la Isla de Coos. Floreció en tiempo de Alexandro a quien sólo conçedió pudiese hacer retrato suyo. [...] Él mismo pintó un cavallo y en su competençia se pintaron otros y para que constase la diferencia de éste a los demás, trujeron cavallos naturales a la presençia de los demás y no hiçieron ningún movimiento, pero mostrando Apeles el suyo, relincharon’ (2001, s.v. Apeles). As Apelles was the supreme painter of the ancient pagan world, so one should aspire to be a ‘Christian Apelles’. line III.2–3 The Virgin Mary is the ‘aurora’ here, Christ’s Dawn (cf. Luis de Belmonte Bermúdez’s religious epic La aurora de Cristo and Lope de Vega’s sonnet ‘A don Francisco de la Cueva y Silva’ in La vega del Parnaso, which calls Mary ‘la Aurora de Dios Sol’). This image of the Virgin was popularized because it was one of those associated with the Virgin Mary in the Litanies dedicated to her (Litaniae Lauretanae), in which the phrase ‘Stella matutina’ is used. The same morning star motif was used by a number of artists who included images from the Litanies to the Virgin in their depictions of the Immaculate Conception. As previously noted, St Luke was supposed to have painted the Virgin’s portrait. line III.5 ‘lo siga’ in the MS (Simón Díaz 1976: 50). line III.6 ‘Tamia’ in the MS (Simón Díaz 1976: 50). In classical mythology, Venus, Lamia, and Flora are goddesses or demi-goddesses, each more or less associated with base sensuality in the Golden Age imagination. In his discussion of Venus, the Roman goddess of love and beauty, Pérez de Moya draws on St Augustine’s description of Venus as the deity of ‘mujeres públicas’, as well as the goddess of virgins and married women. ‘Píntanla desnuda [...]. La concha marina que tiene en la mano denota el insaciable deseo libidinoso de los lujuriosos, porque según dicen los naturales, la concha con todo el cuerpo abierto se llega al coito’ (1995: 379–83). Covarrubias notes that the name Lamia had various meanings in antiquity: ‘Los antiguos se persuadieron a que avía ciertas mugeres, o por mejor dezir unas fantasmas de malos espíritus, que en forma y figura de mugeres muy hermosas atrahían a sí los niños y

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A su Autor, lo que deve, restituye; Siendo en pintar, como en vivir exemplo: Tanto, que el que sus obras imitare, Los términos profanos lexos huye, Y se levanta duplicado templo Con lo que, en las costumbres, enseñare, O con imitaciones, que pintare; Pues nadie iguala tanto Con pinzel, pluma, y vida Al Pintor sacrosanto, Que dexó con dos plumas repetida La alta Deidad, honor de la alabança, Vida de todo, fin de la esperança. Artífices divinos, aunque humanos, Pues se os concede, haceros soberanos, A Lucas imitando, ò a Vicencio. O no, abatáis las plumas, o no, al suelo; Que Dios las da, para bolar al cielo. Whoever sings of vices, virtues spurns; The painter’s brush wields such effective force It raises jaspered pyramids, and turns Colours into marble-work, imposing stones; So eloquent, though lacking tongue and voice, It brings forth essences and excellence, Reveals the raging violence of war, Mercy’s gentleness, The spiritual side of love; In silence gives us glories, Richer in meaning than it might with words; Oh, you who have attained such eminence Waste not your eulogies on worthless men.

los mancebos con halagos y últimamente los matavan y se los comían. [...] Es cosa vulgarmente recibida aver en África, entre los demás monstruos que aquella región cría, un animal con el rostro de donzella muy hermosa, cabellos largos y rubios, el cuello y pechos de tanta perfeción, que el pincel haría mucho en imitarlos y contrahazerlos. Estos descubren, con que atrahen para sí los hombres, y quando los han a las manos los despedaçan’ (2003, s.v. lamias). Finally, Pérez de Moya again cites Augustine’s De civitate Dei for his characterization of Flora as ‘una famosa ramera, que los romanos canonizaron por deesa’. So great was her beauty that she ‘vendía su cuerpo a cuantos querían, mas si no la daban gran suma de dinero, no admitía a nadie’, and so great was her resulting profit that, upon her death, she left funds to the Roman people to perpetuate a festival in her honour. The Romans, in turn, built a temple to Flora and proclaimed her the goddess of flowers (1995: 422). Mira de Amescua, in El esclavo del demonio (1612), sets up a contrast similar to Zárate’s, with Flora and Lamia in contraposition to virtue. Furious over his daughter’s rejection of an arranged marriage, the aging father Marcelo associates the disobedient daughter with Flora and Lamia, rather than with faithful Penelope and the virtuous Lucrecia, who chose suicide rather than a life dishonoured: Hija que al padre desprecia, viva y muera con infamia, siga como loca y necia a la antigua Flora y Lamia, no a Penélope y Lucrecia. (I.141–45) line III.11 ‘Que a Vicencio prestó la pluma y tinta’ in the MS (Simón Díaz 1976: 50).

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Aspire to match the model offered you By one who honoured Florence with his birth, Whose very name his Victory proclaims; Who sets himself against destructive Time’s Inclemency, his life, his artist’s brush; He who with pen and plectrum dedicates His thoughts to ageless glory, ageless fame; Not just Apelles he, But Luke, divine Apelles, To whom Apollo gave God-given light to use instead of brushes; In gratitude for this high gift, he gives Back to his Author all that he’s received.

III.

Saint Luke compels the Christian artisan To follow him in dipping brush and pen Forever in the truth (applying them To Christ and His Aurora, all perfection’s sum); Rejecting all the pagan images Like Venus, Lamia, Flora, bringing dishonour Exciting the artist’s senses or another’s. By painting as he lives, And living as he paints, Vicencio follows Luke, Whose pen and pigments always he employs To document morality with Art, Depicting exactly all he undertakes.

IV.

He gives again his Author what is due, Exemplary in painting as in life, And those who seek to emulate his work Should flee from places of profanity; Building a temple with a double space For what he teaches by the way he lives, Or paints as copies of reality; No one comes so near With paintbrush, pen and life, The holiest painter of all, Who replicated with his dual quills God on high who merits every praise; The life of all, the goal of all our hopes.

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O artisans divine, though merely men, To you are granted means to reign supreme, Following Vicencio or Luke. Do not debase your quills with earthly themes; God gave you them to fly aloft to heaven.

WORKS CITED Carducho, Vicencio, 1979. Diálogos de la pintura, su defensa, origen, esencia, definición, modos y diferencias, ed. Francisco Calvo Serraller (Madrid: Turner) [1st ed., Madrid: Francisco Martínez, 1633].

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Ceán Bermúdez, Juan Agustín, 1800. Diccionario histórico de los más ilustres profesores de las bellas artes en España, 6 vols (Madrid: Imprenta de la Viuda de Ibarra). Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de, 2001. Suplemento al Tesoro de la lengua castellana, ed. Georgina Dopico & Jacques Lezra (Madrid: Polifemo). ——, 2003. Tesoro de la lengua, ed. Martí de Riquer Morera (Barcelona: Alta Fulla). Giráldez, José, 1884. Tratado de la tipografía o arte de la imprenta (Madrid: Eduardo Cuesta y Sánchez). González de Garay Fernández, María Teresa, 1981. Introducción a la obra poética de Francisco López de Zárate (Logroño: Instituto de Estudios Riojanos). Lapuerta Montoya, Magdalena de, 2002. Los pintores de la Corte de Felipe III: la Casa Real de El Pardo (Madrid: Encuentro). Mira de Amescua, Antonio, 1905. Comedia famosa del esclavo del demonio, ed. Milton A. Buchanan (Baltimore: Furst). Moll, Jaime, 2000. ‘La imprenta manual’, in Imprenta y crítica textual en el Siglo de Oro, ed. Francisco Rico (Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid), pp. 13–27. Paleotti, Gabriele, 1582. Discorso intorno alle imagini sacre e profane (Bologna) [repr. in Trattati d’arte del cinquecento, ed. Paola Barocchi, 3 vols (Bari: Laterza, 1961), ii, pp. 119–503)]. Pérez de Moya, Juan, 1995. Philosofía secreta de la gentilidad, ed. Carlos Clavería (Madrid: Cátedra). Sánchez Cantón, Francisco Javier, ed., 1933. Fuentes literarias para la historia del arte español, ii (Madrid: Imprenta Clásica Española). Simón Díaz, José, ed., 1976. Francisco López de Zárate: sesenta y seis poemas inéditos (Logroño: Instituto de Estudios Riojanos). ——, 1947. Obras varias de Francisco López de Zárate, 2 vols (Madrid: CSIC).

El poema llamado ‘Canción real’ de Francisco López de Zárate (c. 1580–1658), en alabanza de la pintura y del pintor Vicencio Carducho, publicado con los Diálogos de la pintura de este último en 1633, no ha sido objeto del estudio que merece. Su contexto histórico e ideológico, sobre todo, necesita aclararse. En la poesía de Zárate se traslucen preocupaciones por la pintura, respondiendo sin duda al ambiente cortesano de patrocinio y coleccionismo. Dichos temas, presentes en el poema que volvemos a editar, son principalmente tres: la concepción de la pintura como lenguaje, el interés por los efectos de la pintura en el espectador, y la conciencia del papel supernatural del pintor. Estas ideas muestran un Zárate conocedor de la teoría artística de su tiempo, y sugieren que el poeta conoció el Discorso intorno alle imagini sacre e profane del cardenal Gabriele Paleotti (1582). Nuestra edición anotada del texto, con una breve introducción y una traducción inglesa en verso procura proporcionar las claves para la mejor comprensión del poema.