Symbolism in the Paintings: Lament for the Death of a Matador

Symbolism in the paintings: Lament for the Death of a Matador

(Quoted from John Fulton) I. Cogida and Death

The haunting refrain of “At five in the afternoon” is echoed throughout the composition. Most obviously it resounds in five hooded figures, the fleeting afternoon hours, who have turned their backs forever on the plaza of death and the incident that ahs just occurred within a crypt of five exploding stones.

Bull and man keep death’s violent rendezvous. The matador’s glittering arms mark the fatal hour as he is spun on the face of time by death’s horn. His muletta – his blood – “like a long, dark, sad tongue…seems to slide” from five rigid fingers. The alguaciles, death’s couriers mounted on black funeral horses, wait in the bullring’s shadows.

II. The Spilled Blood

The spilt blood, represented by the matador’s red parade cape with its hard, almost liquid sheen, seems to drip and seep from the decaying walls of a “grey bullring of a dream”. From their balcony, Pain and Gangrene, draped in black mantillas, keep a greedy watch over the matador’s powerful body which is already bowed in agony beneath their cold shadows. Beyond a Roman ruin and growth of cypresses, the Giralda tower rises up from Sevilla’s cathedral. It is August and the minaret is inhabited by kestrals. In his Poemas de Cante Hondo, Lorca says: “Seville is a tower full of accurate archers”. Five jet black bulls momentarily lift their heads from the marsh grass. With the bulls are cattle egrets whose wings will soon flower white with flight. Lorca refers to “Los Toros de Guisando”, those formidable stone bulls which stand in a field near Avila and are believed to have been sculpted and used for bull worship and sacrifices before the Roman occupation of Spain. Around the death’s head niche, above the bulls, is inscribed, “He was killed by a bull from the ranch of Ayala”. Written on the banner flying over the plaza is “The Virgin of the Dew (called the white dove in Sevilla) has taken him up”.

III. The Laid Out Body

The most powerful dirge ever written for the death of a bullfighter, bears off, up through soft mists, the athletic body of the matador until it is “lost in the arena of the moon, that feigns itself a bull in childish play.” He is left “where no mortal fish may croon, in the white thickets of the frozen spray”.

Death has put on him the skull of a minotaur, and left his “body with its snapped and trailing reins,” symbolized by yards of fluttering black funeral ribbon. The gold letters on the ribbon trace a lifetime: 4 Junio 1891 Sevilla – 13 Agosto 1934 – Plaza de Toros Manzanares. Ignacio, go! Though bellowing bulls may froth –

Sleep, fly and rest. Even the ocean dies ! IV. Absence of the Soul

Using the lines: The Child does not know you nor the afternoon,

because you have died forever… …no one will want to look into your eyes

because you have died forevermore.

John drew the matador’s figure from behind. The most intricately designed part of the “suit of lights” is shown. The ornamental quality of the embroidery is balanced and sustained by the severe stylization of the torero’s jacket into a coffin shape. Later, John realized how deeply rooted this balance was in Spanish art and history. Even though Andalucía’s ornate mosques of Cordoba, Sevilla and Granada are covered with the natural lace of jasmine, bougainvillea and ivy, they are sustained by severe and geometrical Roman foundations.

The traje de luces, not unlike religious vestaments, commands respect. Many men have died in these splendid suits of their profession. Like a Mithraic high priest, the matador uses a sword to take life from the beast that, since time, immemorial, has been the supreme symbol of strength and fertility. For the suit in this painting, John used the violet color of papal robes.

The matador holds a sword as though it were an offering. His gaze is fixed upon an open bullring where the destinies have gathered to watch the eternal “dual between life and death, enacted almost as a ritual dance” in the arena of time.