Francisco Pacheco Y Su Libro De Retratos. by Marta P. Cacho Casal
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BR.DEC.pg.proof.corrs_Layout 1 19/11/2012 12:31 Page 852 BOOKS 1 For the recent restoration of the Farnesina, see R. destined for publication and that, in its present Varoli Piazza, ed.: Raffaello: La Loggia di Amore e Psiche form, it is incomplete and not assembled as alla Farnesina , Milan 2002. Pacheco intended. She discusses precedents 2 G. Émile-Mâle: Pour une histoire de la restoration des for the work, in particular Paolo Giovio’s peintures en France , Paris 1982, ed. S. Bergeon Langle, Paris 2008, p.234. Elogia virorum illustrium (Basel 1575–77), whose 3 For Cavalcaselle, see S. Rinaldi: I Fiscali, riparatori di publications were well known in Spain. An dipinti – Vicende e concezioni del restauro tra Ottocento e influence closer to home existed in the form Novecento , Rome 1998, pp.99 –100 and 105 –06. of Gonzalo Argote de Molino’s museum, 4 Paolo and Laura Mora and Paul Philippot, contrary or camerín , in Seville, which was considered of to what Hoeniger writes (pp.373–74), correctly state such importance that Philip II went to see it that a ‘ stacco ’ is the removal of the paint layer together on his visit to the city in 1570. As well as the with the plaster layers lying immediately beneath it, library and the Wunder kammer , of particular while a ‘ strappo ’ is the removal of the paint layer alone; interest was the portrait gallery of celebrated see P. and L. Mora and P. Philippot: Conservation of Wall Paintings , Bologna 1984; (2nd ed.), Bologna 2002; men carried out by Philip’s royal painter Alon - Italian translation, 1998. so Sánchez Coello, a project Pacheco records in the Libro . It would seem that Pacheco was creating his own portrait gallery, one that cel - ebrated the illustrious men of his own city of Seville as well as those of the reign of Philip II. This volume makes a valuable contribution Francisco Pacheco y su Libro de to our knowledge of Pacheco and the intel - Retratos. By Marta P. Cacho Casal. 376 pp. lectual circles within which he moved. It also incl. 49 col. ills. (Fundación Focus-Abengoa, enriches our understanding of the complex - Seville and Marcial Pons, Madrid, 2011), ities of cultural life in Seville during the 30. ISBN 978–84–92820–55–9. Golden Age. € Reviewed by ROSEMARIE MULCAHY 29. Portrait of Pablo de Cespedes , by Francisco Pacheco. 1 A facsimile edition of Pacheco’s Libro de Retratos was Black chalk with red chalk, frame in pen and brown published by the Fundación Lázaro Galdiano, with a ink, with brown and white wash, 19.3 by 14.2 cm. prologue by Diego Angulo, Madrid 1983. FRANCISCO PACHECO (1564–1644 ) is not (Fundación Lázaro Galdiano, Madrid). 2 renowned for his paintings, which are rather The essential publication for any study of Pacheco is Bonaventura Bassegoda I Hugas’s magisterial annotated stiff and dry and often evidently based on print - edition of El Arte de la Pintura , Madrid 1990. ed sources. His claim to fame, apart from his studies of the Libro , notably by Angulo, Piñero being the father-in-law of Velázquez, is his y Reyes, Bassegoda and Carrete, but none as treatise El Arte de la Pintura (1649), the book comprehensive as Marta Cacho’s thorough and that has had most influence on the historiog - lucidly written text, which brings Pacheco and raphy of Spanish art and which captures the his intellectual milieu vividly alive. His fortuna , essence of the working methods and cultural biography and career as a writer is reappraised. Rethinking the Baroque. Edited by Helen environment of artists in late sixteenth- and The legend of Pacheco’s Academy, as Bassego - Hills. 243 pp. incl. 25 col. + 31 b. & w. ills. seventeenth-century Spain. Less well known is da has shown, was born in the eighteenth cen - (Ashgate Publishing, Farnham, 2011), £65. his Libro de Retratos , a unique work that brings tury. 2 Cacho argues that the position that he ISBN 978–0–7546–6685–1. together drawing, literature and poetry. Con - held among Andalusian scholars of his time was ceived as a homage to his native city of Seville not that of a head of an academy but rather of Reviewed by OWEN HOPKINS and its most distinguished citizens (the full title an amateur of letters and scholarship. The eulo - is Libro de descripción de verdaderos Retratos, de gies in the Libro are examined with the intent THIS BOOK, A collection of ten essays mostly ilustres y memorables varones ), it may also be seen of demonstrating that the text (also including derived from a conference held at the Univer - as a memorial to himself as an artist and poet. 1 poems and inscriptions) is as valuable as the sity of York in 2006, aims to recover the term It is a most impressive body of work containing portraits. In the process we are made aware of Baroque from the ‘margins of art history’; that fifty-six black and red pencil drawings Pacheco’s skills as an editor and compiler; he is, art history as it is currently practised. The (Pacheco himself affirmed that he had made had no inhibitions in drawing upon the work Baroque is still broadly understood as the more than 170) of humanists, intellectuals, of others. His intelligent use of plagiarism is mode of art and architecture that emerged in churchmen, men of arms and letters, profes - demonstrated by Cacho with comparative Rome in the work of Bernini and Borromini sionals and artists, with biographies, eulogies tables. He is shown at his most original in the before spreading throughout Europe, and is and poems. In the Arte , Pacheco deals at length eulogies of artists: Cespedes, Vargas and Cam - characterised perhaps above all by the qualities with portraiture and the importance of drawing paña. Pacheco also collaborated with writers of illusion and drama. Yet, historians working from life. In the Libro we can see his talent for and poets: at least twenty-eight poems were on the period traditionally termed Baroque capturing a likeness without flattery – this is commissioned for the Libro . An examination (roughly spanning from the end of the Coun - particularly evident in his portraits of church - of the literary forms of the day shows the cil of Trent in 1563 to the emergence of the men. His technique of very finely drawn various conventions used; it is striking to Rococo in France and Lord Burlington’s rule hatching, combined with rubbing the paper what extent the Horatian concept of ars poetica of taste in 1720s Britain) have shied away from with pencil, creates subtle tonal effects. Out - permeates the poems. using the term. In these circles the Baroque standing portraits include those of the painter The author tackles the problems inherent in is commonly perceived as an anachronism Pablo de Cespedes (Fig.29), the famous Mer - the Libro with admirable clarity: the purpose (there was no ‘Baroque’ art and architecture cedarian preacher Fernando de Santiago, and for which it was made, the lack of rational in the seventeenth century) and moreover, the founder of artillery Francisco de Ballesteros. order in the way in which it is currently reflective of an outdated Hegelian mode of The Libro , which is now in the Fundación bound, its lack of completion, doubts as to the history at odds with an empirical, materialist Lázaro Galdiano in Madrid, had disappeared identity of some of the sitters, the relationship approach. At the same time, the work of Wal - from sight soon after Pacheco’s death and was to the Libro of the portrait drawings in the ter Benjamin and Gilles Deleuze – notably rediscovered in 1864 and purchased by Asensio Palacio Real, the Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid, the latter’s Le pli: Leibniz et le baroque (1988) – y Toledo, who published the first monograph and the Hispanic Society of America, New has brought the Baroque into the lexicon of on it in 1876. There have been subsequent York. She concludes that the Libro was not a generation of scholars working in a wide 852 december 2012 • cliv • the burlington magazine BR.DEC.pg.proof.corrs_Layout 1 19/11/2012 12:31 Page 853 BOOKS variety of fields yet with little interest in its Geraghty and Glenn Adamson. A recurring which the Spanish monarchy governed its traditional meanings. This book, as its editor, and important theme is Wölfflin’s distinction empire. Philip II’s interest in prints and his Helen Hills, states, ‘is designed to explore between the ontological and the epistemolog - awareness of their efficacy for disseminating what happens when these worlds mesh’. ical. This was key to his famous classificatory images and information had a major impact An opening essay by Hills succinctly out - system, and acts as the inspiration for Ger - on the development of printmaking in Spain. lines the still-contested etymology of the term aghty’s reassessment of several drawings by His travels throughout Europe exposed him Baroque and discusses its traditional uses as Nicholas Hawksmoor produced in the 1690s to the highly organised printmaking industry well as those to which it is put by Benjamin when he was still assisting Christopher Wren there. He had a particular interest in maps, and Deleuze, among others. Essays by Alina with the completion of St Paul’s Cathedral. By reflecting his enthusiasm for new printing Payne and Howard Caygill tackle the emer - mixing orthographic and perspective views technologies while also fulfilling a practical gence of Baroque as style. Payne works from in the same drawing, Hawksmoor, Geraghty need for information about his empire. It is the Baroque’s extraordinary reversal of status argues, sought to collapse the fundamental against this background that the development between the works of Jacob Burckhardt distinction Wölfflin later identified.