Francisco Pacheco and Jerome Nadal: New Light on the Flemish Sources of the Spanish "Picture-within-the-Picture" Author(s): John F. Moffitt Source: The Art Bulletin, Vol. 72, No. 4 (Dec., 1990), pp. 631-638 Published by: College Art Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3045765 Accessed: 07/10/2009 12:09 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=caa. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. College Art Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Art Bulletin. http://www.jstor.org FranciscoPacheco and JeromeNadal: New Light on the Flemish Sourcesof the Spanish"Picture-within-the-Picture" John E Moffitt "Asi lo estampo el padre Nadal." Iberian treatment of this device dates to 1616, appearing -Francisco Pacheco (1638) in Saint Irene Healing the Wounds of Saint Sebastian (Fig. 1) painted by Francisco Pacheco (1564-1654).6 According The role of Netherlandish prints in providing composi- to Priscilla E. Muller, Pacheco's painting contains those tional prototypes for Spanish artists of the Siglo de Oro is generalized Flemish characteristics of "immobility, com- increasingly being considered significant, since the matter positional symmetry, . dichotomy of perspective (sep- was first surveyed in a fairly comprehensive fashion in 1948 arate vanishing-points in the earthly and the celestial areas), by the late Martin Soria.1 More recently, Netherlandish [and] similarity of pose and gesture in the figures." As she prints (particularly in the form of illustrations in emblem concludes, "the traits of Hispano-Flemish painting of the books) have been shown to have formed a point of de- earlier sixteenth-century (correctness, reticence and exact- parture for many Spanish artists.2 The geographical exten- itude) remained [Pacheco's] heritage."7 What is especially sion of such practices is striking. For instance, some studies noteworthy in the composition of the canvas is Pacheco's have documented the indispensability of these well-trav- inclusion of an enframed scene, illustrating the martyrdom eled graphic materials for artists working in Latin Amer- of Saint Sebastian. As has been recently demonstrated, the ica,3 and Northern engravings can even be credited with model for Pacheco's "cuadro dentro del cuadro" was a having spawned certain characteristic motifs seen in Ba- Flemish print of the same title, by Jan Harmensz. Muller roque architectural designs in the New World.4 As such (Fig. 2).8 Regardless of its particular graphic source, it is findings reveal, a densely detailed Netherlandish print was even more significant that Pacheco employed the motif for for Spaniards more often than not the preferred icono- a specific purpose: to illustrate an episode that had tran- graphic source. The focus of this essay is a single com- spired before the moment represented in the scene in the positional device, in effect a narrative format, that was to foreground of the painting, showing the obviously later become a characteristic staple of Spanish Baroque painting, moment of the healing of the arrow wounds. The result is the so-called "cuadro dentro del cuadro," or "the picture- what we may call "temporal displacement." Even though within-the-picture."/5 Pacheco's painting no longer exists (it was destroyed in 1936 The first instance of what was to become the typically during the first months of the Spanish Civil War), the artist 1 M. Soria, "Some Flemish Sources of Baroque Painting in Spain," Art analyze the strictly Spanish adaptations of the device and, additionally, Bulletin, xxx, 1948, 249-259. to reveal the didactic purposes of its original and very specific, Flemish 2 source. For the emblematic sources in particular, see esp. J. Gallego, Visi6n y simbolos en la pintura espaiola del Siglo de Oro, Madrid, 1972; and S. 6 On this artist, see J.M. Ascenci6 y Toledo, Francisco Pacheco, sus obras Sebastian, Contrarreforma y barroco: Lecturas iconograficas e iconol6- artisticas y literarias, Seville, 1867; A.L. Mayer, Die Sevillaner Maler- gicas, Madrid, 1981. Dr. Sebastian has since published many other studies schule, Leipzig, 1911, 90-101; F. Rodriguez Marin, Francisco Pacheco, on the same issue. Maestro de Velazquez, Madrid, 1923; P.E. Muller, "FranciscoPacheco as 3 a For the impact of Netherlandish prints in the New World, see esp. P. Painter," Marsyas, x, 1961, 39-44; M. Barbadilla, Pacheco, su tierra y Kelemen, Baroque and Rococo in Latin America, New York, 1951; M.B. su tiempo, Jerez de la Frontera, 1964; J. Brown, Images and Ideas in Sev- Burke, Spain and New Spain: Mexican Colonial Arts in Their European enteenth-Century Spanish Painting, Princeton, 1978, 32-48; E. Bermejo, Context, Corpus Christi, 1979; and S. Sebastian, Arte iberoamericano, "Influencia de una obra flamenca en Francisco Pacheco," Archivo espaiol desde la colonizacion a la independencia, Madrid, 2 vols., 1985-86. de arte, LV, 1982, 3-8; and S.A. Vosters, "Lampsonio, Vasari, van Mander y Pacheco," Goya, Nov.-Dec. 1985, 130-139. 4 See esp. J.F. Moffitt, "Wendel Dietterlin and the Estipite. Observations 7 on Architectural Style in Colonial Mexican Ecclesiastical Facades: 'Ba- Muller (as in n. 6), 39. 8 roque,' or 'Neo-Mannerist'?" Boletin del Seminario de Estudios de Arte y This iconographic source was only recently identified by different schol- Arqueologia de la Universidad de Valladolid, L, 1984, 325-349. ars: E. Valdivieso Gonzalez and J.M. Serrera Contreras, Pintura sevillana 5 On this compositional motif, see B. Mestre Fiol, El cuadro en el cuadro: del primer tercio del siglo XVII (Historia de la pintura espaiola), Madrid, Pacheco, Velazquez, Mazo, Manet, Palma de Mallorca, 1977; A. Chastel, 1985, cat. no. 239; and L. Konecny, "Una ojeada en la 'carcel dorada' del maestro "Le Tableau dans le tableau" in Fables, formes, figures, Paris, 1978, II, Pacheco," Boletin del Museo e Instituto Camon Aznar, xxvII, 75-97; and J. Gallego, El cuadro dentro del cuadro, Madrid, 1978. Al- 1987, 17-25. As these different authors indicate, the print had been derived though Gallego demonstrates that this motif, with its innumerable vari- in its turn from a painting by Hans van Aachen of ca. 1588. ations, is found throughout the history of art, it is my intention only to 632 THE ART BULLETIN DECEMBER 1990 VOLUME LXXII NUMBER 4 1 F Pacheco, Saint Irene Healing the Wounds of Saint Sebas- 2 Jan Harmensz. Muller, The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian, tian, 1616 (formerlyAlcala de Guadaira) ca. 1598 wrote in some detail about his unusual work, so different pies the foreground: "Aquella Santa viuda Irene que le cur6 from any other Saint Sebastian known to us.9 de las heridas." This present moment/foreground motif is Given this published testimony, the rather unusual em- complemented by an event in the past represented by the phasis placed upon the nurse-like ministrations of Saint picture-within-the-picture, which takes place in the back- Irene in the foreground is easily explained by the painting's ground of the picture, "donde le estan asaeteando." Pa- intended destination. According to Pacheco, his picture was checo concluded his statement by alluding to a third, or commissioned "para un Hospital de San Sebastian de Al- "future moment" (which he did not depict), when the saint cala de Guadaira, donde hay una Cofradia de la Miseri- was definitively dispatched at the order of the Roman cordia que viste algunos pobres, cura y da medicinas a nat- emperor. urales y forasteros."10Pacheco also remarked upon the other Although Pacheco was a decidedly stiff and mediocre odd iconographic features in the painting. As he explained, painter, he remains significant, first, as a writer who doc- there is "a window on the wall, through which the Saint uments the peculiar polemics of early seventeenth-century is seen in a field, tied to a tree, where he is being shot at Spanish art theory, and, second, as the teacher (and future with arrows."1lHe makes it clear that foremost in his mind father-in-law) of Diego Velazquez (1599-1660), the fore- is the sense of temporal displacement. This is the factor most painter of the Siglo de Oro. A work like Pacheco's predetermining the painter's unusual, two-stage, narrative- Saints Sebastian and Irene, particularly in its distinctive compositional arrangement. The "present moment" occu- compositional aspects, represented a significant influence 9 F.J.Sanchez Cant6n, ed., Francisco Pacheco: Arte de la pintura. Edici6n depuis le XVe siecle, Paris, 1979; and S. Forestier, Saint Sebastien: Rituels del manuscritooriginal acabada el 24 de enero de 1638, 2 vols., Madrid, et figures, Paris, 1983. in 1956, II, 327-330. For other kinds of representations of the saint ques- 10 Pacheco (as in n. 9), 327. tion, see V. Kraehling, Saint Sebastien dans 'art, Paris, 1938; M.