Among the material objects most frequently present on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spanish playhouse stages, few evince the semiotic and discursive complexities of painted portraits. Many onstage paintings, of course, are nothing more than inert objects, such as the miniatures which lovers and suitors exchange, bestow, cherish, steal, and discard in numerous romantic comedies. Other comedia paintings possess the power to captivate and enamour their beholders. Even Neoplatonic ideas of a visual representation suffused with its subject’s soul, however, are insufficient to explain the phenomenon of portraits that play more active roles in a small number of comedias: at critical moments these paintings unexpectedly function as surrogates for their absent subjects, falling from the walls on which they hang over open doorways and thereby blocking would-be murderers’ and rapists’ access to their intended victims. By virtue of the apparent agency thus displayed, these portraits at least briefly become more than mere inanimate objects. The present essay will examine how such likenesses transcend their material nature in four comedias, beginning with Damián Salucio del Poyo’s use of this device in La próspera fortuna de Ruy López de Ávalos [The Prosperous Fortunes of Ruy López de Ávalos] and then turning to two playwrights who included similar episodes in subsequent works: Luis Vélez de Guevara in El lucero de Castilla y Luna de Aragón [The Shining Star of Castile and the Moon of Aragon] and Tirso de Molina in both La prudencia en la mujer [Prudence in Woman] and La firmeza en la hermosura [Constancy in Beauty].1
As Laura R. Bass notes, “It is no accident that Spain’s so-called Golden Age of literature during the seventeenth century was also its Golden Age of painting” (2008, 3). Spain during this era was a culture entranced by the idea of representation, a fascination revealed by the simultaneous proliferations of portraiture and playwriting in an age when the visual and literary arts were often paralleled, following Horace’s dictum ut pictura poesis [as is painting so is poetry].2 This correspondence was specifically applicable to dramaturgy in the eyes of many playwrights, among them Tirso de Molina: in his Cigarrales de Toledo [Country Houses of Toledo], Tirso notes that “no en vano se llamó la poesía pintura viva” [not in vain was poetry called living painting] and argues that a playwright should construct and organize a comedia using illusionistic techniques analogous to those used by a painter, such as perspective (1996, 226). Moreover, this parallel between the two modes of artistic mimesis was visually as well as theoretically apt. Comedias were at least initially intended for performances in which the characters, not unlike figures in paintings, would be given bodily form and often luxurious garb for the pleasure of the spectators’ gaze.3 Actors playing roles oscillated between the two-dimensional and the three-dimensional onstage; in the theatres, static paintings seemed to come to life even as performers seemed to transform themselves into simulacra of portraits, creating a perceptual and conceptual liminal space between lo vivo and lo pintado, between living reality and artistic representations of it.
It is thus significant though hardly surprising that Lope de Vega could write one comedia, El Brasil restituido (Brazil Restored), in which an absent king’s portrait is treated as if it were the monarch himself, and another, El servir con mala estrella (Serving under an Evil Star), in which a present king is treated as though he were merely an inert portrait of himself. In the latter play, King Alfonso VIII comes illicitly to the home of Don Tello to woo the latter’s sister, only to be surprised there by Tello’s unexpected return. Regally scorning the ignominy of concealment or self-defence, Alfonso chooses instead to remain motionless where he stands, in effect assuming the guise of his own image. Rather than confront his sovereign directly, Tello accepts this pretence so that he can criticize Alfonso, taking advantage of a painting’s inability to hear or retort: “¿Quién trajo á casa el retrato, / hermana, del señor Rey? / ¿Véndese esta figura? / Cierto que es muy parecida, / Y que no he visto en mi vida / Tan extremada pintura” [Who brought this portrait of the king here, sister? Is this figure for sale? It is certainly an excellent likeness, and never in my life have I seen such consummate painting] (1952, 50). It is unfortunate, Tello continues in “an exquisitely tactful but barbed rebuke” (McKendrick 2000, 59), that the artist chose to depict the king as a furtive lover rather than as a noble warrior, thus diminishing his subject’s majesty with an image which is neither a flattering nor a worthy one.4 In contrast, at the conclusion of El Brasil restituido Don Fadrique de Toledo unveils a uniquely exemplary portrait of Philip IV when the Spaniards’ vanquished foes seek reconciliation and forgiveness. Fadrique instructs them to kneel before the painting while he speaks to it as though it were the king: “Magno Felipe, esta gente / pide perdón de sus yerros. / ¿Quiere Vuestra Majestad / que esta vez les perdonemos? / Parece que dijo sí” [Great Philip, these people beg pardon for their errors. Does Your Majesty want us to pardon them this time? It appears that he said “yes”] (1970, 294). The rebels receive the mercy they seek ostensibly from Philip’s portrait, the quality of which transcends mere visual likeness, since it is somehow imbued with the full force of Philip’s majesty as well as the capacity for clemency lauded by Lope. That Lope deemed both these devices theatrically valid reveals just how ambiguous and liminal a representational space the Spanish stage – as well as the Spanish portraitist’s canvas – could be.
La próspera fortuna de Ruy López de Ávalos (1604) is the first half of Damián Salucio del Poyo’s theatrical diptych devoted to its eponymous protagonist, the royal favourite and Constable of Castile under Enrique III and then Juan II until Álvaro de Luna’s ascension.5 It is also this play in which Salucio del Poyo utilizes the falling portrait device in an episode that Luis Vélez de Guevara and Tirso de Molina, among other playwrights, will imitate (Peale 2004, 138–40).6 The portrait in question is that of the infanta Catalina de Inglaterra – Catherine of Lancaster, granddaughter of Pedro I of Castile and her cousin Enrique III’s future queen. Though Catalina, with the support of her family and political allies, covets the Castilian throne Enrique already occupies, her true feelings for Enrique are soon revealed to be more amorous than rivalrous.7 While conferring privately with the Spanish commander Gonzalo de Estremera, Catalina’s assurances of her peaceful nature quickly give way to transparent questions about her cousin: “¿Cómo Enrique no se casa? / ¿Ha puesto en una dama / su pensamiento, á quien ama? / ¿Quiere á alguna bien?” [Why has Enrique not yet married? Has he set his heart on a woman whom he loves? Does he adore anyone?] (1857, 443c). When told that Enrique in fact does love a count’s very beautiful daughter, Catalina immediately calls for her own portrait to be sent to Enrique, a likeness which will be no mere miniature: “Hola, dadme aquel retrato / Que está colgado en mi tienda, / Para que tu rey entienda / Que como a deudo le trato” [Bring me that portrait hanging in my tent, so that your king will understand that I treat him as a kinsman] (1857, 443a). Once the retrato grande [large portrait] is brought forth onstage, Catalina demands that Gonzalo tell her which is more beautiful, Enrique’s young countess or her own painted image. The perceptive Spaniard assures her that Enrique would immediately forget her rival were he to see the portrait, to which the infanta replies: “Si este retrato ha de ser / Bastante para quitalle / El amor, quiero envialle / Adonde le pueda ver” [If this portrait will be enough to purge him of his love, I want to send it to where he can see it] (1857, 443a).
Despite the political context of La próspera fortuna, Catalina’s portrait is nevertheless introduced in this scene within the recognizable Neoplatonic discourse of enamouring likenesses. Melveena McKendrick notes that “the connection between beauty, desire, and eye is crucial” to the dramatic treatment of love inspired by images:
The belief that love was stirred most readily through the eye – the noblest of senses for the neoplatonists, for whom beauty led most effectively to the contemplation of the divine – pervaded Early Modern thinking and sensibilities. There are numerous plays where the picture of an unknown person gives access to love. (1996, 11)
Likenesses could awaken love, the Neoplatonists further argued, because painting could both convey external beauty and lay bare a subject’s inner nature – the mind, character, and even the soul – to the viewer’s gaze. Calderón himself, in his deposition defending painting as an aristocratic calling, argued that in a portraitist’s rendering of a man’s features, “llegó su destreza aun a copiarle el alma” [his skill even succeeded in copying his soul] (2007, 11).8 As Frederick de Armas explains of this tradition, “The work of art, the retrato can move the soul since it partakes of soul” (1998, 6). This is the philosophy underpinning Catalina’s impulsive decision to send her portrait to Enrique: in Catalina’s mind, it is entirely plausible that Enrique might fall in love with her likeness and reciprocate her feelings prior even to meeting her in person.
This is, of course, one practical reason why Catalina asks Gonzalo to compare her unseen rival’s beauty to that of the portrait rather than Catalina’s own: it is the painted image which she hopes will ignite Enrique’s passion for her. At the same time, however, the question serves to foreground the simultaneous presence onstage of Catalina and her likeness – which, like all the paintings included here, must be of substantial size if the portrait will prove large enough to block a doorway later in the play. This scene confronts Gonzalo and the audience with two Catalinas, one viva and one pintada, who are separate yet also the same, sharing both physiognomy and character. It would be difficult to imagine staging a more effective illustration of representation’s ambiguities than this tableau: it is the painted Catalina whose beauty is discussed in the third person by her original, as if she were a separate entity, but who is also intended to charm and beguile Enrique, as if she were the “authentic” Catalina.
Following her instructions, in the second act Gonzalo hangs Catalina’s portrait over the doorway leading to Enrique’s bedchamber, where the king himself sees it for the first time. He initially calls for its removal but quickly changes his mind, reasoning that its subject’s virtuous character makes her a trustworthy guardian for his slumbers. He then addresses the likeness directly, as though it were Catalina herself:
ENRIQUE: Retrato, quedáos ahí
En guarda deste lugar,
Y mirad que habéis de dar
Mañana cuenta de mí;
Que aunque sois figura muerta,
En vuestra fe me aventuro,
Y me entro á dormir seguro
Con mi enemiga á la puerta.
[ENRIQUE: Portrait, remain there to stand guard over this place, and remember that tomorrow you will be held accountable for me; although you are a dead image, I trust myself to your good faith, and I retire to sleep securely with my rival at my door.] (1857, 451a)
Again the difference between original and likeness is problematized, since Enrique is asking the inert two-dimensional painting to act with the perceptions and agency of its subject, despite his admission that it is a dead image. More important, however, in this speech Salucio del Poyo begins to extend the powers discursively associated with Catalina’s portrait beyond the conventionally amatory with Enrique’s command that the image exercise a protective responsibility as well. By introducing this new textual element, which Schack significantly described as “la idea de convertir á un retrato en ángel protector de una vida amenazada” [the idea of transforming a portrait into an endangered life’s guardian angel] (1887, 313), the playwright destabilizes the painting’s prior implicit categorization as a secular likeness: active beneficent powers were most often associated with religious paintings and icons in medieval and early modern Western cultures. The Council of Trent, refuting Protestant charges of Catholic iconolatry, had insisted that “it was not the images themselves that were to be worshiped, but rather the sacred figures they represented” (Bass 2008, 80).9 That distinction notwithstanding, however, the saints, the Virgin Mary, and Jesus Christ were believed to be in some way present in their material representations – and even more important, they were believed to work through those representations on behalf of the faithful. As Hans Belting notes, “Authentic images seemed capable of action, seemed to possess dynamis, or supernatural power” (1994, 6). Indeed, in early modern Spain the crafting of “extremely lifelike, evocative” polychrome sculptures of Christ and Mary in order to “move the viewer to devotion” during religious processions relied on precisely this sense of inherent dynamism (Webster 1998, 110).10
There exist innumerable accounts of miracles accomplished by religious likenesses, to which were often attributed apotropaic powers. According to grateful believers, for example, the seventeenth-century Italian image known as the Madonna of the Oak not only saved women in childbirth, as might be expected from an icon of the Virgin, but also cured the dangerously ill and protected its believers from a breathtaking catalogue of dangers: “it saved people from possession by the devil, from attacks by seven kinds of animals, from attacks by robbers and brigands, from a host of watery accidents, from fire, from falls from trees and ladders, from military disasters, from imprisonment and vehicular accidents” (Freedberg 1989, 141). Even more significantly for our purposes, there also existed any number of accounts of religious images themselves transcending their inert material nature to take action in the physical dimension. Caesarius of Heisterbach’s thirteenth-century Dialogue on Miracles relates stories of portraits turning towards or away from people and even of statues administering corporal punishment to sinners.11 Another well-known trope was that of the statue of Christ on the Cross suddenly coming to life and reaching out to embrace a faithful worshipper; paintings by Spanish artists depicting these visions or miracles, such as Ribalta’s Christ Embracing Saint Bernard of Clairvaux and Murillo’s Saint Francis Embracing Christ on the Cross, were produced well into the seventeenth century, suggesting that such tales would have been a part of the cultural currency shared by Salucio del Poyo’s audiences (Freedberg 1989, 287–9, 294–6).
Salucio del Poyo can thus be seen to have carefully prepared his own seventeenth-century spectators for Catalina’s portrait to take visible action in Enrique’s defence. After the king retires to his chambers, the Jewish physician Don Mair appears “con un vaso en la mano, como que lleva dentro veneno” [with a glass in his hand, like he is carrying poison within it] (1857, 451b). He announces his regicidal intentions to the audience, only to be thwarted by the image which the king had only moments before commanded to protect him: “Va á entrar y cáese el retrato, tápale la puerta, y queda espantado.” [He goes to enter and the portrait falls, blocking the door, and he stands frightened] (1857, 451b). Mair’s initial fearful response is a superstitious one, regarding this unexpected event as a “mal agüero” [bad omen] (1857, 451b), but he soon focuses on the portrait as a representation of its subject rather than as a large, heavy object: “Animo, no hay que hacer caso, / Que esta es una tabla muda; / Parece que se demuda / Y me amenaza si paso” [Courage! There is no need to pay any attention, since this is a mute panel; it seems to be changing, growing upset, and threatening me if I pass] (1857, 451b). Mair’s effort to reassure himself that Catalina’s likeness is only a tabla muda gives way to his sense that it knows what crime he has come to commit and looks menacingly at him, thus strengthening the suggestion that the portrait, somehow possessing both perceptions and agency, functions as the absent Catalina’s surrogate and deliberately fell to block his path. This impression is only enhanced, of course, by the visual image presented by the fallen portrait no longer looking down on the stage floor from above, but rather standing now on the same level as the actors, in effect confronting the physician face-to-face. Enrique and Ruy López, startled by the noise, arrive and uncover Don Mair’s plot, and then the young king praises the painting with rhetoric that reinforces the likeness’s supra-material representation in this text, now calling it a “retrato vivo” [living portrait] instead of a “figura muerta” [dead image] and declaring it “de mis ojos el postrer milagro” [in my eyes the ultimate miracle] (1857, 452a).
Vélez de Guevara similarly incorporated a portrait’s protective fall into another privanza drama, El lucero de Castilla y Luna de Aragón (1613–14).12 In this comedia the subject of the portrait is the play’s long-suffering protagonist Fadrique de Trastámara, the Duque de Arjona, who is betrayed by the Conde de Santorcaz, his one-time protégé at court and unsuccessful rival for the hand of his wife Aldonza. By the third act, Santorcaz has succeeded in discrediting Fadrique in the eyes of the king and bringing about his imprisonment on false charges, in part so that he can force his attentions on the presumably defenceless Aldonza in her husband’s absence. It is this assault from which Fadrique’s painted image will protect her.
Unlike Salucio del Poyo, Vélez does not incorporate the portrait into the action prior to the scene in which it falls: while the earlier play needed to explain the presence of Catalina’s likeness in her political rival’s chambers, it is natural that Fadrique’s image would hang in his own apartments. The audience first notices its presence when the distressed Aldonza commands her maid Elvira to draw back the drapery covering the portrait: “Esté descubierto siempre / porque mis ojos le miren” [Let it always be visible so that my eyes can behold it] (forthcoming, 2615–16). As in La próspera fortuna, the text foregrounds a connection between love and a painted image, but in this comedia the retrato has the intended purpose of reinforcing conjugal love rather than awakening a new passion; Aldonza gazes upon the portrait to feel closer to her incarcerated husband. In Fadrique’s absence, his likeness will serve as his surrogate, as Aldonza makes clear when she dismisses Elvira: “dejadme sola, que quiero / con el Duque divertirme” [leave me alone, for I want to distract myself with the duke] (forthcoming, 2627–8). And once Elvira has left, Aldonza addresses the portrait in a long monologue in which she consciously seeks to blur the distinction between lo vivo and lo pintado: “Ya que hemos quedado solos, / quiero, señor, persuadirme / que sois vuestro original” [Now that we are alone, my lord, I want to persuade myself that you are your own true self] (forthcoming, 2633–5).
Most significantly, Aldonza confesses the jealousy she cannot help feeling at the false reports that Fadrique sexually abused women under his authority, and then imagines his furious reaction:
ALDONZA: Parece, señor, que airado
de ver que esta ofensa hice
a la fe de vuestro amor,
y al dolor que contradice
en vos culpas tan enormes
y delitos tan civiles,
me repondéis por los ojos
con rayos, y que pusistes
la mano en la espada agora.
¡Tened, escuchadme, oídme,
Duque, señor, dueño, esposo!
[It seems, my lord, that in anger at my offence against the good faith of your love, and against the pain that belies in you any such enormous offences and heinous crimes, you respond to me with lightning in your eyes and you are now putting your hand on your sword. Wait, listen to me, hear me, duke, my lord, my master, my husband!] (forthcoming, 2665–75)
As in La próspera fortuna, an anxious character attributes human reactions to a portrait and fears the image’s capacity for retribution; her emphasis on its gaze also associates it with religious discourses, recalling Nicholas of Cusa’s explanation of how a painted icon’s eyes will be seen to gaze continuously and unchangeably at each and every monk in its presence (1962, 134–7). Aldonza’s attribution of emotion to the portrait serves in part to foreshadow its fall soon thereafter, once she has retired for the night and the Conde de Santorcaz arrives, intending to overcome her resistance to his advances. The painting crashes to the floor just as he approaches Aldonza’s door:
CONDE: Pero ¿qué es esto? Señor
Duque, vuecelencia mire
que yo … que … cuando … que el Rey …
después que … nunca … Terrible
susto el retrato me ha dado,
que es de suerte lo que vive
de su original, que pudo
sobresaltarme, y temíle
como a marido […]
[CONDE: But what’s this? My lord Duke, your Excellency, look, I … that …when …since the king … after … never … The portrait has given me a terrible fright, since it looks so much like its subject come to life that it startled me, and I feared it as I would a husband […] (forthcoming, 2723–31)
Santorcaz’s perturbation here is noteworthy: for a few moments he seems genuinely confused and responds to the painting with real fear, as though Fadrique himself stood in the doorway rather than his likeness. This portrait is indeed presented as more than inert matter, given the visceral reactions it can elicit from both Fadrique’s wife and his rival as well as its apparent ability to protect the former’s chastity from the latter’s concupiscence: the sound of its fall brings the young Álvaro de Luna to the scene in time to defend Aldonza’s honour.
To the best of my knowledge, Tirso de Molina is the only playwright to have incorporated falling portraits into more than one comedia.13 Ever since Hartzenbusch’s identification of the source in his 1848 edition of Prudencia en la mujer (ca. 1622–3), there has been a critical consensus that Tirso borrowed Salucio del Poyo’s device for perhaps the most famous scene of this historical play, in which the widowed and politically beleaguered Queen María de Molina’s portrait bars another regicidal, poison-brewing Jewish physician from entering her sleeping son’s chambers.14 Despite the obvious similarities, however, the Mercedarian substantially reworked his source material. Like Vélez, Tirso has no need to introduce the queen’s portrait before the scene in which it falls: it is logical that María de Molina’s likeness would hang in the royal palace. Furthermore, if Catalina sends Enrique a portrait representing her primarily as a desirable woman and if Fadrique’s retrato captures him primarily as a husband concerned for his honour, then María de Molina’s depicts her in her public capacity as a ruler. Like Philip IV’s portrait in El Brasil restituido and like all such images of sovereigns (Bass 2008, 79–82), the queen’s likeness is fundamentally iconic, created and displayed as a representation of the power and authority she both wields and embodies as a monarch.15 Tirso relies on precisely this aspect of a royal portrait to create an effective tableau even prior to the painting’s fall in Prudencia, when the treacherous and ambitious infante Don Juan and the physician Ismael plot the young king’s murder in the latter’s own apartments under the silent gaze of his mother’s likeness. This stage image visually conveys the arrogant would-be usurper’s contempt for the queen, whom Don Juan considers negligible and unfit to rule by virtue of her gender (1968b, 919b).16
After Don Juan departs, Ismael conquers his misgivings in a soliloquy and then prepares to enter the sleeping king’s bedchamber. Unlike in Salucio del Poyo’s original scene, however, the portrait over the doorway gives the would-be assassin pause even before it falls. The stage directions state: “Al querer entrar en el aposento del Rey, repara en el retrato de la REINA, que está sobre la puerta” [When he starts to enter the king’s room, he catches sight of the queen’s portrait, which is over the door] (1968b, 920a). Ismael expresses his agitation in words that immediately foreground the liminality of the painting, which he clearly cannot dismiss as nothing more than pigments on canvas:
ISMAEL: Mas, ¡cielos!, ¿no es el retrato
este de su madre? Sí.
No sin causa me acobarda
la traición que juzgo incierta,
pues puso el rey a su puerta
su misma madre por guarda.
¡Vive Dios, que estoy temblando
de miralla, aunque pintada!
[But heavens, is this not his mother’s portrait? Yes. Not without cause do I fear the treason which I judge to be uncertain to succeed, since the king placed his mother herself to guard his door. I swear to God that I tremble to look at her, even painted!] (1968b, 920a)
For Ismael, María de Molina cannot easily be considered utterly distinct from her framed image, which he guiltily regards as a watchful sentinel conscious of his intentions:
ISMAEL: ¿No parece que enojada
muda me está amenazando?
¿No parece que en los ojos
forja rayos enemigos,
que amenazan mis castigos
y autorizan sus enojos?
No me miréis, reina, airada.
[Does it not look like she is threatening me furiously and mutely? Does it not look like she is forging hostile lightning bolts in her eyes, threatening me with punishments and affirming her grievances? Do not gaze angrily at me, queen.] (1968b, 920a–b)
As in El lucero de Castilla, the portrait’s viewer focuses on the subject’s eyes, imagining menacing rayos radiating out of the painting which provoke pleas for clemency. Ismael, however, will receive no mercy from María de Molina, who will ultimately force him to drink his own poison after he confesses his guilt.
The queen’s portrait falls to block the doorway just as Ismael summons the resolve to commit the regicide which will enable Don Juan’s claim to the throne. As Serge Maurel’s description of the scene indicates, this is the moment when the painting most obviously transcends its material nature: Ismael “l’interpelle, essaie d’apaiser sa colère; l’image s’anime et, en manière de réponse, tombe à ses pieds, lui interdisant le passage alors qu’il allait entrer” [speaks to it, tries to appease its anger; the image comes to life and in response falls at his feet, barring him from the passageway he was going to enter] (1971, 365). This fortuitous fall also strengthens in Prudencia the religious elements less directly present in La próspera fortuna and El lucero de Castilla: in those plays, the portraits’ falls were rendered at least more poetically credible by their apotropaic functions, which evoked the abilities popularly attributed to miraculous images, but there was no suggestion that the images possessed power because Catalina and Fadrique themselves were candidates for sainthood, despite their virtuous characters. As various critics of Prudencia have observed, however, in this work the queen’s moral exemplarity cannot help but bring to mind her namesake, the Virgin Mary, for whom María is in fact “credibly an analogue” (Wilson and Moir 1971, 96). Margaret Wilson points out that María de Molina “is the mother of an infant son who is poor and persecuted, yet a king” (1977, 94), while de Armas has further enumerated the many parallels between the text’s presentation of the niño rey Fernando and the Christ Child (1978). Thus María’s portrait can even more plausibly exert its “miraculous powers” (Wilson and Moir 1971, 93) precisely because of its subject’s obvious associations with the Virgin.
When María de Molina herself arrives a few moments later, her entrance creates another striking tableau which offers perhaps the most imaginative exploitation of the visual potential inherent in such falling portrait scenes devised by any playwright; as we shall see, Tirso likewise employs it in La firmeza en la hermosura.17 Spanish playhouse stages in this era featured two doorways facing the audience through which characters entered and exited; Prudencia’s stage directions indicate that once the queen’s portrait has blocked his access to one of these doors, Ismael attempts to flee through the other – only to encounter the actual queen making her entrance through that same doorway, coming to her son’s aid and obstructing Ismael’s path in a fashion identical to that of her painted image only moments before. There must even occur at least a brief moment during which María de Molina is framed by one doorway even as her framed likeness stands in front of the other. Tirso thus achieves onstage a remarkable doubling effect which carries the erosion of distinctions between lo vivo and lo pintado to new heights. What, this tableau seems to ask the spectator, separates the “true” María de Molina from her image?
Finally, Tirso de Molina’s La firmeza en la hermosura (ca. 1632–3) combines a scenario reminiscent of El lucero de Castilla with the discourses and representations of portraiture used by Tirso himself in Prudencia; like the latter play, Firmeza foregrounds a woman’s exemplary virtue and it announces that theme with a similar title.18 In Firmeza Don Juan de Urrea is forced to feign his own death, leaving his betrothed, Doña Elena Coronel, to remember and mourn him with the life-size retrato which hangs in the humble apartments to which she is reduced after his alleged demise. This likeness’s fall to block a doorway follows what by now emerges as the predictable pattern, beginning with the arrival of the Conde de Urgel, this play’s villain. Like the Conde de Santorcaz’s passion for Aldonza in El lucero, Urgel’s obsession with the chaste heroine drives him to attempt a nocturnal assault on her virtue. And like Ismael in Prudencia, the Conde de Urgel delivers a soliloquy in which he contemplates and justifies to himself the dishonourable action he is about to take before moving towards Elena’s door, at which point he “detiénese viendo sobre la puerta el retrato de DON JUAN” [stops when he sees the portrait of Don Juan over the door] and exclaims, “La imagen de don Juan miro / valientemente copiada” [I see the likeness of Don Juan boldly copied] (1968a, 1441b). Again Tirso undermines the difference between reality and representation, for Urgel immediately speaks to the portrait as though it were his rival present in the flesh. Calling him “joven inadvertido” [imprudent boy], the count reproves Juan for his arrogance in daring to compete for Elena’s favours and for his naive trust in her virtue, and then dismisses the retrato as he approaches the door, “No estorbarás más mi intento” [You will hinder my plans no more] (1968a, 1441b–2a).
It is at this moment, of course, that Juan’s portrait crashes to the floor in an exercise of its protective function on the real Juan’s behalf, blocking the doorway and frightening Urgel towards a re-awakening of his suppressed honour: “Por Dios, que le estoy temblando: / cobarde su copia miro” [I’m trembling, by God: I look at his likeness with dread] (1968a, 1442a). He even goes so far as to doff his hat in a demonstration of respect that recalls Santorcaz’s belated acknowledgment of the deference he owed Fadrique: “Respetemos su presencia, / deseos inadvertidos, / porque un esposo, aunque en sombra, / de veneración es digno” [Let us respect his presence, imprudent desires, because even the image of a (betrothed) husband is worthy of veneration] (1968a, 1442a). The portrait’s fall, as in the other three plays, brings the life-sized painted image literally face-to-face with the villain, heightening the illusion that Juan’s essence or soul somehow animates the likeness. Even this, however, does not prepare Urgel for the real Juan de Urrea’s appearance in the unobstructed doorway: “En la puerta del otro lado aparece DON JUAN con la espada desnuda, la punta al suelo, en cuerpo y sin moverse” [In the door on the other side appears Don Juan with his sword drawn, its point on the floor, in the flesh and motionless] (1968a, 1442a). Again the audience sees the doubling effect devised by Tirso for Prudencia, here made even more explicit by Juan’s motionless pose framed in the second doorway and by the words with which Urgel declares his astonishment: “¡Allí don Juan retratado! / ¡Aquí, cielos, don Juan vivo! / ¿Dos esposos en dos puertas / y en entrambas dos el mismo?” [There stands Don Juan painted and here, good heavens, stands the living Don Juan! Two husbands in two doorways and in both of them the same man?] (1968a, 1442a). In this tableau dictated by the stage directions, the immobile Juan seems, like King Alfonso in El servir con mala estrella, to be imitating his own portrait even as it shares the stage with him; the resultant symmetrical stage picture draws lo vivo and lo pintado so closely together that the distinctions between them essentially collapse.
Lastly, just as he did in Prudencia, Tirso also overtly links the retrato to religious discourses of miraculous images. Prior to its fall, the grieving Elena addressed a lengthy monologue of love to the portrait, vowing fidelity to Juan’s memory and eagerly anticipating the reunion of their souls in the hereafter. Not only does this passage declare Elena’s Penelope-like loyalty, but her language here is also evocative of another, non-theatrical Golden Age literary tradition:
ELENA: Mi amor, malogrado mío,
como accidente forzoso
del alma, que tras vos vuela,
os sigue a los dulces ocios
de la quietud que os asista;
que bien puede, aunque no en rotos
lazos del cuerpo, buscaros
en éxtasis y en arrobos.
[My untimely-dead beloved, my love – like an inescapable accident of the soul which flies after you – follows you to the sweet freedom of the serenity where you dwell; well may my love, although not in the broken bonds of the body, seek you in ecstasy and raptures.] (1968a, 1436a)
This talk of souls winging their way to otherworldly repose and ecstasy partakes of the language of mysticism, immediately recalling the poetry of San Juan de la Cruz. In such mystical verse, of course, the soul yearns for and sometimes achieves union with el Amado, the Loved One, who is none other than Christ himself. As a result, Elena’s desire for just such a future rapture with Juan by extension rhetorically associates him with Christ, a connection that the text will reinforce when the Conde de Urgel, terrified at the appearance of the rival he thought dead and buried, considers Juan’s return a resurrection and cries out: “hasta los sepúlcros se abren” [even the graves are opening up] (1968a, 1442b). And if Juan is associated with Jesus Christ, even by allusion, then his portrait can be regarded as sharing its protective capacity with the paintings and statues of Jesus credited with saving and comforting the weak, the innocent, and the devout.
In conclusion, this essay has aimed at delineating some of the ways in which a select number of painted portraits in the comedia transcend their materiality and function as much more than inanimate objects. In the four plays examined here, it is not enough for likenesses to serve as objects of exchange or even as Neoplatonic images capable of awakening love: instead, previously inert paintings of absent characters unexpectedly exercise agency, saving embattled kings and vulnerable noblewomen from death or dishonour. Not only do these scenes capitalize on an effective stage device, but more important, they also foreground the ambiguities and contradictions already present in early modern Spanish discourses of both theatrical and pictorial representation. In these four works by Salucio del Poyo, Vélez de Guevara, and Tirso de Molina, there is much more to some portraits than initially meets the eye.
1 Students of the comedia will likely already be familiar with the episode in Calderón’s El mayor monstruo del mundo (The Greatest Monster in the World) in which Mariadnes’s portrait falls between Herodes and Octaviano as the former attempts to kill the latter; Herodes plunges his dagger into the painting, just as he will later murder Mariadnes herself. Unlike in the four plays examined here, Calderón uses a portrait’s protective fall primarily to foreshadow violence to come. The substantial scholarly commentary on this episode includes Bass (2008, 84–99); Blue (1978); Gómez (1997, 281–5); and McKim-Smith and Welles (1996). Following Klaus Toll’s notes to his 1937 edition of Salucio del Poyo’s El rey perseguido, Caparrós Esperante also cites instances of falling portraits in Claramonte’s De lo vivo a lo pintado, Jiménez de Enciso’s La mayor hazaña de Carlos V, and Rojas Zorilla’s third act of La Baltasara (1987, 137 n159). Space does not permit consideration of these plays here.
2 See also Calvo Serraller (1991), Lacourt (1990), and Morán Turina (2001). All translations are mine unless otherwise referenced.
3 See Bass (2008, 45–6) on painting and theatre as “sites of sartorial display.”
4 See McKendrick (2000, 57–63) for an analysis of portraits in this play.
5 See Cauvin (1957), MacCurdy (1978), and Peale (2004) on the comedia de privanza. For commentary on Salucio del Poyo, see Caparrós Esperante (1987) and Hernández Valcárcel’s edition of several of the comedias (1985).
6 McClelland takes a dim view of Salucio del Poyo’s use of the falling portrait device, which she considers “cheap enough from the standpoint of absolute values,” but argues that Tirso makes it more persuasive in Prudencia en la mujer with stronger characterization (1948, 53).
7 This is pure fiction. The actual Catherine and Enrique were married in a political alliance negotiated by their families in 1388 – when she was fifteen years old and he was only nine.
8 See also Curtius (1990, 559–70), Damiani (1989), and ter Horst (1982).
9 See also Saint-Saëns (1995) on Tridentine Spanish art.
10 See Webster (1998, especially 57–110 and 164–88) for an analysis of such processions.
11 See, for example, 1:501–2 and 2:23–4, 26, 77–8. See also Loomis (1948) for a compendium of miracles, and Belting (1994) and Trexler (2004) on religious images.
12 I am greatly indebted to C. George Peale for sharing with me the newly edited text of El lucero de Castilla from the forthcoming critical edition in Manson and Peale’s ongoing series of Vélez de Guevara’s complete plays. For a brief discussion of the play, see Cauvin (1957, 108–13).
13 See Weimer (2003) for my preliminary considerations of the falling portraits in Prudencia and Firmeza.
14 See de Armas (1987, 183–5), de los Ríos, editor of Tirso de Molina’s Obras completas (1968, 902–3), Fucilla (1961, 3), Gregg (1977, 302–3), Kennedy (1948, 1136 n12); Lida de Malkiel (1973, 79 n6), and Morel Fatio (1900, 102–7) for critical agreement concerning this relationship as well as varying perspectives on possible historical counterparts to the Jewish physicians in the two plays.
15 See also Belsey and Belsey’s essay on portraits of Elizabeth I (1990).
16 See Blue (1998, 454) for a summary of the play’s conflicting perspectives on María.
17 As Agheana (1972, 48–50) and Sullivan (1981, 111–12 n12) observe, Tirso repeatedly exploits visually striking, often emblematic tableaux in Prudencia as well as in other plays. See also Hughes (1984) for instances of such scenic devices and visual images in Tirso’s religious theatre and Restrepo-Gautier (2001) on Tirso’s use of emblems.
18 Firmeza was performed in 1633 under the title Sin peligros no hay fineza, while a 1635 manuscript of the text also calls it Amor no teme peligros. See Jones and Williamsen (1981) for details of the play’s textual history and attribution.
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