Twentieth Century History of Findlay and Hancock County, Ohio, and Representative Citizens, Part 161

Author: Jacob Anthony Kimmell
Publication date: 1910
Publisher:
Number of Pages: 1189

USA > Ohio > Hancock County > Findlay > Twentieth Century History of Findlay and Hancock County, Ohio, and Representative Citizens > Part 161

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The most remarkable of this group is the El Niño de Vallecas (Fig. 9). It has been said that one can hear this idiot dwarf's nasal whine. But in the El Bobo de Coria (Fig. 10), pathology has gained even more complete mastery. All that there is appaling in an idiot face is here. The crossed eyes, the pallor, the pathetic leer-nothing which fidelity of draughtsmanship dictates has been omitted. Somewhat less gruesome is the Idiot of the Vienna Museum (Fig. 11) (called also The Laughing Boy) ; but its authenticity is not beyond dispute.

In the picture called Las Meninas (Fig. 12) two dwarfs appear ; but so far from dominating the scene they are quite incidental. Maria Barbolo and Nicolasico Pertusato stand in the lower right-hand corner of the painting. The former has a cretinoid face and figure; the latter is a hydrocephalic, his miniature form emphasized by the great dog at his feet. The painting is of royal personages; the royal playthings happen to be of the group.

It certainly was not the fact that Velasquez' career nar- rowed the material at his disposal and forced this curious choice of subject on him; nor that the life of the world of his day was calculated to shrink his intellectual concerns. Con- sider, for a moment, the world in which he lived; and see if you would expect it to inspire a painter to devote his talents to dwarfs and fools. It was a world in which kingdoms were being daily destroyed, thrones reoccupied over night, territorial boundaries readjusted with every swing of the pendulum, armies slaughtered like rats, undreamed of countries explored, traditions ruthlessly set aside. Not many years before Velas- quez' birth Copernicus and Columbus had created a new heaven and a new earth; and his life-time was pitched in that period of novelty and enthusiasm and intellectual adventure which has given us our own heritage of emancipation and at which we

have never ceased to marvel. Erasmus, Saronariz. thon and Sir Thomas More had not long been des ?: Knox, Calvin and Loyola were names fresh in [ potent in influence; and the mantle of leadership. on a host of Velasquez' contemporaries, all of there : all time: Corneille, Racine, Molière, Descartes Spinoza, Leibnitz, Milton, Bunyan, Pope, Swif: Addison, Newton and Harvey. Not content with !.. tion of stars the managers of the political show la a monster carnival of intrigue and slaughter in v Wallenstein, Gustavus Adolphus, Cromwell, Rich: : arin and a host of others were taking part. En!" drip with blood; bivouacs were never quenched; #T . sun greeted a fresh hero of carnage and adventur task merely to list the events which brought abas : ration of the Teutonic nations from Rome, and ti of progress from Italy and Spain to England and The pace had begun to tell, it is true, on Vela- country ; but though Spain was being now distarkt. recently known, and was still knowing, glorious te . 80 years before the painter's birth Don Carlos I of .. inherited the rule over more extensive dominion- since the days of Charlemagne; and the fortan: had by no means waned when this extensively l . tleman was chosen by the electors of Germany s: ! of the Holy Roman Empire. In the life-time ol V, parents Spain was in her hey-day; and the painte: : to an unexcelled heritage of national romance and pride. He was destined, it is true, to see tha: threatened; for, during his life-time, Spain ani: hitherto in the van of progress began, like boys i' end of a parade, to lose interest in the line of t. wander up side alleys. The decadence was rapi thanks to her king's conservative intellectual polics. keep step with civilization; and not a great deal of : flowed under the bridge before she had reached the third-rate power. It is not without significance ! early days of her decadence, she should have prodr . the most progressive minds in all art; and the! which, elsewhere in Europe, was touching science life, should have singled out in Spain not a natara pher, but a painter. No one would, of course, for : expect European events-of no matter what ma.z. have any direct influence on the artistic material e! . man like Velasquez. Court painter though he was. never any danger that he become an artist of the Wa- Crossing-the-Delaware type; he was immune to who" so well called the anecdotal blight of the one-u; school. The exciting drama of European history turb him in his studio; and it is not strange that But the drama was enacting, none the less; and 1. choice of sordid material was forced on him h : splendid show in the world without.

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uvi wowucun. ne was not even of humble parentage ville-the city of his birth-was the glory of the realms. His father, though poor, traced his ancestry a Portuguese house to the kings of Alba Longa ; and llan mother, whose name the son has immortalized, I to the hidalgas. His early advance was rapid. At ked by influence-he had made for himself a secure

Madrid; had painted the king's portrait; had been ed court painter ; and had been given a studio in the nd a residence in the city. Painters were indeed in ys none too highly respected ;' but Velasquez' position id gave him an opportunity for contact with men of on in the various walks of life. In 1628, for instance, the rare chance of a nine months' intimacy with who had been sent to Spain on a diplomatic mission, managed, during his stay, to awaken Velasquez from · tic lethargy and to persuade him to make the Italian ' In Rome he must have been a personage of some r he lived first at the Vatican, then at the Villa which was subsequently purchased by Colbert for the Academy of Painting. He reached Spain again in id "His Majesty," writes Pacheco, "was greatly it.his return." Then followed 18 years of productive warded by many honors. In 1648 there was a second to Italy and, on his return, the appointment as of the Palace. It was in his capacity as Marshal that nents for a royal journey to the Pyrenees ' fell to and here he contracted a " subtle, syncopal, tertian of which he died (1660). Honors followed him to 1; and he was attended in his last moments by the op of Tyre and Patriarch of both Indies. Two years : had been invested with the Habit of Santiago; but r a long discussion, during which a council had re- hat they "approved his age, purity of blood and but disapproved the nobility of his paternal and ancestors." A dispensation for defective nobility issued by Pope Alexander VI; and Diego de Silva ed " hijo dalgo " by the king's order. The cross of of Santiago was conferred, after the artist's death, of the king.

Rubens, then in the full maturity of his powers and ght of his glory, was sent by Holland to Madrid on a :lating to the conclusion of peace between Spain and :he Spanish king wrote, complaining that "such im- itters should be confided to a painter . . . . , to a man inferior position."

nteresting and significant that Velasquez escaped, in of de Beruete, being "seduced by the magic concep- ibens." There is said to be one picture (a portrait of on horseback in the. Imperial Gallery of the Grand uscany in Florence) which was at first attributed to t is now supposed to have been painted by Velasquez for the Taccas bronze statue at Madrid. I know of ainting about which similar confusion could possibly

rney was made to celebrate the Treaty of the Pyrenees war waged by Mazarin against Spain) and the be- he Infanta Maria Theresa to Louis XIV of France.

of distinction, both at the court and on his European journeys, was hardly one to contract his intellectual interests. This is, however, not quite the whole story, for in spite of the in- fluential position which Velasquez early obtained at the Spanish court, it was among the court underlings that many of his days were spent. In the court registers he appears among the dwarfs, jesters and barbers of the palace. As late as 1637 a list was published containing the names of dwarfs, jesters, musicians, barbers, etc., to whom were given clothes of grace. Here one reads " the clothes of the barbers and of Diego Velazquez may be reduced to 80 Ducats, and those of the officials of the wardrobe to 70."" In the list of places assigned to the spectators of a bull fight (1642), Velasquez is put in the fourth tier with the servants of the grandees, the barbers of the palace and other underlings. During the painter's trip through Italy the Ambassador at Madrid wrote to the Archbishop of Pisa, à propos of a visit Velasquez was about to make: "Be careful to say 'you' to him and not 'your excellency'; for after all he is nothing but a painter."

One must, of course, bear in mind the position of relative honor held by dwarfs and jesters in the courts of Velasquez' day. Spain, indeed, rather outdid England and the rest of Europe in this matter; though royal fondness for minia- ture men was an old and general hobby. In Scandinavian mythology dwarfs originated as maggots in giants; but in actual life their acute and active minds, their sensitive natures, made the maggots and not the giants the choice of kings and queens. Not only were the pygmies royal favor- ites; some of them were noted characters and a few, able men. Men like Philetus of Cos, Vladislas Cubitas,-King of Poland-and Pepin le bref, though of doll-like physique, were diminutive neither in mind nor in achievement. Strangely enough, however, the royal fancy did not always require an excess of mental endowment to offset the physical deficiencies. Bébé, for instance, the dwarf of Stanislaus of Poland, was practically an idiot; and the pet presented to Henrietta of France in a pie, could hardly have been highly regarded to be so lightly treated. Yet some of Velasquez' miniature asso- ciates were undoubtedly attractive and intelligent men. It is interesting to recall that Zuloaga, who has commemorated on canvas the repulsive features of his dwarfed servant, some- times dreamed of collaborating with a great composer on an opera written about the life and death of that dwarf. " He was my servant," said Zuloaga. " A strange man, very hideous, physically distorted. But his life was wonderful. His death-he died of love."

The buffoons, too (truhanes or hombres de placer), pos- sessing a sinister power, held a place in court by no means insignificant. "They represented," says Justi, " freedom of speech in its lowest degradation "; and, though employed ostensibly for royal amusements, they became a power by gain- ing the royal ear. Embassies were not infrequently entrusted to them; and instances are on record of wise men having played the fool in order to have the fool's influence with the

5 The ducat was worth about 23 cents.

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king. " A vaudeville supported by his Catholic Majesty," Beruete has called this group of miniature and clownish men; but Velasquez' classification with them must be interpreted in the light of the place they held in the court life of the time.

His choice of these bizarre types for portraiture is of course not unique in art. Carreño, Rubens, Fortuny, Zamacois and many others have produced pictures of dwarfs. But Velasquez alone has painted a large series of this kind; he alone has entrusted his fate in so large part to so precarious a medium ; he alone has introduced such subjects into his best pictures-into the picture, indeed, which, if all else he did perished, would still entitle him to a high place in art. These are sufficiently striking facts. One does not overlook the other work that Velasquez did; but the dwarf and jester group cannot themselves be overlooked, nor regarded as in- cidental. They form a large, an integral part of his artistic output.

There is no warrant for assuming that Velasquez' peculiar choice of medical material in his art indicated any spirited interest in medicine. Such an interest, if it had existed, would hardly have confined itself to a restricted and revolting clinical field; it might have been expected, as Steen's did, to select some of the more human aspects of medical life-as- pects more likely to awaken interest and more certainly suit- able to the purposes of art. Spanish medicine was, indeed, in no condition to arouse any vivid enthusiasm. The uprising of the Germanic spirit in the North and the gradual degenera- tion of the South were giving a new direction to the history of science. Every one is familiar with the galaxy of medical stars flashing in the Netherlands, in England, in France and in Italy; but Spanish names, if they are known to us at all, hardly match those in the list which includes Boerhaave and Harvey. Even during the days of her political supremacy Spain seems to have failed singularly to beget physicians of the very first rank. Lisbon, Salamanca and Alcala produced, of course, medical men of some importance; but, aside from the Belgian-born Vesalius not a single Spaniard achieved im- mortality in a day when physicians of other European countries were writing their names for all time."

Consider, too, how abruptly Velasquez turned his face on his artistic precedents in painting these pictures. Painting, in contrast with Castillian architecture and literature ap- peared late and developed slowly in Spain; and it continued to be hemmed in by the straitest conventions. The three schools (of Castille, of Andalusia and of Valencia) differcd in many respects, but they were one in their devotional char- acter. The church was the sole patron of art; and most Spanish painters spent a part of, many of them all, their lives in convents and cathedrals. "The chief end of the works of Christian art," wrote Velasquez' own father-in-law, "is to

" In the note on Spanish medicine, which is appended, I have indicated some of the important physicians of the time and their achievements. No epoch-making names occur; but it is of interest to see that a few important early contributions were made (note especially the institution of the Hospital dels folls at Valencia and the work of Andreas a Laguna in genito-urinary

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persuade men to piety and to bring them to God." . Alcala and Salamanca," writes Sterling-Maxwell, -v. was always more popular than Cicero." Yet Velas- ing up in this tradition, became the painter of ": the court rather than saints of the calendar."

It is interesting to speculate as to this extraordiz of subject on the part of a man of unexcelled por lived in an exciting world-the friend of celebrities. mate of kings. Certainly such a man would hast his artistic output to the still life, from which bek; draughtsmanship; and line the galleries of Europe -: did-with melons and grapes that might have (vy country fair or with fish and sides of beef to re. butcher's heart. Yet see how he did confine hi- The insipid Hapsburg face he must, as court par .. duce; a task, in itself, not altogether promisiaz. . generating Hapsburg kings of Spain being, at ts: the suburbs of imperial melancholy.' Yet Velas i. free from this imposed task, did not flee to str- jects ; he continued, in Beruete's phrase, to . hymn to ugliness "; and after leaving the Mis- age, whose features are familiar solely because ! painted them and whose name has small titk: 1 brance save as the inventor of the golille- collars-Velasquez goes to the degenerate playthir ;. royal degenerate. It seems an obvious suggestion : painting of these creatures was ordered by their :- owner and simply fell in Velasquez' day's work. i- did he lavish such care on them; if they repelled 1 : did he not-as others had done-introduce them in where they could serve as foils for beauty? One : to appeal to the melancholy genius of Spain, to the to brood over the idea of death, which those aut: speak regard as much more characteristic of the (r.3. the notorious gaiety of southern Europe. Yet it is; absence of any feeling on the subject, which impr. strongly. It would be difficult to find a more perto of objective painting. Not only, are no distress :. of repulsive objects omitted; but what is much me" . because much rarer, is the absence of all effort to g1- twist to things. The man who painted them F .. have had an emotion, and seems indifferent about any. He handled skulls, he fondled them: bx: : " Alas, poor Yorick !" escaped his lips. One ic. gazing at these living abortions with senses akr. feelings all unstirred. And that, one may say 42 attitude of science, not of art. No doubt he pato- pictures simply because he wanted to; no doubt. v. and jesters had aroused his interest, he gare al- thought to their fitness as artistic material. Hi !: motives need not be sought for; but intellectual k: to be an Andalusian trait, is apparent. And that is :: ing light a consideration of this group of pictures th- man, marking him off from those who are inter-

"One of them (Philip II) on seeing a man ... "Either that man is mad or he has been reading D.

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al to select him. On opening his eyes in the morning 3 and jesters were the things in his field of vision ; they ed his artistic demands, in which imaginative needs little part. To their reproduction on canvas he gave ¿cientious draughtsmanship and an infinite talent; in ng them to paint at all he was intellectually indolent degree. Mr. Low has recently written of one of his 3: " He was a man (in Gautier's phrase) for whom ible world really existed; and therefore he was inclined

e Velasquez the supreme place in art." Velasquez' world was peopled by deformed and clownish men; existence was real for him; beyond such a world one les he seldom looked.

ny rate, the importance of these pictures in the history is of the greatest. They began a new era. One of them no called the Theology of Painting; and though there greement as to what he meant, there is general agree- hat it was high praise. There are, of course, those now : have always been those-who feel that the painting rmed and clownish men is an artistic achievement of qual value with learning to write with one's toes. Yet raise-even worship-Velasquez has received from s of varied temperaments. His voice-a modern voice iæval times, a scientific voice in art-has hushed a eal of talk about beauty as the sole concern of art. . not without his own artistic convictions. " I would ' he said to some one who suggested Rubens as a " be the first of vulgar than the second of refined ." He even had a formula ("Truth, not painting ") though often quoted, may be made to mean whatever . Yet it is certain he did not take rules of thumb very y. One imagines his sombre face smiling quietly at :. " A picture is a painted poem," said the ancient ; " I celebrate myself and sing myself," shouted Walt n; "Art is simply and solely the effective transmis- experience," writes Tolstoi; " Paint the soul, never e arms and legs," was the friar's advice to Fra Lippo 'There is no excuse for art, unless it present some- fferent from nature," wrote Goethe. There are the ; here are the paintings; and they do not fit. " Paint- elasquez would probably have replied, in Corot's 'is not so complicated as you make out"; or in nn's, "I write what I have seen, what I have felt, ave experienced, and I write it as well as I can, that

jely enough, a Spanish poet (Quevedo) has used, in g Velasquez, the very metaphor-almost the very which have come to stand for the Shakesperian atti- irt:

"Then deem the picture-by the skill, That few shall reach and none surpass,

Delighted and deluded still-

The face of nature in a glass."

vagy tous pictures, at- tributed to this artist in the early inventories of the palace, were destroyed in the fire at the Alcazar-among them three portraits of buffoons, descriptions of which (by Palermino) have survived. Beruete credits Velasquez with only 83 original paint- ings; Curtis describes a much larger number. In addition to the Menippus, Aesop and del Borro and to the portraits of sickly children (Philip Prosper and Don Carlos) there are 19 extant paintings belonging to the series of Jesters, Dwarfs and Idiots. The genuineness of Nos. 2, 5 and 19 is not beyond question; but in the case of the other 16 authenticity has been established.

PAINTINGS BY VELASQUEZ IN WHICH DWARFS, JESTERS AND IDIOTS ARE REPRESENTED.

I. Jesters: *1. Pablillos de Valladolid. Prado, Madrid.

*2. Bouffon (Cristobal de Pernia). Prado, Madrid.

*3. Don Juan of Austria. Prado, Madrid.

*4. Portrait du Géographe. Rouen.

II. Dwarfs: *5. Antonio d'Ingles. Prado, Madrid.

*6. El Primo. Prado, Madrid.

*7. Don Sebastian de Morra. Prado, Madrid.

*8. Carlos and his Dwarf. Copley Museum,

Boston.

°9. A Dwarf with dog and parrot. Gallery Lord Ashburton.

°10. Two dwarfs leading a spotted hound. Louvre.

º11. A Spanish court dwarf. Royal Museum, Berlin.

12. Olivares and Balthasar Carlos with dwarfs. Gallery, Duke of Westminster, Grosvenor House.

'13. A dwarf seated reading. Gallery Señor Sala- manca, Madrid.

"14. Prince Balthasar in riding school (similar to 12). Wallace Gallery.

*15. Las Meniñas. Prado, Madrid.

16. Die Infantin Margarete und die Zwergin. Maria Barbola.

III. Idiots: *17. El Niño de Vallecas. Prado, Madrid.

*18. El Bobo de Coria. Prado, Madrid.

*19. Der lachende Bursche (or der Idiot). Royal Gallery, Vienna.

Pictures marked * are here reproduced; the mark ° before the title signifies that the gallery stated may not be the present site of the picture in question.

NOTE ON SPANISH MEDICINE IN THE DAYS OF VELASQUEZ.

Though Spanish names of the very first importance are want- ing, Spanish physicians and surgeons in the XVI century were sufficiently active to have left their mark on the times. As early as 1545 a treatise on the operation for vesical calculus was in circulation (Juan Gutierrez) ; and a number of publications appeared on the treatment of wounds and on trepanation. These treatises were written by the professors at Salamanca, at Seville, at Lisbon, and by the court physicians. One of the important monographs was by Bartholome de Aguero (1531-1597), professor at Seville, who was a strong exponent of the immediate closure of wounds; in fresh wounds he advocated protection from air and the use of coagulating and drying materials. In Spain, as elsewhere, much energy was devoted to maintaining the tradi- tions and recording the history of medicine; commentaries and translations were numerous; Hippocrates, Galen and Avicenna had their exponents. The author of one of the histories of medicine (Lusitanius of Lisbon) deserves especial mention for

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having advanced what is practically the accepted theory of " an epidemical constitution " and " a contagium."

The Spanish Galen (Andreas a Laguna) was an interesting figure of the times. Most of his life was spent at the court of Charles V. He was a physician, philosopher and statesman who lost his life in the plague at Metz. He wrote one of the earliest treatises on the treatment of urethral stricture with bougies. His book entitled " Methodus cognoscendi exstirpandique excres- centes in vesicae collo carunculas" must have been one of the very early works on the subject.

The most interesting figure was, of course, Vesalius. He was born in Brussels and held professorships in Padua, Bologna and Pisa. On the abdication of Charles V, Vesalius, who had ac- companied him into Spain, went into the service of Philip II. Here, the court duties, the jealousy of Spanish physicians, the hatred of the clergy and the lack of anatomical material preyed on his melancholy temperament, and he decided to leave Spain and make a crusade to Jerusalem. On the death of Fallopius, . he was called to succeed him in the Paduan professorship, but was shipwrecked on the way home and died in hunger and misery.

One of the most important contributions of Spain to mediaval medicine was the establishment of the Hospital dels folls at Valencia. It was here that probably the first effort was made to treat psychopathic patients reasonably and humanely. The hospital was founded in 1409 by Bernardo Andreu, following a mission conducted by the brothers Gilaberto Jafre in the cathe- dral. According to Lope (Las Locos de Valencia) this hospital was a show place and much frequented by visitors.

Other names that should be mentioned are:

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Twentieth Century History of Findlay and Hancock County, Ohio, and Representative Citizens, Part 161

Author: Jacob Anthony Kimmell Publication date: 1910 Publisher: Number of Pages: 1189

Author: Jacob Anthony Kimmell
Publication date: 1910
Publisher:
Number of Pages: 1189