In the famous chapter Empresa segunda (Second undertaking), "Ad omnia", of his Idea of a Christian Political Prince (1640), Diego de Saavedra Fajardo expressed some of his most deeply-felt ideas on the significance required in a picture. If a painting cannot give life to human bodies, it does give them "the grace, the movements and even the emotions of the soul". In the same way, it enhances nature which does not intervene in what art can raise to perfection.

This subtle balance between nature and art is one of the special ideas of the Baroque: nature is the essential foundation on which art builds, contributing an extra, something over and above, making reality more complete and more beautiful.

For Saavedra Fajardo, this added value, absolutely essential, of all art, but particularly of painting, serves to justify its exemplifying and educative role, one of the fundamental characteristics of artistic practice in modern times: "It is for this reason", he writes, "that man was born naked, without speech, and with his understanding, memory and imagination a blank canvas, so that doctrine might be painted on them with the images of art and science, and education be written on them with its documents. . . ". Saavedra is using one of the mainstays of artistic theory in modern times: the "Ut pictura poesis". If man is born, as Aristotle maintained, as a tabula rasa, doctrine can "paint" its images and instruction can "write" on him the documents of education. And from here he expounds on the need of good education, indispensable in the case of princes and poli-ticians, an education not only by the living example of parents, ancestors and tutors, that is, those who write with documents, but also by the artistic works that paint doctrine on the walls of the palaces. So, he continues, "not only should the palace be reformed in its living figures; it should also be reformed in the dead ones which are the statues and paintings. The chisel and the brush are dumb tongues, but they have as much influence as the speaking ones. . . There should be no statue nor painting in the palaces that does not inspire fervent emulation in the mind of the prince. Let the brush on the canvas, the burin on the bronze and the chisel on the marble tell of the heroic deeds of the past that he may read at all times; these statues and paintings are fragments of history always before him".

Some years before, in 1607, Federico Zuccaro returned to Italy after a rather unsuccessful visit to the court of Philip II. He dedicated his Idea de pittori, scultori et architetti to the Duke of Savoy, Carlo Manuel, married to Doña Catalina Micaela, the daughter of Philip II. He wrote of his wonder at the skill shown by the King as a draughtsman, skilled in drawing plans, figures, landscapes, horses and other animals that he wanted to see in his great gallery, and forecast that this would be "a compendium of everything in the world, and a great mirror in which one would see the most illustrious deeds of the heroes of his great Royal House, the portrait of each of them, and passing along the gallery one would have news of all the important sciences", as the dome contains the images of the planets, their movements, mathematical symbols, the cosmography of all the earth and pic-tures of all the animals of dry land, of the waters and of the air".

Zuccaro mentioned not only the encyclopaedic value of a "Compen-dium of all the things in the world" that was required in a royal gallery but also an idea that differed somewhat from the "tabula rasa" of Aristotle, the blank canvas suggested by Saavedra. The new metaphor is that of a mirror; the painted galleries must reflect the heroic virtues, the deeds and images of the powerful, as well as the interest in knowledge and a complete presentation of geographic and even cosmic reality. This had been the value of the work of art as it was understood in the times of Philip II, even in such an eminently religious building as the Monastery of El Escorial, decorated not only with the King's superb collec-tion of paintings of religious subjects but also with scenes of battles, a gallery of maps, panoramas of cities and of land-scape (1). This type of decoration was changed, however, by his grandson, Philip IV, halfway through the seventeenth century, and not only because tastes had changed (2). This was the century of the War and Peace commemorated in this exhibition, a preoccupation that conditioned the decoration of the Spanish royal palaces; Philip IV and his chamberlain, Velázquez, took this double solicitude even to the Escorial. Alongside the deeply religious paintings in the royal palace by Titian, Rubens or Van Dyck, Velázquez placed the portrait of the King in armour beside a lion, the universal symbol of power in Europe at that time. So the cosmological and scientific interests so much in vogue in the sixteenth century, and lauded by Zuccaro in his treatise of 1607, were gradually being abandoned.



I. Splendour, magnificence and artistic quality of decoration. Weariness of heroic themes

In referring to the political value of the works of art that adorned the palaces in the Renaissance and Baroque periods, we should first consider some circumstances that will throw light on our interpretation of examples such as the Royal Alcázar of Madrid. The term "political value" requires some explanation.

When kings such as Philip II or Philip IV, mainly responsible for the pictorial splendour of the palace, decorated it with one of the finest collections of art ever assembled in Europe in recent ages, their guiding principle was to make it a reflection of their power, prestige and magnificence. The political message was shown first of all by the accumulation of works by such eminent European masters of the XVI or XVII centuries as Titian, Rubens, Van Dyck or Velázquez. Political prestige and the image of power and wealth were linked to the possession of works by the great painters just as the idea of greatness coincided with the enormous aesthetic and artistic quality of the collection (3).

This is clear, for example, when on the completion of the enlargement of the building at the beginning of the VXII century, the young King Philip IV shows its treasures to Cardinal Barberini, the Papal Legate, in 1626. The paintings in some of the great rooms such as the New Gallery or Hall of Mirrors, with the official portraits of the dynasty, with works by Titian and Rubens, or the Lower gallery with its collection of mythological paintings, among them the "poems" of Titian, were shown to the Papal Legate and his attendant, who was none other than the eminent connoisseur Cassiano dal Pozzo, as a superb collection that reflected the political power of the King of Spain precisely on account of its enormous artistic value (4).

An even better example of the political significance of showing King Philip IV surrounded by works of art is the description by Palomino of the visit of the Duke of Grammont, special ambassador of Louis XIV, to arrange his marriage to the Infanta Maria Teresa: "he entered the palace escorted by the Lord Admiral of Castile; His Majesty, standing beside a writing desk, received him in the Hall of Mirrors, where he continued standing throughout the ceremony. The Hall of Mirrors was richly and magnificently decorated; under the canopy stood a chair of inestimable value. The decoration had been carried out by the Chamberlain, Don Diego Velázquez, and by the Master of Tapes-tries, and when the Duke expressed a wish to see the King's room in greater detail, His Majesty told Don Diego Velázquez to escort him with every care and to show him all the beautiful works of art in the Palace . . ". So four days later, on October 20, "Don Diego proceeded to show him all the rooms of the palace in which there was much to admire among the multitude of original paintings, statues, porphyries and other riches that adorn the great building".

Not all the grandeur of the Royal Alcazar was in heroic, histori-cal or commemorative works. Recalling the "Second Undertaking" of Saavedra Fajado, he asks "What feeling of glory is not awakened by the statue of Alexander the Great?", and he goes on to ask "What lewdness is not provoked by the amorous transforma-tions of Jupiter?" The reply could not be more significant: "In such matters, more than in honourable ones, art is ingenious (on account of our depraved nature), and such works are placed in Palaces as objects of beauty, and so ugliness comes to adorn the walls". Thus he opposes very eloquently the qualities of glory and power to those of lewdness and ugliness, contrasting the images of heroes with those inspired by the Metamorphosis of Ovid.

Here he indicates with disapproval the purely pleasurable value of so many mythological representations and nudes, recognising the "ingeniousness" of art in such spheres. He says that the idea of what is decorative and artistic, in association with the private pleasure of the prince in this type of painting, was generally accepted in the palaces amd buildings of the Baroque period when decoration was provided not only for the public rooms but also in the private quarters of the ruling class. And these ideas were present in the collections of the Royal Alcazar in which the Lower Gallery had a series of private rooms decorated with mythological scenes, many of them inspired by the Metamorphosis of Ovid (5).

Few examples in the Spanish palaces give such a clear demonstra-tion of this pull between war and peace as does the collection assembled by Philip IV in this Lower Summer Gallery of the Royal Alcazar in Madrid. In later paragraphs we will see that in the Hall of Mirrors, the political importance of the collections lies in an exaltation of the dynasty or else of some of the best known heroic deeds associated with the monarchy (such as the Battle of Lepanto). In the Lower Gallery, however, the Poems by Titian, some of the most famous nudes by Rubens or Dürer of the royal collection, and others by Jordaens, Luca Cambiaso, Veronese, etc. betray the move away from this glorifying of the heroic gesture that pervaded the culture of the XVII century.

This change is evident again in other collections such as that chosen by Philip IV for a country house near Madrid called the Torre de la Parada, with a wide-ranging mythological series of paintings from the Rubens studio, with no underlying intentions. These were accompanied by portraits as hunters, of Philip IV, of his son Prince Baltasar Carlos, and of the Cardinal Infante by Velázquez, as well as his Aesop and his Menipo and some minor works (6). Hunting as a pleasant alternative to war, a popular literary theme in the Renaissance and Baroque periods, comes as the setting for these portraits by Velázquez and for some of the Rubens series in the Torre de la Parada. In the question of the weariness of the theme of war, the supreme example is the famous Mars, the third of the mythological figures painted by Velázquez for this country house. It is a perfect reflection of the privacy achieved in the Alcazar of Madrid through a whole gallery of nude figures. In the words of Jonathan Brown: "Through the imagination of Velázquez we see the reaction of Mars to the unexpected ending of his amorous adventure". It is true that the god has been defeated, but his melancholy pose must not be seen as related to any critical view held by Velázquez with regard to the military setbacks suffered by his king; rather it is a mag-nificent allegorical portrayal of the weariness of the world of heroics and war that was represented by the hunting lodge in which the painting was hung.

The pull between peace and war was most evident in the cycles of the Buen Retiro. Another section of this catalogue deals with the image of war in its famous Salón de Reinos with its scenes of battles, dynastic portraits and the series of The labours of Hercules by Zurbarán. It should not be forgotten, however, that Philip IV also placed nearby the series by Italian painters of scenes from the history of Rome, recalling the heroic deeds of the classical age - (one of the favourite themes in European culture at the time) - while in the Landscape Gallery of the same palace were placed the landscape series with saints and hermits painted by Poussin, Claude Lorrain and others, portraying the life of retirement and a longing for peace, different from the Mars of Velázquez but with a certain parallelism. Here is one of the deepest reflections in the whole of seventeenth century European painting on nature as an abode of rest, of quiet and of religious meditation; the idea of classical landscape is now used to symbolize a stoical withdrawal into nature, full of imagery of the tradition of the Christian anchorites as is evident in paintings such as Poussin?s ?Landscape with St Jerome? or Claude Lorrain?s ?Landscape with Santa María de Cervelló?. In others such as the magnificent ?Landscape with the burial of Santa Serapia? by Claude Lorrain, religious meditation is suggested by Rome and its ruins, while Velázquez, in the ?Landscape with San Antonio Abad and San Pablo Ermitaño? recalls Nordic traditions for the same purpose, Dürer for the figures of the anchorites, and Patinir for the landscape that he knew so well from the royal collections (9).



II. Different modes of persuasion and the commemorative value of the image: the Royal Alcazar of Madrid.

We should not forget, however, the great persuasive value assigned to to artistic activity in the XVII century, according to the classical rhetoric of Aristotle. This persuasion was intended to work in two ways: on one hand it was to show the people, the ambassadors and the visitors, by means of the works of art, the validity and the need for a certain image of power; and on the other it acknowledged the educational and stimulating effect on the Prince's political activity, as confirmed by Saavedra Fajado.

And finally there is another aspect of the political importance of works of art - their commemorative significance. Apart from any decorative, pleasurable or pedagogical value, and beyond the persuasive rhetoric inherent in the period, a great number of paintings and sculptures justify their presence in the palaces simply as reminders of the past, of events and personages that give meaning to the events and the politics of the present.

Baltasar Gracián expresses this in his Criticón (1651-1657) when he describes the collection of Lastanosa in Huesca: "It has always been politically wise to perpetuate great men in statues, seals and medals, whether the purpose is to inspire the men of the future or to honour those of the past; remember that they were men, and that their example is not impossible to follow".

These artistic, persuasive, pedagogical and commemorative values of works of art were found in abundance in the Royal Alcazar. In these few pages it is impossible to give even a summary of the significance of such a vast collection.

First of all it must be remembered that there were constant changes of the paintings that were gradually collected there over a period of two hundred years and more, changes not only as regards the growth of the collection but also the changing judge-ment of painting and of the way it was exhibited during the XVI and XVII centuries. So we must focus on the state of the collec-tion in the second half of the XVII century when it was at the peak of its splendour.

From the descriptions by chroniclers and travellers such as Venturino, Diego de Cuelvis, Hieremias Gundlach, Cassiano dal Pozzo, etc.; inventories such as those made in 1600, 1636, 1666, 1686 and 1700; plans, by Juan Gómez de Mora in 1626 and then in the XVIII century by Teodoro Ardemans, provide enough data for an "X-ray" of the state of the collections held in the building between the end of the XVI century and the fire that destroyed it in 1734.

Very briefly it may be said that in the time of Philip II, the intention was not that of a collection with a given political theme as was imposed in later years. The description by Venturino in 1571 centres on the richness of the frescos and the quantity of tapestries in the New Hall of the King, as well as on the sumptuous decoration of the so-called Golden Tower.

Combining the description by Diego de Cuelvis at the end of the XVI century with the inventory made in 1600, it is seen that the arrangement of the paintings in the main rooms of the building (the King's Room at the west, overlooking the Manzanares, and those on the south side around the Great Hall), is very much in the style of the VXI century with very little idea of a political programme. For example, the so-called Great Hall, (the future Salón de Comedias) was decorated with views of towns, historical scenes such as the entry of Philip II into Portugal and the battles of Charles V, paintings of the Chinese islands, a chart with different kinds of birds, portraits of inhabitants of the islands and several paintings that may have been by Arcimboldo (10).

It was another building alongside the Alcazar, known as the Casa del Tesoro, that housed the portraits by Titian, Antonio Moro and Spanish painters that came to be the nucleus of a political image of the House of Austria. To judge by the inventory of 1600, it was very far from this idea, and was simply a collection of works of art. The fifth room, for example, contained such great works as Titian?s ?Charles in the battle of Mülberg? or his ?Philip II offering to heaven the Infante Don Fernando?, together with animal portraits and images, arms of the Knights of St.Michael, and the ?Allegory of the education of Philip III? by Justus Tiel. There was a little more order and intention in some of the rooms of the Treasury; the first room contained important portraits of the Royal Family by Moro, Sánchez Coello, Titian and Joos van Cleve; the second contained mythological paintings such as "The loves of the gods" by Correggio and portraits by Titian ?Philip II in armour? and by Moro (?Juana of Portugal?); the Paymaster's Office had an assortment of portraits, mythologies and allegorical works such as the Hans Baldung ?Ages of Man?.

It was not until the XVII century that the great works by these painters - the ?Charles? V at Mühlberg or the ?Philip II offering the Infante to heaven? by Titian and the new equestrian portraits by Rubens or Velázquez reach the type of expressiveness that gives them their full content of political allegory. And this called for the greatest architectural reform of the building in all its history. This was undertaken by Juan Gómez de Mora in the reign of Philip III and it provided not only a new façade but also a whole row of rooms along the south side of the palace. With this reform, three great halls were available for the the great collections: the South Gallery, the Octagagonal Gallery and the Hall of Mirrors.

Well into the reign of Philip IV (who had ordered it in 1621), the inventory of 1636 reveals the spirit of the collection as a whole, much indebted to the previous century as regards artistic taste but clearly intended to represent a political statement, at least from 1626 when Cassiano dal Pozo had described the visit he made with Cardinal Barberini. The great halls contained not only supremely artistic works by Rubens, Titian and Van Hemessen but other great paintings with a political undertone such as those mentioned in the previous paragraph and the ?Furies? by Titian. Shortly after this visit, historical subjects were added, works by Carducho, Caxés and González, and the lost portrait by Velázquez of Philip IV on horseback. The 1636 inventory also lists another Velázquez, "The eviction of the Moors" (also lost), the portrait of the Infante Don Fernando by Van Dyck, brought from Flanders by the Marquis of Leganés, and the anonymous ?Battle of Nordlingen?, all clearly historical and political. The descrip-tion of the Hall of Mirrors by Carducho in 1633 mentions the historical painting by Velázquez which took the place of the González portrait of Philip III as well as the "Entry of Philip III into Portugal" and the "Interchange of the Princesses".

The gradual improvement in the decoration of these great salons continued in two directions: on one hand, Philip IV replaced some of the historical works of Spanish painters by paintings of greater artistic value (particularly by Rubens, Velázquez, Tin-toretto or Gentileschi), and on the other hand there came a real sense of allegory and exaltation of the dynasty with the official portraits of Charles V, Philip II, Philip III, Philip IV and Charles II. In combination with the moral admonitions of Titian?s ?Furies?, these made up one of the finest collections in Europe at the time. It contained nearly all the functions and qualities we have mentioned as fundamental for an understanding of a large part of the collection of the Royal Alcazar: the commemorative and dynastic paintings in the portraits and historical scenes, the morality of the ?Furies?, and the persuavive influence of the splendour of the collection. There was also the metaphorical significance of the mirrors that gave their name to the Gallery in the sense that the literature invoked "mirrors of the virtue of the prince". We mentioned that Federico Zuccaro had used this metaphor in his description of the Gallery of the Duke of Savoy. It also appears in Velázquez? most famous painting "Las Meninas" (The maids of honour) and in the series of portraits of Charles II by Carreño de Miranda that were also in the Hall of Mirrors.

The real step towards the consolidation of the exhibition in the mode and mood of the XVII century was taken of course by Diego Velázquez in the fifties. The great number of acquisitions made by Philip IV and the trips to Italy of his favourite Spanish painter led them to transform the collection and replace all the paintings that seemed archaic, especially those of Hieronymos Bosch or the VXI century Flemish painters who no longer appealed to the taste and the interests of the time.

This is patent in the in the South Gallery, completely redecorated by Velázquez, and in the Octagonal Room, the two great halls that complemented the Hall of Mirrors for the exhi-bitions in the Alcazar. The South Gallery, after the reforms between 1646 and 1648, was the only one in the palace in which sculpture predominated; here were placed the series of sculptures known as ?The Planets?, by the Flemish Jonghelinck, purchased for the Buen Retiro, as well as several bronze busts by Leon Leoni such as his ?Philip II?, ?María of Hungary? and pro-bably the ?Carlos V? and ?Fury? (all now in the Prado). These sculptures complement the royal portraits in the adjoining Hall of Mirrors.

Similar measures were taken in the South Gallery. In 1633, the Diálogos de la Pintura by Bartoleme Carducho represented a pro-gramme that had been assigned to Carducho, Caxés and Fabricio Castello and that had not been carried out. It had stated "It is to be appropriate to the location, and is to be a represen-tation of all that has happened in the world from the Creation until now, with the personages of each period, showing their age and a heroic deed of the time, each one shown with a heroic deed of a famous person, and all presented with much moralising, and with much erudition and example".

This text for a work that was never undertaken, so reminiscent of the words of Federico Zuccaro in 1607 that we quoted earlier, has its parallel in the decoration of the South Gallery according to the invemtory of 1636: twelve paintings of the twelve months, four of the elements, four of the seasons, views of royal palaces, scenes of war and of hunting of the Flemish school, twelve scenes by Juan de la Corte and two panels by Hieronomo Bosch, hanging among the royal portraits by Villandrando, Titian and Rubens.

Velázquez made a complete transformation. Not only did he add more royal portraits (removing those that were archaic such as those of Villandrando), but he substituted all those mentioned in the previous paragraph with mythological paintings by Veronese, portraits by Rubens, Titian and Tintoretto, and religious scenes by Bassano and others. From the point of view of political significance, Titian's paintings were important: the portrait of Philip II in armour, that of Charles V with a dog, and of the Empress Isabel, as well as his famous series of Roman emperors that Philip IV had purchased at the auction of the treasures of Charles I of England and that were destroyed in the fire of 1734.

The decoration that had expressed a vaguely cosmological image of power, typical of the XVI century, was thus transformed by Velásquez into a Gallery in the Baroque style that he had so much admired in Rome during his second visit to Italy. The political allegory inherent in the majestic portraits, and in the series of Roman emperors by Titian that adorned the higher part of the walls, was complemented by some very sophisticated studies based on Venetian paintings of the XVI century.

Political considerations and intentions were raised to new heights by being expressed with greater artistry, and to return to the quotation from Saavedra Fajado with which we began, nature, in this case political nature, only acquires its true significance in contrast with paintings of scant admonitory and moral content, such as the ?Venus and Adonis? and the ?Cefalo and Procris? by Veronese or the series of Venetian Women, probably from the studio of Tintoretto and now in the Prado, all full of artistic expressiveness. Once again, peace and war, quietude and heroic tension are present in the Spanish Royal Collections, reflecting one of the main features of European history and culture in the XVII century.

In this way, Velázquez transformed a building that had offered a vaguely cosmological concept of power in the style of the XVI century into a Baroque gallery like those he had admired in Rome during his second trip to Italy; now the political allegory inherent in the state portraits, and Titian?s series of Roman emperors around the upper part of the walls, were complemented by some very sophisticated studies based mainly on masterpieces of VXI century Venetian painting.

Political and exemplary values were thus given all their force and potential in a setting of the highest artistic achievment, and as Saavedra Fajardo wrote in the work with which we started this commentary, nature - political nature in this case - only acquires its true dimension when it is contrasted with paintings of scant admonitory and moral effect as, for example, Veronese?s ?Venus and Adonis? and ?Cephalus and Procris?, or the series of ?Venetian women?, probably from the Tintoretto studio, however eloquent they are artistically. Here again, peace and war, quietude and heroism appear in the Spanish royal collections, exemplifying one of the outstanding qualities of the history and culture of the XVII century.

FOOTNOTES