The Thirty Years' War is only one of the numerous military conflicts in which Spain was embroiled during the first half of the 17th century, a period in which it was at war with every other major European power. [1] The present essay investigates the manner and extent to which Spanish artists were affected by the military conflicts and how this circumstance was reflected in art production both within and outside the court in Madrid.

A look at the courtly art of the period shows that the Spanish Hapsburgs used art in a new and heretofore unprecedented way, commissioning a series of monumental architectural and decorative programs to render visible the imperial power of the Spanish royal house and its claim to status as a world empire. While up to this point the kings of Spain had hesitated to glorify themselves in programs representing the monarchy with its victories and deeds, this attitude underwent a fundamental change under Philip IV. [2] In foreign policy, the king and his minister Olivares pursued the goal of restoring, if not expanding, the global power that Spain had still enjoyed under Philip II (1561-1598), a strategy that led to Spain's constant presence in the various European theaters of war. In the first four decades of the 17th century, a number of initiatives can be observed at the court in Madrid indicating a growing awareness of the possibilities inherent in the politics of art. First, the capital city was transformed into a Baroque residence. The Plaza Mayor was redesigned as a monumental, self-contained plaza complex [3]; the Alcázar, which after hundreds of years of building resembled a medieval fortress more than a Baroque royal residence, received a new, representative facade. In the 1620s, the Plaza de Palacio in front of the Alcázar likewise received representative character through the regularization of the streets leading to it. [4] In the palaces, interior programs with decorative cycles of painting portrayed the Spanish monarchy as a triumphant dynasty. The decoration of the Salón de los Reinos at Buen Retiro, for example, undertaken in 1634-35, included a relatively elaborate program glorifying the king's military exploits. [5] Twelve monumental battle pictures on the long walls of the hall showed the recent victories and triumphs of the Spanish armies, some of them associated with the Thirty Years' War. [6] The ruler monument, as well, received a new function under Philip IV. While up to this point some reserve had been shown in erecting kings' monuments within the palace complexes, at Buen Retiro a number of monuments were planned for prominent places: Leone Leoni's bronze statue of 1550-55, Charles V and Fury Restrained, was set up in the Patio de Emperador, one of the large courtyards of the complex [7], while another full-figure marble statue of Charles V by Leone and Pompeo Leoni was erected in the garden of the Eremita de San Pablo. [8] In addition, Pietro Tacca's monumental equestrian statue of Philip IV, showing the king with a baton, dressed for war and mounted on a curveting horse - a portrait type new to Spain - was placed in the Jardín de la Reina, one of the gardens of Buen Retiro. [9] One portrait of Philip IV is known to have originated on the occasion of a military success: the portrait of the king at Fraga - painted in 1644 by Velázquez, who had accompanied him to battle as court painter - shows Philip IV in the commander in chief's uniform worn at the triumphal entry into Lérida after the victory over the French. [10] Thus during the first half of the century, numerous works making reference to war originated in the court in Madrid, though the attitude they display is by no means critical.



Artists' Daily Lives and Art Production in Times of War

Aside from the major commissions for the Madrid court mentioned above, the Thirty Years' War and the other wars in which Spain was involved seem to have been of little concern to Spanish artists; few works bear witness to any interest in military themes. While in the Netherlandish, Italian, French, and German painting of the period, numerous subjects reflecting a consciousness of war - battle paintings, scenes from the soldier's life, still lifes with weapons, the depiction of raids and other atrocities - attain new heights in the works of Jacques Callot, Peter Paul Rubens, Pieter Snayers, Philips Wouwerman, Sebastian Vrancx, and many others, few paintings by Spanish artists are devoted to these themes.

There are a number of explanations for this. First of all, it should be remembered that painters in Spain, living and working far from the theaters of war, were little affected by military events; indeed, most of the military conflicts took place outside the Iberian peninsula. To be sure, in the 1640s there were repeated clashes in Catalonia and on the Portuguese border, but compared to the many battles on Netherlandish, French, or German soil, their number was negligible. In the first half of the 17th century, moreover, few Spanish artists went abroad, and those who did traveled not to uncertain areas, but to Rome, in order to devote themselves to their studies. In addition, the government strove to minimize the military presence in the capital city and, with the exception of the royal guard, generally avoided stationing troops in Madrid. Despite occasional raids, thefts, murders, other acts of violence, and begging, above all by soldiers who had left the army and streamed into the capital city [11], artists generally had little contact with the soldier's life, another reason for the rarity of war themes in Spanish painting, whether historical or allegorical. The battle paintings in the Salón de los Reinos of Buen Retiro clearly show that few of the painters involved were experienced in depicting battles; often, they are the only large-scale history paintings in the oeuvre of the artist in question. Moreover, the medium of printmaking, employed by artists in other European lands to disseminate images of war, some of them critical, was little used in Spain. [12] Certainly the paucity of military representations may also be traced to a lack of audience. The church and the nobility showed little interest in such themes, and in Spain, unlike the Netherlands, the bourgeoisie were not self-confident enough to adopt a critical stance toward the war.



War and Artists' Daily Lives

To what extent were Spanish artists nonetheless affected by the events of war, and how is this circumstance reflected in their works? Spanish writings of the time tell us little concerning the role of the war in the daily lives of artists or its effect on the arts. While in Germany, Joachim von Sandrart eloquently lamented the decay of the arts as a result of the great war [13], the numerous conflicts of the time are hardly mentioned in the treatises on painting by the great Spanish theorists of the 17th century. Neither the Diálogos de la pintura of Vincente Carducho, published in 1633 in Madrid, nor the Arte de la pintura of Francisco Pacheco, published in 1649 in Seville, nor Jusepe Martínez' Discursos practicables del nobilissimo arte de la pintura, written decades later in 1673, deal at all with the question of the extent to which individual artists or art in general was affected by military events. [14] Moreover, we know of only a few artists who participated directly in the war. We learn of them from the contemporaneous biographer Lázaro Díaz del Valle (1656-1662), whose Epilogo y nomenclatura de algunos artífices gives us the most authentic reports on Spanish painters of the first half of the century, as well as from Antonio Palomino in Parnaso Español pintoresco laureado (1724), the third and last volume of his Museo pictórico y escala óptica. [15] Seldom do we hear of artists accompanying high-ranking personages in their travels to the theaters of war.

Up to this point, no cases are known in which Spanish painters were employed for diplomatic purposes in times of war. The example of figures such as Peter Paul Rubens, who was active in diplomatic service for Spain and England, or the architect and painter Balthazar Gerbier, who successfully negotiated for the English government, show that 17th-century artists could indeed attain to diplomatic status. [16] Yet when the Spaniard Diego Velázquez first traveled to Italy in 1629, he was greeted with suspicion and even thought to be a spy. [17] Spain had been embroiled in the Mantuan war of succession since 1628, and at that time Velázquez belonged to the entourage of the famous general Ambrogio Spínola, whom Philip IV had appointed governor of Milan in 1629. In his letter of recommendation to the Council of Ten of the Venetian senate, Alvise Mocenigo, the Venetian ambassador in Madrid, emphasized the harmlessness of the painter's visit to Venice ("non puó esser di sospetto") [18]; nevertheless, in a letter to the duchess of Naples, the ambassador of Parma, Flavio Atti, conjectured that the painter had come to Italy to spy for the Spanish court ("dico io, che viene per spiare"), in fact in cooperation with another known spy. [19]

In order to enable Spain to fight on numerous fronts, however, some contribution was required from artists as well, above all in the form of taxes and military service. The Spanish army consisted primarily of mercenaries, who were generally recruited on a volunteer basis and served in a professional army. [20] Nevertheless, the increasing need for soldiers occasioned periodic attempts to introduce compulsory military service, a measure which would have affected painters as well. The latter repeatedly resisted the initiatives of the court to obligate them to military service. [21] Evidence for this exists for the years 1600 [22], 1625 [23], 1626 [24], and for the period after 1636. [25] To be sure, in only one case is concrete reference made to a particular war: in a document composed in 1668 at the instigation of the painters Juan Montero y Rojas and Andreas Schmidt, freeing them from obligations to a confraternity, the lawyer Alonso Carrillo mentions that after 1636, the year of Spain's declaration of war on France, the attempt had been made to draft artists into the army. [26] Evidence exists as well for a lack of military enthusiasm on the part of the nobility: in 1643, Philip IV had to use the threat of large fines to force them to participate in the campaign against Catalonia. [27]

Despite all the pressure, few artists joined the military, and these probably on a volunteer basis. One of them was Juan de Toledo (1611-1665), who according to Palomino was called "El Capitán" and went to Italy, where he served as capitán de caballos in the duchy of Milan. [28] This experience was of considerable importance for his work, for upon his return to Madrid, Toledo specialized as a battle painter. Concerning Bernabé Jiménez Illescas (1613-1671) of Lucena, Palomino tells us that he had first interrupted his studies to join the army. [29] As a soldier, he traveled extensively and became acquainted with other peoples. Finally, Jiménez turned to painting again in Rome and spent six additional years studying there. His time in the military, however, remained without direct significance for his work, for the painter concentrated above all on religious themes. Concerning Jacques Courtois, called Le Bourguignon (1621-1675), a battle painter of French origin who worked in Rome, it is known that he attached himself to the Spanish army in Milan and in the context of his service prepared numerous battle sketches.

In addition to the few reports found in artists' biographies of war service by painters, numerous records indicate that because of the high cost of war, painters, too, were burdened with additional taxes. The latter were first of all those known as repartimiento de soldados or repartimiento del vestir de soldados, taxes serving for the "investiture and maintenance of one or a number of soldiers." [30] In a number of court proceedings (1597, 1600, and 1677) [31], for which Calderón composed legal opinions, individual painters refused to pay this tax. Also mentioned are donativos, otherwise unspecified taxes levied repeatedly by the Madrid guilds after 1636 in order to cover the costs of war. [32] The writings composed in defense of the painters generally assert that artists are to be exempt from all such taxes since painting enjoys the status of an ars liberalis. Such demands are to be placed on simple craftsmen, not on painters, who should by no means be equated with the former. [33] Painting enjoys the same rank as poetry, for both are "trabajo del entendimiento," of "ingenuidad," of "idea" as well as "inteligencia" and "teoría." An additional point adduced in the painters' defense is not only their artistic rank, but also their poverty; since they are barely able to feed their own families, additional taxes would be an unreasonable demand. [34] Not every case of refusal to pay taxes came to trial, but when it did, the judgments were usually in favor of the artists. Nevertheless, painters were forced to struggle repeatedly for recognition of their activity as an ars liberalis and consequently their exemption from taxes.

If Spanish painters showed little inclination to take part in the war, whether actively or in the form of the payment of taxes, they nonetheless used it as an argument in their petitions for state support for their education. When the painters of Madrid proposed the founding of a royal academy in 1624, their appeal claimed that painting was a useful art and could be helpful, among other things, for artillery and the production of weapons. [35] The prospective academy would offer scientific instruction in the arts, improvement in the mastery of drawing, and a general elevation in the level of Spanish art. [36] The painters also maintained that with improved education for Spanish painters, the court would no longer have to employ overpaid foreign masters, thus testifying to the suspicion that greeted anything foreign in Spain at that time as well as to the competitive pressure to which native painters were subjected.



Art Production and War

As we have seen, Spanish artists in the first half of the 17th century were hardly affected by the numerous wars in which their land was embroiled, a fact which may also explain the infrequency of representations with military themes. As "pintores de batallas," Palomino mentions only Juan de la Corte (ca. 1597-1660), a painter of Flemish origin active in Madrid, Juan de Toledo (1611-1665) from the province of Murcia, and the Valencian artist Estebán March (1610-1668). De la Corte, whom Palomino classifies as a court painter, though not one of the best [37], painted numerous land and sea battles. Most of them show battles between Spaniards and Turks (Fig. 1) [38], though he also represented a series of victories by Charles V. [39] Juan de Toledo, who had studied in Rome with the battle painter Michel Angel Cerquozzi and worked in Granada, Murcia, and finally Madrid, also created numerous "Batallas" and "Marinas," i.e. many-figured battle scenes and dramatic naval battles in the manner of de la Corte. [40] In addition, paintings with smaller groups of fighting soldiers, shown at center on an elevated, stage-like foreground, are also found in his oeuvre (Fig. 2). [41] From Estéban March we have numerous drawings and paintings of battle scenes, which do not usually represent a particular event (Fig. 3). [42] The number of pictures devoted to historical battles is considerably smaller than those showing non-identifiable fights. On the whole, these works are obligated to Aniello Falcone and Michel Angel Cerquozzi, the Italian masters of the war genre, to the engravings of Antonio Tempesta, or to Rubens.

Daily life in war, camp life, or plundering and robbery appear in painting even less frequently than battles. Among the few works with such themes are two pictures by Estéban March, the one a monumental camp scene showing numerous large tents with officers and solders in victorious poses (Fig. 4) [43], the other a wash drawing showing the plundering of a village (Fig. 5). [44] The raid scene shows a captain at center, before whom two bound farmers - one of them kneeling - are probably pleading for their lives. In the background appears a wagon with the war booty and a devastated village landscape with burning houses. The drawing was made in Valencia, outside the sphere of the court; in its critical stance toward the horrors of war, it remains an exception in Spanish art.

Only a few portraits of war participants have survived. Among them is the full-figure representation of a heretofore unidentified artillery general by the Madrid painter Francisco Rizi (1608-1685), dated to the 1640s (Fig. 6). [45] The high-ranking officer is shown frontally, not in a victorious pose, but rather in strong contrapposto with an almost casual air. Two representations of unknown soldiers are attributed to the painter Antonio Puga (1602-1648), also active in Madrid. [46] The one, Portrait of an Unknown Soldier (Fig. 7), shows a self-confident young man in armor, turning frontally toward the viewer with the expression of a victorious warrior. [47] The dark side of war is illustrated in the painting The Dead Soldier (Fig. 8), likewise attributed to Puga. Here the horror of war is presented in terms of an individual fate; at the same time, however, the death's head lying next to the corpse and the bones scattered about allude to the Vanitas of human existence. [48]

Spanish painters also make reference to the war of their time in a few genre scenes, still lifes, and Vanitas paintings. Apart from the "Bodegones" originating in Seville at the beginning of the century, genre scenes are rare in 17th-century Spain, especially ones depicting soldiers. [49] One of the few exceptions is the painting The Grinder by the above-mentioned Antonio Puga. [50] The work shows a group of persons dominated by the figure of a soldier to the right, who leans on his rifle while his sword is sharpened by the grinder next to him on the right. A scene from military life also appears in the oeuvre of Antonio de Pereda (1611-1678), an artist active in the courtly sphere in Madrid. The greatest still life painter of his generation, he introduced the Vanitas theme to Spain. [51] In his large work Kitchen Scene with Maid and Soldier (Fig. 9), also entitled "Allegory of Lost Virtue," a young woman busy with the washing appears in a kitchen along with a table heavily laden with food and vessels; kneeling, she turns toward a seated soldier. [52] A broken platter, a number of upset vessels, and an extinguished candle suggest the theme of lost virtue, widespread in the literature of the time.

The weapons still life, popular in Holland and Germany at the time of the Thirty Years' War, is absent from Spain altogether. [53] At the most, isolated weapons appear in Vanitas still lifes. A masterpiece of this genre is Pereda's Allegory of Transience of ca. 1634 [54], in which a number of objects are used to allude to the transience of imperial power. An angel extends a cameo with a portrait of Charles V toward the viewer, pointing with the other hand to a globe symbolizing the greatness of the Spanish world empire. Further insignia of riches such as valuable coins, chains, and a clock lie on the table next to the globe. On a second table in the left half of the picture, numerous objects such as death's heads, trophies, books, and maps point to an aspect of human existence beyond power. A burnt-down candle as well as an hourglass warn of the transience of earthly life. When Pereda painted this picture in the 1630s, the age of Spain's ascendancy was already over and the land was approaching ruin, both politically and economically.

The results may be summarized as follows: the few artists outside the court proper who dealt with military themes were mostly second-rate painters such as Toledo, de la Corte, or Puga; Pereda and March constitute an exception. The battle paintings by these masters usually show generalized combat scenes rather than particular events. Occasionally, genre scenes with soldiers appear; these, however, do not glorify the soldier's life in any way. The few representations of the horrors of war are associated with reflections on Vanitas, transience, and the deceptiveness of earthly power.

In courtly art, on the other hand, the war appears in an unequivocally favorable light. In ruler portraits and the decorative programs of palaces, the Spanish army is presented as victorious and the king, his First Minister, and generals as invincible commanders-in-chief. Often warlike virtues such as bravery and courage are extolled as well. Few examples can be found representing the generosity of the victor toward the defeated, the devastating results of war, the suffering of the captives, or the physical misery of the wounded. A consciousness of changing fortune in war and the need for Caritas is rarely found among the court painters. Unlike in the Netherlands, Flanders, and Germany, the works of the Spanish painters express no longing for peace, either directly or in allegorical form, though one may reasonably expect that such sentiments existed in Spain as well. The only monumental painting that may be interpreted as an expression of the longing for peace and criticism of the military policy of Philip IV is Velázquez' Mars (Fig. 10), painted after 1640. [55] The painter shows the god of war visibly exhausted, in a pose that is hardly warlike; shabbily clad, with his armor at his feet and weary of war, he seeks rest on his bed. [56] Such questioning of the official glorification of war, however, was a privilege reserved only for an artist of Velázquez' stature.

FOOTNOTES