The Peace of Westphalia appears to have affected Spain only indirectly. The special agreements in which the United Provinces of the northern Netherlands were granted independence from Spain preceded the primary negotiations, while the Peace of the Pyrenees, which temporarily ended the conflict between France and Spain, was first settled over a decade after the conclusion of the Peace of Westphalia. In contrast to the newly created confessionally mixed state of the United Provinces, Spain remained after 1648 purely Catholic with strong ties between Church and state. As such, Spain continued to have a special role among the leading European powers and largely succeeded in maintaining its position until the overthrow of Gaspar de Guzmán, Count-Duke of Olivares. In former times, Spain's role had become important because of its geographic position. During the Middle Ages, the European continent grew to become prosperous and found its own identity only through confrontation with "Others". [1] Relations to northern Africa and cultural exchange with the Islamic world were of decisive importance to this process. [2]

In 1648, Spain had, on one hand, a state with a multi-ethnic population as well as certain experiences in the assimilation of foreign cultures. On the other hand, a certain willingness to engage in religious conflict was also present - a willingness kindled by the deteriorating economic situation as well as the confrontations with both the Protestants and the Turks. The manner in which the Spanish Catholics treated Spain's minorities (who were still insufficiently integrated) and "heretics" (who had in the meantime joined the confessional conflict) is most revealing because it offers the opportunity to examine the earnestness and universal validity of the principle of tolerance proclaimed in the Peace of Westphalia. Or, to formulate the question more generally: How can we accurately define Europe's contemporary attitude toward the Others - keeping in mind the present-day liberal attitude which is so readily employed as an ideological weapon against the so-called fundamentalism of the Others?

The ban on Judaism and Islam after the fall of Granada in 1492 was a forceful break in the history of the Iberian peninsula, which was traditionally inhabited by a multi-religious population. However, even around 1500, Spain was a better place for foreign religious communities than other European countries. [3] The Jews had been expelled much earlier from some of these countries and in many others pogroms were the order of the day. In the sixteenth century, a Spanish clergyman like Bartolomé de Las Casas still could obtain recognition of certain "human rights" for heathen Indians, but later during this century the religious conflicts within Spanish society also increasingly intensified. The Inquisition now became a permanent institution that was not only charged with the prosecution of recidivous "conversos" (converted Jews), but of all supposed "heretics". [4] In 1609, Philip III eventually ordered the banning of all Moriscos (converted Moors) that had remained in the country. [5] Black African slaves were almost the only group of Others still living in Spain after this date; it is likely that some of them were originally Muslims as well. A number of Black African slaves seem to have remained in Spain for quite some time. We know that some of them were taken on as assistants to painters. [6]

In the present text, I will deal with the following questions: How did the arts respond to the aggravation of the religious conflicts in Spain? Did the Münster agreements have a recognisable effect on contemporary art? [7] What kind of consequences did the Peace of Westphalia have - as a peace concluded between the leading Christian confessions - for the representation of Others in Spain? Do the available visual sources reveal a growing religious tolerance extended to Others or did the image of the enemy just shift? Did the Moors become the new enemies?

In the following, I will rely on the categories of "inclusion" and "exclusion". These categories are taken from the contemporary discourse on the arts and are now occasionally used to thematise the practice of barring non-Western artists from the enterprise of international exhibition. [8] I argue that the borrowing of this methodical approach is justified through recent historical research on the Hispanic world - that formerly did not only comprise the Iberian peninsula, southern Netherlands, southern Italy, and Lombardy, but also the Philippines and Latin America. With good reason, the multi-cultural character of the old Hispanic world is regarded as an early form of a population structure like that, for example, of the USA. Researchers hope that a more thorough comparative study will furnish useful suggestions for solutions to current problems. [9]

I will consider in my discussion of "inclusion" and "exclusion" the specific historical conditions of the initial appearance of these categories. In the seventeenth century, the terms were not primarily used to distinguish the status of people belonging to different ethnic groups. Definitions of "inclusion" or "exclusion" depended, first and foremost, on religious factors. The representation of Jews in paintings from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries has been analysed in a number of earlier studies. [10] The Jews, however, were not the only "outcasts" that appeared in images of the period. Thus, I opt for a (new) methodical approach that offers the opportunity to incorporate representations of Moors and Moriscos in the discussion of the contemporary propaganda against the Others. Was the actual expulsion of the Moors and Moriscos in 1609 also followed by a new wave of exclusion from depictive art? Considering that Moors and Moriscos were at least ideally included in literary works of the time - how can we explain the absence of such examples in contemporary painting? Was there no longer a place for the Others in the work of Spanish painters?

Let us begin with two representations dated shortly before 1500: Fernando Gallego's "Veneration of the Relics" (dated 1480) from the Cathedral of Zamora, and Pedro Berruguete's "Saint Dominic de Guzmán Presiding Over an Auto de Fe" which was painted between 1490 and 1496 for the monastery of Santo Tomás at Avila. Both examples illustrate my method of analysing "inclusion" and "exclusion". In both panels we can see figures wearing a turban. In images antedating the fifteenth century, figures with this head-gear can indicate a certain structure of the population of a country, i.e. the inclusion of minorities. According to Ruth Mellinkoff, the turban points to the exotic foreigner, the loner from afar, irrespective of time, place, customs and religious confession. [11] In art, the turban is known as an element characterising Jews, but also as an attribute of the Oriental in general. As such, the turban acquires an increasingly negative meaning: it becomes a symbol of the suspicious foreigner who rouses the fears of the Christian majority. In Spanish paintings we often see figures wearing a turban - particularly in the context of miraculous deeds or in saints' stories where they may represent the act of conversion as in e.g. Fernando Gallego's "Retable of Saint Ildefonso" in the Cathedral of Zamora. [12] One of the representations of this retable, the picture thematising the contemporary "Veneration of the Relics", shows the figure of a Moor.

The "immagini infamanti" (infamous images), in use in Italy since the late thirteenth century, are examples of media of exclusion. [13] These images showed political criminals (e.g. traitors, insurgents, and robbers) as well as delinquents who had offended the civil rights (mostly people who had committed financial delicts). When someone was found guilty of a criminal act, their effigy was painted on the walls of main public buildings; inscriptions informed of the name, crime and punishment. As extant examples in Spain suggest, the representation of the convicted came into use in Spain only in the times of the Inquisition - in a moment when in Italy this practice was waning because of growing concern about city prestige. [14] In Spain, the ecclesiastical court proceedings were concluded with the "auto de fe". [15] Thereafter, the convicted were handed over to the secular authorities who carried out the execution in an area outside the city where those condemned through civil procedure were also put to death. As a rule, the "act of the faith" was held in a church ("auto privado"), but in exceptional cases it was staged in the main square of the most important Spanish cities ("auto público general").

Pedro Berruguete's aforementioned representation of an "auto de fe" was part of a pictorial program for the headquarters of the inquisition which at the time was located in the convent of Santo Tomás. The pictorial program was meant to justify the establishment of the new authority and to impart its modus operandi to the faithful. [16] The "auto de fe" depicted by Berruguete is likely to refer to inquisition proceedings instituted in the town of Avila in 1490/91 against the alleged ritual murderers of a Jewish child. We see the supposed heretics wearing the "sambenito" (the penitential robe) on their way to the place of execution; having arrived, they are abandoned naked to the fire. The "sambenito" was inscribed with a list of sins, while the "coroza" (penitential cap) was marked with varying symbols that informed of the imposed punishment. After the close of the legal proceedings, the garments of infamy were exhibited together with the heretics' names in parish churches and central offices of the inquisition.

Exclusion

We are familiar with representations of Moors in Spain above all through the iconography of "Santiago Matamoros", Saint James, the Moorslayer. According to recent research, this type of image first appeared with the advancing "reconquista", the so-called reconquest. [17] The earliest known examples in the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela show Saint James as a bishop. This is indicative of the distinguished rank among the Apostles that he was conferred early on. In a representation from the twelfth century in the church Santa Maria de Tera, Saint James appears as a pilgrim: the unusual case of a saint depicted in the custom and garments of his worshippers. The image of the fighting knight James was widely disseminated through seals and flags. The first sculptured form of this image dates from 1230 and is found in the so-called "tympano de clavijo" of the Cathedral of Santiago. Here, the saint is shown astride a horse with fallen Moors as his iconographic attributes. A peculiar representation is to be seen in Oloron Sainte-Marie in the portal of the Sainte-Marie Cathedral, which had begun to be built in 1120: bound Moors having to support the trumeau pillar with the representation of the Deposition of Christ depicted in the tympanum. [18]

The fifteenth century was the heyday for representations of the Moorslayer. It was the century of the conquest campaigns against Granada by the Catholic Kings and a time of growing fear of the Turkish menace. The early image types were returned to, when, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Saint James was promoted as the symbolic figure of the fight against heresy and heathenism in general and employed as a visual weapon against the German Protestants as well as against the Indians. In his analysis of a representation of Charles V as "Matamoros", Wolfgang Braunfels has pointed out that in the battle of Mühlberg the Spanish carried a flag showing the Moorslayer and that the battle-cry of the day was "Sant Jago Espania, Sant Jorge Imperio". [19]

One of the most interesting questions for us to ask is how representations of Saint James in the fight against the Moors were used in order to justify the actual expulsion of the Moriscos in 1609. An example of central importance is Francisco Ribalta's pictorial program for the high altar of the parish church in Algemesí, created in 1603 in honour of the apostle Saint James (Ill. 1). [20] The town of Algemesí is located only a few kilometres from the city of Valencia, i.e. in a region which then had the highest proportion of Morisco population and from which their compulsory shipment was later initiated. In Ribalta's version of "Santiago Matamoros", the saint, with eyes self-confident, is stampeding over the fearful Muslims who - stereotypically characterised by the turban - have their mouths gaped in helpless despair. In Algemesí, the very concrete intention to exclude the Others is expressed in a roundabout way through a history scene invoking Santiago Matamoros. However, there are two other groups of works of art that thematise expulsion after the fact. We can point, on one hand, to seven undated paintings which obviously were conceived as pictorial documents of the forceful expulsion and, on the other hand, to pieces from a competition on the same subject which Philip IV initiated among his court painters in 1627.

The seven history pieces all have the same size (173 x 110 cm) and a similar structure in composition. [21] Two show Morisco uprisings, three depict shipment from different ports in the region of Valencia (Ill. 2) and one details the arrival in Africa's Oran. A clear didactic purpose lies behind these representations. This is also suggested by the cartouches containing texts that inform about the historical events depicted. In addition, all of the works have inscriptions identifying the scenes of action and individual personalities. The paintings that visualise the revolts and the supposedly friendly reception in Africa are probably meant to justify the expulsion after the fact. The size of the figures reflects their significance - accordingly, the Spanish commanders-in-chief are shown as larger figures. The Moriscos wear typical garb and are partly shown engaged in their special customs, e.g. performing their dances. [22]

The 1627 artists' competition in Madrid on the subject of the banishment gave Velázquez (who had come to Madrid only in 1623) the opportunity to prove that he was not only able to portray, but also to execute entire compositions. [23] Unfortunately, his work as well as the paintings of his competitors are not preserved. Furthermore, the reasons leading to the task assigned for the competition have not as yet been examined. The only source material available is a description of Velázquez' painting by his biographer Antonio Palomino de Castro y Velasco [24] and a preparatory drawing by Vicente Carducho (Ill. 3). With his work, Velázquez was elected as the winner of the competition. As a reward, the painting was hung in the "Salón grande" of the Alcázar, where it was destroyed by a fire which devastated the royal palace in 1734. The continual presence of the painting in the Alcázar suggests that Spanish rulers have always agreed with the measures that had been taken by their predecessors - measures which are unanimously classified by present-day historians as a grave mistake that had fatal consequences including the loss of important highly qualified manpower. [25]

In Carducho's drawing we detect a similar setting and the same action as in Velázquez's painting as described by Castro y Velasco: on one hand, the coast seen from afar and, on the other hand, the confrontation between soldiers and a complaining crowd with ships for the transport in the background. The difference between the two pictures is that Velázquez places the commanding Philip III in the centre of the composition, adjoining the female allegorical figure of Spain to his right - so that the glorification of the banishment, immoral in itself from our present perspective, appears even more unbearable. Was this added allegory decisive in awarding the prize to Velázquez? I don't think so. What probably turned the scales in favour of Velázquez was - as one would expect from this painter - the more naturalistic conception of the events. In Carducho's drawing we find a clearly idealised type of figure that recalls Roman triumphal processions. Any allusions to the afflicted population are missing and we are not given any visual explanations for the depicted banishment. However, the seven history paintings mentioned above verify that detailed information did exist and a more realistic depiction would have been possible (Ill. 2). On the other hand, the figures in Carducho's drawing as well as the artist's omission of the commander and allegorical figure may even stir the present-day viewer's sympathy for the afflicted people. Much more than Carducho and other artists, Velázquez proved to be capable of representing the Others in a highly tangible manner. I will return to this aspect and point to further examples towards the end of this article.

Another pictorial program which illustrates the attempt to visually exclude the "conversos" is found in the monastery of Paciencia de Cristo. This pictorial program stemming from 1650, i.e. two years after Münster, was probably motivated by reasons of internal policy. [26] As early as 1632, the inquisition had accused a group of Portuguese "conversos" of having desecrated a crucifix in Madrid. The convicted were put on trial in a process which ended up in a great "auto de fe". The heretics were said to have violated the crucifix in order to do damage to the Christians. The crucifix, however, did not only shed blood but also spoke three times to its violators. Thereafter, the crucifix could only have been burned after it had been taken apart.

Several of the convicted were sentenced to death. But this would not suffice: for the eternal remembrance of the events, a Capuchin monastery was erected at the place of the crime. Four of the leading contemporary painters of Madrid were commissioned to carry out a series of five paintings which were to represent the heretics' actions as well as their execution. However, the picture which was to show the punishment was never painted. The other works were completed by 1650. Francisco Camilo showed the "Ill-treatment of the Crucifix", Francisco Rizi thematised the "Miracle of the Blood" (Ill. 4), Francisco Fernández represented the "Miracle of the Speaking Crucifix" and Andrés de Vargas depicted the "Disassemblage and Burning of the Cross and the Figure". [27]

The gesture of tolerance in Velázquez's "The Surrender of Breda" (1634-35) may be seen as indicative of reform attempts under Olivares. [28] However, the pictorial program from the monastery of Paciencia de Cristo shows that the reconciliation between the Christian confessions could simultaneously result in increasing agitation against other religious beliefs. It was the duty of the king to swear before the grand inquisitor and the court of inquisition that he would prosecute heterodoxy with all his might. This may explain why Philip IV let himself be pressured to approve the execution of an anti-Semitic pictorial program, although this visual indictment of "conversos" was based only on dubious evidence.

As already mentioned, the patrons of the picture cycle from 1650 eventually renounced a depiction of the "auto de fe". Nevertheless, we have recourse to a particular representative work created towards the end of the century in 1683 by Francisco Rizi. The painting is a visual document of the inquisition proceedings held in 1680 in the Plaza Mayor at Madrid (Ill. 5). [29] Meanwhile, the economic difficulties had also reached the inquisition, with the consequence that public stagings of the "auto público general" had become very rare. Therefore, the inquisition process of 1680, which after a long time was again celebrated in the open, was attributed major importance.

In order to understand Rizi's painting, it is decisive to know that the artist was commissioned to compose two other paintings for the king almost at the same time as he was requested to depict the "auto de fe". Both of the other depictions were to be history paintings reflecting contemporary events: "The Siege of Vienna by the Turks and its Deliverance by Polish troops" and the celebration of this victory in the Escorial with the "Adoration of the Holy Host". Upon Rizi's death in 1685, the first of these works remained unfinished. It had approximately the same dimensions as the painting showing the "auto de fe" and only appears in inventories. In regard to the second painting, we know that a sketch existed which is now lost. Later, the painting was executed by Claudio Coello who pursued a thoroughly new concept.

In contrast to the reign of Philip IV, under Charles II no military victories by the Spanish troops could be reported nor, consequently, could scenes like those in the paintings of the "Salón de Reinos" of the Real Palacio del Buen Retiro be depicted. [30] Thus, the Austrian Habsburg success in the relief of Vienna was celebrated as one's own. A Spanish accent was introduced by Charles II, who, in spite of the secular occasion, stressed the event's religious significance. From a religious perspective, the victory near Vienna was not only seen as a triumph over the Turks, but also proof of the superiority of the Catholic religion. This latter notion is the common denominator underlying both of Rizi's paintings, the "Adoration of the Holy Host" and the "Auto de fe".

Similar attempts to take part in the fight against Islam - at least by means of visual media - are already to be found earlier in decoration programs of Spanish palaces: in the so-called Battle Gallery of the Escorial as well as in the main hall of the pleasure palace El Pardo and the Alcázar in Madrid. [31] In 1625, when the so-called "pieza nueva" of the Alcázar was redesigned, it was no other than the Count-Duke of Olivares who ordered the transfer of Titian's representations of "Charles V in His Victorious Battle Against the Protestants Near Mühlberg" and the "Allegory of Philip's Victory Over the Turks Near Lepanto" from El Pardo. He further added another painting by the artist to this group of works, namely "Spain Succouring Religion".

The pictures we have analysed so far make it clear that the tolerance discussions in Münster did not influence the representation of the religious Others in Spanish art. On the contrary: visual assails were intensified during the second half of the seventeenth century. In connection with the expulsion of the Moriscos in 1609, tendencies toward visual exclusion focused more and more on followers of the Islamic faith. We almost get the impression that Judaism and Islam, which once were important components in the formation of Europe, now, after the reconciliation of the Christian confessions, were victims more than ever of religious fundamentalism. Individual paintings like Velázquez's "Expulsion of the Moriscos" and Rizi's "Auto de fe of 1680" or pictorial programs like those in the monastery of Paciencia de Cristo and in the Alcázar thus overtly serve religious exclusion and subordination. What has become of Spain's so very fertile capability in earlier centuries to assimilate foreign cultures and, through their inclusion, to be innovative?



Inclusion

As is often the case with Spanish art, a bridge to literature may prove rewarding in the search for a possible positive exception to exclusion. While artists in Italy were favoured by the competition of the courts and did often succeed in finding their way in the "artes liberales" by their own virtue, the artists of the Iberian peninsula owed the little social prestige they had gained to the intercession of the literati. [32] At the court in Madrid, literature and depictive arts enjoyed a close reciprocal relationship. Themes treated in literature oftentimes also found deliberate parallel interpretations in painting. [33]

An initial glance at the poetry of the "Siglo de Oro" seems to present similar results regarding tendencies of exclusion. In his "Novelas ejemplares" published in 1613, Miguel de Cervantes, often designated as the most prominent moral authority of the Hispanic world of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, draws a rather negative picture of the marginal groups that were threatened with exclusion because of their religious convictions. [34] In this context, Cervantes' tale "The Dogs' Colloquy" is of primary interest. [35] Following the model of the picaresque novel, a dog gives an account to another of his experiences with various masters. Among them are a butcher, a shepherd, a merchant, a constable, a soldier, a poet and a stage manager, as well as Gypsies, Moriscos and a sorceress. Cervantes uses his descriptions to deride the peculiarities of the above-mentioned groups. On the other hand, he does not exempt Old Christians (constables, soldiers etc.) from his attacks. However, we must take into account - and this may be suitable to exonerate Cervantes - that the social regimentation in those years was not only directed at persons with dubious religious convictions, but could also affect writers and poets who wrote their stories with the intention of entertaining their readers rather than of instructing them on morals. [36] This is precisely why Cervantes and other Spanish writers always seem to make the effort to connect literary fiction to historical reality and why they provide moral assessments in their depictions of everyday life.

What counters the argument that the exclusion of the Moriscos was generally accepted at this moment in time is their frequent appearance in novels and "historical" tracts published before and after their expulsion. [37] These include among others the "Historia del Abencerraje y la hermosa Jarifa" (1565), Mateo Alemán's Moor tale "Ozmín y Daraja", which forms part of this author's picaresque novel "Guzmán de Alfarache" (1599), and Ginés Pérez de Hitas "Historia de las guerras civiles de Granada" (1st part 1595, 2nd part 1619). These texts have always been controversial to experts. Christoph Strosetzki suggests that Pérez de Hita wanted to appeal for sympathy for the Moriscos who had been banished from Granada in 1571 and from Valencia in 1609. [38] André Stoll, however, argues that Pérez de Hita's moorophilia is rooted in an arrogant attitude of superiority. [39] Stoll believes that the motif of the cultivated Moor in contrast to the abhorrently wild and rude Christian peasants was only introduced by Alemán because the author, a "converso" himself, also had problems with integration.

In literature, however, we find many more representations of Moors and Moriscos than in depictive art, although the interpretation of their content does not present fewer difficulties. The conspicuous presence of members of the lower social strata emerges as an evident parallel between text and image; it is this fact which I want to thematise in terms of inclusion. Regarding literature, I refer above all to picaresque novels. [40] In these novels, a low-born protagonist gives an account of his life in the first person. In his search for an advantageous profession, he comes to know other social spheres - which he comments upon critically. But at the same time, the protagonist's criminal or ridiculous conduct and an invariably questionable happy-end produce a certain distance in the reader, making the text appealing to members of the upper strata of society as well. The aforementioned tale by Cervantes, "The Dog's Colloquy", also fits with this typology in more than one respect. The positive representation of peasants, day-labourers etc. appears (at first sight) to be an accomplishment of the old Hispanic world because the earliest examples stem from the Netherlands, Lombardy, southern Italy and Spain. [41] Only later do painters like Georges de La Tour follow the literary examples. But is it true, as Barry Wind argues, [42] that the remarkable integration of underprivileged people "of the true faith" goes hand in hand with an exclusion of other religious groups? Or asked the other way around: did the suspected presence of many "conversos" among the aristocracy and the clergy lead to an early heroizing of the simple folk and an intensified preoccupation with ordinary everyday life? I want to discuss this question in light of Velázquez's "bodegones" which already has been interpreted in the context of picaresque literature by Carl Justi in his famous Velázquez biography (1888). [43]

Velázquez himself apparently regarded his "Waterseller" as a major work of his early period and a show-piece of his art; indeed, he took this painting along with him to Madrid in 1622 or 1623. [44] Art historians include this painting with the "bodegones", a class of pictures mentioned by Velázquez's teacher and father-in-law, Francisco Pacheco, in his art treatise "Arte de la pintura" (1649) in the chapter entitled "On the painting of animals and birds, fish markets and bodegones and the ingenious invention of portraits from life". [45] This chapter deals with pictures that combine elements of still-life and genre painting. [46] With genre paintings, the "bodegones" have the simply dressed figures in common; they are connected to still-life paintings by the representation of everyday utensils and food. In the "bodegones", however, the depicted objects are of a particularly modest character. The multi-cultural melting-pot of Seville was evidently favourable to the development of the "bodegones" on the basis of southern Italian, Lombardic and Netherlandish models. However, the interpretation of the "bodegones" is much more difficult to determine than the art-historical derivation of their formal elements. This is all the more so because in Pacheco's art treatise the category of the "bodegones" is not sufficiently defined nor delimited from other categories that he introduced. [47]

In Vicente Carducho's treatise, already published in 1633, the "bodegones" had been criticised, and thus, Pacheco probably felt obliged to defend his son-in-law. [48] However, Pacheco's humanist education, focused on figures of the High Renaissance, as well as his function as "censor y veedor de las pinturas" did not facilitate his partiality. Indeed, he pointedly left out only Velázquez's "bodegones" from the contemporary criticism of this new category of paintings. [49] On the other hand, the question naturally arises whether Velázquez's "bodegones" possessed something that was not to be found in other pictures of this type.

Let us therefore turn our attention to the "Kitchen Maid", a picture that is also classed among the "bodegones". Two versions of this image exist; one is preserved in Chicago, the other in Dublin. The everyday objects presented in the foreground are almost identically arranged, only the lighting is different. However, the most obvious difference is that in the background of the Dublin painting an additional representation of the "Supper at Emmaus" is to be seen (Ill. 6). The combination of the Black African woman and the Christian scene was recently interpreted as indicative of Velázquez's willingness to concede the salvation of the soul to people of lower strata as well as non-Christian communities if they would only profess Christian belief. [50] In 1987, Barry Wind offered a converse interpretation. He claimed that the painting shows a symbolic contrast between the divine Revelation of Christ to his Disciples in the background and the house-maid, blind to God, who is surrounded only by her simple jugs and bowls. [51]

However, another picture also highly esteemed by Velázquez counters Wind's thesis: the portrait of the painter's assistant Pareja (Ill. 7). [52] Pareja accompanied the court painter in his second journey to Italy from 1649 until 1651, a journey Velázquez made with the intention of establishing contact to the pope in the hope that this would facilitate his social advancement. In February 1650, Velázquez joined a Roman confraternity. This gave him the opportunity to exhibit a number of his paintings for the celebrations of Saint Joseph taking place in March of that year. The paintings were exhibited in the portico of the Pantheon, then in use as the Christian church of Santa Maria de la Rotonda.

Here Velázquez also presented the three quarter portrait of Pareja, who is shown in dark olive-green clothing with a scarf covering his breast and a lace collar which was then prohibited in Spain by laws governing dress. The sitter is further characterised by his firm look and the resolute gesture of his hand reaching into his garment. Through these attributes, Velázquez succeeds in imparting an imposing charisma to his assistant. The choice of the subject was confirmed by the success of the painting. Shortly thereafter, Velázquez was not only admitted as a member of the "Accademia di San Luca", but he also received the commission for the famous portrait of Pope Innocent X. Within the work of the court painter Velázquez, the portrait of Pareja can be regarded as a late reflex of his "bodegones".

If we had to characterise this type of picture retrospectively (i.e. having in mind the Pareja portrait), we could say that in his "bodegones" Velázquez draws on Netherlandish and Italian models without entirely adopting their moral conceptions. Velázquez no longer shows the "ridiculous figures with different and ugly sujets that are meant to cause laughter" (Pacheco's definition of one of his categories [53]) which he found in his models. The experience of Seville as a melting-pot with many social problems obviously led to an inversion of earlier image conceptions in Velázquez's work - an aspect Wind overlooks. Wind's interpretation of the "Kitchen Maid" overly emphasises a Netherlandish perspective as well as the viewpoint of the court painter Velázquez, who (influenced by the most renowned literary figures of Spain) created "theological" paintings. [54] Wind does not sufficiently take into consideration that the "Kitchen Maid" is the early work of an artist who was still young and keen on experimenting. This is further evidenced in that Pacheco only points out the life-likeness of the "bodegones" of his pupil, [55] and that Velázquez listed his "Waterseller" by precisely this title in one of his inventories and did not choose another, more evocative name for this painting. [56] In 1609, at the time that Velázquez painted his "bodegones", the Hispanic world had just expelled its last major group with a non-Christian past. A few years later in Madrid, the court artist would justify this measure. But very much like Cervantes, who attacks various groups in "The Dogs' Colloquy" but continues to show sympathy for individuals in other texts, [57] Velázquez also apparently was capable of deviating from the general stereotype in certain cases. Unfortunately, we do not have representations by him of a sorceress or a gypsy. The only evidence in his work of the nevertheless astounding diversity in the population of the seventeenth-century Hispanic world are his pictures of a Black African "Kitchen Maid" (Abb. 6) and of his assistant, the Mulatto "Pareja" (Abb. 7).

This does not, however, diminish the value of these two works because as we know from other examples, painting in Spain did not have the liberty that literature did. At least the official paintings, which hardly attempted to include marginal groups, more and more served the policy of exclusion. In his early works, Velázquez repeatedly returned to the same models, leading us to believe that he was likely to have maintained personal contact with them. This might be one reason why Velázquez, like the authors of picaresque literature, turned to lower social groups, but did not ridicule them. In order to justify his pictures in the face of a possible censorship - which was expressly pronounced by Carducho in his "Diálogos" - Velázquez may have given his everyday scenes a "deeper" meaning. However, in my opinion this is of secondary importance, especially if we draw attention to the "Waterseller", which Velázquez apparently considered to be the best of his "bodegones" paintings. [58]

Velázquez's attitude to his personnel, evident in the "bodegones" as well as later in the portrait of Pareja, is also remarkable in a supra-regional context. We must take into consideration that in seventeenth-century Catholic Spain and in the reformatory countries, a process of exclusion of the Others - not only in pictures, but also in reality - was in full swing in the name of "progress". [59] Spanish paintings, at least the examples evaluated here, give the impression that the conciliation of the Christian confessions in the Peace of Westphalia tended to promote the process of exclusion rather than to deter it. [60]



Epilogue

Nevertheless, Pareja was in no way pleased with the attitude of his master. In one of his own paintings, "The Calling of Saint Matthew" (1661), he cited his master in a self-portrait at the left edge of the picture, adding a slip of paper with his name and the date (Abb.7) [61] The three quarter profile of the sitter and his clothing are very much like in Velázquez's portrait of Pareja. But there are significant differences. While Velázquez sought to work out the ethnic difference through particular facial features, Pareja seems to have tried to assimilate his physiognomy to those of the figures of the Christian scene. In addition, the Mulatto now renounces the lace collar which, as already mentioned, was prohibited in Spain by law. Obviously, Pareja did not want an "exotic" existence, but, like a majority of the "conversos" and Moriscos in former times, desired full integration in Spanish society.

FOOTNOTES