Apelles in Renaissance Spain:Canvases and Ekphrases of a Cobbler, a Goddess, and a Ruler

Frederick A. de ArmasUniversity of Chicago

[Plenary talk at Kaleidoscope Conference at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, March 12, 2015]

[The video presentation itself can be found at: http://vanhise.lss.wisc.edu/kaleidoscope/?q=node/59

[A longer version of this paper will be published in A Companion tothe Spanish Renaissance, edited by Hilaire Kalendorf. Brill: 2017]

As ancient palaces came to light, as caves and crevices in

the earth led to buried architectures and artistic discoveries;

as pagan temples reappeared shedding the dust and foliage that

hid them; as classical statues emerged from the ground as if they

were corpses revived by ancient necromancers; delight and

curiosity concerning these findings spread from Renaissance Italy

to the rest of Europe. Giorgio Vasari asserts that these

excavations are one key element that made possible the art of the

period (1998, 279). In Spain, this excitement for these objects

of an ancient civilization can be discerned even in the great

literary masterpieces of the period. In the second part of Don

Quixote, for example, when discussing fame, the knight recalls the

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Pantheon, Hadrian’s tomb, and even an Egyptian obelisk in Rome.

Indeed, the episode of the Cave of Montesinos may have been

inspired by the re-discovery of Nero’s Golden Palace (De Armas

2004). Lope de Vega in La Dorotea tells an anecdote of how an

ancient statue is unearthed and how all marveled at its beauty.

It reality it was only a ruse thought of by Michelangelo. He had

sculpted the statue, buried it so that it could be found. Once it

was praised as ancient, he produced a foot that was missing,

proclaiming that he created it and that the moderns could rival

the ancients in art (Lope de Vega 1980, 367-68; De Armas 1982).

Even so, there was one aspect of the Renaissance that was

missing. The great paintings of antiquity were mostly lost due to

their fragility. Only some of the wall paintings of later periods

remained. Thus, the names and works of the famous Greek painters

came to be known mainly through Pliny´s Natural History. In Book 35,

while pointing to the materials used in paint, the Roman author

provides a history of ancient canvases. Leonard Barkan asserts

that this and other sections of the Natural History became “the

central grounding text of the rediscovery of ancient art” (1999,

66).1 Scores of artists and works were described by Pliny and by

2

rhetoricians such as Cicero and Quintilian. And out of these,

Pliny established a canon of the most famous, a list which the

Renaissance also followed: Apollodorus, Zeuxis, Parrhasius

Euphranor and Apelles. Indeed, the list is based on the progress

of mimesis in the arts, and thus leads to famous anecdotes on the

subject. These continued to circulate throughout the Renaissance

and early modern periods. For example, Pliny tells of a contest

between Parrhasius and Zeuxis as to which one could best imitate

nature. Parrhasius drew some grapes, and upon unveiling the

painting, birds flocked down to peck at them. But then Zeuxis

asked his rival to pull back the curtain that hid his invention.

It turned out that the curtain was the painting, so perfectly

drawn as to deceive the eyes. He was known as a master of

illusion through what would later be known as chiaroscuro. We

could go on and discuss how, in order to paint the beauty of

Helen, Zeuxis picked five maidens from Croton as models because

there was no perfect beauty in nature; or we could turn to a

sixth painter, Timanthes and ponder the significance of

Agamemnon’s veil in his Sacrifice of Iphigenia. Indeed, these and many

other works were of significance for the Siglo de Oro: for

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example, we can come to understand the different models used by

Don Quixote to paint Dulcinea in his imagination as a clear

allusion to Zeuxis;2 or we can turn to poems by Boscán,

Garcilaso, Góngora and Argensola for ekphrases of Timanthes’

canvas. But for this talk, I have chosen to focus on Apelles,

since he was considered the locus classicus, the supreme painter of

ancient Greece, a figure of empire, the painter of Alexander the

Great. But even with one painter, we will have to limit our

discussion, given his tremendous impact.3 We will not be able to

discuss the famous contest between Apelles and Protogenes; nor

how Apelles fell in love with Campaspe, Alexander’s mistress

while he painted her portrait, a topic that inspired Siglo de Oro

plays such as Lope de Vega’s La grandeza de Alejandro (1604-8) and

Calderón’s Darlo todo y no dar nada.4 We will study one anecdote

turned into art as well as two of his paintings so as to bring

out their differing concerns and their impact in Renaissance and

imperial Spain.

1. The Quibbling Cobbler

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“Apelles and the cobbler” is a well-known anecdote told by

Pliny and other classical writers. Curiously, more than one

artist from the Renaissance chose to transform it into a

painting. A number of writers also recast the anecdote, providing

it with new intents. The story is as follows: On finishing a

painting, Apelles would exhibit it in an open room and would hide

so as to hear the comments of the passersby. One day a cobbler

walked through and commented on a defect in one of the sandals

worn by a drawn figure. Apelles corrected it. Puffed up by his

importance the cobbler came back again, this time to criticize

one of the legs of the person drawn. The indignant Apelles told

him that he only had the right to give his opinion on footwear,

and certainly not on his design (Pliny 35.85; 1952: 323-25).

Juan Luis Vives transformed Pliny’s material for his Linguae

Latinae Exercitatio a Latin primer first published in 1538.5 In a

witty dialogue, Albrecht Durer (1471-1528) having painted Scipio

Africanus “argues with two learned pedants, Grynius and Velius,

who find fault with every feature, but are soundly rebuffed…”

(Gombrich 1960, 132). The arguments start when Durer sets a price

for the paintings and the two scholars seek to find fault and

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thus lower its value. Velius who is described by his companion as

“half a physician” has much to complain about: he wants to see

the back of Scipio’s head, to which Durer sarcastically replies

that he should turn around the canvas. Velius also complains of

the way hair is painted on Scipio; how his temples are “too much

swollen” (1960, 132-3), only to be given a very exacting

explanation. The dialogue combines the fictitious with the real,

the ancient with the modern. Although Durer is not known to have

painted Scipio Africanus, the two pedants are actually scholars

from the times.6 Kaspar Ursinus Velius (1493-1539) lived in

Vienna where he was court historian. Perhaps it is his very

punctiliousness that Vives criticizes. He is the most obstinate

of critics and the one who receives the most put-downs in the

dialogue. Yes, it is a comic text that would have amused the

students of the time with veiled references to punctilious

scholars. But there is much more to it. Vives seeks to praise

Durer who had died some ten years before the dialogue, as a new

Apelles. After all, in Nurenberg he impelled a Northern

Renaissance, having visited Venice and being in touch with

painters in Italy from Leonardo da Vinci to Raphael. The latter

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has painted himself as a new Apelles in The School of Athens. Now,

Vives, through a translation studii, places Apelles and the classical

Renaissance in the German lands.

There is yet a more important point to be made. Vives had

transformed the shoemaker into two scholars who, contrary to the

cobbler, have no real insights into the painting. With the advent

of Vasari and other histories of art, scholars sought to express

their opinion. While Vasari was an artist, he could write about

art, albeit he was criticized by Condivi, a nobleman and artist

whose life of Michelangelo forced Vasari to correct his own work.

Vives, then, brings up the question as to who is qualified to

write about an artist.7

Vives’ concerns are replicated by Peter Breughel, a Dutch

painter and printmaker who flourished a few decades after Durer.

The Painter and the Buyer (Vienna 1565), is a pen and ink picture that

shows in the foreground a thoughtful and inspired painter with

bushy hair and a beard. He holds a paintbrush in his hand and

seems engrossed in his art. In the background stands a would-be

connoisseur or buyer, who can barely see the painting through his

thick glasses and who seems uncertain. Both Vives and Breughel,

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then, are interested in verbal and commercial transactions; in

the interplay between painters, critics and buyers. These two

vignettes appeared at a time when art was becoming such an

important commodity that it was displayed not only by princes but

even by the middle class. In both works the painter emerges as a

figure that is vastly superior to his public.

Pedro Mexía, a humanist from Seville, collected many

anecdotes about different personages and published them in 1540

with the title Silva de varia lección.8 In a chapter on Apelles, Mexía

tells much that is found in Pliny and other classical authors,

even detailing a Venus, one of the paintings that will be

discussed later on. Curiously, he shortens the cobbler anecdote,

deleting the shoemaker’s return and Apelles’ caustic reply. There

is no tension, then between the artist and his public; there is

no haggling over price as in Vives’ dialogue; and there is no

buyer as in Breughel. Instead, Mexía emphasizes the many people

who visit Apelles’ gallery (2.18; 1989: 1.647). It is as if Mexía

has no interest in the actual ways in which paintings were bought

and sold. His work was meant as a repository of curious anecdotes

and as such it became a bestseller, with some 31 editions in

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Spanish, and 75 in foreign languages within a century. He only

wishes to discuss “muchas cosas muy agradables y curiosas” that

can be repeated in learned conversation – including the knowledge

of art.

Vasari, who conceived of his age as a Renaissance in

painting, a period that imitated and even improved upon the works

of Apelles and other antique artists, sought to compete with

them. He often drew a specific classical artist in the act of

painting different subjects. He placed these works in different

walls and halls in his house in Arezzo.9 Having been granted

possession of a home in Florence in 1557, he moved his family

there. On the south wall of what is called the Sala Vasari, he

exhibits Apelles and the Cobbler (Cheney 2006: 159). In Vasari’s

painting there are two figures in front of a canvas; one of them

is the artist, while the other, is kneeling and pointing at the

feet of the individual portrayed (the critical cobbler). Apelles’

public stands in the background. The picture is framed by

personifications of Music and Sculpture. Perhaps Vasari wished to

convey the notion that each art is unique and should be judged

according to its own rules and standards. It is also quite clear

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that he wished to portray himself as a new Apelles, someone who

could not just draw the ancient artist but envision him while

completing a painting thus inserting a second work of art within

his own work.10

An ancient anecdote about Apelles has turned up in two

immensely popular works by Spaniards: a textbook to learn Latin

and a miscellany. It has also become the subject of artistic

endeavors, from Vasari’s laudatory work to Breughel’s mercantile

scene, thus evincing the circulation of the anecdote from Italy

to Flanders and Seville. Apelles’s anecdote becomes the point of

departure for specific concerns: Who should criticize art? How

does one assess the monetary value of a painting? What all these

works have in common is a reverence for the classics; hints of a

belief that the present moment is beginning to rival the

classical past in its art; and a clear indication of a special

moment in time when art suddenly becomes almost priceless while

the artist is no longer relegated to mechanical arts. He becomes

revered as a practitioner of the liberal arts. Painting and

writing become sister arts, praising the artist and discarding

their critics. Art becomes a new form of learning.

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2. Venus Anadyomene

Art above all else seeks to capture beauty and the very act

of its creation or birth. One of Apelles’ most important works is

the Venus Anadyomene. In spite of Pliny’s praise, Giovanni Pietro

Bellori, in his Lives of the Artists (1672), praises it in detriment of

the goddess. He explains: “Ovid… wrote in high praise of Venus

that if Apelles had not painted her, she would have remained

until now submerged in the sea where she was born” (Panofsky

1968: 163). Bellori is of course alluding to how Apelles’ Venus

emerges from the foam in the sea. This seminal foam derived from

the genitals of Uranus who was killed by his son. Mixed with

water, an element that is considered as the mother or matter

itself, it creates or begets Venus. Venus Urania thus emerges

from the sea fully grown, in all her beauty. Classical art

reveled in this fascinating topic, and today we still preserve a

painting from Pompeii that may have imitated the Greek original

in some aspects. But it was Apelles’ work that fully resonated

with antiquity. His painting survived: “long enough to see its

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last days in Rome, at the time of Emperor Nero” (Heckscher 1985:

129).

Bellori’s comments on the painting are unexpected; almost

shocking. He seems to be saying that the artist, a mere human, is

to be considered superior to Venus, the goddess of beauty. The

shock is lessened when we analyze Bellori’s source, Ovid’s Art of

Love. The Roman poet claims that women unadorned are very much

like “lifeless weights” (3.220; 1979: 133), blocks of marble

that, through art, turn into a perfect jewel or painting.11

Unless adorned by art, this Venus should keep her door shut until

she is ready to be seen as beautiful, since men are not

interested in how she achieves perfection (“Why must I know the

cause of the whiteness of your cheek? Shut the chamber door! Why

show the unfinished work? [3.227-28; 1979: 135]). What matters,

then, is the crafted work of art, be it a perfected body

(cosmetically adorned); or the statue or painting that is fully

finished. Ovid does not disdain the deity, but he shuns unadorned

bodies. The irony, of course, is that Apelles’ paints the goddess

while she is still drying her hair. Apelles surpasses other

artists in that he paints not a beauty that has completed her

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toilette, but one who is just born, and is still wet from the

sea. It is Apelles’ idea of Venus that triumphs over Ovid’s

objectification of woman as an imperfect body that can only charm

through adornment. It is not that Venus’s beauty did not exist

without Apelles; it is just that Apelles’ idea of her and the

fame of his painting allowed the goddess to become even more

present in the minds of the ancients.

The Renaissance saw instantly another conflict inherent in

the figure: Born of spuma, nude, and riding the concha or

seashell, a symbol of female sexuality, she is still a mysterious

and numinous being. While for some she may evoke sexuality, she

is taken by Plato as the Celestial Aphrodite, as opposed to the

terrestrial Venus (Plato 1970, 47). During the Reanissance,

Marsilio Ficino argues in the Symposium that Venus is nude,

unadorned and dripping with the elemental water because she is

that idea or ideal of perfect beauty that goes beyond the

delights of the body (1985: 53). It is this second conflict that

will play out in art and literature as much as the first

(adornment). Renaissance artists produced ever new versions of

the Venus Anadyomene so as to compete with Apelles and wrest fame

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from him. Botticelli’s Birth of Venus may be the best know today,

but at the time, Marcantonio Raimondi’s engraving Venus Wringing her

Hair, would have had a much greater circulation.12 Soon

thereafter, Titian finds a more intimate, way of depicting the

goddess in Venus drying her hair (c. 1520)

In Spain, Italianate poetry brought with it ekphrastic

images of the Venus Anadyomene. In the midst of Garcilaso’s third

eclogue we encounter a reference to two antique painters:

Tanto artificio muestra en lo que pinta

y teje cada ninfa en su labrado,

cuanto mostraron en sus tablas antes

el celebrado Apeles y Timantes (2011: vv. 117-20)

The allusion to Apelles occurs when, after one of the

nymphs has discovered a locus amoenus, all four emerge from the

river to enjoy the site. They carry with them their threads and

tapestries, each weaving a different scene.13 The reader is asked

to compare ancient paintings with modern tapestries woven along

the shores of the Tagus river, albeit in the hands of nymphs of

old. The poem refers first of all to Apelles and he is, of

course, the one that interests us here. Although his name may

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evoke a series of paintings carefully described by Pliny,

Garcilaso underlines that, as the nymphs leave the river,

“escurrieron del agua sus cabellos” (2011: v. 96). This is the

distinctive gesture of the Venus Anadyomene, thus foregrounding

images of creation, beauty and love. The poem, then, seeks to

rival the antique; and with each tapestry, it seeks to make words

more capacious than painting.

While Garcilaso could image the nymphs in the guise of

Venus, art in Spain veered away from this figure. For Rosa López

Torrijo this may have to do to with Spain’s difficulty with nudes

(1985: 272). Countless treatises of the period rail against the

female nude from Carducho (1633), to Pacheco (1649) and Palomino

(1724).14 Mythographers such as Juan Pérez de Moya betrayed the

image through allegorization. Pérez de Moya explains that

Aphrodite’s name derives from aphros, the virile humor (1995:

377-78), and points to the concha as denoting insatiable desire

that leads to coitus (1995: 383). Thus he will reject the

celestial Venus, claiming, in a euhemeristic transformation that

she was merely a young virgin who seized by desire, gave herself

to all (1995: 379).

15

As Antonio Sánchez Jiménez has shown there are at least

fifty works by Lope that allude to Apelles (2011: 209, 219, 226-

27). There is much to choose from here, since he often paints the

bathing nude. I will only point to one play where we may catch a

glimpse of Apelles’ Venus. La quinta de Florencia clearly has Apelles

in mind. The work brings together two important moments from

Apelles. The first has to do with the ruler of Florence, named

Alejandro Medici. He believes that his secretary is in love with

his beloved, and thus decides to act as magnanimously as

Alexander the Great in ceding her to César. Let us recall that

Alexander had ordered Apelles to paint his mistress Campaspe, and

in the intimate moments of drawing her, the artist began to fall

for her. Perceiving this, Alexander presented her to the painter,

while accepting the painting in return. The anecdote was repeated

as an example of a ruler’s magnanimity and as the sign of an

ideal patron of the arts and it even became the subject of

several plays.15 Once again, woman becomes an object of exchange.

In La quinta de Florencia, Alejandro, Duke of Florence, intends to

surpass his namesake by offering his beloved to his secretary

without accepting her painted image in return. But the Duke is

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actually mistaken in his gift since César entertains no such

passion. Having pointed to the importance of Apelles in the plot,

Lope utilizes the painter again, but in an indirect manner in

another scene. At his country villa, César views a painting of

Venus and Adonis and falls asleep. It is clear from the ekphrastic

description that he is looking at a version of Titian’s canvas

executed for Philip II (De Armas 2008: 171-82). Impassioned, he

decides to search for this painted deity in the countryside

around him and discovers a peasant by a fountain who seems to him

to be the very image of the Venus he had contemplated in the

painting. Here, the peasant woman is certainly lacking the

necessary cosmetics that are supposed to complete her according

to Ovid. And yet, she is so beautiful that she becomes, in

César’s eyes, the deity herself. This occurs as she goes to fetch

water from a fountain, thus recalling the relation between Venus

and the aquatic element. Lope, then paints his play with images

from Apelles, and with watery echoes of the Greek artist’s

unadorned Venus Anadyomene. But Lope is not fully accepting of

objectifying woman. The peasant woman’s cries for freedom and

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justice awaken the sensibilities of the Duke, who seeks to punish

his secretary.16

We will end this section with an example of Venus Anadyomene

that certainly rivals Garcilaso a century earlier. can be found

in Lope’s poem La rosa blanca, published in La Circe (1624):17

Tuvo principio, en opinión de algunos,

de la espuma del mar, de quien nacido,

no con vientos feroces importunos,

sino del blando céfiro impelida…

concha de oro y nácar navegando

(1969: vv. 97-100, 103).

Much of what is depicted recalls Botticelli’s Birth of Venus: The

calm sea, the foam in the waters, Zephyrus blowing Venus to

Cyprus’ shore, the conch as boat. In the next stanza, she will be

greeted, like in Boticcelli, by the Horae (1969: vv. 109-10). But

the main gesture that typifies Apelles is missing in Lope, albeit

not in Botticelli: Venus does not dry her tresses with her hands.

Why censor Apelles’ gesture?18 This censoring silence may point

to the fact that the poem is fully re-creating an image that no

Spanish painter dares to draw.19

18

Lope, then, veers from fully objectifying women. As a

mythical figure that stands on her own or as a suffering being

that seeks freedom and justice his Venuses don’t just pose, but

make a statement.

3. Painting Alexander / Imaging the Habsburgs

Lope de Vega’s praise of Juan de Vander Hamen as a new

Apelles was far from an exception; Lope also referred to Pacheco

in this manner. But long before them, Titian fulfilled the drole

played by Apelles. In 1530 and again in 1532, Titian was

commissioned to paint a portrait of Charles V. As Erwin Panofsky

once asserted, these meetings constituted the beginning of a

relationship between artist and patron “which is almost unique in

the annals of art” (1969, 7). The Venetian painter was to become

the “official” portrait artist of the emperor, thus imitating the

ancient relationship between Apelles and Alexander the Great.

Titian was to become the most revered painter for the Spanish

Habsburgs, with portraits, mythologies and religious paintings

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journeying from Venice to Madrid during the reigns of Charles V

and Philip II.

Both Apelles and Titian emphasized the importance of decorum

in royal portraits, an element not based on false praise, but on

depicting what is appropriate for the status of the figure. Pliny

tells how Apelles attempted to paint King Antigonus, blind in one

eye. He drew him so that the image “only showed the part of the

face which he was able to display as unmutilated” (35.329; 1552:

329). In a similar manner, Titian’s portrayals of Charles V and

Philip II, and in particular his Charles V at Muhlberg, transforms

the misshapen jaw of the Habsburgs into a sign of determination,

“his ungainly mouth set in an expression of unshakable resolve”

(Panofsky 1969, 85). In addition, Titian, like Apelles, sought to

foreground the weapon or symbol of power to be held by the ruler.

In this equestrian portrait celebrating the great triumph at

Muhlberg, Charles V carries a spear, an image that reflects the

historical circumstance, since he led the battle with this

weapon. The lance or spear has a double symbolic value. First of

all, “the spear was the weapon of such valiant killers of dragons

(that is to say, heresies) as St. George” and secondly, in a

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wider application “it is the weapon of the Christian knight”

(Panofsky 1969: 86).

In like manner, Pliny recounts that Apelles gave Alexander a

thunderbolt as a weapon, perhaps because Olympia, his mother,

before giving birth, had dreamt that thunder and lightning had

hit her womb, but also because the thunderbolt was Jupiter’s

symbol of power.20 According to Plutarch, Alexander was given a

darker complexion to be lighted solely by the radiance of his

weapon. In Titian’s portrait, the somewhat darkened sky glows

with yellow light, a golden color reflected in Charles V’s armor.

It is as if Titian, recalling the striking weapon and lighting in

Apelles’s portrait, sought to emulate it. While in Alexander’s

portrait, the king is viewed as god-like, Titian makes the

emperor into a Christian knight.

Lope de Vega expanded this conversation with a poem entitled

“Al cuadro y retrato de Su Majestad que hizo Pedro Pablo Rubens.”

Rubens, arrived in Madrid for his second visit to the city in

1628, twenty-five years after he had come there as a young man.

Philip IV immediately requested from him a series of portraits,

thus breaking the exclusivity of Velázquez in portraying the

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king.21 It is doubtful that Velázquez was overwrought at the turn

of events. Rubens was such an important figure in diplomacy and

art that the Velázquez must have acquiesced to all requests, if

not with joy at least with resignation. There was one moment that

must have tested the Spanish artist´s equanimity. Rubens was

asked to paint an equestrian portrait of the king (of which we

preserve only a copy since the original perished when the Alcazar

burned in 1734);22 it replaced Velázquez’s own painting which had

been installed in the Alcazar just three years before (Sánchez

Jiménez 2013: 763; Brown 2006: 65). Lope de Vega was well aware

of what was occurring. Asked to write a poem in praise of Rubens’

new painting, he used his broad knowledge of the history of art

to further expand and contextualize the episode. Since he was

dealing with an equestrian portrait, Lope decided to use as

background to his laudatory work the famous canvas done by Titian

for Charles V. He thus calls Rubens a new Titian, and he also

indicates that Philip is akin to the emperor: “semejante a su

divino bisabuelo” (2004: 681). He then proceeds to further

elaborate on the uniqueness and greatness of Ruben’s portrait and

of Philip’s rule.23

22

The poem proceeds from an ominous beginning to a happy

conclusion. At first, we are presented with the artist (Rubens)

as a new Prometheus. Instead of stealing fire from the gods, he

takes her brushes (2004: 679). Emilie Bergmann calls this motif

“art as robbery” (1979: 84-85). A satyr, who stands for envy,

informs Nature of this theft. Enraged, she searches for the

culprit, and punishes many along the way: the rose, for example

is doomed to blossom for only one day. In the end, Nature finds

the painting for which her brushes were used. As she gazes at

Philip’s portrait, she is so amazed at the youthful king “tan

vivo, tan fuerte, tan fogoso, tan altivo” that she restrains

herself and does not destroy the canvas (2004: 680). At the

poem’s conclusion, Nature decides she can do no better. Since

Philip has become Alexander, let him have an Apelles (2004: 681)]

Although Lope could not have provided a more apt and

laudatory comparison, the context can diminish the praise here

imparted. Let us remember that there was a very special

relationship between Titian and Charles V, one that lasted for

many years. This is not the case with Rubens and Philip. The

Flemish painter came to Madrid on a diplomatic mission, seeking

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to negotiate a treaty between Spain and England. He spent two

years in Madrid and then was sent to London. Thus, although his

relations with the king were close, they would only last a brief

time. In fact, Rubens was not overly-fond of Spaniards since he

blamed them for the ruin of the Low Countries. He would often

“denounce their arrogance, their laziness and their

capriciousness… He did not even spare the King and his ministers

‘who appear to be in a profound lethargy’” (Lescourret 1993:

156). In a letter dated December 29, 1628 he praises Philip

while adding: “…he would surely be capable of governing under any

conditions, were it not that he mistrusts himself and defers too

much to others. But now he has to pay for his own credulity and

others’ folly, and feel the hatred that is not meant for him.

Thus have the gods willed it” (Saunders Magurn 1955: 295).

While Titian sought to deflect the defects of Charles V,

turning his deformed jaw into a sign of determination, here the

defects are those of empire. A native of the Americas found in

the painting, points to the expanse of the new territories.

However, the figure could bring to mind that war could only be

waged with revenues from the Indies as Spain kept experiencing

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bankruptcies. In the sky above, different allegorical figures are

depicted, one of which holds the world. Since part of it is

obscured by Philip’s head, it almost appears as a halo, but an

earthly one. The suffused golden light found in Titian’s portrait

of Charles, becomes a darker and more ominous reddish color in

Rubens, perhaps indicating that the storms of war do not loom

far. Lope de Vega echoes the uncertainties of the times in his

laudatory poem: “Estaba el joven dulcemente bravo / con el fuerte

bastón poniendo un clavo / en la rueda veloz de la Fortuna (2004:

680). Spain is no longer in the ascendancy. Philip is simply

trying to hold his place; and Spain, as the wheel of Fortune

moves swiftly, could be leading the country downwards. The

function of Alexander and Apelles, of Charles V and Titian, may

be to provide a laudatory comparison. But the state of affairs is

such that it would be difficult to equate Philip’s present with

an imperial past, be that of Alexander or of Charles V. While

elsewhere Lope would use Apelles as a figure who is the harbinger

of fame to others, here, it is Rubens who seeks to be a new

Apelles, and while he completes a fine painting, it cannot be

25

compared favorably with Titian’s Charles V at Muhlberg nor with the

glories of the then rising empire.24

In conclusion, a cobbler, a goddess and a ruler, figures

encountered or drawn long ago by Apelles, seem to come back to

life in Renaissance Italy and Imperial Spain. Each may be clothed

in a new garb, but they still accentuate the greatness of a

classical past that a new era seeks to emulate. The cobbler seeks

to bring down the painter, a figure that according to Vasari

could rise to the level of a “mortal god” (1998: 305). Instead,

Apelles and those that embody him in the Renaissance, are shown

to be open to criticism, when appropriate; and when not, ready to

exhibit their deep and comprehensive knowledge. The cobbler or

his surrogates can mutate into the figure of the buyer, someone

as yet unsure of himself, as the art market becomes more and more

open to non-aristocratic customers. But the artist remains

supreme as all wish to become embodiments of Apelles. Indeed,

Apelles and his followers are the harbingers of fame as they seek

to immortalize kings and courtiers and even the gods themselves.

An unadorned Venus acquires fame through Apelles’ art, while

questioning woman´s place, woman´s adornments and her relations

26

to art. A ruler sees himself as a new Jupiter and a new

Alexander, as Rubens (a new Apelles) robs the brushes of nature

so as to draw Philip IV. Lope de Vega, with subtle irony and

understanding, writes of the greatness of this new king, but

through hyperbole reveals that he is no match for Charles V and

Alexander; and that Rubens may have known this and known that his

relationship with Philip could never resist comparison with the

masters that preceded him.

Even as Fortune’s wheel spins, Apelles remains in a revered

place where newer designs and conversations serve only to confirm

the endurance of his art, paintings that no longer exist but are

forever re-imagined.

Notes

27

1 In book 34, Pliny studies bronze, and thus the statues made out of this metal; while in book 36 the study of marble triggers a history of sculptures created with this material.

2 “píntola en mi imaginación como la deseo, así en la belleza como enla principalidad, y ni la llega Elena, ni la alcanza Lucrecia” (1.25.314).

3 See his Allegory of Calumny, Antigonus I (not showing his blind eye), Artemis offering sacrifice, Castor and Pollux with Victory and Alexander the Great, Clitus theBlack, The Figure of War with his Hands Tied Behind Him Following the Triumphal Chariot ofAlexander (this one was taken to Rome and later the visage was replaced with that of Augustus).

4 Calderón presents anachronistically three painters attempting to draw Alexander: Timanthes is rejected as adulatory; Zeuxis is too daring, while Apelles is just right.

5 The text consists of 25 dialogues, which are somewhat easy to read and contain numerous references to classical texts. In Dialogue 8, for example a pedant is always talking about other countries that he has not visited – but read about them in Pliny. The many dialogues enable students to learn new vocabulary as in Dialogue 17 where you can learn of the items being served at a banquet (the presence of Simonides may be comic since there is an anecdote that wen he steppedout of a banquet, the roof collapsed. Remembering where everyone was seated, he created the art of memory.The one we are concerned with isDialogue 23.

6 Simon Grinaeus (1493-1521) was a Latinist and a Hellenist who excelled inhis studies at the University of Vienna. He corresponded with Erasmus and may have been included here because he did a Latin version of Plutarch, whodiscusses Apelles in his life of Alexander the Great.

7 Condivi, for example reject the notion that Michelangelo was indebted to any other artist, which is actually false, having apprenticed with DomenicoGhirlandaio.

8 Since he had corresponded with Vives, it is likely that he know of his use of the cobbler’s anecdote. Indeed, Mexía does mention Durer as a new Apelles, but points to Erasmus instead of Vives as his source for the comparison (2.18; 1989: 1.651).

9 In the Hall of Fortune he painted: Apelles’ Alexander and Campaspe, Gyges Outlininghis Shadow, Progagones’ Ialysus and his Dog, Timanthes’ Sacrifice of Iphigenia, Zeuxis’ Story ofHelen, and Zeuxis and Parrhasius.

10 A brief tract by painter and theorist Francisco Pacheco entitled A los profesores del arte de la pintura, composed in 1622, consists of a paragone between painting and sculpture, one where he wishes to negate Juan Martínez Montañés’s judgment of the superiority of sculpture. Let us recall that Montañés was considered one of the most important sculptors of Seville, providing many wooden images for altars in the region. Pacheco clearly relies on Pliny as an authority on the antiquity of painting (Calvo Serraller 1991, 185). He then rejects Montañés’ judgment on painting using Apelles’s anecdote. In this case a sculptor (like a cobbler) cannot disparage painting (Calvo Serraller 1991, 190). Four years later, another treatise, Juan Alonso de Butrón’s Discursos apologéticos (1626), takes up Pliny’s tale once again. In his fourth discourse he tells us that Apelles could accept the shoemaker’s criticism of shoes, but when the cobbler attempted to censure other elements of the painting, he was severely chastised by Apelles. A good judge, he concludes, is only he who knows art in depth (Calvo Serraller 1991, 205).

11 “a noble gem whereon naked Venus is wringing her spray-trenched tresses” (3.224; 1979: 135).

12 For the engraving see Shoemaker, Broun and Foresman 1984: 68. See also Paul Joannides 2001: 271.

13 Filódoce weaves the myth of Eurydice; Dinámene draws the story of Apolo yDaphne; Climene envisions the tragic tale of Venus and Adonis; while Nise prefers to draw the present, the death of Elisa.

14 There may have existed a Birth of Venus by Juan Pantoja de la Cruz. But otherwise, the art of Spain shunned Apelles’s nude Venus.

15 See Lope’s Las grandezas de Alejandro to Calderón’s Darlo todo y no dar nada.

16 Her figure may also be sought in plays and poems of the period, where thebathing nude is so prominent (MacCurdy 1959: 36-39). While this figure emerges from rivers or lakes, it still stuns with beauty, recalling Apelles’ Venus. Rojas Zorrilla, for example, wrote six plays in which thereare variations on the scene of the bathing nude. One of the most discreet is Casarse por vengarse, where the Constable of Sicily falls for Blanca on

spying her as she takes off her gloves, and dips her hands in a river to freshen her face. No full nudity is found here. Her gesture takes almost one hundred verses to describe in a fashion that seeks to rival a work of art (Mullin 2007: vv. 529-625). This is very much what Pliny said of descriptions that sought to rival Apelles’ painting: they must be more detailed than the painting. Her beauty, her ability to enamor others, the emergence from water, the lack of perfection that makes her even more perfect, all goes back to Apelles albeit in a minor tone. I am not arguing that this type of scene is always contaminated by a recollection of Apelles’ Venus, but that it would be useful to keep Apelles in mind when dealing with the bathing nude.

17 The poem is dedicated to the daughter of the Count-Duke of Olivares. The name of the poem derives from the fact that she exhibited a white rose in her coat of arms. It is included in his collection La Circe (1624). Zapata Ferrer divides the poem into three sections: 1. Invocation to Venus and praise of María de Guzmán, daughter on the Count-Duke of Olivares; 2. The mythical section which includes two major stories: Venus and the coming tobe of the red rose (stanzas 12-90) and an affair between Jupiter and Amarílida out of which is born the white rose (stanzas 91-108); 3.Epilogue with praise for María de Guzmán (1990: 262-62)

18 Curiously, the collection ends with a sonnet dedicated to the Spanish painter Juan de Van der Hamen (famous for his bodegones) who is now praised as a new Apelles (1969: 1310). Here nature complains that the painter has stolen her brushes, for how else can he equal her? Lope sees Van der Hamen as a new Apelles because he can equal nature; and he sees himself as a new Apelles, surpassing him even while ignoring his main gesture.

19 As Antonio Sánchez Jiménez has noted, Lope once again praised van der Hamen as Apelles in an sonnet in the Laurel de Apolo (2011: 281).

20 “The thunderbolt… announces that the king commands some of Zeus’s divine powers and therefore demands some of the same respect. It is a bold step inthe exaltation of a ruler, making Alexander the equal of a god (but not replacing that god). There can be little doubt that Alexander… commissionedits representation both in the painting by Apelles and in the elephant medallion… both place a bolt of lightning in Alexander’s hand” (Holt 2003, 124).

21 Marie-Anne Lescourret explains: “Philip IV had a studio installed for himat the palace and paid Rubens a visit every day… Philip IV had asked his

court painter, Diego Velázquez to open all the royal galleries for Rubens and from then on the Flemish painter fed on the great collection of Titianscollected by the Emperor Charles V…. Rubens copied the great Venetian, not only because he believed in the instructive benefits of copying but also toenrich his own collections” (1993: 160-61)

22 There is a copy at the Uffizi was commissioned by Gaspar Méndez de Haro, Marques de Heliche, Viceroy of Naples and made by Juan Bautista Mazo (although the face was made by Velázquez).

23 Natura naturans (creative nature) Jupiter, Alexander, Charles V and Philip IV are set against Art, Prometheus, Apelles, Titian and Rubens.

24 In my 1978 article on Lope and Titian, I called this comparison “derogatory” (1978:344). I no longer consider this to be true. But I still believe that in the midst of so much praise there is certainly room to question a difficult historical moment.

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