botticelli and calderon

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At War with Primavera: Botticelli and Calderón's El sitio de Bredá Author(s): Frederick A. de Armas Source: Hispania, Vol. 82, No. 3 (Sep., 1999), pp. 436-447 Published by: American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/346283 . Accessed: 08/02/2015 15:50 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Hispania. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 200.34.202.238 on Sun, 8 Feb 2015 15:50:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

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Page 1: Botticelli and Calderon

At War with Primavera: Botticelli and Calderón's El sitio de BredáAuthor(s): Frederick A. de ArmasSource: Hispania, Vol. 82, No. 3 (Sep., 1999), pp. 436-447Published by: American Association of Teachers of Spanish and PortugueseStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/346283 .

Accessed: 08/02/2015 15:50

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserveand extend access to Hispania.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 200.34.202.238 on Sun, 8 Feb 2015 15:50:45 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

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436 HISPANIA 82 SEPTEMBER 1999

At War with Primavera: Botticelli and Calder6n's El sitio de Breda

Frederick A. de Armas Pennsylvania State University

Abstract: In El sitio de Bredd, Calder6n makes use of Italian Renaissance art in order to construct a subplot that softens the cries of war. This counter-movement to the well known horrors of war serves first of all to humanize the Spaniard who had acquired a reputation of cruelty in the Netherlands. It also allows a text of war to humanize the face of the enemy. Indeed, a haunting woodland scene in the first act can be viewed as a dramatic ekphrasis of Botticelli's Primavera. The action in Calder6n's scene corresponds to the left and right sections of the painting: from Mercury's message on the left to the rape of Chloris/Flora on the right. The three Graces in both painting and play stand for the Senecan notion of liberality. It is through acts of generos- ity that bellicose impulses are transmuted into a vision of harmony and abundance.

Key Words: Calder6n de la Barca (Pedro), Botticelli (Sandro), Bredai, ekphrasis, Flora, Italian Renaissance art, mythology, Ovid, Spanish Golden Age theater, war in the Netherlands

n his treatise on painting, dated July 8, 1677, Calder6n asks: "iQuien duda que nfimero trascendente de todas las Artes

sea la principal que comprehende 'a todas?" (Curtius 561). Calder6n praises painting not only as an art that includes all other seven liberal arts, but also as a method used by God in his creation. To the notion of deus pictor Calder6n added a number of others, according to Ernst Curtius: "the divine Logos is not only a painter, but also archi- tect, musician, poet" (568). If the poet is then to emulate the creative powers of di- vinity, he ought to combine all these arts. The playwright's court spectacles are poly- phonic in nature, combining poetry with music and introducing settings that utilize both painting and architecture in order to create new worlds. This ars combinatoria is present not only in Calder6n's spectacles, but throughout his production, albeit to a lesser degree. His fascination with the theo- retical problems shared by painting and poetry are clearly evinced in works such as El pintor de su deshonra and Darlo todo y no dar nada. This theorizing that moves back and forth between literature and art was initiated by a series of Renaissance authors and painters, according to Clark Hulse: "It marks a radical break with the ways that

medieval poets and, even more, medieval painters spoke of their art, for it submerges the craft elements of art in favor of an intel- lectualized and theorized language that could buttress the social claims of poet and painter alike" (9). This new artistic dis- course "is given normative form by Ariosto, Raphael, Aretino and others in the early six- teenth century, and is disseminated across Europe in the course of the sixteenth cen- tury, becoming a common intellectual prop- erty that is manipulated and exploited in new locations and circumstances for new purposes" (Hulse 9). Calder6n clearly par- took of this common intellectual property as he, for example, used the liberal arts to link poetry and painting. Just as Paolo Giovio, a biographer of Raphael's circle "projects unto painting the common method of gram- matical and rhetorical training in which Leonardo's studio sketchbook corresponds to ancient models and rhetorical exercises of the schoolroom" (Hulse 105), so Calder6n shows how grammar's "concor- dances" and rhetoric's persuasion, arts that are key to poetry, are also central to paint- ing (Curtius 561). It is not my purpose here to show how Renaissance artistic theories survived during the middle and late seven- teenth-century in Spain, but it is important

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to recognize their presence in order to un- derstand how Calder6n may have con- ceived of the relationship between painting and poetry. It also allows us to enter into this area of correspondences as part of the period's understanding of it.

The debate between those who believe in the a priori correspondences between the arts, such as Mario Praz, and those that have found that the comparison between the arts is ultimately baseless, such as Rene Wellek, has given way to a series of ap- proaches that are foregrounding the signifi- cance of a multidisciplinary study of culture. The notion of ekphrasis has led to the scru- tiny by critics such as Emilie Bergmann, Murray Krieger, and James Hefferman, of the competition between arts and an analy- sis of the theories that allow for such com- petition. More importantly, the juxtaposi- tion of literature and art has come to be re- garded as a key to our understanding of a particular moment in culture. As Clark Hulse has stated: '"The seams or boundaries between categories, including the seam between poetry and painting, become sig- nificant moments for uncovering...where the intellect is subjected to social force, or where intellectual force takes a social form; they are marks for the potential for cultural totality" (19-20). Critics of Spanish Golden Age theater, particularly those who have dealt with Calder6n's theater have focused, over the years, on the parallelism between poetry and art. Many of these studies have shown the common themes and ideologies shared by the works in question. Indeed, some have even discussed the shared theo- retical language between art and poetry.1 Few, however, have attempted to decipher how the seams between the arts can un- cover certain social and political fractures.

Calder6n's El sitio de Bredd (1625-28), the subject of this essay, has repeatedly been compared to Velkzquez's painting on the matter, The Surrender of Bredd, com- posed almost ten years later.2 As John Loftis explains: "El sitio exhibits a spirit of chivalric generosity to the conquered simi- lar to that apparent in Velizquez's painting of 1635" (193). Indeed, Everett W. Hesse

has argued that Velazquez based his paint- ing on Calder6n's comedia. He shows, for example, that the surrender of the keys at the end of the play corresponds to the cen- tral scene in Velizquez's painting (75-76). Perhaps because of this link with Velizquez's picture, critics have consis- tently pointed to "El valor plistico, de re- lieve emblemaitico que el drama posee" (Valbuena-Briones 104). However, no spe- cifics are given to support this claim. As a number of critics have shown, Calder6n's mythological plays revel in the representa- tion of the visual. The amazing scenery found in the mythological court dramas, for example, is often replicated through verbal portraits, carrying with them an emblematic charge, as Margaret Greer has shown: "For the literate Renaissance and baroque theatregoer, well versed in reading em- blems and heraldic devices, however, meaning might be conveyed with equal if not greater effect by visual images" (8). There is critical debate as to whether El sitio de Bredd was commissioned as a court play (thus demanding abundant scenery and spectacle) or written for the public play- houses.3 Whatever the answer may be, the play relies on visuality and emblematics. Indeed, McKim-Smith and Welles stress the ceremonial nature of the work, arguing that: "Because of its inherently static and ritualistic nature, its emphasis on event rather than process, ceremonial drama thus approximates painting" (189). Investigation concerning the pictorial has led to yet an- other unexpected connection. McKim- Smith and Welles have shown that cartog- raphy is also important, not only to Calder6n's play, but also to Velizquez's painting.

What these contributions to Calder6n's comedia have not as yet uncovered are some of the specific pictorial images mapped within the text-and how these images fracture the central martial thrust of the play. This essay will thus focus on Calder6n's use of Italian Renaissance art in order to construct a subplot that softens the cries of war. This counter-movement to the well known horrors of war (as represented

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for example in Rubens's famous canvas which shows Europe suffering because of constant, pointless conflict),4 serves first of all to humanize the Spaniard who had ac- quired a reputation of terrible cruelty in his plundering of the Netherlands (McKim- Smith and Welles 191). More importantly, it also allows a text of war to humanize the face of the enemy. As John Loftis states: "Calder6n emphasizes the suffering caused by the war" (including the suffering of those within the walls [192]). In El sitio de Bredd, Venus, the impulse of beauty, harmony, and liberality, attempts to subdue Mars. The text thus inscribes images of peace and abundance from ancient and Renaissance art in order to attenuate horror and promote harmony. The pictoric images may even serve to question an imperial agenda that demanded the proliferation of bellicose practices. After all, Breda was the culmina- tion of an imperial Spanish policy that turned away from the truce established by Philip III and moved towards an aggressive stance regarding territorial advancement, which, coupled with a reform movement within Spain, was expected to lead Philip IV and his privado the Count-Duke of Olivares "to regain world hegemony for Spain" (Loftis 187).

Imperial and counter-imperial argu- ments are embedded in Calder6n's play in a pattern similar to that of Cervantes's La Numancia, a key model for Spanish siege plays.5 Although a critical discussion has ensued as to whether Calder6n is following Cervantes's play or later works by Lope de Vega which dealt with the siege of cities in Flanders,6 it is clear that in its pictorialism, in its praise of the enemy, in its portrayal of cleverness as a major attribute in order to successfully besiege a city,7 and in its hid- den ambiguities towards imperial expan- sion, El sitio de Bredd clearly resembles La Numancia. Indeed, Calder6n inscribes Numancia in his work when Flora asks: "CEs Bredi acaso Numancia?" (130). But Cervantes's pictorial uses have to do with frescoes which thematize epic and heroic topics. Calder6n, on the other hand, makes use of Italian art to foreground the roman-

tic sub-plot and its ties to the main action. Throughout the play there is a constant

reminder that the heroic effort surrounding the siege of Bredai takes its inspiration from the Spanish monarch. Spinola, the com- manding general, states at the outset his faith in "Filipo poderoso, / cuarto planeta de la luz del dia" (105). As J. H. Elliott has clearly demonstrated, from the beginning of his reign, Philip IV was praised as a sun- king: "The sun as the fourth planet seemed a particularly appropriate emblem for the fourth King Philip, and the conceit of the rey planeta-the planet king-may already have been hit upon by 1623" (177).8 This association between king and astral body is of necessity tied to the astrological beliefs of the time. Thus, Spinola's mention of a date following a second evocation of the ruler, acquires added significance: "hoy a veinte y seis de agosto" (108). The fiery warmth of August, a time when the sun shines particularly brightly, must be propi- tious for the siege of Breda, since Sol is emblematic of Spanish monarchical pow- ers. But Spinola warns that haste is neces- sary: "El invierno viene ya, / en Flandes mas importuno; porque, acercandose al norte / va sintiendo sus influjos" (108). To claim that winter is approaching during the month of August may appear as an exag- geration. But Spinola is clearly aware that he is not in a southern land and that two months have passed since the summer sol- stice, a moment that starts the sun in a path away from the northern lands. The term influjos is commonly used in astrology to refer to a planet's influence. Spinola dreads the failure of his monarch's bright rays and thus of positive astral influences. He pic- tures the deadly triumph of winter: "cuando el diciembre, que anuncio, / molduras de escarcha y hielo / labre en sus hombros robustos" (108). The commander thus es- tablishes a series of contrasts. On the one hand, the celestial and imperial suns, the South represented by Spain, and the warm- est season (summer) are beneficial to the Spanish siege of Bredt. On the other hand, a sunless time, the North represented by Flanders and the coldest season (winter)

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threaten his enterprise. Even though the sun still shines brightly in August, haste is needed if the Spaniards are to win this siege.

While Spinola represents the reflected rays of the Spanish monarchy, Flanders is embodied in the play by a woman, Flora. She suffers from "grave melancolia" which "pudo en tus hermosos ojos / eclipsar la luz del dia" (110). It is most fitting that she be described as melancholy, since the planet which corresponds to this humor is Saturn. For astrologers of the time, the last of the ptolemaic planets, known for its coldness, was actually a second sun, a cold sun, a counter-solar force. This notion was as an- cient as Chaldean astrology, which saw Sat- urn "comme un soleil vieilli, refroidi, ralenti" (like a sun grown old, cold, and slow [Bouch6-Leclerq 93]). It is also fitting that she is described as eclipsing the light of day. Saturn as a sol niger or black sun was often represented as an eclipsed sun.9 In contrast to the brightness and light of the Spanish masculine summer, we have the pale light of a northern and feminine win- ter.

And yet, this set of clearly established contrasts based on astrological, seasonal, humoral, and positional elements is shortly brought into question by the very woman who embodies one of the oppositions.

Gridley McKim-Smith and Marcia L. Welles have shown that a number of pas- sages in the work mask the horrors of war "by means of naturalization (whereby the instruments of war are inscribed in nature) as well as of neutralization (whereby the grisliness of war is obfuscated)" (193). Among these passages is one where Flora describes the enemy troops in terms of the seasons:

... ser maridaje lozano del invierno y del verano: Que en las armas los rigores, en las plumas los colores eran, admirando al cielo, los unos montes de hielo, los otros campos de flores. (111)

As Flora looks upon the Spanish troops, they seem to form a concordia discors bring-

ing together the two opposing seasons, win- ter and summer. While their weapons seem like ice, their plumes appear as fields of flowers. Indeed, the marching infantry are like fields of grain ready for the harvest. As they march, their undulations are like those caused by the wind upon the crops. The beauty of the marching soldiers is not just naturalized. It is rendered harmonious through the notion of concordia discors, and it acquires a mythical dimension through the evocation of spica, the blade of wheat, the emblem for Astraea (De Armas, The Return ofAstraea 1 and 64). As the goddess of the fabled Golden Age, the first and most perfect age of humankind, she presides over the conquest of Flanders. After all, Virgil had transformed her into an imperial goddess when he proclaimed her return during the age of Augustus. Now, Spain will become a new Rome and, through world do- minion (the conquest of Flanders), bring about an era of perfect peace. Most impor- tantly, it is someone from the opposing camp, Flora, who views the Spaniards in a favorable light.

Flora's beautiful vision, then, seems to transform the horrors of war, of a war that had already killed her husband, into a radi- ant vision of the possibilities of world peace and perfection. And yet, this triumphant tapestry is subtly subverted. First of all, the war in Flanders is compared to Don Quijote's exploits. When don Fadrique ar- gues that before the main army arrives they can skirmish with the enemy and take "aquestos / molinos de viento y de agua" (114), Alonso replies:

?Molinos de viento? Ya me parece su demanda aventura del famoso Don Quijote de la Mancha. (114)

Don Quijote was generally interpreted in the seventeenth century as a funny book. The knight's high ideals, his lack of contact with the realities of his time, and his ridicu- lous failures can well be applied to the Span- ish attempt at conquest in Flanders. Don Quijote also believed that, through his ex- ploits, he could bring back the mythical Golden Age. In the end, he returns home

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defeated. Thus, the quixotic and risible vi- sion of conquest, empire, and mythical re- turn is juxtaposed to the idealized view of Spanish warfare, casting doubts on the va- lidity of the enterprise.

More importantly, we have seen that it is one of the enemy, Flora, who first con- jures up the mythical and imperial vision. At first glance, this serves to validate Spanish claims. However, as John Loftis has noted, Flora, "who has the principal female role" in the play, is a fictitious character in the midst of historical personages (195). Her presence breaks the historicity of the play and its epic tenor. The spectator must won- der why this beautiful woman is inserted in the midst of the bellicose action. Indeed, the scene in which she appears seems almost magical in its beauty, in its woodland seclu- sion. It recalls Botticelli's haunting painting of the Primavera. Indeed, I would argue that the pigments, the lights and shadows of the Calderonian scene point to Botticelli's Primavera as its model.10 A learned audi- ence, viewing the action, could have envi- sioned this mysterious painting embedded amidst the bellicose action of the play.11 The seams between play and painting are clearly demarcated. They separate Spanish impe- rialism from Flora's vision of peace and abundance. Let us glance at the painting within the text.

Although most modern readings of the Primavera teach us to view the develop- ment of the favola by reading it from right to left (Dempsey 62), both in Cervantes's Don Quijote and in Calder6n's El sitio de Bredd, the tale unfolds from left to right. In- deed the action in Calder6n's scene corre- sponds to the left and right sections of the painting. On the extreme left-hand side of the Primavera stands Mercury. This god was well known in the Renaissance and Golden Age as messenger of the gods. Thus, the Count ofVillamediana as the head of the Spanish correos during the early sev- enteenth-century, represented himself as a Mercury figure. In Calder6n's play, Morgan enters the locus amoenus where Flora and her companions are conversing. In his role as Mercury/messenger, he carries a letter

which orders Enrique de Nasau to take troops from Bredai to Grave, since the Span- iards are rumored to be going to attack the latter (111). There are two other character- istics of Mercury that are also represented in Calder6n's play. As Dempsey points out, Mercury is a god of navigation (39), and Enrique, on hearing the message, decides that his troops will travel from BredA by boat:

... y por el rio vamos en veloces barcas porque Ileguemos mais presto; (Ap.) 0 porque, yendo en el agua, templen sus heladas ondas este fuego que me abrasa. (111)

The opposition between the coldness of the waters and the heat carried by Enrique rep- licates Mercury's role since in his guise as wind god he "softens the wintry sky and opens the seas to navigation after the harsh storms of late winter" (Dempsey 39). In Botticelli, Mercury uses his wand to turn away the clouds from the site of the primavera. In Calder6n, Morgan comes to take away (or so it seems) the clouds of war from the area around Flora and her compan- ions.

Flora is left in a small valley where shade provides her with relief from the cares of war:

Supe que a Bredai venias, y a este vallejo sali a recibirte... Descansa a esta sombra... (110)

In Botticelli's canvas, the predominance of shadow contrasts with the resplendence of the flowery fields. The same is true in Calder6n's ekphrastic dramatic scene. Since Henry of Nassau has left her to move the troops from BredA to Grave, Flora is accompanied only in the shaded fields by her father Alberto and her son Carlos. Alberto tells Flora to rest amidst the beau- tiful flowers ("En estas hermosas flores" [112]). This is the second time that she is related to the flowers. Earlier, she had called herself a frozen flower when convey- ing her grief for her dead husband ("Siente

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una temprana flor / del cierzo la furia helada" [110]). Both her name, Flora, and her kinship to flowers serve to reveal one of the pagan "mysteries" of the play. This should not come as a surprise, since Calder6n consistently uses characters' names to point to their link to mythological figures. A character named Astraea appears in thirteen instances in Calder6n's theater (De Armas, The Return ofAstraea 68). Flora signals the goddess of flowers in Calder6n's Apolo y Climene (De Armas, 'The Betrayal of a Mystery"). She also represents this deity in El sitio de Bredd. Indeed, Carlos describes her in terms of flowers:

Parece que se ha rendido al suefio, y en e1 traslada a sus hermosas mejillas de los claveles la grana, del jazmin la castidad, mezclando pfirpura y nacar. (112)

The image of Flora in Botticelli also shows this combination of reddish pink and white. Her white dress is dotted with white, pink, and red flowers, and she carries roses of these three hues in her arms. Students of the painting have detected the presence of the jasmine, "symbol of elegance, grace and amiability" in the fields surrounding her (Baldini 104).

Flora's portrayal leads us to the second and final action in Calder6n's scene. Asleep in the fields, she is soon awakened by the enemy. Don Fadrique Bazain, sword in hand, comes upon her as the scene sud- denly blazes with the fire of combat. The scene replicates the triad at the right of the painting, where the story of the birth of a deity is told pictorially. Flora's birth or meta- morphosis is described in Ovid's Fasti, one of Botticelli's models for his painting. In Ovid, the deity herself tells that she was once the nymph Chloris but was trans- formed by a god: '"was spring and I was roaming; Zephyr caught sight of me; I re- tired; he pursued and I fled; but he was stronger.... However, he made amends for his violence by giving me the name of bride, and in my marriage-bed I have naught to complain of. I enjoy perpetual spring....

This garden my husband filled with noble flowers and said, 'Goddesss, be queen of flowers"' (vv. 201-12). This birth is repli- cated, yet transformed, in Calder6n's play. Just as Zephyr pursues Chloris in the myth, Fadrique rushes against Flora. We know him, as a Spaniard, to be related to the west wind, since the Spanish army has been de- scribed in terms of a wheat field undulating in the wind. The particular wind mentioned is the west wind, associated with Spring: "el c'firo las movia" (111). Thus, Fadrique/ Cefiro has come to Flanders to conquer both the land and its representation, Flora. But he does not rape the enemy. Instead, he recognizes her beauty, her divinity. He al- lows her to flee to Bredi, a city he and his troops will besiege.

The siege of a walled city or fortification has often been compared to the wooing and conquest of a woman and viceversa. As Helen Solterer asserts: 'This figure of the female body as military fortification is so endemic that most medieval works asses it from the outside alone-as a fagade to scale, a construction to besiege and overwhelm. The only perspective is that of the aggres- sor" (Solterer 107). What is particularly significant in Calder6n's play is that the sec- ond act and third act will present both woman's perspective and the perspective of the besieged. But at this point the audience is witnessing the attempted rape of Flora by Fadrique/Cdfiro. By noting her status as goddess, Fadrique's speech alerts the audi- ence to the fact that Flora is already the goddess of flowers, the goddess of per- petual spring. It is this eternal spring that characterizes the mythical Golden Age. Just as the goddess Flora is depicted in Botticelli's Primavera as giving birth to flowers from her very breath, in Calder6n's play, Flora's vision turns even the horrors of wars into the beauties of nature. Her vi- sion, then, is not one of Spanish imperial- ism, but of the potential of all lands and peoples to coexist in peace. There is thus a double vision that comes about through Flora's rhetoric. While some would argue that she is strengthening the notion of Span- ish imperial conquest, others will see in her

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a more expanded view of a mythical age without strife, where armies are metamor- phosed into wheat, where bellicose fire changes to stars and fields raped by an an- cient enemy are now covered with flowers. Although Flora perceives the winter of war, she envisions it as being transformed into the "campos de flores" suggested by the soldiers' plumes (111). This is very much the goddess of Ovid's Fasti, where she as- serts: "I was the first to scatter new seeds among the countless peoples; till then the earth had been of but one colour" (vv. 221- 22).

The stars envisioned by Flora in a previ- ous scene come back to haunt her during her moments of rest, as she intuits the vio- lence that is about to ensue with the appear- ance of Fadrique:

Una sospecha me abrasa y astr6logo el corazo6n no se que le avisa al alma. (112)

The introduction of astrology into the text recalls the many astrological interpretations to which the painting has been subjected. According to Ernst Gombrich, Botticelli's astrological picture follows the writings of Marsilio Ficino, who conceives of three benefic planets (which he often refers to as the three Graces): Venus, Apollo, and Mer- cury, with gifts to bestow upon the initiate (59). While Venus stands at the center and Mercury at the extreme left of the painting, the influence of Sol is pervasive, being filtered through the vegetation and creating an aureole around Venus. So where are Venus and the Sun in Calder6n's scene of springtime? We have seen how at the begin- ning of the play the solar influence of Spain is contrasted with the saturnine coldness of Flanders. And yet, the painting transforms the image of the North from a land of nox- ious darkness to a place where paradisiacal springtime can reign. But the Sun, an image of Spanish imperial might, erupts into the pleasance as a Spanish war commander whose violence alters the beauty of the scene. Flora fears this solar figure, since its excesses may destroy her springtime peace. Although he comes rushing in like

Zephyrus, this noxious Sol fails to do vio- lence to Flora's garden, since he acknowl- edges her role as goddess (113). The newly discovered deity pleads for mercy for "tres inocentes vidas" (113). The triads in the painting are now coming together in the play. On the one hand, she and Fadrique replicate the scene of Zephyrus's rape of Chloris and transformation into Flora, with the difference that Fadrique fails to attack her, recognizing her as goddess. Secondly, she points to her family as a triad. This sec- ond triad may well stand for the three Graces. Before Fadrique's arrival, Flora, with her father and her son, act out a scene of tender love. Carlos attempts to assuage her mother's "ansias" (112) while Alberto, her father, wishes her to rest and forget her worries. Seneca explains in De beneficiis "the triple rhythm of generosity, which con- sists of giving, accepting and returning... [T] he three phases must be interlocked in a dance as are the Graces" (Wind 28). Throughout the play, Alberto, Carlos and Flora can be detected dancing to this tune of generosity as they care for each other.

Furthermore, the three Graces are but attributes of Venus. Calder6n's Flora, then, is none other than the goddess of beauty and liberality. Throughout the play, Flora's beauty and the beauty of her rhetoric will vie with the heroic tone of the play. Fadrique's praise of her beauty further re- veals the mystery of Flora's identity:

Que como en un templo a quien sacrilego fuego abrasa, qued6 entre muertas cenizas de la imagen libre, y la estatua de la diosa, que alli tuvo altar, sacrificio y ara; asi por reliquia quedas de todas estas campafias.... (113)

For Fadrique, Flora is a goddess of old, a pagan figure whose temple is being de- stroyed, but whose sacredness remains for- ever. She is the goddess who presides over the action. The burning of the temples of old coincide with the Spanish attack against Lutheranism. Indeed, Flora's husband had died defending his religion against the Spaniards: "Confiesa que en la defensa / de

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su religi6n muri6" (110). Flora thus repre- sents a forbidden cult, and her beauty pro- vides this counter-religion with an aura of sacredness which not even the "vulgar" curses of the Spaniards can destroy. Flora could thus be interpreted as a spirit of clem- ency and of Renaissance humanism and syncretism, which would soon disappear with the advent of the Counter-Reformation.

In Calder6n's play, the portrait of the Primavera will break from its frame in the first act, its pagan pigments of tolerance and its unabashed celebration of earthly beauty, abundance, and harmony infiltrating and subverting the martial action. The first symptom of this contamination is found in the pictorial scene itself, when don Fadrique's violence is turned to admiration verging on worship. The Spaniard gives a gift of two horses to Venus/Flora, which al- lows her and her family to flee the approach- ing Spanish army. But the contamination flows both ways. In Act Two, Flora admits that she loves "un cort6s caballero" (119) whose name she does not know, and later she even approaches the walls of the city during a truce to discover:

a quien he de agradecer aquella pasada acci6n de haberme devuelto a mi hijo a mis brazos. (124)

She does know that he is a Spaniard, and their siege of Breda is already having dev- astating effects. The leaders have ordered that old men and children leave the city since supplies are scarce. Flora complains to Morgan and Justin of Nassau:

Del cefiro la atrevida furia marchita el candor del mais vivo resplandor; que no es trofeo bastante, Justino, una flor infante, Morgan, una helada flor. (120)

The wind of springtime, the Zephyr has twice threatened Flora. First, in the guise of the Spaniard Fadrique and now through the city leaders who would take a flower of youth and one of old age away from their keeper, the goddess of flowers. This plea and Justin's reply is part of the dance of giv-

ing and receiving which is key to the ideal of harmony hidden within this martial play.

More important is the amorous link es- tablished between the martial Spaniard and the beautiful northerner. Fadrique makes clear that he regards their union in terms of the illicit love between Venus and Mars:

Mil veces el Cielo vio juntos a Venus y a Marte; y asi no es notable error que hagan uni6n tan segura el rigor con la hermosura, la guerra con el amor. (124)

From a vision of the Primavera, then, we move to a second painting by Botticelli, his Mars and Venus. In the painting "Venus stares fixedly and enigmatically into space and Mars sleeps deeply while baby satyrs play with his armor and one blows a shell into his ear without awakening him" (Heiple 385). In some ways, this seems to be the opposite of the movement which was seen earlier in the play, where Fadrique (Mars) had awakened the resting Flora (Venus). But, Calder6n's comedia works out the re- sult of Fadrique's vision of Venus in terms of Botticelli's Mars and Venus. Ernst Gombrich has shown that the painting has an astrological subtext, citing from Ficino's commentary on Plato's Symposium: "Venus, when in conjunction with Mars...often checks his malignance... [S]he seems to master and appease Mars, but Mars never masters Venus" (Gombrich 67). Indeed, the beauty of Flora (Venus) had halted Fadrique's violence against her. He now seeks her love in the midst of war.

s the siege drags on, Flora as Ve- nus also pleads for an end to the

M suffering since Breda has become "un sepulcro que nos guarda vivos" (129). When a relief effort by Henry of Nassau fails, terms for the surrender of the city are negotiated. As John Loftis reminds us, these are "generous terms, including full pardon for all those within the walls" (198). These terms reflect the ability of Venus to placate Mars's malignance, the ability of the Dutch to negotiate with the warlike Spaniards. The dance of the three Graces has then brought about an unheard-of liberality. Indeed, they

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represent the three moments of gift-giving in the play: the two horses offered to Flora by Fadrique; the city and its keys offered by the Dutch and the liberal terms offered by the Spaniards. If, as Gridley McKim-Smith and Marcia L. Welles state, "the play regis- ters discordant ideologies: conquest and clemency..." (198), these opposing strains are brought together in the figure of Venus derived from Botticelli's paintings. She checks Mars's fury, teaches him the grace- ful dance of liberality, and triggers a long- ing for Primavera, for a vision of abundance, love, and beauty that is sure to slowly dissi- pate the horrors of war."2

0 PHOTO CREDIT: Alinari/Art Resource, NY 1. S0012801 AL594 B&W Print Botticelli, Sandro (1444-1510). The Birth of Venus. Uffizi, Florence, Italy. 2. S0026816 AN6885 B&W Print Botticelli, Sandro (1444-1510). Primavera. Uffizi, Florence, Italy.

0 NOTES

1An example is A. K. Paterson's study of El pintor de su deshonra.

2For Shirley Whitaker, the play was written in 1625 with materials provided to Calder6n by Olivares. It was performed at the palace for the king and the royal family and was preceded by a "Loa que represent6 Don Pedro de Villegas en la comedia, que se hizo en Palacio por las nuevas de Bredai" by Antonio Hurtado de Mendoza. Simon A. Vosters rejects Whitaker's dating, suggesting that it was written in 1628 for the occasion of Spinola's visit to Madrid. Critics have taken different sides on this argument. While Loftis asserts that he finds Voster's "rebuttal unconvincing" (194, note 27), McKim-Smith and Welles give more attention to Voster's arguments (201, note 6).

3Both Hesse (75) and Whitaker (130) assume its courtly nature, while Vosters argues for the possibil- ity of its being written for the corrales (130).

4Rubens had also produced a print of the battle of Bredd for the frontispiece of Hermannus Hugo's Obsidio Bredana (1626), an eye-witness account of the siege by Spinola's chaplain.

5Anthony Cascardi compares both plays and con- cludes: "In comparison to Cervantes's history play, which was obliquely skeptical of the Spanish imperial mission, El sitio de Bredd is affirmative. For Calder6n, the aggressors are heroic Spaniards whose valor is exalted by their adversaries.... The religious imperi- alism of El sitio de Bredd is vulgar-"?Que piensan

estos perros luteranos?" (112-13). I agree with Cascardi regarding to Cervantes's skepticism, but I would add that such skepticism, although veiled through laudatory and even "vulgar" remarks, is also to be found in Calder6n's play.

'Valbuena-Briones argues that "Calder6n, en la elaboraci6n de este drama, debe de haber tenido en cuenta comedias...dde Lope de Vega. Sin embargo, es la tragedia El cerco de Numancia, de Cervantes, la obra que ha tenido principalmente como modelo" (104). Loftis agrees: "Calder6n's sympathetic portrayal of the defenders of Bredai reminds us of Cervantes's por- trayal of the defenders of Numancia" (191, note 22). McKim-Smith and Welles prefer to problematize this link and foreground connections with Lope: 'The lo- cus classicus of the siege play in Spain is Cervantes's El cerco or La destrucci6n de Numancia (ca. 1581-82), a problematic precedent because it is the besieged who are glorified.... Much more akin to El sitio de Bredd in subject and form are the contemporary chronicle plays of Lope, three of which dramatize the war in the Netherlands" (190-91).

7Cervantes, like Calder6n, turned to Italian art for the composition of his siege play. While Cervantes used Raphael as model, Calder6n turns to Botticelli. Cervantes also praises the Roman enemy and the clev- erness of Scipio in Numancia. Spinola's cleverness is evinced in his surprise attack on Bredai and in the construction of incendiary boats and improved siege engines. On Cervantes's pictorialism and praise of the enemy (De Armas, Cervantes, Raphael and the Clas- sics).

8Elliott points to Tirso de Molina's Tanto es lo de mds como lo de menos as one of the first instances of the praise of Philip as sun-king. I would add that Lope included praise for the rey planeta in the loa of one of the two plays he wrote to celebrate Isidro's canoniza- tion in 1622: "Cuarto sois de los Felipes / el sol en su cuarta esfera / de su luz." This and other early in- stances of the image of Philip IV as sun are treated in De Armas, The Return ofAstraea 61ff.

9In La estrella de Sevilla, the eponymous protago- nist is described as "Una que de negro hacia / fuerte competencia al Sol.... Una noche horror del dia, / pues de negro, luz le daba / y 61 eclipsado quedaba" (vv. 141-42; 145-47). James Burke explains: "She is described in terms of a black light which can eclipse the bright light of the sun.... Saturn, in astrology and alchemy, was considered a black star, and a sol niger" (6-7).

10Hope and McGrath point to Botticelli's Primavera as one of the most noted examples of hu- manist involvement: Botticelli must have sought ad- vice from humanists for his depiction of the transformation of Chloris into Flora after being rav- ished by the wind-god Zephyr. His depiction of these figures "seems to correspond to a passage in Ovid's Fasti" (177). Dempsey has shown that the humanist program is even more complex based on both Lucretius's De rerum natura, Ovid's Fasti, Horace's Odes, Seneca's De beneficiis and Hesiod's Georgics (36-

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37). Each is re-thought and transformed. For example: Botticelli altered Lucretius's simple description of a rustic parade of springtime deities into his own inven- tion, one that changes Lucretius's sequential listing into a manifestation of the growth and development of the season" (32).

"Although we do not know how Botticelli's Primavera came to be known in Spain, there seems to be numerous ekphrastic reproductions in the the- ater and prose of the period. The painting is embed- ded in Cervantes's La Galatea, La Gitanilla, and Don Quijote and in Calder6n'sApolo y Climene (Camamis, '"The Concept of Venus-Humanitas"; De Armas, '"The Betrayal of a Mystery" and "The Eloquence of Mer- cury").

'2Venus, then, is an instrument for the return of Astraea-not the imperial Astraea of Virgil's poems, but the benign goddess of peace and truth who is at home only in the harmonious surroundings of a mythi- cal Golden Age.

M WORKS CITED

Baldini, Umberto. Primavera. The Restoration of Botticelli's Masterpiece. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1986.

Bergmann, Emilie L. Art Inscribed: Essays on Ekphrasis in Spanish Golden Age Poetry. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1979.

Bouch&-Leclerq, A. L'astrologie grecque. Chicago: Bolchazy-Carducci, 1979; rpt. Paris 1899.

Burke, James F. '"The Estrella de Sevilla and the Tra- dition of Saturnine Melancholy." Bulletin of His- panic Studies 51 (1974): 137-56.

Calder6n de la Barca, Pedro. Obras Completas. Ed. A. Valbuena Briones. 5th ed. Vol. 1. Madrid: Aguilar, 1966. 3 vols.

Camamis, George. "The Concept of Venus-Humanitas in Cervantes as the Key to the Enigma of Botticelli's Primavera." Cervantes 9 (1988): 183- 223.

Cascardi, Anthony. The Limits of Illusion: A Critical Study of Calderdn. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1984.

Curtius, Ernst. European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages. Trans. Willard R. Trask. New York: Harper & Row, 1953.

De Armas, Frederick A. '"The Betrayal of a Mystery: Botticelli and Calder6n's Apolo y Climene." Romanische Forschungen 98 (1986): 304-23.

-. Cervantes, Raphael and the Classics. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998.

-. "The Eloquence of Mercury and the Enchant- ments of Venus: Humanitas in Botticelli and Cervantes' Don Quijote, II, 10," Laberinto. An Elec- tronic Journal of Early Modern Hispanic Studies 2.1-2 (1998).

-. The Return ofAstraea: An Astral-Imperial Myth in Calder6n. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 1986.

Dempsey, Charles. The Portrayal of Love. Botticelli's "Primavera" and Humanist Culture at the Time of Lorenzo the Magnificent. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1992.

Elliott, J. H. The Count-Duke of Olivares. The States- man in an Age ofDecline. New Haven and London: Yale UP, 1986.

Gombrich, E. H. Symbolic Images. Studies in the Art of the Renaissance, II. 3rd. ed. Chicago: U of Chi- cago P, 1985.

Hefferman, James A. W. Museum of Words. The Poet- ics of Ekphrasis from Homer to Ashbery. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1993.

Heiple, Daniel L. Garcilaso de la Vega and the Italian Renaissance. University Park: Penn State UP, 1994.

Hesse, Everett W. "Calder6n and Velazquez." Hispania 35 (1952): 74-82.

Hope, Charles and Elizabeth McGrath. "Artists and Humanists" in The Cambridge Companion to Re- naissance Humanism. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996.

Hulse, Clark. The Rule ofArt. Literature and Painting in the Renaissance. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1990

Krieger, Murray. Ekphrasis. The Illusion of the Natu- ral Sign. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins UP, 1992.

Loftis, John. Renaissance Drama in England and Spain. Topical Allusion and History Plays. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1987.

McKim Smith, Gridley, and Marcia L. Welles, '"Topo- graphical Tropes: The Mapping of Bredai in Calder6n, Callot and Velazquez." Indiana Journal of Hispanic Studies 1 (1992): 185-212.

Ovid. Fasti. Trans. James G. Frazer, revised by G. P. Goold. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1989.

Paterson, A. K. "Juan Roca's Northern Ancestry: A Study of Art Theory in Calder6n's El pintor de su deshonra." Forum for Modern Language Studies 7 (1971): 195-210.

Praz, Mario. Mnemosine. The Parallel between Litera- ture and the Visual Arts. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1970.

Solterer, Helen. The Master and Minerva. Berkeley: U of California P, 1995.

Valbuena-Briones, A. "Nota preliminar." El sitio de Bredd in Pedro Calder6n de la Barca. Obras com- pletas. Vol. 1. Madrid: Aguilar 1969.

Vosters, Simon A. "Again the First Performance of Calder6n's El sitio de Bredd." Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispdnicos 6 (1981): 117-34.

Wellek, Rene. "The Parallelism between Literature and the Arts." English Institute Annual 1941. New York: Columbia UP, 1942.

Whitaker, Shirley B. "The First Performance of Calder6n's El sitio de Bredd." Renaissance Quarterly 31 (1978): 515-31.

Wind, Edgar. Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance. 2nd ed. New York: W. W. Norton, 1968.

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446 HISPANIA 82 SEPTEMBER 1999

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