Francisco Pacheco and Jerome Nadal: New Light on the Flemish Sources of the Spanish
"Picture-within-the-Picture"
Author(s): John F. Moffitt
Source: The Art Bulletin, Vol. 72, No. 4 (Dec., 1990), pp. 631-638
Published by: College Art Association
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FranciscoPacheco and JeromeNadal: New Light on the Flemish
Sourcesof the Spanish"Picture-within-the-Picture"
John E Moffitt
"Asi lo estampo el padre Nadal."
-Francisco Pacheco (1638)
The role of Netherlandish prints in providing compositional prototypes for Spanish artists of the Siglo de Oro is
increasingly being considered significant, since the matter
was first surveyed in a fairly comprehensive fashion in 1948
by the late Martin Soria.1 More recently, Netherlandish
prints (particularly in the form of illustrations in emblem
books) have been shown to have formed a point of departure for many Spanish artists.2The geographical extension of such practices is striking. For instance, some studies
have documented the indispensability of these well-traveled graphic materials for artists working in Latin America,3 and Northern engravings can even be credited with
having spawned certain characteristic motifs seen in Baroque architectural designs in the New World.4 As such
findings reveal, a densely detailed Netherlandish print was
for Spaniards more often than not the preferred iconographic source. The focus of this essay is a single compositional device, in effect a narrative format, that was to
become a characteristic staple of Spanish Baroque painting,
the so-called "cuadro dentro del cuadro," or "the picturewithin-the-picture."/5
The first instance of what was to become the typically
1 M. Soria, "Some Flemish Sources of
Baroque Painting in Spain," Art
Bulletin, xxx, 1948, 249-259.
2 For the emblematic sources in
particular, see esp. J. Gallego, Visi6n y
simbolos en la pintura espaiola del Siglo de Oro, Madrid, 1972; and S.
Sebastian, Contrarreforma y barroco: Lecturas iconograficas e iconol6gicas, Madrid, 1981. Dr. Sebastian has since published many other studies
on the same issue.
3
For the impact of Netherlandish prints in the New World, see esp. P.
Kelemen, Baroque and Rococo in Latin America, New York, 1951; M.B.
Burke, Spain and New Spain: Mexican Colonial Arts in Their European
Context, Corpus Christi, 1979; and S. Sebastian, Arte iberoamericano,
desde la colonizacion a la independencia, Madrid, 2 vols., 1985-86.
4 See esp. J.F. Moffitt, "Wendel Dietterlin and the
Estipite. Observations
on Architectural Style in Colonial Mexican Ecclesiastical Facades: 'Baroque,' or 'Neo-Mannerist'?"Boletin del Seminario de Estudios de Arte y
Arqueologia de la Universidad de Valladolid, L, 1984, 325-349.
5 On this compositional motif, see B. Mestre Fiol, El cuadro en el cuadro:
Pacheco, Velazquez, Mazo, Manet, Palma de Mallorca, 1977; A. Chastel,
"Le Tableau dans le tableau" in Fables, formes, figures, Paris, 1978, II,
75-97; and J. Gallego, El cuadro dentro del cuadro, Madrid, 1978. Although Gallego demonstrates that this motif, with its innumerable variations, is found throughout the history of art, it is my intention only to
Iberian treatment of this device dates to 1616, appearing
in Saint Irene Healing the Wounds of Saint Sebastian (Fig.
1) painted by Francisco Pacheco (1564-1654).6 According
to Priscilla E. Muller, Pacheco's painting contains those
generalized Flemish characteristics of "immobility, compositional symmetry, . . . dichotomy of perspective (separate vanishing-points in the earthly and the celestial areas),
[and] similarity of pose and gesture in the figures." As she
concludes, "the traits of Hispano-Flemish painting of the
earlier sixteenth-century (correctness, reticence and exactitude) remained [Pacheco's] heritage."7What is especially
noteworthy in the composition of the canvas is Pacheco's
inclusion of an enframed scene, illustrating the martyrdom
of Saint Sebastian. As has been recently demonstrated, the
model for Pacheco's "cuadro dentro del cuadro" was a
Flemish print of the same title, by Jan Harmensz. Muller
(Fig. 2).8 Regardless of its particular graphic source, it is
even more significant that Pacheco employed the motif for
a specific purpose: to illustrate an episode that had transpired before the moment represented in the scene in the
foreground of the painting, showing the obviously later
moment of the healing of the arrow wounds. The result is
what we may call "temporal displacement." Even though
Pacheco's painting no longer exists (it was destroyed in 1936
during the first months of the Spanish Civil War), the artist
analyze the strictly Spanish adaptations of the device and, additionally,
to reveal the didactic purposes of its original and very specific, Flemish
source.
6
On this artist, see J.M. Ascenci6 y Toledo, Francisco Pacheco, sus obras
artisticas y literarias, Seville, 1867; A.L. Mayer, Die Sevillaner Malerschule, Leipzig, 1911, 90-101; F. Rodriguez Marin, Francisco Pacheco,
Maestro de Velazquez, Madrid, 1923; P.E. Muller, "FranciscoPacheco as
a Painter," Marsyas, x, 1961, 39-44; M. Barbadilla, Pacheco, su tierra y
su tiempo, Jerez de la Frontera, 1964; J. Brown, Images and Ideas in Seventeenth-Century Spanish Painting, Princeton, 1978, 32-48; E. Bermejo,
"Influenciade una obra flamenca en Francisco Pacheco," Archivo espaiol
de arte, LV, 1982, 3-8; and S.A. Vosters, "Lampsonio, Vasari, van Mander
y Pacheco," Goya, Nov.-Dec. 1985, 130-139.
7 Muller
(as in n. 6), 39.
8 This
iconographic source was only recently identified by different scholars: E. Valdivieso Gonzalez and J.M. SerreraContreras, Pintura sevillana
del primer tercio del siglo XVII (Historia de la pintura espaiola), Madrid,
1985, cat. no. 239; and L. Konecny, "Una ojeada en la 'carcel dorada' del
maestro Pacheco," Boletin del Museo e Instituto Camon Aznar, xxvII,
1987, 17-25. As these different authors indicate, the print had been derived
in its turn from a painting by Hans van Aachen of ca. 1588.
632
THE ART BULLETIN DECEMBER 1990 VOLUME LXXII NUMBER 4
1 F Pacheco, Saint Irene Healing the Wounds of Saint Sebas-
tian, 1616 (formerlyAlcala de Guadaira)
2 Jan Harmensz. Muller, The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian,
ca. 1598
wrote in some detail about his unusual work, so different
from any other Saint Sebastian known to us.9
Given this published testimony, the rather unusual emphasis placed upon the nurse-like ministrations of Saint
Irene in the foreground is easily explained by the painting's
intended destination. According to Pacheco, his picture was
commissioned "para un Hospital de San Sebastian de Alcala de Guadaira, donde hay una Cofradia de la Misericordia que viste algunos pobres, cura y da medicinas a naturales y forasteros."10Pacheco also remarked upon the other
odd iconographic features in the painting. As he explained,
there is "a window on the wall, through which the Saint
is seen in a field, tied to a tree, where he is being shot at
with arrows."1lHe makes it clear that foremost in his mind
is the sense of temporal displacement. This is the factor
predetermining the painter's unusual, two-stage, narrativecompositional arrangement. The "present moment" occu-
pies the foreground: "Aquella Santa viuda Irene que le cur6
de las heridas." This present moment/foreground motif is
complemented by an event in the past represented by the
picture-within-the-picture, which takes place in the background of the picture, "donde le estan asaeteando." Pacheco concluded his statement by alluding to a third, or
"future moment" (which he did not depict), when the saint
was definitively dispatched at the order of the Roman
emperor.
Although Pacheco was a decidedly stiff and mediocre
painter, he remains significant, first, as a writer who documents the peculiar polemics of early seventeenth-century
Spanish art theory, and, second, as the teacher (and future
father-in-law) of Diego Velazquez (1599-1660), the foremost painter of the Siglo de Oro. A work like Pacheco's
Saints Sebastian and Irene, particularly in its distinctive
compositional aspects, represented a significant influence
9 F.J.Sanchez Cant6n, ed., Francisco Pacheco: Arte de la pintura. Edici6n
depuis le XVe siecle, Paris, 1979; and S. Forestier, Saint Sebastien: Rituels
et figures, Paris, 1983.
10 Pacheco (as in n. 9), 327.
del manuscritooriginalacabadael 24 de enerode 1638, 2 vols., Madrid,
1956, II, 327-330. For other kinds of representations of the saint in question, see V. Kraehling, Saint Sebastien dans 'art, Paris, 1938; M. Sandoz,
"Riberaet le theme de 'Saint Sebastien soigne par Irene,"' Cahiers de Bor-
deaux, 1955, 65-78;F. Le Targat,Saint Sebastiendans I'histoirede l'art
11 Ibid., 328.
FRANCISCO
PACHECO AND JEROME NADAL
633
3 Diego Velazquez, Christ in the
House of Martha and Mary, ca.
1618. London, National Gallery
4 Diego Velazquez, The Fable of
Arachne and Minerva ("Las Hilanderas"), ca. 1659. Madrid, Museo
del Prado
upon the greater talents of the pupil. Supporting this assertion is the evidence of two paintings, from the very beginning and the end of Velazquez's long and distinguished
career: Christ in the House of Martha and Mary (ca. 1618)
and, finally, The Fable of Arachne and Minerva ("Las Hilanderas") from around 1659 (Figs. 3, 4). Since recent studies have discussed the narrative basis of the anomalous temporal displacement characterizing these two paintings, the
arguments involved need not be repeated.12 In any event,
this aspect of the paintings by Velazquez must ultimately
have stemmed from Pacheco's practice, as exemplified by
his lost painting of 1616. The specific point to be considered
here is the matter of the origin and significance of Pacheco's
initial appropriation of the formal invention, later to be
used with more spectacular results by his gifted pupil.
It has been repeatedly observed that the source for Pacheco's compositional anomaly was Flemish in origin. This
conclusion is quite correct, but only in a very general, or
12
90 (these and other studies will be collectively published as
Velazquez: Practica e idea, University of Malaga Press, 1991). For a rebuttal of the idea of temporal displacement, see Brown (as in n. 39 below).
See, reviewing the literature, J.F. Moffitt, "'Terebat in Mortario':
Symbolism in Velazquez's Christ in the House of Martha and Mary, "Arte
christiana, LXVII, 700, 1984, 13-24; and idem, "Painting, Music and Poetry
in Velazquez's Las Hilanderas," Konsthistorisk Tidskrift, LIV, 2, 1985, 77-
634
THE ART BULLETIN DECEMBER 1990 VOLUME LXXII NUMBER 4
5 Pieter Aertsen, Christ in the
House of Martha and Mary, 1553.
Rotterdam, Boymans-Van Beuningen Museum
geographical sense. Adherents of the proposition generally
concur in pointing specifically to the unusual "kitchen- and
market-scenes," with traditional biblical narratives hidden
in the backgrounds, that were painted by Pieter Aertsen
(ca. 1508-75) and his disciple Joachim Beuckelaer (ca. 153574).13 How do these hypothetical
models support the cur-
rent hypothesis? The representative example is Aertsen's
Christ in the House of Martha and Mary, a painting dating
from 1553 (Fig. 5).14 Commenting on this work, Julian Gal-
lego acutely observed how "neitherBeuckelaer nor Aertsen
ever clearly arrives at systematically employing one scene
in order to explain the other" within the same picture. He
concluded that "their originality consists in the juxtaposition of one sacred scene to another [quite different] profane
scene, with the former being placed in the foreground,"
where it functions as a "vanitas" motif (significatio in
malo).15 It is also quite apparent that in the Spanish examples cited here (Figs. 1, 3, 4), neither Pacheco nor Velazquez ever meant to disrupt the narrative flow, running
from foreground to background, or from past to present.16
Also contrary to the supposed precedent of the Flemish
painters is the fact that the two Spaniards have in effect
13The conclusionabout Aertsenand Beuckelaerhad been reachedby,
among others, JulianGallego (as in n. 5), 159-162;idem, Velazquezen
Sevilla,Seville, 1974, 102-103;idem,Diego Velazquez,Barcelona,1983,
42-43;J.-E.Muller,Velazquez,London,1976, 32-33;M.M. Kahr,Velazquez:TheArt of Painting,New York,1976,15; andJ. Brown,Velazquez,
Painterand Courtier,New Haven, 1986, 15-16.
14 On thesetwo Flemish
painters,respectivelyuncleandnephew,seeK.P.F.
Moxey,PieterAertsen,JoachimBeuckelaerand the Riseof SecularPainting in the Contextof the Reformation,New York,1977;for my example
by Aertsen,see the discussionon pp. 44-51.
depicted the same protagonists in the foreground and background of the given scene, and from one moment of the
given story to another. In this case, the fundamental concepts underlying the functioning of bipartite compositional
practice were radically different in Flanders and in Spain.
The Spanish examples, furthermore, represent an anachronism, using a typically "medieval" compositional technique known as "simultaneous narrative," so characteristic
of, for example, the contrasted, Old vs. New Testament
time sequences of the Biblia pauperum.
As a result, there is no evidence of the moralizing function of the compositional device that Aertsen and Beuckelaer used; with them, the caesura is locational and not temporal, and it specifically underlines a wide separation
between the zones of the sacred and the profane. On the
contrary, for Pacheco and Velazquez there is no such disruption. Instead, there is only a seamless narrative continuity, itself a function of the peculiarly Iberian principle
of temporal displacement. Not only are the two sorts of
bipartite paintings markedly different in intention, but there
is also no evidence in Spain of paintings by either Aertsen
or Beuckelaer at that time, or prints by them, that specif-
15Gallego (as in n. 5), 161. According to another scholar, this compositional dichotomy would have had an insistent moralizing significance:
foreground "materialism" is deliberately contrasted to "divinity," obscured in the background: J.A. Emmens, "'Einsaber ist notig.' Zu Inhalt
und Bedeutung von Markt- und Kuchenstucken des 16. Jahrhunderts,"in
Album Amicorum J.G. van Gelder, The Hague, 1973, 93-101.
16See Moffitt (as in n. 12), for further details on the mechanics of this
effect in the two works by Velazquez. Pacheco's terse explanation for his
appropriation of the unusual device has already been cited.
FRANCISCO PACHECOAND JEROMENADAL
635
ically copied compositions of this kind.17There is thus no
proof for the common assertion that Pacheco took these
paintings as his conceptual models. Had he been shown
these works, however, he might have viewed them as suspect, not just as "foreign"but specifically as a "Protestant"
form of expression.18Moreover, by the end of the sixteenthcentury there seems to have been native reaction in Spain
against contemporary Flemish painting. For example, Fray
Pedro de Vega asserted (Declaraci6n de los siete psalmos
penitenciales, 1606) that "whereas Flemish paintings are
truly handsome when hung high upon a wall, when seen
close up they only appear to be gross daubs [borrones groseros], with badly placed colors and crude draftsmanship."19Notwithstanding this comment about Northern
paintings, it is obvious that Spaniards never wavered in
their acceptance of Northern engravings.
Pacheco's odd narrative device of temporal displacement
was not a novelty but an anachronism in his era. Although
the iconographic model for his anomalous scheme was
Flemish, it came from the engravers of the Spanish Netherlands rather than from the painters. In the particular instance, the source is a suite of book illustrations executed
by artists based in Antwerp, namely the three Wiericx
brothers (Hieronymus, Jan, and Anthony) and others
working under their artistic direction.20By Pacheco's account, he had carefully studied a set of illustrations from
the Wiericx workshop that had appeared in Jerome Nadal's
notable pietistic picture book of Catholic Counter-Refor-
mation iconography, first published in Antwerp in 1593,
Evangelicae historiae imagines / Ex ordine Evangeliorum
quae toto anno in Missae sacrificio recitantur, / In ordinem
temporis vitae Christi digestae.21Although this Jesuit's album of Catholic iconographic orthodoxy has been cited as
having exerted a measurable impact upon painting in
Rome,22to date its influence upon Pacheco (and thus also
Velazquez) has only been discussed in a general way as a
form of orthodox doctrinal expression. There has been no
specific analysis of its actual compositional effects upon
Spanish painting.23Even though this important picture book
is still little cited by art historians, its significance cannot
be overlooked. As Thomas Buser comments, "if the engravings were better known today, scholars might recognize adaptations of its imagery by later artists,"24something
that has recently been shown in the case of a painting by
Francisco Zurbaran.2s
The Evangelicae historiae imagines consists of a series of
153 folio-size engravings, with a frontispiece. These prints
illustrate significant narrative elements developed in each
of the Gospels read at the Mass on Sundays. Terse legends,
inscribed beneath each print, directly correspond to letters
of the alphabet placed upon or near the incidents occurring
within the narrative time-span of each engraved, multipartite Gospel story. The distinctive Nadalian pictorial format - employing displacements in time, either "before"or
"after" the principal scene - has been cogently analyzed
by Miguel Nicolau, Nadal's modern Spanish biographer:
17A painting by Beuckelaer, The Poultry Sellers (ca. 1565), recently turned
up in a private Spanish collection, but no indication of the date of its
arrival in Spain is given. In any event, the principle of temporal displacement is not employed in this example: M. Diaz Padr6n, "Dos tablas de
Joachim Beuckelaer y de Maerten van Heemskerk in colecciones espaiolas," Archivo espaiiol de arte, no. 236, 1986, 412-415. For other comments on the presence of Flemish genre paintings in Madrid (none exhibiting this compositional trait), see S. Schroth, "Early Collectors of Still
Life Painting in Castile," in Kimbell Art Museum, Spanish Still Life in the
Golden Age: 1600-1650, exh. cat., Fort Worth, 1985. In spite of the fundamental differences between the Spanish and Flemish bipartite compositional procedures, as these are explained here, one scholar had distinguished as many as five iconographic sources from the North for the
Pacheco-Velazquez bodegones: H. Soehner, "Der Herkunft der Bodegones
Velazquez," in Varia Velazqueiia, Madrid, 1960, i, 233-244.
of the Imagines, see C. Sommervogel, S.J., Bibliotheque de la compagnie
de Jesus, Louvain, 1960, v, cols. 1517-20. A lengthy accompanying text
by Nadal, entitled Adnotationes et meditationes, was published in 159495. Although these commentaries are extensive, they do little more than
reiterate the visual facts of the plates (as keyed to the letter identifications),
and any further symbolic or exegetical information is rarely given the
reader. The format is very much that of the spare and sense-oriented character of Loyola's Spiritual Exercises. I am most grateful to my colleague,
Dr. Eugene R. Cunnar, of New Mexico State University, for his critical
reading of this paper and for allowing me to examine his microfilm copy
of the explanatory text, acquired after I lent him my copy of the 1607
edition of the folio volume of plates (of which he made good use; see n.
25 below). On the author of the Imagines, see M. Nicolau, Jeronimo Nadal, sus obras y doctrinas espirituales, Madrid, 1949.
22 For Nadal's influence on Italian
Baroque painting, see H. Hibbard, "Ut
picturae sermones: The First Painted Decoration of the Gesu," in R. Wittkower, and I.B. Jaffe, eds., Baroque Art: The Jesuit Contribution, New
York, 1972 (esp. p. 44); and T. Buser, "JeromeNadal and Early Jesuit Art
in Rome," Art Bulletin, LVIII,1976, 424-433.
23 F.
Delgado, S.J., "El Padre Jer6nimo Nadal y la pintura sevillana del
siglo XVII," Archivum historicum Societas Iesu, ii, 1959, 354-363; and
A. Rodriguez de Ceballos, S.J., "Las 'Imagenes de la Historia Evangelica'
del P. Jeronimo Nadal en el marco del jesuitismo y la contrarreforma,"
Traza y baza, v, 1974, 77-95. Although Delgado's title in particular suggests some serious art-historical scrutiny, unfortunately neither author
mentions any paintings that might have been directly influenced by the
Imagines.
24 Buser (as in n. 22), 427.
18 See
Moxey (as in n. 14), 109ff, "The Image Debate: The Reformed Challenge," noting (p. 163ff) how Calvinism in effect actually encouraged
"genre"-likeimagery in the Netherlands. See also p. 229ff, "The Religious
Attitudes of Aertsen and Beuckelaer," observing the absence of documentation about the possible doctrinal allegiance of these two Flemish
painters. Apparently they were both Protestants after all, since "theirwork
coincides with Calvin's call for an art of the visible . . . 'without any
meaningful intention"' (p. 268). To the contrary, Pacheco's Catholicism
was notoriously militant, and is documented as such throughout his Arte
de la pintura.
19Vega, as quoted in Rodriguez Marin (as in n. 6), 16.
20 On these illustrators, see L. Arvin,
Catalogue raisonne de l'oeuvre des
trois freresJean, Jeromeet Antoine Wiericx, Brussels, 1866; and M. Rooses,
"De plaatsnijders der 'Evangelium Historiae Imagines,"' Oud Holland, ii,
1888, 277-288.
21 For the titles, dates, and
places of appearance of the various editions
25
E.R. Cunnar, "Jerome Nadal and Francisco Pacheco: A Print and a
Verbal Source for Zurbaran's Circumcision (1639)," Boletin del Museo e
Instituto Cam6n Aznar, xxxiii, 1988, 105-112.
636
THE ART BULLETIN DECEMBER 1990 VOLUME LXXII NUMBER 4
The manner in which these engravings reproduce the life
of the Savior is as follows. A primary scene, the nucleus
of the evangelical act commemorated, first catches our
eye. However, either in the landscape background, or
through the aperture of a window, or perhaps in the vicinity of the architecture depicted, there will appear letters demarcating different scenes connected with the
principal representation. These other scenes, usually situated as though they were seen in the distance, either
represent the preceding steps, leading up to the main
event, or they may represent successive steps, deriving
from the main event, or they may also make allusions
to the metaphorical language to which the evangelical
narration refers. . . . The first letters of the alphabet discretely signal those other parts at the same time that they
refer to the "adnotationcula" containing the titles or epigraphs of those other scenes.26
A recent student of Nadal's mnemonics, Fernando R. de la
Flor, succinctly sums up the larger art-historical implications of this procedure, "in which the composition is broken up into a multiplicity of sub-pictures, and which therefore seems a return to the medieval technique of pictorial
fragmentation."27With the help of Nadal's terse legends (or
"captions"), all carefully keyed to the component parts of
the various biblical stories, the reader-viewer was meant
to meditate upon the pictures, the texts of which he would,
in any event, have been expected to know already in their
written form. The meditational purpose of the engravings
was reinforced by the addition of complementary texts in
the 1594 edition, the Adnotationes, and further enhanced
a direct reading of the New Testament Scriptures. In short,
Nadal's Imagines belong to the Ignatian tradition of the
"Ars memoriae," a mnemonic tradition as vital in Spain as
it was elsewhere.28As De la Flor has demonstrated, however, Nadal's "arte de la memoria" is indebted to native
Spanish sources: besides the obvious immediate influence
of Saint Ignatius's Exercitia spiritualia (1553), the Ars
magna of Raymond Lull was particularly important to Nadal.29 The strictly art-historical significance of Nadal's
Imagines, above all as a devotional-mnemonic aide, should
be evident, since this represents, among other things, a literal embodiment of the idea of "ut sermones picturae,"30a
reshaping of the commonplace motto "ut pictura poesis"31
for contemporary Catholic purposes. As Buser reminds us,
"the concept of using pictures for lessons in prayer is an
important document for the purposes of art in the Counter
26 Nicolau (as in n. 21), 117.
27F.R. de la Flor, Teatro de la Memoria: Siete ensayos sobre mnemotecnia
espanola de los siglos XVII y XVIII, Salamanca, 1988, 82.
28 On this
long-standing tradition, see, besides de la Flor, the fundamental
historical analysis by F.J. Yates, The Art of Memory, London, 1966; see
also J. Spence, The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci, New York, 1985. For
a late example of mnemonics in Spanish art theory, see J.F. Moffitt, "La
Arcadia Pict6rica (1789) of Preciado de la Vega and the Ars Memoriae,"
Boletin del Museo e Instituto Cam6n Aznar, xxII, 1986, 27-34.
29 Flor (as in n. 27), 81ff.
Reformation."32Certainly, if only for its splendid pictorial
effects, Nadal's Imagines is the most important document
of this kind that survives.
In the preface to the "Adnotationes" - the second part
of Nadal's Imagines, consisting of learned exegetical annotations about each lettered incident displayed in the separately bound picture-book - Nadal explains that this
manual had been composed in order "to afford seminarians
of the [Jesuit] Society continual and ready material and
profit for meditating and praying." As stated in the preface,
it was Saint Ignatius himself who had charged Father Jerome Nadal with the task of completing the Imagines; accordingly, the form and the content of the picture book
naturally derive from the Ignatian concept of "compositio
loci," or mental reconstructions of given religious scenes,
a procedure recommended some years previously by Loyola in his highly influential meditative manual, the Exercitia spiritualia. The concept underlying Nadal's Imagines
also fulfills the Tridentine dictate of 1563, ordering the
"bishops diligently to teach that, by means of the stories
of the mysteries of our redemption portrayed in paintings
and other representations, the people are instructed and
confirmed in the articles of the Faith, which ought to be
borne in mind and constantly reflected upon." These devotional images are repeatedly recommended as "salutary
examples [that] are set before the eyes of the faithful."33
For a pious Catholic artist like Pacheco, the Imagines
represented two great virtues: scriptural exactitude and
doctrinal authority. As Pacheco put it, such a lavishly illustrated devotional work represented "la verdad y el decoro." A third factor, largely of interest to a devout painter,
was that this collection of minutely detailed engravings employed and, in 1593, "modernized" the venerable compositional format of temporal displacement. This process of
pictorial and narrative fragmentation was largely confined
to the Imagines at the time of its appearance. Alonzo Rodriguez de Ceballos points out that the compositional procedure is centered upon:
... A Gospel scene broken up or subdivided into various temporal or psychological moments, to each of
which there is affixed a letter which points to the explanatory commentary found in the Adnotationes. This
procedure, by which the larger composition is subdivided into a multitude of internal pictures, appears to
represent a reversion to medieval techniques of pictorial
fragmentation. The result is the loss of that unity of vi-
30 For this term, see Hibbard (as in n. 22).
31 For this term (and its
wide-ranging art-historical implications), see the
classic study by R.W. Lee, Ut Pictura Poesis: The Humanistic Theory of
Painting, New York, 1967.
33 Buser (as in n. 22), 425.
33 H.J. Schroeder, O.P., ed., The Canons and Decrees of the Council of
Trent, Rockford, Ill., 1978, 216; for the Latin text, see J.D. Mansi, ed.,
Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, repr. Graz, 1961,
xxxiiI, 171.
FRANCISCO
sion which had been so laboriously acquired in the Renaissance. But this result largely proves that we are dealing with Mannerist, not Renaissance, prints, specifically
with a "reformed"Mannerism that subordinates the aesthetic value of the image to its strictly functional value
as a pedagogical tool. Narrative dispersion is nevertheless unified through an imposed system of single-point
perspective and by the subordination of the complementary scenes to the principal one. The subsidiary compositions with the minor figures have additionally been
endowed with a powerful realism arising from the scrupulous observation of naturalistic minutiae that had
never been lost in Northern painting.34
One engraving taken from the complete set of 154 prints
contained in the Imagines will suffice to exemplify all the
peculiar compositional traits enumerated by Nicolau, de la
Flor, and Ceballos as characterizing the pictorial procedures common to Nadal's work - and to those compositional features described as generally pertaining to Pacheco's painting of Saints Sebastian and Irene (Fig. 1).35
This example is Nadal's second plate, signed by Hieronymus Wiericx and illustrating the Visitation ("In die Visitationis") (Fig. 6). There are at least a half-dozen "pictureswithin-the-picture" within this single, meticulously cut
plate, but one subsidiary scene is notable. Situated in the
exact center of Nadal's engraving, this literally "enframed"
vignette represents the closest compositional and functional analogue to the curious structural device characterizing Pacheco's often discussed picture. As in the Spaniard's
painting, we look out of the scene and through a rectangular opening cut into the rear wall of the chamber. By
means of this time-telescoping device, one is permitted to
spy upon a secondary scene, distant in space as well as in
time. As in Pacheco's painting, the far-off "cuadro dentro
del cuadro" in Nadal's print complements the significance
of the tableau vivant in the foreground. Closest to us is the
"principal scene," set within an ordinary house, in which
Saint Anne ("E") greets the Virgin Mary ("D"). Directly
above the saluting pair is the principal/central complementary vignette, the picture-within-the-picture. Seen
through a window - as in Pacheco's painting - this narrative embellishment takes place outside of the house, and
is similarly placed within a landscape. Labeled "I," according to the caption, this vignette represents "Post eius
ortum, redit Nazareth Maria Virgo Mater cum Joseph." In
other words, this is what occurred "after the birth of him,"
that is, Saint John the Baptist ("H"), shown to the far left
through an arched portal. After that event, we see "the
Virgin Mary, a mother [to-be], returning to Nazareth with
Joseph."
34 Ceballos (as in n. 23), 89-90.
Pacheco's painting of Saints Sebastian and Irene does not, of course,
directly derive from Nadal's Imagines. Since the Saint Sebastian story is
largely apocryphal, it has no place in the Imagines, only depicting Gospel
materials relating to the Divine Office. In this case, we also know that
Pacheco's choice of subject matter was really no choice at all, since he
35
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Evangelicae historiae imagines, Antwerp, 1607)
As Nadal's abbreviated caption makes clear, the real link
between the two scenes, one in the foreground and the other
in the background, is strictly narrative in nature. What is
displayed in the background, directly placed behind and
above the titular image, is a scene enacted at a later moment, situated within the extended temporal framework of
a given scriptural narrative: the foreground depicts Luke
1:40, whereas the background illustrates Luke 1:56. Here
are the narrative-derived compositional principles of temporal displacement, and they are a consistent factor in all
the 154 plates composing Nadal's Imagines. The volume
represents, in short, the comprehensive iconographic source
linking (and thus explaining) the three temporally displaced
had received a commission from a hospital dedicated to the warrior-saint,
and Saint Irene had to be included in his picture to make a specific reference to the healing mission of the donor institution. In any event, Pacheco also identifies for us the specific textual source of his painting: Cardinal Cesare Baronio's Annotationes in martyrologium romanum (Arte,
in, 327).
638
THE ART BULLETIN DECEMBER 1990 VOLUME LXXII NUMBER 4
paintings by Pacheco and Velazquez illustrated in Figures
1, 3, and 4. The only difference between the engraved
source and the later paintings derived from its anomalous
compositional principles is that Pacheco and Velazquez decided to dispense with the letter labels and their corresponding captions.
Complementing the pictorial evidence, it can be shown
that Francisco Pacheco knew of Nadal's often reprinted
Imagines, which had recently reintroduced anachronistic
principles of temporal displacement into modern Spanish
Counter-Reformation art. In fact, Pacheco went so far as
to state that he regarded Nadal's Imagines as a largely unrivaled authority on questions of orthodox Catholic iconography. Accordingly, in his Arte de la pintura, he approvingly cited Nadal's unsurpassed expertise in such
matters on no less than twenty different occasions.36 For
our purposes, it is sufficient to observe how on one occasion, describing in fact just how one ought to paint the
Visitation, Pacheco decisively announced that "asi lo estampo el padre Nadal."37
If nothing else, this statement proves that Pacheco certainly knew the plate that has been cited as a model for the
consistently applied Nadalian techniques of temporal displacement. Pacheco's repeated verbal allusions to the many
other plates illustrating Nadal's exemplary picture-album
of Counter-Reformation iconographic orthodoxy thus
should establish the Spaniards' view of the lavishly illustrated meditative manual: they considered it the greatest
single authority on the proper manner of visually recreating the textual components of religious subject matter.38As proved by his now-lost painting of Saint Sebastian
and Irene (and what must have been others like it), Pacheco
wholeheartedly embraced the unique Nadalian pictorial
principle of temporal narrative displacement. This evidence also demonstrates that Velazquez found Pacheco's
workshop procedure useful to his painterly pursuits, for
example for purposes of drawing an odd moral from a Classical mythological subject, as in Las Hilanderas (Fig. 4).
These findings also throw new light on Velazquez's compositional methods,39 suggesting that he was on occasion
very likely to have deliberately employed principles of temporal displacement in a way that had already become traditional in Spanish painting of the Siglo de Oro. In this
case, the autoridad propelling the odd decision was not so
much Francisco Pacheco but instead Father Jerome Nadal,
from whom Pacheco had initially derived the anachronistic
narrative technique that he repeatedly championed in his
influential book, the Arte de la pintura.40
36 For
temporally displaced composition that Brown admits is Velazquez's Landscape with Saint Anthony and Paul the Hermit (ca. 1633, Prado) where
the two saints appear no less than three times within the same canvas;
"then,"says Brown, "he left no doubt about his intentions." For arguments
to the opposite effect, that Velazquez resorted to the device in two other
major paintings, see the articles cited in n. 12 above.
quick reference to all of Pacheco's citations of Nadal, either his
authority or his Imagines, see the index added to the modern edition of
the Arte, II, 462.
37 Ibid., II, 325.
38
It is surprising that no art historian has ever made the visual linkage
between Nadal's and Pacheco's pictorial imagery; certainly anyone who
has read the latter's Arte, a work very well known to students of Spanish
art, recognizes Pacheco's almost slavish dependance on this published
source. See also Delgado (as in n. 22), esp. pp. 361-363, who had commented at some length about Pacheco's repeated citations of the authority
of the strictly pictorial details of the plates in the Imagines, but, alas, in
the end he too made no attempt at cogent formal comparisons with Pacheco's painted oeuvre. Since Pacheco's paintings are generally thin stuff,
the real motivation for this investigation was a better understanding of
the reasons (or autoridad) for Velazquez's occasional allegiance to the
principle of temporal displacement.
39In his fine recent monograph, Velazquez, Painter and Courtier (1986),
Jonathan Brown asserts (p. 285) that "in only one instance did Velazquez
paint a picture with consecutive narration, in which the same characters
reappear in different parts of the composition." The single instance of a
John F Moffitt has published numerous studies dealing with
aspects of Spanish art. His most recent book, Occultism in
Avant-Garde Art (UMI Research Press, 1988), focuses on
the work of Joseph Beuys [Department of Art, New Mexico
State University, Las Cruces, NM 88003-0001].
I believe that we can even trace the presence of Pacheco's own, often
consulted copy of the Imagines into his pupil's personal library, and up
to the year 1660. In the posthumous inventory of Velazquez's effects, the
following title turns up among his books: "No. 492. - Figurasde la Biblia."
Even without an author's name attached to this brief citation of a folio
volume of engraved plates of "Scenes from the Bible," unaccompanied by
any text, I am quite sure that its author was "Jer6nimoNadal, S.J." For
the bibliographic inventory, see Varia Velazqueia, Madrid, 1960, ii, 397399. Here Pacheco's book appears as "455. - Libro [del arte] de la pintura
y su antigiiedad." Since many of the published sources cited in the Arte
de la pintura also reappear in the 1660 inventories of Velazquez's possesions, it may be assumed that at his death Pacheco bequeathed his library
to his son-in-law.
40