When Velázquez arrived at the Habsburg court, he was contracted to work for the king in a single capacity: that of painter to the king. In the following decades, however, Velázquez accumulated titles and positions in the courtly retinue that expanded his responsibilities at court and in the royal palace. In the middle of his career, the nature of these assignments took a decisive turn. Philip IV occupied himself in the 1630s with the construction of the Buen Retiro Palace and the Torre de la Parada, sites of royal representation and recreation for which major suites of paintings were not collected from the king’s existing possessions but instead commissioned from some of the most prominent painters in Europe, Velázquez included.1 Philip IV’s court painter dutifully made canvases for each suite commissioned. It has been proposed, furthermore, that Velázquez had a hand in planning the installation of both projects. No single document puts him incontestably in charge of either; nevertheless, his presence at both was likely instructive in the years leading up to what was eventually his own work in this same arena.
Between the two projects, the Buen Retiro is the one that most closely followed the New Room in artistic ambition, political charge, and chronology. The birth of Prince Balthasar Carlos on October 17, 1629, occasioned a ceremony of fealty that customarily took place at the church of San Jerónimo el Real. Seeing the opportunity that this presented, the Count-Duke of Olivares secured the position of governor of the Royal Apartment of San Jerónimo, just adjacent to the church, on July 10, 1630, and launched a construction campaign that enlarged this site into a palatial complex with courtyards and gardens.2 On December 1, 1633, the keys to what was then officially the Palacio del Buen Retiro were given over to the king and queen of Spain, with inaugural celebrations to take place within the week.3 With what remained of the decade, the interior was filled with hundreds of works of art, including tapestries, paintings, sculptures, and decorative arts, many of them commissioned or acquired expressly for this purpose.4 The jewel in the crown of the Buen Retiro was the Hall of Realms, for which Velázquez executed a suite of equestrian portraits of the royal family to hang alongside paintings of battles from the history of Spain, including his own Surrender of Breda (MNP, P001172), and images of “Hercules Hispanicus.”5 As has been supposed for the New Room, the Count-Duke of Olivares himself oversaw this work, commissioning from a panoply of Spanish painters a suite of paintings that thus exalted the Habsburg monarchy, glorified Spain’s military might, and mythologized its origins. Jonathan Brown and John Elliott have posited the close participation of Velázquez and court poet Francisco de Rioja in overseeing the realization of the decorative program of this space, although no documentation can confirm it.6 Nevertheless, Velázquez is plausibly credited with having brought Francisco de Zurbarán from Seville to produce the Hercules canvases, originally commissioned as a series of twelve of which only ten were finally executed, and one battle painting, namely The Defense of Cadiz against the English (MNP, P000656). Whatever Velázquez’s involvement beyond this, what resulted was almost certainly the most significant site of representation of Habsburg power since the New Room before it.
Starting in 1635, attention shifted to the Torre de la Parada, a royal hunting lodge, the construction of which is thought to have been completed in 1637.7 This project seems to have been directed by King Philip IV himself, who authored a memoria, now lost, initiating a commission of paintings from Peter Paul Rubens for it and communicated instructions through correspondence over the course of its execution.8 Whatever role Velázquez might have had in shaping the decoration of this building cannot be determined with any real certainty; that said, he contributed a trio of mythological paintings as well as several more court portraits to its total hang, otherwise largely the creative vision of Rubens and logistically brokered by Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand, then governor of the Spanish Netherlands.9 The Cardinal-Infante reported to the king that Rubens had begun work on the cycle by November 20, 1636, and it was probably completed by February 27, 1639, when a final shipment of paintings was delivered to Spain.10 This exchange generated the single largest commission that Rubens and his workshop ever received from the king of Spain, consisting of approximately sixty paintings of mythological stories, most of them derived from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The Torre de la Parada was a private space of leisure in comparison to the Buen Retiro’s public-facing site of political theater; its paintings therefore depicted hunting and animal scenes befitting its function, as well as images of erotic and comic entertainment.11 For Velázquez, the Torre de la Parada was the arena within which to test himself against the Flemish painter, Velázquez’s paintings of Aesop (MNP, P001206) and Menippus (MNP, P001207) a countermove to Rubens’s own Heraclitus, the Crying Philosopher (MNP, P001680) and Democritus, the Laughing Philosopher (MNP, P001682), and Velázquez’s Mars (MNP, P001208), a depiction of the Greco-Roman god of war as “a real historical figure,” his experiment in the capacities of the royal portraitist in the realm of mythological painting.12 If Rubens’s work for the New Room gave Velázquez a sense of what Rubens was capable of in the realm of political diplomacy, international ambassadorship, and creative force, what he witnessed take place in the Torre de la Parada can only have reinforced this lesson.
By the 1640s, the king’s attention turned once again to the reconstruction of rooms within the Alcázar palace that would function as exhibition spaces for the royal art collection and the sites where Velázquez’s career as curator of the royal art collection would finally unfold. The first major project that the king set into motion was the reconstruction and redecoration of what became the “Octagonal Room,” a gallery space constructed from a former corridor located just in front of the New Room. Originally decorated with a small number of paintings with seemingly no relation to each other, this corridor would be refashioned into the site of display of the most important sculptural holdings of the royal art collection, for which the gallery seems to have been expressly redesigned.13 Toward the end of the decade and with the reconstruction of the space well under way, Velázquez was hired to work on the project in the capacity of veedor y contador (supervisor and bookkeeper), a position he would hold only for the duration of and in direct relation to this particular project. Even within the larger team of people tasked with carrying out such projects, that of Velázquez was a consequential role. As veedor y contador, the painter would oversee the selection, preparation, and installation of artworks in the gallery space, coming over direct control of the exhibition of a part of the royal art collection for the first time in his career.
Velázquez installed the Octagonal Room twice over the course of an approximately four-year period, an exercise that offered him a glimpse at the uses to which works of art could be put in the contextualization of other works of art. That the Octagonal Room was intended from the beginning as a gallery for the display of sculpture made it unlike any other renovation project undertaken at the Alcázar during Velázquez’s lifetime. Until this project, sculpture had not functioned at the court of Philip IV as the focal point of any single gallery decoration. Every aspect of the Octagonal Room would be oriented around this medium. Over the course of its decoration and redecoration between the late 1640s and early 1650s, what this meant would change.
1 The Octagonal Room
As the only dedicated sculpture gallery assembled in the Alcázar palace of Philip IV, the Octagonal Room posed a new challenge both to Velázquez, as the de facto curator of its contents, and to the architects responsible for its renovation.14 The medium made demands on the interior architecture of the gallery space that a suite of paintings would not have. Construction began in 1646, when master builders Alonso García and Alonso Gómez were assigned the destruction of the tower adjacent to the intended Octagonal Room so that a stairwell could be built connecting the main floor of the palace—most notably the New Room—to its lower apartments, to be discussed in the next chapter. Toward the end of this same year, joiner Antonio de Lancharte began work on a wooden model of the Octagonal Room for which he was finally paid in full in January of 1647. Around this time, Juan Gómez de Mora, court architect and maestro mayor (foreman) of this project, requested that a canvas from the existing supplies at court be prepared so that he could begin working on the designs (trazas) of the room. If succeeding payment records are any indicator, these designs detailed the numerous ornamental aspects of the interior architecture, which was among the most elaborate in the royal palace. Payments made to joiners, carpenters, puertaventaneros (“door-windowers”), painters, and floorers cite niches, pilasters, cornices, corbels, windows, and the like, some of which were executed in colored tile, jasper, and marble.15 As José Manuel Barbeito has pointed out, this gallery distinguished itself from other galleries in the palace not only because sculpture was the focus of its decorative program but also because the richly ornamented walls of this gallery stood in visible contrast to the comparably bare walls of adjacent galleries.16 Ten niches were built into the plan of the room from the beginning, suggesting a predetermined installation plan that assumes ten objects of roughly the same size, shape, and format.17 Unlike the New Room, where paintings were seemingly chosen for the gallery according to its intended function after its construction, the Octagonal Room was thus specifically designed around the set of objects that it was to house. Almost certainly on the grounds of the architectural aspect of this project, Theodoro Ardemans and Antonio Palomino would claim Velázquez as part of the history of architecture in Spain. In an enumeration of the great artists and architects in Spain and abroad, Ardemans would write that Velázquez was both “painter and architect,” explicitly citing the Octagonal Room as his grounds for doing so; Palomino, perhaps in conversation with Ardemans, would unequivocally credit Velázquez with the “traza” of this gallery, in addition to its decoration.18 Although this is likely an exaggeration of Velázquez’s involvement in the architectural design of this new gallery, documents indicate his intervention in the project as early as January of 1647, suggesting that he may have had a hand in determining its final shape.19
Scholars have agreed, however, that Velázquez’s most significant contribution to the project consisted of the selection, preparation, and disposition of artworks for the decoration of the gallery, which included oil paintings of hunting scenes, marble medallions and busts of Roman emperors, and freestanding bronze sculptures. Like the Buen Retiro before it, the Octagonal Room interwove the symbolic languages of mythology, Roman antiquity, and Spanish history in a total display of Habsburg political power. The Roman emperors represented in the busts and medallions were the historical predecessors of Charles V and his lineage, with all its imperial aspirations. The paintings almost all included mythological characters, none better represented than Hercules, the Habsburgs’ mythic avatar.20 But the ensemble of bronzes was the undisputed centerpiece of this program. Our knowledge of these works comes in the form of a record of a payment made on May 28, 1647, to master gilders Francisco de Córdoba and Juan Cerrano “for cleaning ten bronze sculptures that were brought from the royal house of the Buen Retiro, seven of them the seven Planets and, [among] the other three, one a portrait of Philip II and another of the emperor and another of the Queen of Hungary, which were to be put in the new octagonal room that was made in the Alcázar of Madrid” (figs. 2.1–2.10).21 According to the records of this pagador, the payment was directly authorized by Velázquez, as veedor of this project, and by Juan Gómez de Mora, as its maestro mayor.22 The “Planets” cited here can be readily identified as Jacques Jonghelinck’s seven planetary deities, executed in bronze with gilded attributes, namely Luna, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Mercury, and Sol.23 The remaining three were the portrait figures commissioned from Leone Leoni and Pompeo Leoni, one the Philip II of the collection of the Museo Nacional del Prado, another the Mary of Hungary of the same collection, and finally Emperor Charles V and the Fury.24 Taken together, the sculptures around which the Octagonal Room was ostensibly designed were a collection of works relatively consistent in their material and format, depicting figures from Spanish political history and Roman mythology.
Jacques Jonghelinck, Sol, ca. 1570, gilt-bronze, 198 × 71 × 44 cm, Patrimonio Nacional, Madrid, 10003151
Image by Frits Scholten; courtesy of Arie Pappot
Jacques Jonghelinck, Venus, ca. 1570, gilt-bronze, 117.5 × 40 × 52 cm, Patrimonio Nacional, Madrid, 10003153
Image by and courtesy of Arie Pappot
Jacques Jonghelinck, Jupiter, ca. 1570, gilt-bronze, 208 × 103 × 48 cm, Patrimonio Nacional, Madrid, 10010387
Image by Frits Scholten; courtesy of Arie Pappot
Jacques Jonghelinck, Saturn, ca. 1570, gilt-bronze, 190 × 95 × 62 cm, Patrimonio Nacional, Madrid, 10010386
Image by and courtesy of Arie Pappot
Jacques Jonghelinck, Mars, ca. 1570, gilt-bronze, 243 × 80 × 45 cm, Patrimonio Nacional, Madrid, 10010389
Image by and courtesy of Arie Pappot
Jacques Jonghelinck, Luna, ca. 1570, gilt-bronze, 187 × 88 × 50 cm, Patrimonio Nacional, Madrid, 10003152
Image by Frits Scholten; courtesy of Arie Pappot
Jacques Jonghelinck, Mercury, ca. 1570, gilt-bronze, 200 × 38 × 80 cm, Patrimonio Nacional, Madrid, 10010388
Leone Leoni and Pompeo Leoni, Emperor Charles V and the Fury, 1551–55, bronze, 251 × 143 × 130 cm, Museo Nacional del Prado, E000273
Image © Archivo Fotográfico Museo Nacional del Prado
Leone Leoni and Pompeo Leoni, Philip II, 1551–68, bronze, 171 × 72 × 46 cm, Museo Nacional del Prado, E000272
Image © Archivo Fotográfico Museo Nacional del Prado
Leone Leoni and Pompeo Leoni, Mary of Hungary, 1553–64, bronze, 175 × 60 × 70 cm, Museo Nacional del Prado, E000263
Image © Archivo Fotográfico Museo Nacional del Prado
When putting together this installation plan, Velázquez would have found a ready handbook to the royal sculpture collection in Spanish Renaissance treatises on sculpture that circulated at the court, which reproduced modern bronzes among their pages. These included the very same bronzes that had come under Velázquez’s care as veedor y contador of the Octagonal Room. The most focused treatment of this art form were the two discourses written at the end of the previous century by antiquarian and humanist Diego de Villalta: his Tratado de estatuas antiguas, y el principio que tuuieron con memoria particular de las figuras, y retractos de los Reyes de España (henceforth Tratado de estatuas antiguas) and his Tratado de las Antiguedades de la memorable Peña de Martos; donde al principio se trata de las Estatuas Antiguas, con particular mención de algunos Bultos, y Figuras de Nuestros Reyes de España (henceforth Tratado de las Antiguedades), the latter now known only through a manuscript copied in the eighteenth century from the sixteenth-century original. Villalta’s Tratado de las Antiguedades contains chapters on several sculptures in the royal art collection, including the most virtuosic: Leoni’s Emperor Charles V and the Fury (fig. 2.11).25 Villalta offers a basic description of the sculpture, listing its component parts and highlighting the way in which the figure of Charles V steps on the figure of Fury below him. He goes on to interpret the work, writing that it allowed those who view it to appreciate the valor and strength that Charles V brought to his battles and invoking Latin verses addressing the cruelty of war and its consequences. “Furor arma ministrat [fury furnishes weapons],” Villalta writes, citing Virgil’s Aeneid. He then proceeds to recount Charles V’s many victories against the enemies of the Spanish empire, characterizing the emperor as a valiant Christian uniquely capable of quelling the fiery Turks and furious Saxons.26 Significantly shorter chapters on Leoni’s sculptures of Mary of Hungary and Philip II appear shortly thereafter. Although Villalta spills considerably less ink on the figures depicted in these works, he makes clear his esteem for their accomplishments in life, saying of Mary of Hungary, for example, that “she was a very valiant woman, and thus deserved to be portrayed with the rest of the Kings.”27 Interspersed among the chapters on Leoni’s portraits are illustrations of sculpted portraits of figures like the Roman emperor Trajan, the Babylonian queen Semiramis, and the military general Scipio, figures that contextualize the Habsburgs’ own royal conquests in the language of history and myth (figs. 2.12–2.14).
“El Emperador Carlos V,” from Diego de Villalta, Tratado de las Antiguedades de la memorable Peña de Martos; donde al principio se trata de las Estatuas Antiguas, con particular mención de algunos Bultos, y Figuras de Nuestros Reyes de España ([S.l.]: [s.n.], 1590), unpaginated
Image © Museo Lázaro Galdiano, Madrid
“Estatua del Emperador Trajano,” from Diego de Villalta, Tratado de las Antiguedades de la memorable Peña de Martos; donde al principio se trata de las Estatuas Antiguas, con particular mención de algunos Bultos, y Figuras de Nuestros Reyes de España ([S.l.]: [s.n.], 1590), unpaginated
Image © Museo Lázaro Galdiano, Madrid
“Estatua de Semyramis Reyna de Babylonia,” from Diego de Villalta, Tratado de las Antiguedades de la memorable Peña de Martos; donde al principio se trata de las Estatuas Antiguas, con particular mención de algunos Bultos, y Figuras de Nuestros Reyes de España ([S.l.]: [s.n.], 1590), unpaginated
Image © Museo Lázaro Galdiano, Madrid
“Estatua de Scipion,” from Diego de Villalta, Tratado de las Antiguedades de la memorable Peña de Martos; donde al principio se trata de las Estatuas Antiguas, con particular mención de algunos Bultos, y Figuras de Nuestros Reyes de España ([S.l.]: [s.n.], 1590), unpaginated
Image © Museo Lázaro Galdiano, Madrid
These ekphrases, however brief, give a strong sense of Villalta’s interpretive priorities. Sculptures have, for Villalta, seemingly little purely aesthetic value. Rather, they are witnesses to a history that they effectively memorialize. For Villalta, the art of sculpture consists, first and foremost, of images of the great rulers preceding the present king, and portrait sculptures—as the titles of each of his treatises clearly indicate—are at the heart of this conception. Like painted portraits of kings elsewhere at the Habsburg court, sculpted portraits serve in Villalta’s texts to narrate a history of the great accomplishments of the rulers they depict. In the chapter in his Tratado de las Antiguedades in which he sets out to elaborate the origins, principles, and purposes of the art of sculpture, Villalta writes that sculptures functioned alongside history books, buildings, medals, and the like to “make the memory [of great men] everlasting, and to honor their names and their great deeds, and to make them immortal on the earth.”28 The series of descriptions of modern sculptures in the Tratado de estatuas antiguas are exegeses that consist of nothing more than chronicles of the great deeds that had made the subject of each sculpture worthy of immortalization in this medium. For Villalta, “sculpture” (by which he means portrait sculptures of individual figures) is defined by its commemorative function, and thus by its relationship to the historically significant persons it was made to make immortal.29 In his view on the art of sculpture, portraiture is primary, art operates in the service of historical record, and political imperatives overwhelm any others.
With his first ensemble for the Octagonal Room, Velázquez put the bronzes in the Habsburg art collection to the services outlined in Villalta’s treatises, organizing this gallery around its same vision of what the art of sculpture comprises and the purposes that it serves. Jonghelinck’s planetary deities and Leoni’s historical portraits represent precisely the kinds of subjects for sculpture that Villalta’s thinking accommodates (which are also, it is worth noting, the only kinds of subjects for sculpture that Villalta’s thinking accommodates). Like the adjoining New Room, the Octagonal Room functioned as a site of representation of the Habsburg monarchy thanks to its portraits of the dynasty’s founding monarchs. Jonghelinck’s mythological figures work on the portraits in much the same way that Villalta’s citations of Latin verses and references to personages from Greco-Roman myth and legend work on the history of Spanish monarchs to which his writings are so committed. The Tratado de las Antiguedades opens with Villalta’s assertion that in antiquity, statues were raised to the greatest princes and emperors, including Julius Caesar, Augustus Octavian, Septimius Severus, and other such figures. By laying this groundwork before proceeding to describe the sculptures made of contemporaries like Emperor Charles V and King Philip II, Villalta establishes an ancient precedent for the practice of immortalizing important figures from the history of Spain in bronze and marble. Included in this lineage are even mythological characters like Hercules, who, according to Villalta, “was also a most ancient King of Spain.”30 Velázquez’s exhibition of Leoni’s portraits figures alongside Jonghelinck’s mythological bronzes works according to the same logic, the monarchs represented in Emperor Charles V and the Fury, Philip II, and Mary of Hungary elevated by Jonghelinck’s deities to mythic scope and given a pedigree dating to antiquity.
The exception that provides the rule to this gallery is Emperor Charles V and the Fury, the single sculpture within which the principles of Villalta’s thinking actively operate. Originally commissioned to include only a portrait of the emperor, Leoni’s sculpture came to include an allegorical “fury,” a figure almost certainly derived from the same Virgilian source material mentioned above but nevertheless reminiscent of Titian’s furias in the gallery just adjacent.31 Unlike Titian’s paintings, which depicted particular figures from Roman myth, Leoni’s figure is a distillation of these kinds of characters into the iconographic type to which all of them belong: the monumental, heroic nude, contorted into a tortured pose. Between Prometheus, Sisyphus, and their cohort, this figure corresponds to none of these: it is the “furia” in its most abstracted form. Paired with the portrait of Charles V, it serves to elevate him from his historical specificity to a universal principle, as indicated by the inscription running along the base of the sculpture: Caesaris Virtute Domitus Furor (Fury conquered by the virtue of Caesar). Within the inscription, Charles V is transfigured from historical figure to the embodiment of imperial virtue. By juxtaposing two figures that operate on two different representational registers—one the mimetic likeness of a real personage, the other an allegorical personification of an abstract idea—Leoni makes the one work on the other, the total meaning of the sculpture emerging from their contradiction. Leone Leoni and Pompeo Leoni seem themselves to have been aware of this: the hinged armor, once removed from the figure of Charles V, reveals a heroic male nude, the apotheosis of Habsburg monarch to Greco-Roman god complete (fig. 2.15).
Leone Leoni and Pompeo Leoni, Emperor Charles V and the Fury (The Nude Figure), 1551–55, bronze, 251 × 143 × 130 cm, Museo Nacional del Prado, E000273
Image © Archivo Fotográfico Museo Nacional del Prado
By surrounding this and related figures with images of planetary deities, Velázquez repeats the representational strategy of Leoni’s Charles V, rippling the scope of this strategy outward from this single work to the gallery as a whole. The exhibition of Jonghelinck’s Planets alongside Leoni’s portraits allows these works to act on each other in the same way that Leoni’s Fury does on his Charles V. Habsburg rulers dating back to Charles V, that most illustrious ancestor of Philip IV and immediate model, had regularly used the visual language of antiquity to cast themselves in the guise of mythological gods and heroes. This decorative program for the Octagonal Room was entirely in keeping with a rhetoric of Habsburg rule in which kings were compared to the planets, and none more so than Philip IV, the self-styled “Planet King.”32 No sculpture of Philip IV was included in this gallery, but it nevertheless functions as a portrait of his dynastic identity, rendered in the symbolic language—that of planetary deities—with which he ornamented his political persona. The combination of subjects of the works included in this installation of the Octagonal Room, some of them Habsburg rulers and others Greco-Roman deities, thus functioned to establish continuity between a glorious, heroic imperial past and the figures depicted in Leoni’s portraits—and Philip IV, by association.
José de Ribera, Tityus, 1632, oil on canvas, 227 × 301 cm, Museo Nacional del Prado, P001113
Image © Archivo Fotográfico Museo Nacional del Prado
José de Ribera, Ixion, 1632, oil on canvas, 220 × 301 cm, Museo Nacional del Prado, P001114
Image © Archivo Fotográfico Museo Nacional del Prado
Today Leoni’s Emperor Charles V and the Fury is on view in a circular gallery at the Museo Nacional del Prado in the company of two further “furies”: José de Ribera’s Tityus and Ixion (figs. 2.16–2.17). Like Jonghelinck’s Planets before them, Ribera’s titanic figures redouble the extraordinary conceit of Leoni’s imperial bronze. Within their sightline is Titian’s Emperor Charles V at Mühlberg alongside his own furias, Tityus and Sisyphus, the visual echo of Leoni and Ribera’s trinity. At work here—just as it was at work in Velázquez’s Octagonal Room, and even the New Room before it—is an awareness of the power of one image or group of images to transform another, and of the gallery as the site for such transformation. In the Octagonal Room, a single suite of sculptures was made to represent Habsburg glory, past and present, with images of mythic deities apotheosizing the historic kings with whom they stood shoulder to shoulder. But it would not remain this way for long.
2 Velázquez, veedor y contador
The ensemble that Velázquez first put together for the Octagonal Room represented a curatorial vision with a coherent understanding of the parameters and purposes of the artistic medium around which it was designed. As veedor y contador of the Octagonal Room, Velázquez’s responsibilities to the project could have ended here, with the installation of Leoni’s and Jonghelinck’s ten bronzes. However, shortly thereafter Velázquez traveled to Italy to expand the sculpture collection of Philip IV. It is unclear that he did so with the express intention of bringing back bronzes for the Octagonal Room, but this is what he did. The acquisitions that Velázquez made while in Rome were added to this gallery upon his return, giving its decorative program its final form; it was an intervention in the management of this gallery that falls nowhere within the parameters of his job title as veedor, instead more consistent with privileges normally afforded to court artists. The title of veedor y contador of the Octagonal Room may have given Velázquez practical control of the program of artworks on view in this gallery, but it was as a painter that he gave the gallery its defining shape.
Velázquez’s official involvement in the construction and decoration of the Octagonal Room dates to very early in the life of the project; nothing in either the protocols governing his official title or his day-to-day exercise of its powers suggests that it included a trip to make acquisitions for the gallery under his control. On January 22, 1647, Velázquez was officially named veedor of this project in a royal decree. Philip IV promoted Velázquez to the post himself, on the grounds that the existing veedor on the payroll of the royal palace, Bartolomé de Legasa, was already so occupied as to be unable to oversee such a project.33 In a document dating to March 2 explicitly written as a follow-up to the decree of January 22, Philip IV named Velázquez contador of this project, thus assigning him the management of the funds issued for its execution.34 Velázquez’s appointment to these posts is definitively established in a document included in the royal account books dating to March 7, 1647. The terms of this document are relatively precise in their description of what the job entailed.35 As veedor y contador, Velázquez was to maintain records of all the monies paid on the project, ensuring that the appropriate expenses were assigned to different aspects of the project, including labor and especially materials, and ensuring the timely execution of tasks by those hired to carry them out. In addition, he was to author expense forms that would be signed by both Velázquez and the palace’s maestro mayor and circulated between the pagador (paymaster) of the royal palace and the tenedor de materiales (manager of the building materials). According to this document, Velázquez was to oversee the execution of this project in keeping with the king’s stated orders for it. In turn, the maestro mayor of the palace’s royal projects would recognize his authority as the veedor y contador of this project, and the various laborers who executed the work on it would answer to him. On March 10, the king issued another decree requesting that Bartolomé de Legasa give the existing documentation of all expenses made in relation to the Octagonal Room to Velázquez, thus completing the transfer of the project into Velázquez’s hands.36
As Philip IV’s decrees indicate, the veedor y contador of any particular royal project was one of a number of moving parts that all worked together to realize it. The protocol for the execution of such a project, specifying which employees of the royal house would work on it and in what capacity, was handed down in an official set of instructions.37 The instructions stipulated that the veedor y contador of any single project keep meticulous records of monies assigned to whom, for what service, and on which date in record books to be handed over to the pagador of the project for processing. Once the money to pay the costs of the work had been gathered together, it was to be kept inside a strongbox with a bound book recording the amount of money deposited in the strongbox and taken out of it, the date of each transaction noted therewith. The strongbox had three keys; the veedor, maestro mayor, and pagador were each in possession of one of these, and it was stipulated that no two keys could ever be held by a single person at any time. Separate records books were also kept for the monies paid to employees of the royal house for work executed on a project and for any repairs or corrections made to the work executed. At various points, it is stipulated that decisions on the project were subject to the king’s approval and should not be carried out without it. Although not included in the official instructions, the court superintendente de obras reales (superintendent of royal projects) would report progress on such projects to the king and, in turn, communicate the king’s orders to the veedor y contador, maestro mayor, and pagador.38
In the documentation surrounding the Octagonal Room, a set of key players emerges as central to the management of the gallery’s creation; these players correspond precisely to the team of people indicated in the set of instructions on how to execute a royal project. The instructions indicate that the royal employees with the most involved roles to play in the execution of such a project were the literal and figurative “keepers of the keys”: the veedor y contador, the maestro mayor, and the pagador. While few individual documents survive pertaining to the Octagonal Room (despite the repeated call in the instructions for forms and record books documenting every real and maravedí dispensed), we have already seen this dynamic play itself out in at least one payment record signed by Velázquez, as veedor y contador of the project, and Juan Gómez de Mora, the palace maestro mayor, long regarded the authors of this gallery. Although Velázquez and Gómez de Mora are consistently given the most attention in secondary literature pertaining to this project, it is worth remembering that much of our information about the project can be found among the records of the court pagadores in the Archivo General de Simancas, and for good reason. This information is scattered across three different account books: activity from the years 1646 and 1647 is documented within the files of pagador Francisco de Villanueva and activity from the years 1648 and 1651 within the files of pagador Francisco de Arce.39 This is no bureaucratic mistake: Francisco de Villanueva was made pagador at the royal palace on October 18, 1640.40 He held this position until January 15, 1648, at which point it was decided that he was too ill to continue exercising this office. The job then passed to Francisco de Arce, his son-in-law and one of the palace’s existing tenedores de materiales, who held this office until 1677.41 The administration of this project thus moved between Velázquez, Gómez de Mora, and the court pagador (first Francisco de Villanueva, then his replacement, Francisco de Arce), the dynamic articulated in the official instructions on how to execute a royal project visibly playing itself out across the surviving documentation of the execution of the Octagonal Room.
This documentation does not directly account for the royal sculpture collection, nor for how the sculptures to be displayed in this gallery came under Velázquez’s direct supervision. That said, there were certainly immediate precedents during the reign of Philip IV that establish that, in practice, the artworks to be incorporated in a royal project were under the care of that project’s veedor. While the Alcázar was still being renovated, Philip IV had ordered the transfer of all the sculptures then conserved in the vaults of the Alcázar to the royal site of Aranjuez.42 This transfer was one of the most ambitious movements of sculpture from the royal art collection from one site to another to be undertaken during the reign of Philip IV. According to the terms of this document, Hernando de Espejo, the king’s guardajoyas (keeper of the treasury) “or whatever other person [was] in charge of them” was to deliver the sculptures to the person to be indicated by the Junta de Obras y Bosques, the board that oversaw activity across the royal grounds and palatial complexes.43 Philip IV’s order tells us very little about how he expected such a task to be carried out, but a follow-up document offers a more precise picture of the roles played by various court employees in its execution. The works would be received at Aranjuez by the veedor of that royal site, prepared by the aparejador (building engineer), and then given over to the tenedor de materiales. From there, the sculptures would be paid for and put in their place. Attached to this document was an inventory that specified which works were to be transferred to Aranjuez.44 Like the above-cited documentation, this inventory confirms that the sculptures were under the care of Hernando de Espejo and were to be received at Aranjuez by the veedor on site. Scholars overwhelmingly address Velázquez’s role in curating the Octagonal Room by suggesting that such control over the decorative program of this gallery was a function of the privileged relationship he shared with Philip IV, who regularly granted licenses to Velázquez that he did not to other painters at the court. It is worth noting, however, that if this was Philip IV’s intention, the assignment to work on the project as its veedor y contador was the right one. The documentation concerning the delivery of the sculptures in the royal art collection to the palace at Aranjuez offers a clear and unequivocal precedent for the practical control that Velázquez would exercise over the sculptures to be included in the Octagonal Room beyond what was specified in nomination forms and instruction manuals. It would not have been much of a stretch to move from overseeing the installation of a set of objects in this gallery to selecting them in the first place.
That said, nothing in the above-cited documentation can account for the defining move in Velázquez’s curating of the Octagonal Room: the trip to Italy during which he made a set of acquisitions with which he decided the final ensemble of works exhibited in this gallery.45 Velázquez was authorized by King Philip IV to make this trip to Italy not specifically to complete the decoration of this particular gallery (at least, not that any documentation can incontestably demonstrate) but to purchase artworks for the royal art collection and in particular to expand its sculptural holdings. This was a privilege with less precedent in the work of veedores before him than in the work of court painters before him. The assignment to travel abroad to acquire works for the royal art collection was more frequently reserved for two kinds of figures. The most obvious of these was the foreign diplomat, usually a member of the royal family with close ties to the king himself.46 Salvador Salort Pons and Miguel Morán Turina, however, have both pointed out that by sending Velázquez to Italy expressly to expand his collection of artworks, Philip IV was following the example of other great rulers before him who had sent artists abroad for this very purpose.47 In 1540 King Francis I of France sent the artist Primaticcio to Italy to purchase antiquities for his art collection at Fontainebleau. He returned to France with 125 casts of sculptures from some of the most famous collections in Rome, eventually revisiting Italy in search of more.48 While in the service of Vincenzo I Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, Rubens traveled widely as an ambassador of the Mantuan court; this included going to Rome to study its marbles, as well as its coins, gems, and engraved cameos. The Gonzaga family possessed an impressive collection of antiquities, paintings, tapestries, and other art objects, to which Rubens himself eventually contributed.49 In 1631 King Charles I of England sent Hubert Le Sueur to Italy to do the same. The court sculptor returned to London with molds of sculptures from antiquity from which bronzes were cast and installed in the gardens outside St. James’s Palace.50 Nothing in the guidebook for the role of the veedor of a royal project can account for travel to Italy in pursuit of artworks for display in royal spaces, but there was a ready precedent for such work in the careers of artists from other major European courts. Velázquez’s role as veedor y contador of the Octagonal Room put him in the position to intervene in the decorative program of this gallery. But Velázquez’s most substantial contributions to it came thanks to the privileges afforded to him as painter to the king, an accomplishment all the more remarkable insofar as he was seemingly the first of his profession to hold this office.51
3 Velázquez’s Sculptures
Combining the managerial powers of his role as veedor y contador with the privileges afforded to him as a painter, Velázquez assembled a decorative program for the Octagonal Room upon his return from Italy that reflected a new understanding of the medium around whose display this space was designed. Among the impressive number of works that Velázquez acquired in Rome were the three sculptures that came to form part of the final iteration of the decorative program of the Octagonal Room. Seemingly acquired expressly for this gallery, the sculptures now known as the Germanicus, Satyr in Repose, and Discus-Thrower express Velázquez’s direct engagement with the sculpture collections that he would encounter in Italy, remaking the very conception of sculpture at the heart of this gallery in light of what he discovered there.
There is little surviving documentation that can account for the trip that Velázquez made to Italy between 1648 and 1651, but we know enough to evaluate Velázquez’s purchase of the three sculptures that were eventually added to the Octagonal Room within the larger timeline of his trip. Velázquez’s second trip to Italy has been reconstructed by Salvador Salort Pons and Enriqueta Harris to the extent that the documentation permits, and so only a brief summary of the most important dates will be offered here.52 Plans for Velázquez to take a trip to Italy were made as early as November of 1646, when the archbishop Giulio Rospigliosi wrote a letter to Cassiano dal Pozzo describing Velázquez’s keen desire to visit Italy to study the paintings on view there.53 The first clear record of the trip in question dates only to November 25, 1648, when the king allotted Velázquez the use of a coach and a mule for transportation. This document specifies that Velázquez would accompany the diplomatic party sent to receive Mariana of Austria, the new queen of Spain.54 Traveling with this party, Velázquez arrived in Málaga on December 7, 1648, leaving for Genoa on January 21, 1649.55 From there, he passed through Milan and Padua before landing in Venice on April 21, 1649.56 After leaving Venice, he went on to other artistic centers including Bologna, Florence, Modena, Parma, and Naples before finally arriving in Rome, where he would stay for nearly the remainder of his trip.57 Although the precise date of his arrival remains unknown, a surviving letter from the Cardinal de la Cueva gives us the terminus ante quem of May 29, 1649.58 He remained in Rome until around mid-November of 1650.59 After a period of several months during which Velázquez revisited Florence, Modena, Venice, and likely Bologna, Velázquez left Italy from Genoa in May of 1651, arriving in Valencia on June 13.60 A letter from the king to the Duque del Infantado tells us that Velázquez finally arrived in Madrid on June 23, 1651.61 A day later, thirty-six crates of paintings and sculptures were reported as having arrived in Spain from Naples.62 Velázquez spent a year and a half in Rome, approximately half the total amount of time he spent in Italy. Velázquez bought numerous paintings and conducted business in other artistic centers, but if his primary aim for his second trip to Italy was to purchase sculptures for the royal art collection, this was an aim he set out to accomplish in Rome.
Little is known about Velázquez’s activities in Rome for the first six months after his arrival, but it is likely that he would have challenged himself simply to view the great number of sculpture collections that the city contained.63 There can be no doubt that he spent time, for example, studying the Tribuna in the Uffizi Galleries and the Octagonal Patio in the Belvedere, both octagonal spaces decorated with sculptures. While it is not possible to reconstruct the precise display of works in either space at the time of Velázquez’s trip, it cannot have been lost on the painter that neither contained sculpted portraits. Rome’s sculpture collections instead overflowed with gods and heroes. As foreigners to the city, Velázquez and Juan de Córdoba, an aide who helped Velázquez arrange the production and shipment of copies and casts, came to know these collections by means of a number of guidebooks.64 At the time of his arrival to Rome, the most recently published guidebook to the city would have been Fioravante Martinelli’s widely disseminated Roma Ricercata nel suo sito, e nella scuola di tutti gli Antiquarij … E descritta con breue, e facil modo per istruttione del curioso, e deuoto forastiero nel visitare li più celebri luoghi antichi e moderni della Città, first published in 1644.65 Intended as a revindication of modern Rome in view of the legacy of ancient Rome, this guidebook alone would have done little to improve Velázquez’s knowledge of the many sculpture collections in the city. As an aid to his reader at the start of the book, however, Martinelli offers an annotated bibliography of further reading on specific topics of interest to the Italophile, one of which is sculpture:
As for sculptures, Ulisse Aldovrandi has written on these, and [his book] comes as an attachment to Lucio Mauro’s “Antiquity”; but you will find little in the places that he mentions. The Marquis Vincenzo Giustiniani has had engravings made of his Gallery in two large volumes; the first of which contains the sculptures, and the second the bas-reliefs. And Francesco Perrier after him has drawn and engraved one hundred of the noblest sculptures in Rome, from which virtuosos of every profession can benefit greatly.66
Martinelli suggests a number of texts that might have been available to Velázquez in Rome. Ulisse Aldrovandi’s Di tutte le statue antiche, che per tutta Roma in diuersi luoghi, e case particulari si veggono, raccolte e descritte, first published in 1556 as an appendix to Lucio Mauro’s Le antichità de la città di Roma: Breuissimamente raccolte da chiunque ne ha scritto ò antico ò moderno, remained one of the most significant treatises on sculpture to have been written in the century preceding Velázquez’s arrival in Rome. That said, for reasons that will make themselves clear in the pages to follow, it was indisputably François Perrier’s Segmenta nobilium signorum e statuaru: quæ temporis dentem inuidium euasere Urbis æternæ ruinis erepta, typis æneis ab se commissa perptuæ uenerationis monimentum (henceforth Segmenta nobilium), a book of engravings first published in 1638, that structured Velázquez’s reception of the holdings in the city’s impressive sculpture galleries.
No guidebook that Velázquez could have consulted while in Rome presented as comprehensive a picture of ancient sculpture, or so coherent a statement about this art form, as that of François Perrier. This album of images, which was very successful on the market, cheap to purchase, and continuously reprinted, comprised one hundred engravings of sculptures from Roman antiquity accompanied by no text other than its frontispiece and the index that appeared at the end of the book.67 It was the first of its kind to organize itself around perceived virtuosity before any other. It was also different from other comparable texts in ways that would have made it particularly well suited to Velázquez’s purposes. To consider only the two examples offered in Martinelli’s guidebook, Aldrovandi’s treatise, which sought to be a comprehensive and complete account of every ancient sculpture in Rome, neither included images of the works listed nor offered any guidelines for discerning between works of high quality and artistic significance and works of low quality and little historical importance.68 The guidebooks to the collection of Vincenzo Giustiniani, Galleria Giustiniana del Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani, first published in the 1630s but reprinted in 1640, were rich with images but limited to a single collection, one from which Velázquez would ultimately not purchase a single sculpture. By contrast, Perrier’s Segmenta nobilium was the one guidebook available to Velázquez that would have offered him only a vetted selection of the best sculptures from across the city’s collections.
Enough of the casts that Velázquez finally brought back to Spain with him are represented in Perrier’s album to allow us to be certain that he studied its contents extremely closely, even using it as a catalogue.69 Alongside the surviving casts themselves, our knowledge of what sculptures Velázquez commissioned and from which collections derives from the following documentation: contracts, inventories of the royal art collection postdating his trip, drawings of works in need of restoration after the fire of 1734 that destroyed the Alcázar palace, and the relatively detailed account of Velázquez’s acquisitions that Antonio Palomino includes in this episode of the painter’s biography. By cross-referencing these sources, José María Luzón Nogué has compiled a list of approximately thirty freestanding figures executed in plaster or in bronze that Velázquez brought back with him from Italy.70 Almost all of these derive from the most famous collections in Rome, including approximately fifteen in total from the Galleria Borghese and the Vatican collections.71 His acquisitions included copies of the Laocoön group from the Vatican collections (Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, V-012); the Apollo Belvedere (lost); the Farnese Hercules (RABASF, V-001); the Dying Gaul (lost); the Ludovisi Mars (lost); Silenus with the Infant Dionysus (RABASF, V-026), then in the Borghese collection; along with the Borghese Gladiator (RABASF, V-023); the Borghese Hermaphrodite (MNP, E000223); and so on.72 These sculptures were certainly appreciated as being among the most masterful of Western antiquity. Just as importantly, almost every sculpture of which Velázquez acquired a copy—with a few noteworthy exceptions—was included in Perrier’s album.
What is extraordinary about the three sculptures that Velázquez commissioned for the Octagonal Room is not their art historical significance or the fame of the collections from which each derives, but rather the degree to which they do not conform to the criteria governing the selection of almost every other freestanding figural sculpture included among Velázquez’s acquisitions. On December 13, 1649, roughly six months after arriving in Rome, Velázquez drew up a contract commissioning from local bronze-founders Giovanni Pietro del Duca and Cesare Sebastiani bronze copies of three sculptures, each proceeding from a different Roman collection. In order of their appearance in the contract, these were:
One standing figure of a nude Emperor at a height of between eight and nine palmi that is in the Garden of His Excellency Signor Cardinal Montalto in Termini, which has a drapery falling on its left arm.73
The second is a statue of a nude faun with a pelt around it, which is in the entrance of the loggia of the Palazzo of the Signori Gaetani on the Corso, which is leaning on a tree trunk, and the sculpture in bronze should still have this tree trunk.74
The third is a standing nude sculpture of a gladiator, which is in the house of Signor Hippolito Vitelleschi on the Corso, which is holding a shield, or a small wheel, in its left hand, and in the right, although it is now without its arm, should not be holding anything.75
This was the first contract that Velázquez wrote up while in Rome, and it was a contract that he authored himself.76 Now identifiable as the Germanicus, the Satyr in Repose, and the Discus-Thrower currently conserved in the existing royal palace in Madrid, the sculptures included in this contract are those that took the place of Leone Leoni’s portrait sculptures of Charles V, Philip II, and Mary of Hungary in the Octagonal Room upon Velázquez’s return from Italy (figs. 2.18–2.20).77 In every respect, these three sculptures flout the rubrics seeming to govern Velázquez’s other acquisitions: Each of these sculptures was the only sculpture a copy of which was commissioned from its respective collection. None appear in Perrier’s guidebook, nor should any of them necessarily have been known to Velázquez by fame alone.78 If the terms by which they are described in the contract are any indicator, Velázquez had little—if any—interest even in correctly identifying each work or its subject.79 It is telling in this regard that the entry in the 1666 inventory of the contents of the Octagonal Room corresponding to these works describes them simply as “another three bronze figures, the same size [as Jonghelinck’s Planets],” without identifying their subjects or suggesting any iconographic justification for their inclusion in this room.80 Just as telling is the mention in their contract of the sculptures’ size, which matches that of the Planets. We can be certain that this was no coincidence thanks to a specification that was made later on in this document: that each sculpture be made with “a square plinth also in bronze of a height of eight or nine fingers more or less as concerns the height of the statue according to the discretion of said Signori Don Diego [Velázquez], or Don Juan [de Córdoba].”81 It is unclear precisely when Velázquez decided to replace Leoni’s portrait figures, whether before leaving Spain or sometime during his first six months touring Italy. But the fact that the contract includes all three of these sculptures, that it includes only these three sculptures, and that it was the first that Velázquez authored after arriving in Rome suggests that Velázquez had, upon their purchase, a fixed vision for how they would complete the decorative program of the Octagonal Room.
Cesare Sebastiani and Giovanni Pietro del Duca, Germanicus, 1651, gilt-bronze, 190 × 74 × 41 cm, Patrimonio Nacional, Madrid, 10010390
Photo by E. Sáenz de San Pedro
Cesare Sebastiani and Giovanni Pietro del Duca, Satyr in Repose, 1651, gilt-bronze, 183 × 59 × 45 cm, Patrimonio Nacional, Madrid, 10010391
Photo by E. Sáenz de San Pedro
Cesare Sebastiani and Giovanni Pietro del Duca, Discus-Thrower, 1651, gilt-bronze, 184 × 79 × 49 cm, Patrimonio Nacional, Madrid, 10003154
Photo by E. Sáenz de San Pedro
Until now, the suggestion that Perrier’s album functioned as a catalogue to the sculptural holdings of the city of Rome has usually meant only one thing: that the inclusion of particular sculptures among its pages encouraged Velázquez to purchase copies of those very sculptures. But there is another way that Perrier’s album may have guided his thinking, even and perhaps especially in the case of copies of sculptures that were not included among its pages. What differentiates Perrier’s Segmenta nobilium from treatises like those written by Villalta is not—or not only—the discerning list of sculptures figuratively inventoried in his album but the precise form that his images take and the presentation of those images within its pages. The question here, to be clear, is not only which sculptures were figured in the Segmenta nobilium and of which of these sculptures Velázquez went on to purchase copies but rather how those sculptures were figured, and the ways in which the logic ordering their figuration informed the reconceptualization of sculpture at work in Velázquez’s second installation of the Octagonal Room. The Segmenta nobilium structures itself as a series of prints, each presented individually not on single pages but on a single folio. Every time the reader turns the page, in other words, they are presented with a new image, and only one new image at a time. These images are ordered not by collection and not necessarily by iconography but more apparently by formal similitude of format and subject. To be sure, some of the sculptures included in the album were not readily comparable to any of the others: the Laocoön group from the Vatican collections, the Spinario, and Michelangelo’s Moses, copies of each of which Velázquez acquired, appear as anomalies in the Segmenta nobilium, their images preceded and followed by images of other works with which they establish no ready visual dialogue.82 But for the most part, sculptures of a kind appear in series: The supposed “Cleopatra” of the Medici collections, Venus with a Shell, or Nymph, and the Borghese Hermaphrodite, all reclining (mostly) female figures, appear one after the other (fig. 2.21 [a–c]).83 These are closely followed by the Dying Gaul, the Tiber, the Vatican Nile, the Capitoline Nile, and the Capitoline Neptune, all reclining male nudes that again appear one after the other.84 This pattern persists throughout the Segmenta nobilium, where heroic male figures (the Farnese Hercules, the Vatican Commodus as Hercules, and the Borghese “Faun”), standing female nudes (the Medici Venus, the Borghese Venus, two distinct Venuses from the Vatican), and so on are consistently presented in sequence.85 If Velázquez used Perrier’s album as a catalogue to the city’s sculptural holdings, this was not a transparent record of existing sculptures but an organizing framework that ordered sculptures according to its own internal criteria.
François Perrier, Segmenta nobilium signorum e statuaru … (Rome: [s.n.], 1638), plates 88–90, Bibliothèque de l’Institut national d’histoire de l’art, collections Jacques Doucet, FOL EST 168
Image © INHA
François Perrier, Segmenta nobilium signorum e statuaru … (Rome: [s.n.], 1638), plates 2–4, Bibliothèque de l’Institut national d’histoire de l’art, collections Jacques Doucet, FOL EST 168
Image © INHA
Still more striking in this regard is that interspersed within these informal series are individual images of some of the sculptures included in the album as they would have appeared from discrete viewpoints. Perrier’s album is comprised of one hundred and one images of a total of only eighty-four sculptures; seventeen of the images included therein are not images of additional sculptures but instead images of additional viewpoints of sculptures already present in the album.86 Within the album itself, there is no existential distinction established between different viewpoints of a single sculpture and individual, autonomous works. Viewpoints of sculptures like the Farnese Hercules and the Borghese Gladiator from the front, side, and back, like viewpoints of the Medici Venus from three distinct frontal viewpoints, are each given an individual page in the album, with no indication of the subordination of any one of these viewpoints to any other, apart from the order in which they appear (fig. 2.22 [a–c]). Moreover, with no ready identifying information to indicate otherwise, it is easy to confuse exactly which images in the text represent additional viewpoints of a preceding sculpture and which present a new sculpture entirely. Using the possibilities available to the medium of print, Perrier thus suggests a conceptual interchangeability between distinct viewpoints and autonomous works.
François Perrier, Segmenta nobilium signorum e statuaru … (Rome: [s.n.], 1638), plates 81–86, Bibliothèque de l’Institut national d’histoire de l’art, collections Jacques Doucet, FOL EST 168
Image © INHA
François Perrier, Segmenta nobilium signorum e statuaru … (Rome: [s.n.], 1638), plates 92–98, Bibliothèque de l’Institut national d’histoire de l’art, collections Jacques Doucet, FOL EST 168
Image © INHA
In its commingling of different kinds of images with no guiding text to distinguish between them, Perrier’s album both proposes that sculpture is an art of multiple viewpoints and redefines, however subtly, what exactly constitutes a multiple viewpoint.87 Just as second or third views of a single sculpture are treated in the text as entirely new works, Perrier’s Segmenta nobilium makes it possible to see autonomous sculptures with comparable formal characteristics presented in sequence as variations on each other (see fig. 2.23 [a–f] and fig. 2.24 [a–g] for two such series that contain both kinds of images with no clear distinction between them). The inclusion of multiple images of single sculptures in Perrier’s album allows the reader to see the remaining sculptures represented therein as variations on a set of basic forms and figures, making of his album a manifesto in print on sculpture as an art of the multiple viewpoint.88
This view underpins the substitution of Leoni’s Emperor Charles V and the Fury, Philip II, and Mary of Hungary for the Germanicus, Satyr in Repose, and Discus-Thrower in the Octagonal Room.89 The relationship between the latter three works and Jonghelinck’s Planets operates according to the very same logic structuring Perrier’s reproductions. The Germanicus, Satyr in Repose, and Discus-Thrower are formally like the Planets in ways that Leoni’s portrait sculptures were not: the subject of each of these, however vaguely articulated in Velázquez’s contract, derives from Roman antiquity rather than Spanish history. Unlike Charles V and the Fury, none consist of more than a single figure, and unlike Philip II or Mary of Hungary, they all appear as nudes. They are, in other words, variations on the same type of work represented by each of the Planets, consistent on formal grounds and format before any other imaginable criteria (whether specific iconography, authorship, or provenance). The Planets, in turn, find themselves utterly recontextualized by this new configuration of works; freed from the charge of deifying Leoni’s portrait figures, it is their format and disposition that become their most privileged characteristics, just as format appears as the organizing principle of Perrier’s album. Whatever imperatives motivated the exhibition of the portrait figures together with the Planets (be they historical, political, commemorative, or most likely a combination thereof), they yield in this new formulation to aesthetic ones, with formal variation across typological sameness the governing order.
Anonymous, The Boy with the Thorn (Spinario), ca. 1652, bronze, 73 × 45 × 55 cm, Museo Nacional del Prado, E000163
Image © Ar chivo Fotográfico Museo Nacional del Prado
That the notion of the art of sculpture as one of the multiple viewpoint became the organizing principle of the gallery is perhaps best demonstrated by the object that came to be literally and figuratively central to the gallery’s decoration, an object that embodies, if in very different terms than the Planets, the very same idea: the Spinario.90 Upon his return from Italy, Velázquez installed at the center of the Octagonal Room a copy of one of the most celebrated sculptures of Greco-Roman antiquity, a sculpture of a boy absorbed in the task of pulling a thorn from his foot. The bronze copy of this work that Velázquez commissioned survives in the Museo Nacional del Prado (fig. 2.25). It is unclear precisely when it was made. It is possible that the copy was commissioned in Italy alongside the many other bronzes that Velázquez purchased while in Rome. Scholars think it more likely that the cast was made after an existing bronze copy of the work decorating a fountain at the Spanish royal palace at Aranjuez upon Velázquez’s return to Madrid.91 Either way, Velázquez may have already had the work in mind while making his selections in Rome. Just before his departure from Spain in 1649, arrangements were being made at the Habsburg court on Velázquez’s orders to produce a foot for the octagonal table on which the Spinario was eventually displayed in the center of the gallery.92 Velázquez already knew that something would be installed in the center of this gallery, and his eventual selection of the Spinario is a choice that confirms much of what the Germanicus, Satyr in Repose, and Discus-Thrower suggest about the new imperatives of this gallery decoration. In many respects, the Spinario was, within the program of the Octagonal Room, exceptional. It is the only work included therein that was installed to be circumambulated, and rightly so. Because of the twist of the figure’s gaze, the angled pose of its leg, and the bend of its torso, the Spinario is the only sculpture in this gallery that would inspire circumambulation, demanding to be looked at from different angles. That said, the act of circumambulation would, in turn, position the viewer to appreciate the other sculptures in the gallery in a manner of which Perrier would have approved: in succession, as though flipping the pages in a portfolio. Exemplifying in its composition the concept that sculpture is an art of multiple viewpoints, the Spinario’s installation at the center of this gallery, in this way, would give this order to the rest.
With his substitution of Leone Leoni and Pompeo Leoni’s royal portrait sculptures for the three male nude bronzes that he acquired in Italy and his installation of the Spinario as its centerpiece, Velázquez reoriented the design for the Octagonal Room away from one set of assumptions about the parameters and purposes of sculpture toward another entirely. This gallery thus served Velázquez as a site of experimentation for the making and unmaking of meaning around a set of works of art, through which Velázquez examined and then reexamined the limits and purposes of the artistic medium for which that gallery was designed. In the New Room, Velázquez had observed the ways that a gallery hang could be used to arbitrate the meaning of any single work of art. In the Octagonal Room, he tried his hand at it.
On the Buen Retiro Palace, see especially Brown and Elliott 1980, republished as Brown and Elliott 2003; Harris 1980; and Úbeda de los Cobos 2005. On the Torre de la Parada, see especially Alpers 1971; Vergara 1999, pp. 124–30; Georgievska-Shine and Silver 2014; and Silver 2016.
Brown and Elliott 1980, p. 55; Brown and Elliott 2003, p. 55.
Brown and Elliott 1980, pp. 68–71; Brown and Elliott 2003, p. 70.
Brown and Elliott 1980, pp. 105–40; Brown and Elliott 2003, pp. 107–48.
Brown and Elliott 1980, pp. 141–92; Brown and Elliott 2003, pp. 149–202. The question of the possible reconstitution of the hang of the Hall of Realms has been examined in a standalone essay in Úbeda de los Cobos 2005, and is in the process, as of this writing, of further exploration by the curators at the Museo Nacional del Prado who have acquired the surviving building that once housed the Hall of Realms in their expansion of the “Campus Prado.”
On Velázquez at the Buen Retiro, see Brown and Elliott 1980, p. 191; Harris 1980; and Brown and Elliott 2003, p. 200.
Alpers 1971, p. 28, esp. n. 19.
The most complete history of the commission, including this documentation, can be found in Alpers 1971, pp. 29–41.
On Velázquez at the Torre de la Parada, see Alpers 1971, p. 30, esp. n. 23, and p. 39; and Georgievska-Shine and Silver 2014, pp. 3 and 8.
Vergara 1999, p. 125.
Alpers offers a direct comparison between the Buen Retiro and the Torre de la Parada in Alpers 1971, p. 105, an introduction to her longer analysis of the decorative program as a whole (Alpers 1971, pp. 101–45).
On Velázquez at the Torre de la Parada, see especially Cruz Valdovinos 1999; Georgievska-Shine and Silver 2014, pp. 183–200; Georgievska-Shine 2017; and Mena Marqués 2000. On the presentation of Mars as “a real historical figure,” see Cherry 2007, p. 258.
For the original installation of this corridor, see Martínez Leiva and Rodríguez Rebollo 2007, pp. 87 and 144, no. 15. For useful overviews of the Habsburg sculpture collection, see Morán Turina 1994; Coppel Areizaga 2007; Helmstutler Di Dio 2008; and the relevant chapters in Helmstutler Di Dio and Coppel Areizaga 2013.
Histories of this room, its reconstruction, and its decoration can be found in Bottineau 1956–58, pt. 2, pp. 55–61; Orso 1986, pp. 153–62; Barbeito Díez 1992, pp. 157–73; Barbeito Díez 1994, pp. 88–90; Checa Cremades 1994a, p. 403; Barbeito Díez 2007, pp. 120–22; and Martínez Leiva and Rodríguez Rebollo 2015, pp. 52–58.
Azcárate 1960b, pp. 370–71.
Barbeito Díez 1992, p. 169.
It is worth citing here a dictum made by Leone Leoni in his correspondence with Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle, Bishop of Arras and direct councilor to the Spanish king, concerning the assembly of sculpture galleries. Leoni writes that “it is not up to [him] to execute figures according to galleries; on the contrary, it is the galleries that must be constructed around the figures” (Plon 1887, p. 65: “car je n’ai pas à exécuter les figures d’après les galeries; mais, au contraire, ces sont les galeries qui doivent être construites en conséquence des figures”). Written in the century before the construction of the Octagonal Room, it is unlikely that its architects built it with this dictum in mind. Nevertheless, the coincidence between what Leoni advocates in his letter and what happens in the Octagonal Room is worth noting.
See Palomino 1724, vol. 3, p. 340 (see also Palomino 1947, p. 917; Palomino 1987, p. 162; Palomino 2018, p. 135) and Ardemans 1719, p. 281: “Pintor, y Architecto.” While many scholars agree that Ardemans and Palomino exaggerate the extent of Velázquez’s contribution to the history of architecture at the Spanish court, a different perspective is offered in Bonet Correa 1960 and Blasco Esquivas 2011.
Azcárate 1960b, p. 370.
For Rubens’s cycle of paintings of the Labors of Hercules, see Martínez Leiva and Rodríguez Rebollo 2015, p. 562, nos. 846–53. Although the subject of the paintings is not specified in the 1666 inventory of the contents of the Alcázar palace, the 1686 inventory does identify them as paintings of “the labors of Hercules and myths” (Bottineau 1956–58, pt. 2, p. 58: “las fuerças de Ercules y fabulas”). For the marble medallions, see Martínez Leiva and Rodríguez Rebollo 2015, pp. 573–77, nos. 869–80.
Corpus velazqueño 2000, vol. 1, p. 180, doc. 201: “por linpiar diez estatuas de bronçe que se trujeron de la Cassa Real del Buen Retiro, las siete dellas los siete Planetas y las otras tres una el retrato de Phelipe segundo y otra del enperador y otra de la Reyna de Ungría, las quales fueron para poner en el salon nuevo ochavado que se hiço en el alcaçar de Madrid.” See also Azcárate 1960b, p. 372.
Azcárate 1960b, p. 372.
Jonghelinck’s series of seven planetary deities originally included a bronze-cast figure of Bacchus seated on a barrel that is markedly different from the others in format and, if to a lesser extent, iconography; this work remained in the Jardín de la Isla at Aranjuez, where it continues to function as the centerpiece of a fountain. For surviving documentation regarding the commission of these works, their previous owners, and their eventual gifting to Spain, see Meijer 1979; Buchanan 1990; and Pérez de Tudela 2019. For a more comprehensive treatment of Jonghelinck’s career and working methods, see Pappot and Wiersma 2017.
Orso 1986, pp. 157–58. The same attributions are made in Checa Cremades 1994a, p. 403; and in Martínez Leiva and Rodríguez Rebollo 2015, p. 53. The general bibliography on Leone and Pompeo Leoni is justifiably rich. A preliminary bibliography would include Plon 1887; Mezzatesta 1980; Urrea 1994; Gatti Perer 1995; Helmstutler Di Dio 2011; Schröder 2012; Arciniega García 2013; and Coppel Areizaga et al. 2013.
Both treatises were expressly addressed to King Philip II of Spain and therefore speak to a courtly art culture. On Villalta and the reception of the work of Leone and Pompeo Leoni in Spain, see Marías 1995a.
Villalta S. XVIII, unpaginated.
Villalta S. XVIII, unpaginated: “fue una muy valerosa muger, y assí merece estar retratada con las demas de los Reyes.” The reasons that Velázquez did not include Leoni’s portrait of the Empress Isabel of Portugal (MNP, E000274), also included in Villalta’s treatise, remain a mystery. Of these portrait figures, Villalta had the least to say about the portrait of Isabel of Portugal, and depending on how closely Velázquez studied Villalta’s writings, this may have been a factor in his choice to exclude it. More likely reasons include the difficult political situation with Portugal, which was then at war with Spain for independence, or the fact that Isabel of Portugal was not a member of the Habsburg bloodline, or both.
Villalta S. XVIII, unpaginated: “dexar perpetua su memoria, y engrandecer sus nombres, y grandes hechos, y dexarlos immortales aqui en la tierra.”
It is worth noting that although Villalta’s texts date to the end of the sixteenth century, this viewpoint—that is, that paintings and sculptures served the purpose of memorialization—persisted into the 1640s. Diego de Saavedra Fajardo’s 1640 handbook on the education of princes, Idea de vn principe politico christiano: Rapresentáda en cien empresas, echoes Villalta’s point of view. “The heroic deeds of one’s Ancestors,” Saavedra Fajardo advises, “are written on canvas by the paintbrush, on bronzes by the burin, and on marbles by the chisel; may you read them at all hours, because such Statues and Paintings are fragments of history, ever present before one’s eyes” (Saavedra Fajardo 1640–42, p. 14: “Escriva el pincel en los lienzos, el buril en los bronzes, i el sinzel en los marmoles los hechos heroicos de sus Antepasados, que lea à todas horas, porque tales Estatuas, i Pinturas son fragmentos de historia, siempre presentes à los ojos”).
Villalta 1590, fol. 11r–v: “que tambien fue antiquissimo Rey de España.”
For accounts of the production of this work, including citations to primary sources documenting Leoni’s ambitions for this work, see Helmstutler Di Dio 2011, pp. 15–17; and Helmstutler Di Dio 2012, pp. 46–48. Many of the primary sources themselves are published in Plon 1887.
Ackroyd et al. 2005, p. 48.
Corpus velazqueño 2000, vol. 1, p. 174, doc. 195. A transcription of this document is also available in Cruzada Villaamil 1885, p. 158.
Corpus velazqueño 2000, vol. 1, p. 175, doc. 196. A transcription of this document is also available in Cruzada Villaamil 1885, pp. 158–59.
Corpus velazqueño 2000, vol. 1, pp. 175–76, doc. 197. See also Azcárate 1960b, pp. 368–69.
Corpus velazqueño 2000, vol. 1, pp. 176–77, doc. 198. See also Azcárate 1960b, p. 369.
For a thorough treatment of this document, see Azcárate 1960a. Although it dates to June 30, 1615, we know that this document remained current by the time the reconstruction of the Octagonal Room was undertaken because on December 14, 1646, Philip IV specifically requested that it be revised to include a newly created position at the court, the superintendente de las obras reales (superintendent of royal projects). Azcárate discusses the reform of the document undertaken by Philip IV in Azcárate 1960a, p. 223, n. 1. A copy of the reformed version of the royal document survives in the archives of the royal palace, although the content does appear mostly consistent across both versions (AGP, Adminstración General, Legajo 712bis, exp. 9). A copy of the original version of this document was made for consultation purposes when the post of superintendente de obras reales was extinguished at the end of the seventeenth century (AGP, Administración General, Legajo 712bis, exp. 89). The most comprehensive treatment of the existence and revision of such instructions is Barbeito Díez 1992, pp. 221–45. Another version of these instructions that deals only with the post of veedor y contador of the royal palace was drawn up in 1656, a few years after the completion of the first iteration of the Octagonal Room (Mayoral López 2007, pp. 605–11). It repeats much of what can be gleaned from the written instructions already cited above: that the veedor y contador was to manage the salaries and expenses associated with the running of the royal house, liquidate the funds required to do so, and maintain account books accordingly.
See Barbeito Díez 1992, pp. 246–54; and García Morales 1990b. The position was not uncontroversial, as superintendentes came into conflict with veedores y contadores and pagadores repeatedly throughout the existence of the position. In fact, when the position was eliminated at the end of the century, it was precisely because his work with the palace veedores, contadores, and pagadores was judged to be superfluous (AGP, Administracion General, Legajo 711, 1675). It is by now well known in the literature that Velázquez and the Marquis de Malpica, who served as superintendente de obras reales over the course of the execution of the Octagonal Room, did not get along.
Azcárate 1960b, p. 370, n. 41.
AGP, Administración General, Legajo 710, 1640.
For Francisco de Arce’s appointment, see AGP, Administración General, Legajo 710, 1648. José Manuel Barbeito Díez documents a record of de Arce’s continued holding of this office on March 28, 1677, in Barbeito Díez 1992, p. 299. According to Barbeito Díez, by July 26 of the same year, a Melchor de Arce had taken over the post.
On the use of these bronzes as outdoor sculptures at the royal site of Aranjuez, see Sancho 1994.
AGP, Administración General, Legajo 41³, exp. 120: “o otra qualquier persona que los tuviese a su cargo.” On the Junta Real de Obras y Bosques, see García Morales 1990a; Díaz González 2002; Díaz González 2005–6; and Fernández Talaya 2014.
AGS, Casa y Sitios Reales, Legajo 306, fol. 265. All three of Leoni’s portrait figures are recorded in this inventory. Leoni’s Emperor Charles V and the Fury appears listed as follows: “Una estatua entera de bulto de bronze algo mas q[ue] al natural del enperador carlos quinto n[uest]ro ss[en] or armado con la espada en la mano yzquierda y una lanza en la derecha con el Turco a los pies prisionero estatua grande de bronze desnudo sentado sobre una peana de bronze con despozos de armas con cadenas al pezquezo y los pies y braços” (One full-length statue in the round of bronze, roughly larger than life-size, of the emperor Charles V our lord armed with a sword in his left hand and a lance in the right, with the Turk a prisoner at his feet, a large statue in bronze, nude, seated on a bronze plinth with spoils of weapons, with chains on his neck and his feet and arms). Shortly thereafter, Leoni’s Philip II is listed as follows: “Otra estatua entera algo mas q[ue] al natural de bulto de bronze del Rey Don Phe[lip]e n[uest]ro senor armado con un baston en la mano yzquierda y un alfanje al lado derecho con manto y peana de lo mismo” (Another full-length statue in the found of bronze roughly larger than life size of the King Don Philip our lord armed with a baton in his left hand and a sword at the right, with a cloak and a plinth of the same [medium]). Finally, Leoni’s Mary of Hungary is listed as follows: “Otra estatua de bulto mas que al natural de la Reyna Maria de Ungria siendo viuda de bronze con las manos asidas y una chia echada al cuello que baja [h]asta los Piez con peana de lo mismo” (Another statue in the round in bronze larger than life-size of the Queen Mary of Hungary as a widow, with her hands clasped and a mantle falling on her neck that falls to her feet, with a plinth of the same [medium]). To the best of my knowledge, this inventory remains unpublished, but for a useful summary of the documentation surrounding this move, see Sancho 1994, p. 74, n. 28.
Cordero and Hernández claim that Velázquez made this trip in an official capacity as “comprador de obras del Rey de España” (buyer of artworks of the King of Spain), but no primary source documentation is offered to support Velázquez’s nomination to such a post nor does any account for the existence of this office at the Habsburg court (Cordero and Hernández 2000, p. 91).
While governor of the Low Countries, the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand purchased artworks from Rubens’s estate on the king’s behalf at the auction occasioned by the artist’s death in 1640, soliciting the king’s instructions via personal correspondence (Vergara 1999, pp. 145–46). Similarly, the art collection of Charles I of England was auctioned off between 1649 and 1653, occasioned by the king’s deposition from the throne. For what was likely a combination of political and financial reasons, Philip IV acquired art from this collection through an agent, Luis de Haro, who in turn purchased artworks at the sale through Alonso de Cárdenas, the Spanish ambassador to England (see Brown 1986b, pp. 210–13; Burke 2002, pp. 92–98; Haskell 2013, pp. 151–57). It is worth mentioning here that the Planets themselves were also originally acquired for the collection around 1637 by the Cardinal-Infante, although the circumstances surrounding this acquisition remain unknown (see Brown and Elliott 1980, pp. 109–10; Buchanan 1990, pp. 108–9).
See Morán Turina 1992, pp. 243–44; Salort Pons 1999a, pp. 416 and 423; Morán Turina 1999, pp. 64–65; Morán Turina 2001, pp. 225–26; Salort Pons 2002, p. 90; and Morán Turina 2006b, pp. 116–17.
On Primaticcio’s bronzes for the King of France, see Bensoussan 2009 and Occhipinti 2010.
On Rubens and the marble sculptures of Rome, see especially Aymonino and Dodero 2021. On Rubens and the Gonzaga art collection, see especially Morselli 2016.
On Hubert Le Sueur’s bronzes for the King of England, see Avery 1980–82.
For a complete roster of those hired to work as veedores y contadores at the Habsburg court, see Barbeito Díez 1992, pp. 291–301, appendix 3.
Enriqueta Harris’s study of this trip remains foundational within the literature on this topic (Harris 1960). Salvador Salort Pons has also published extensively on this phase of Velázquez’s career (Salort Pons 1999a; Salort Pons 1999b; Salort Pons 2002; Salort Pons 2008, pp. 239–71). Salort Pons offers a very useful chronology of significant dates and events during this phase of the painter’s life in Salort Pons 2002, pp. 403–8. Both authors rely on the account of this trip provided in Antonio Palomino’s life of the artist, which is the most extensive known primary source pertaining to Velázquez’s second trip to Italy (Palomino 1724, vol. 3, pp. 335–40; see also Palomino 1947, pp. 910–18; Palomino 1987, pp. 156–63; Palomino 2018, pp. 114–37). Although these remain the most fundamental sources on this topic, a more complete bibliography on Velázquez’s second trip to Italy might also include Pita Andrade 1960; Brown 2002; Rodríguez G. de Ceballos 2007; and Castillo Ramírez and Mañas Romero 2008, pp. 17–34.
Salort Pons 2002, pp. 442–43, doc. a35.
AGP, Personal, Caja 1084, exp. 9. See also a related document published in Corpus velazqueño 2000, vol. 1, p. 193, doc. 223; and in Cruzada Villaamil 1885, p. 163. That Velázquez left for Italy in November of 1648 and traveled with the diplomatic party sent to receive the new Queen Mariana is confirmed in Palomino 1724, vol. 3, p. 335; see also Palomino 1947, p. 910; Palomino 1987, p. 157; and Palomino 2018, p. 116.
For documentation of each of these dates, see Corpus velazqueño 2000, vol. 1, pp. 194–95, doc. 224; and Corpus velazqueño 2000, vol. 1, p. 196, doc. 227.
Palomino 1724, vol. 3, p. 335; see also Palomino 1947, p. 911; Palomino 1987, p. 157; and Palomino 2018, pp. 116–17. The precise date of his arrival in Venice is recorded in a letter written to the king by the Marquis de la Fuente, his ambassador in Venice, in which he describes his enthusiasm to show Velázquez all the paintings in his collection (AGS, Estado, Legajo 3548, fol. 114). This letter appears in Corpus velazqueño 2000, vol. 1, pp. 199–200, doc. 233.
The above-cited letter from the Marquis de la Fuente gives the impression that Velázquez went to Modena immediately after leaving Venice (AGS, Estado, Legajo 3548, fol. 114). Palomino suggests that Velázquez went first to Bologna and Florence before going to Modena, stopping also in Parma and Naples before finally settling in Rome (Palomino 1724, vol. 3, p. 336; see also Palomino 1947, pp. 911–12; Palomino 1987, pp. 157–58; Palomino 2018, pp. 118–20).
Corpus velazqueño 2000, vol. 1, p. 200, doc. 234. See also Pita Andrade 1960, p. 152.
This is suggested by a letter sent to the Duke del Infantado from Fernando Ruíz de Contreras dated to November 16, 1650, during which Ruíz de Contreras alludes to the fact that by its arrival, Velázquez should have already departed Italy (Harris 1960, pp. 111 and 134). This letter and a related letter from November 1650 signaling Velázquez’s upcoming departure from Italy are reproduced in Corpus velazqueño 2000, vol. 1, p. 231, docs. 265 and 266.
For documentation confirming Velázquez’s visits to Florence and Modena in late November and December of 1650, see Corpus velazqueño 2000, vol. 1, pp. 232–33, docs. 268, 268a, and 269. For documentation concerning Velázquez’s visit to Venice during this period, see Salort Pons 1999a, pp. 431–32, esp. n. 76. That Velázquez might have returned to Bologna during these months is suggested in Salort Pons 1999a, p. 432. On Velázquez’s departure from Genoa and arrival in Valencia, see Harris 1960, p. 126.
Harris 1960, pp. 111 and 135. Palomino confirms Velázquez’s return to Madrid in this month (Palomino 1724, vol. 3, p. 340; see also Palomino 1947, p. 917; Palomino 1987, p. 162; Palomino 2018, p. 135).
Morán Turina and Rudolf 1992, pp. 294 and 300–301, docs. 24–26.
Salort Pons 1999a, p. 421. On the sculpture collections of early modern Rome, see Salcedo Garcés 2007 and Desmas and Freddolini 2014.
For Juan de Córdoba’s oversight of the final stages of production and shipment of sculptures commissioned by Velázquez, see Parisi 2007b; García Cueto 2011; and Parisi 2022.
For a more comprehensive account of guidebooks to the city of Rome from the Middle Ages until the twentieth century, see Pazienti 2013. Briefer but still useful introductions to this topic can be found in Gage 2014a and Haskell and Penny 1981, pp. 16–22.
Martinelli 1644, preface, unpaginated: “Delle statue hà scritto Vlisse Aldobrando, é và annesso con l’antichità di Lucio Mauro; ma poche ne ritrouarete in quelli luoghi, ch’egli v’accenna. Il Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniano hà intagliata la sua Galleria in doi grossi volumi, il cui primo contiene le statue, & il secondo li bassi rilieui. Et Francesco Perrier dopo lui hà disegnato & intagliato cento delle più nobili statue di Roma, dalle quali i virtuosi di tutte le professioni possono assai profittarsi.”
The exception to this was Michelangelo’s Moses, the only modern work among them (Perrier 1638, plate 20).
Haskell and Penny 1981, pp. 18–21. It is true that prints of sculptures had existed before the publication of Perrier’s album, and in his search for source materials, perhaps Velázquez came across collections of these bound together with a frontispiece by Antonio Lafreri that bore the name Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae, which visitors to the city would often produce to commemorate their travels (on this practice, see Lowry 1952). For his purposes, however, a preassembled album like that of Perrier would have served Velázquez better in his mission.
For the suggestion that Velázquez used Perrier and other such guidebooks as catalogues to the city’s sculptural holdings, see Luzón Nogué 2007b, pp. 428–30, cat. 37; and Solís Parra et al. 2010, p. 387.
For a comprehensive list, see Luzón Nogué 2007a. For each sculpture listed in this essay, there is a corresponding entry in the same catalogue. This list was expanded in Solís Parra et al. 2010. The number cited above does not include the small selection of busts that Velázquez brought back with him and the lions and eagles that would ultimately be incorporated into the redecoration of the Hall of Mirrors in the 1650s (to be addressed in chapter 5 of this book). The present study does not concern itself with the practical matter of the transport of the sculptures that Velázquez commissioned between Italy and Spain. Once the contracts were finalized, Velázquez departed without necessarily seeing through the execution of the casts; as mentioned above, Juan de Córdoba remained to oversee the final stages of production and shipment (see Parisi 2007b; García Cueto 2011; Parisi 2022). On the challenges of shipping sculptures between Italy and Spain in the early modern period, see Helmstutler Di Dio 2015.
Documentation pertaining to Velázquez’s efforts to access the Vatican collections and receive permission to produce copies after their contents is published as Corpus velazqueño 2000, vol. 1, p. 219, doc. 249, and p. 221, doc. 251, respectively.
For the Vatican Laocoön, see Luzón Nogué 2007b, pp. 487–90, cat. 76; although Velázquez’s plaster copy of the Apollo Belvedere is now lost, a brief summary of relevant information can be found in Luzón Nogué 2007b, pp. 473–74, cat. 68, and pp. 494–95, cat. 79; for the Farnese Hercules, see Luzón Nogué 2007b, pp. 379–81, cat. 1; although Velázquez’s plaster copy of the Ludovisi Mars is now lost, a brief summary of relevant information can be found in Luzón Nogué 2007b, pp. 389–91, cat. 5; for Silenus with the Infant Dionysus, see Luzón Nogué 2007b, pp. 470–71, cat. 65; for the Borghese Gladiator, see Luzón Nogué 2007b, pp. 463–65, cat. 61; for the Borghese Hermaphrodite, see Luzón Nogué 2007b, pp. 447–50, cat. 49. The inventory numbers offered in Luzón Nogué 2007b for some of these sculptures differ from those listed in the digital database of the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando; where discrepancies appeared, those in the digital database were privileged.
Corpus velazqueño 2000, vol. 1, p. 212, doc. 244a: “Una figura in piede d’un Imperatore ignuda daltezza di palmi otto in nove che sta nel Giardino del Emo Signor Cardinale Montalto a Termini, che ha una cascata d’un panno sopra il braccio sinistro.” See also Parisi 2007a, p. 351, doc. 1.
Corpus velazqueño 2000, vol. 1, p. 212, doc. 244a: “La seconda è d’una statua d’un fauno nudo con una pelle attorno, che sta nel entrare della loggia del Palazzo de Signori Gaetani al Corso, quale sta appoggiata al tronco, e pero anco alla statua di bronzo vi doverà essere il do tronco.” See also Parisi 2007a, p. 351, doc. 1.
Corpus velazqueño 2000, vol. 1, p. 212, doc. 244a: “La Terza è una statua in piede nuda d’un gladiatore, che sta in casa del Signor Hippolito Vitelleschi al Corso, che nella mano manca tiene un scudo, o rotella, e nella dritta, se bene adesso è senza il braccio, non doverà tener’ cos’ alcuna.” See also Parisi 2007a, p. 351, doc. 1.
A discussion of the terms of this contract can be found in Parisi 2007b, pp. 87–90. The document appears transcribed in its entirety in Corpus velazqueño 2000, vol. 1, pp. 212–14, doc. 244a; and Parisi 2007a, pp. 351–52, doc. 1.
On the Germanicus, see Luzón Nogué 2007b, pp. 486–87, cat. 75. On the Satyr in Repose, see Luzón Nogué 2007b, pp. 455–56, cat. 54; and especially Negrete Plano 2007. On the Discus-Thrower, see Luzón Nogué 2007b, pp. 452–53, cat. 52; and especially Kiderlen 2007. Yves Bottineau and Enriqueta Harris are among the first to propose that these three sculptures are those that ultimately joined the Planets in the Octagonal Room, although both express vocal doubts about their identification (see Bottineau 1956–58, pt. 2, p. 60; Harris 1960, pp. 119–20). Nonetheless, scholars after them have readily accepted the suggestion, including Orso 1986, p. 158; Barbeito Díez 1992, p. 169; and Martínez Leiva and Rodríguez Rebollo 2015, pp. 55 and 570–73, nos. 866–68.
It is worth mentioning here that none of these three sculptures was reproduced in print media leading up to Perrier’s Segmenta nobilium (Luzón Nogué 2007b, p. 429, cat. 37).
For one thoughtful case study in the challenges involved in determining the subjects—or lack thereof—of early modern sculpture, see Cole 2008.
Martínez Leiva and Rodríguez Rebollo 2015, p. 570, nos. 866–68: “Otras tres figuras de bronze, del mismo tamaño.”
Corpus velazqueño 2000, vol. 1, p. 213, doc. 244a: “un zoccolo riquadrato pure di bronzo di altezza di otto in dieci deta più, e meno secondo importera l’altezza della statua ad arbitrio di di Signori Don Diego, o Don Gio.” See also Parisi 2007a, p. 352, doc. 1. On the significance of these plinths, see Luzón Nogué 2007b, p. 487, cat. 75; and Luzón Nogué 2022, p. 74. Almudez Pérez de Tudela has written that the same was done to the Planets; however, she cites no sources that can support this (Pérez de Tudela 2019, p. 130).
For the Vatican Laocoön, see Perrier 1638, plate 1; for Velázquez’s plaster copy, see Luzón Nogué 2007b, pp. 487–90, cat. 76. For the Spinario, see Perrier 1638, plate 42; for Velázquez’s bronze copy, see Luzón Nogué 2007b, pp. 441–45, cat. 47. For Michelangelo’s Moses, see Perrier 1638, plate 20; for Velázquez’s plaster copy of the head of this figure (now lost), see Luzón Nogué 2007b, pp. 514–15, cat. 90.
For the Medici “Cleopatra,” see Perrier 1638, plate 88; for Velázquez’s plaster copy, see Luzón Nogué 2007b, pp. 391–94, cat. 6. For Venus with a Shell, or Nymph, see Perrier 1638, plate 89; for Velázquez’s bronze copy, see Luzón Nogué 2007b, pp. 445–47, cat. 48. For the Borghese Hermaphrodite, see Perrier 1638, plate 90; for Velázquez’s bronze copy, see Luzón Nogué 2007b, pp. 447–50, cat. 49.
For the Dying Gaul, see Perrier 1638, plate 91; although Velázquez’s plaster copy is now lost, a brief summary of relevant information can be found in Luzón Nogué 2007b, pp. 504–5, cat. 85. For the Tiber, see Perrier 1638, plate 92. For the Vatican Nile, see Perrier 1638, plates 93–95; although Velázquez’s plaster copy is now lost, a brief summary of relevant information can be found in Luzón Nogué 2007b, pp. 491–93, cat. 78. For the Capitoline Nile, see Perrier 1638, plate 97. For the Capitoline Neptune, see Perrier 1638, plate 98.
For the Farnese Hercules, see Perrier 1638, plates 2–4; for Velázquez’s plaster copy, see Luzón Nogué 2007b, pp. 379–81, cat. 1. For the Vatican Commodus as Hercules, see Perrier 1638, plate 5. For the Borghese “Faun,” see Perrier 1638, plate 6; for Velázquez’s plaster copy, see Luzón Nogué 2007b, pp. 470–71, cat. 65. For the Medici Venus, see Perrier 1638, plates 81–83; although Velázquez’s plaster copy is now lost, a brief summary of relevant information can be found in Luzón Nogué 2007b, pp. 497–99, cat. 81. For the Borghese Venus, see Perrier 1638, plate 84. For the Vatican Venuses, see Perrier 1638, plates 85 and 86, respectively.
The only image in the text that is wholly unlike these is plate 87, which imagines a scene populated by a number of the sculptures reproduced in the text (Perrier 1638, plate 87).
In this respect, Perrier’s text touches the long-standing debate first in Italy and then in Spain on the relative merits of the arts of painting and sculpture, colloquially known as the paragone, best problematized in Spain by the polychrome sculpture that was especially popular in Velázquez’s native Seville (on polychrome sculpture in Seville, see especially Bray 2009). Different from the Planets in every way, including medium (painted wood, rather than gilded bronze), subject matter (religious, rather than mythological), and purpose (processional or devotional instrument, rather than political propaganda or collector’s item), Velázquez’s familiarity with this unique marriage of painting and sculpture can only have served to underscore the distinctly Italianate qualities of both Leoni’s and Jonghelinck’s output (on the culture that made Sevillian polychrome sculpture possible, see especially Webster 1998 and Kasl 2009).
For a thoughtful case study on the effects of one kind of reproductive print media on the intelligibility of early modern sculpture, see Cole 2015.
Stephen Orso offers a different characterization of the change made by Velázquez’s installation of three new works to the meaning of this gallery, in Orso 1986, p. 162.
On the Spinario, see most recently Parisi Presicce 2014.
The arguments supporting each of these theories are outlined in Luzón Nogué 2007b, pp. 441–45, cat. 47.
Some documentation of this octagonal table appears in Azcárate 1960b, p. 373. Further mentions appear in AGS, Casas y Sitios Reales, Legajo 344 (part 2), fols. 6–7.