ENGLISH VERSION David García López. Lázaro Díaz del Valle y las Vidas de pintores de España (Madrid, Fundación Universitaria Española, 2008)

Translation by Francesco Mazzaferro
CLICK HERE FOR ITALIAN VERSION

David García López

Lázaro Díaz del Valle y las Vidas de pintores de España [Lázaro Díaz del Valle and the Life of Spanish Painters]
[Lázaro Díaz del Valle and the Lives of Spanish Painters]

Madrid, Fundación Universitaria Española, 2008

Diego Velázquez, Las meninas, 1656

[1] The figure of Lázaro Díaz del Valle has historically spawned great enthusiasm and harsh criticism (see about it the notes added to the passages of the author, presented by Francisco Calvo Serraller in Teoría de la Pintura del Siglo de Oro – Theory of Painting in the Golden Century). One can, on the other hand, say that this volume is not only the first annotated (though not complete) edition of his most interesting work for us (i.e. the manuscript of Origen y Yllustracion del Nobilísimo y Real Arte de la Pintura y Dibuxo con un Epilogo y Nomenclatura de sus mas ilustres o más insignes y más afamados profesores - Origin and Illustration of the Most Noble and Royal Art of Painting and Drawing with an Epilogue and Nomenclature of its most Illustrious and most Eminent and most famous Teachers), but the first fully-fledged monograph on this man who, in his peculiar status as a member of the Chapel Royal as a ‘castrato’, lived at the court for about forty years, and as such was a valuable witness to everything that gravitated around him. Lázaro was born in León in 1606, and entered the service of Philip IV already in 1622, to remain there until his death, which occurred in 1669. He was a man of culture, of erudite readings and acquaintances; he wrote a lot, on history, genealogy, heraldry and art. He did not manage however to publish anything of it; and here we have an explanation of his marginal role to which he was long (and still is) confined. Among the many handwritten papers, in fact, the most interesting in the field of artistic literature (but not the only one in which the topic is addressed, as amply illustrates David García López 186 in the introductory pages of the work) is the Origen y Yllustracion...

[2] The manuscript is preserved in Madrid, in the Library Tomás Navarro Tomás of the Centro de Ciencias Sociales y Humanas of the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, with mark FA 4030. One can say everything about these 222 sheets, but certainly not that they are a model of clarity; already Palomino mentioned this in his Museum Pictorico talking about it as the disorganized text of an amateur on art matters (except then he tap into it quite heavily with his Lives). And that the text is disorganized, it can also be understood from the fact that García López feels the need to rearrange it, not presenting (or doing it only in footnotes) parts repeating themselves also with a distance of many pages between them.

Diego Velázquez, Pope Innocenzo X, 1650

[3] Given that the manuscript (written in the years between 1656 and 1659, but with revisions that reach up to 1662) denotes a yet widely preliminary phase with respect to the one which would be ripe for publication, we need to understand what Díaz del Valle wanted to deliver. Let us try to answer in a synthetic way: he wanted a book like Vasari’s Lives. In fact, in a much more articulate and knowledgeable manner than we can, García López tries (and succeeds) to place the work in a much more complex framework (see in particular p. 131-136). From the middle of the sixteenth century, the more and more frequent arrival of Italian artists into the Iberian Peninsula and the experiences which Spanish painters acquired during their travels in Italy led local artists to claim and acquire a new consciousness in relation to the their professional status and to the theoretical classification of the painting in the context of the liberal arts. These arguments are widely known; for them, please refer to the fundamental anthology by Francisco Calvo Serraller Teoría de la Pintura del Siglo de Oro - Theory of Painting of the Golden Century and to Karin Hellwig, La literatura artística española del siglo XVII - The Spanish Art Literature of the Seventeenth Century. The comparison with the Italian experience thus led to phenomena such as legal and tax disputes in the first half of the seventeenth century, to attempts to create Academies and to the drafting of theoretical treatises such as those of Carducho and Pacheco. Moreover, that comparison led many of those who were interested in art issues to claim a "Spanish specificity"; hence the need to know and honour the works of local artists. In this sense, there was something missing: a work lacked which would bring the life and the works of Spanish artists to the honours of the immortality. The main benchmark was Vasari, with his Vite (Lives) and the description of the historical trajectory made ​​by Italian artists, starting from Giotto until the apex with Michelangelo (García López warns that a comprehensive study on the influence of Vasari’s Lives in Spain has yet to be written - see. p. 137 - but it is clear that this influence was material, and certainly not secondary). The project that probably Díaz del Valle conceived was to be the Spanish Vasari - for a different interpretation of the work, see Karin Hellwig pp. 116-117. Hence also the double function of the manuscript: on the one hand to perpetuate the memory of immortal artists, on the other hand to propose the biographies of other contemporary authors, often known to him personally, in a list with discontinuous features, probably due to the precocity of that drafting, but that hints (at least in the dedication) to the willingness to make of Velázquez the Spanish Michelangelo.

.

Francisco de Zurbarán, Agnus Dei (1635-1640)

[4] Detractors have described the work as a simple compilation of an amateur in the matter, who blatantly copies from earlier sources, without mentioning them. Once again, we have to clarify that, at that time, the concept of plagiarism was totally unknown. We must not judge with today's eyes, but with those of that time; if we forget it, we will end up not understanding the essence of things. Just to consider how different things were at that time from today, it is sufficient to consider the fact that the poor Lázaro had been castrated simply because at the time it was inconceivable that women would sing in public. Back to our theme, therefore, there is no doubt that Díaz del Valle drew (i.e., literally copied) from many sources, and scrupulously García López gives an account of it in the notes to the text; but one has to flip the points of view and to "appreciate the effort that led Diaz del Valle to investigate whether and how a few past sources could be helpful in his work..." (p. 151). Among the sources it is thus possible to recognise Gaspar Gutiérrez de los Ríos, Fray José de Sigüenza, Juan de Butrón, Pacheco and Carducho; and among foreigners, of course Vasari, but also Lomazzo and Ridolfi, as well as Karel van Mander. Reference has been made so far so on the non-original parts of the work; it is equally true that when Díaz del Valle passes from past artists to the contemporary ones, he becomes in turn a valuable and often unpublished source for later historians, drawing from what was reported to third parties, but more often from a direct knowledge and friendship relations with the artists (pp. 170-184). In general, his statements are reliable; and if for centuries Palomino was considered as a "Spanish Vasari", we must not forget that the latter wrote in 1720, that he had never known personally the great painters of the Siglo de Oro (Golden Century), while Lázaro did know them, first of all Velázquez. About ca. fifty artists Díaz del Valle provides notations relating to life and works for the first time. And, in perfect harmony with what has already been said, writers such as Palomino did not hesitate any time to heavily draw from this material, in a process of layering and accumulation of its own historical and artistic heritage, that every time was enriched with additional information.

[5] "The complexity of the manuscript by Diaz del Valle, built with heterogeneous materials, organised at many different levels, ranging from well-constructed paragraphs up to a mere list of authors (either quick notes or almost exact repetition, but with variations of the same words in different parts of the manuscript), transforms the modern edition of the text into a work of great complexity... therefore, my primary intention was to transcribe the information on most important painters and works of art in the manuscript, always pointing to their location in the original text. It seemed especially important to contextualize his statements, separate original information from the parts taken from other authors, as well as to put it in context with both artists - indicating the main dates of life as well as the recent literature – as well as paintings, noting where appropriate the views of other authors of treatises or travellers who saw the art pieces in the original places of location, which in many cases clarifies many obscure points ... Equally, some statements have been included in the text of Diaz del Valle about the state of painting or its hierarchy as a liberal art, which are poured into the manuscript out of biographies of painters, also being analysed in the Introduction, together with a number of issues connected with them "(pp. 184-185).