Francisco Pacheco, Arte de la Pintura, Ediciones Cátedra, 2009 (3° edition)

Translation by Francesco Mazzaferro

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Francisco Pacheco

Arte de la Pintura [Art of Painting]

Edited by Bonaventura Bassegoda i Hugas

Ediciones Cátedra

2009, 3° edition

Review by Giovanni Mazzaferro

[1] The Arte de la Pintura, by the painter and scholar Francisco Pacheco (1564-1644) was edited and published by Simon Fajardo in Seville in 1649. It is therefore a posthumous edition. Without doubts it is the most important theoretical work among the Spanish treatises of the Seventeenth century (for a general overview, please refer to Francisco Calvo Serraller, Teoría de la Pintura del Siglo de Oro). The literary production of Pacheco was extremely varied, ranging from arts to poems, from issues of iconography to biographies of famous personalities. However, both his two major works were published posthumously: on the one hand, the Arte de la Pintura, published - as it was said - in 1649; on the other hand the Libro de Retratos de Ilustres y Memorables Varones, which was printed only in 1867. To be precise, Pacheco managed to publish only quite a few of his texts throughout his life. Among these, two are worth recalling here due to their interest for arts: the first one, un-dated, was entitled Francisco Pacheco. To the Reader. Before bringing to light this book, I am determined to bringing to the knowledge of anybody who may have an interest for the art of painting, that I have no other intention but to qualify through this small sample all the rest I will write on this profession. Extremely rare, this booklet, a copy of which Serraller Calvo explains to have tracked down at the National Library in Lisbon (see Teoría de la Pintura del Siglo de Oro, p . 181), de facto reproduces the text of Chapter XII of Book II of Arte de la Pintura. The booklet was known and read by Vicente Carducho that drew from here (without making it explicit) a quote by Leonardo in his Diálogos de la pintura. This implies that the brochure was certainly anterior to 1633 (year of publication of the Diálogos). In reality, however, some additional explanations from Pacheco’s very scarce correspondence which survived until today, suggest that it should be placed in much earlier times (even around 1619). This shows that, in fact, the Arte de la Pintura was the effort of an entire lifetime, to which Pacheco certainly worked for several decades; he tried soon to find a sponsor for publication, and it seems clear that this was the primary purpose of the brochure. On this, more will follow. The second paper is titled A los profesores del arte de la pintura, is dated 1622, shows strong similarities with Chapters 2 to 5 of Book I of the Art de la Pintura and was instead released for a specific reason (a quarrel between some painters and a sculptor for some payments).

Diego Velázquez, Las Meninas, 1656,  Madrid, Prado Museum

[2] The Arte de la Pintura consists of three books, the first two of which are purely theoretical (Libro I de la Pintura. Su antigüedad y grandezas; Libro II de la Pintura. Su teórica, y partes de que se compone), while the third focuses on the technical aspects (Libro III de la Pintura. De su prática y de todos los modos de exercitarla), and ends with a huge appendix on sacred iconography. Luckily for us, the original manuscript of Pacheco is still preserved (at the Instituto Valencia de Don Juan de Madrid). That manuscript served to the printer for the posthumous edition of 1649. The comparison between the original manuscript and posthumous edition (we do not know who edited it; Bassegoda proposes the name of Pacheco’s nephew and will executor, Laureano Pacheco) allows us to understand the main differences. To start, the title in the original manuscript is Tratado de la Pintura en tres libros, while in the first edition is expanded to a never ending Arte de la Pintura, on his antiquity and richness. Describing the most famous persons both among ancients and moderns; explaining dark and coloured, tempera and olio; lighting and stew; frescos, incarnations, and polishing; gold, burnished and matte. And it teaches on how to paint all sacred paintings. According to Bassegoda, the new title tends to emphasize the didactic nature of the book, somehow betraying the aspiration of Pacheco, who aimed at really producing an eminently theoretical treatise, "like if the editor had been somebody with predominantly technical artistic interest, rather than theoretical”. (p. 45). It remains that the publication is without usual dedications to any noble personality, which suggests that the printing costs were borne either by an anonymous sponsor or even by the printer. The edition was conducted with an obvious lack of economic means, as is clear not only from the very low number of preserved examples, but also from the cuts to the original manuscript, in order to reduce the foliation (both the premise of the author as well as the final pages of the code were eliminated, in a highly arbitrary way). The current critical edition was based on the original manuscript and not on the first edition. The same applies to the one previously referred to, edited by FJ Sanchez Canton, and published in Madrid in 1956).

Diego Velázquez, Self-Portrait, 1640 ca,

Colección Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Carlos - Museo de Bellas Artes de Valencia

[3] As mentioned above, the preparation of the work lasted several decades, according to what is written by Pacheco himself. The fact, for example, that the 1619 pamphlet already traced almost verbatim the twelfth chapter of Book II shows that some parts of the compilation were very premature. Other elements also result from the internal evidence of the text: Most of the Treaty actually took its final form only between 1634 and 1638, the year in which Pacheco completed the work. Of course, this does not at all exclude the possible (and indeed, likely) existence of previous versions, which are not known to date. In 1641, however, the aging Spanish painter obtained the license (for ten years) to publish the work, without being able however to eventually see the book printed. The dilution of the work in a time span of a few decades helps to explain, in all likelihood, why a few opinions expressed by the Sevillian are sometimes contradictory. The case of school, from this point of view, is represented by the views expressed by Pacheco on Vicente Carducho: "At times, he is praised and qualified as ‘an intimate friend of us’ "(p. 191) most probably in an ancient edition, while after the publication of the Diálogos in 1633, the primacy of his own work on the one of Carducho is made explicit in two places with an indirect criticism. [note of the editor: on the plagiarism operated by Carducho relative to the quote by Leonardo, please see Javier Navarro de Zuvillaga. The Trattato in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Spanish Perspective and Art Theory in Re-Reading Leonardo. The Treatise on Painting across Europe, 1550-1900]. The Arte, in this slow form of elaboration, look like a monumental mosaic, not only for the diverse items which it encompasses, but also as it testifies the mutating opinions of the author in the course of a long stage" (p. 44).

Diego Velázquez, La vecchia friggitrice di uova, 1618, Galleria Nazionale di Edinburgo

[4] A problem not easy to interpret, once you examine the original manuscript, is the presence of annotations on the same manuscript from different authors as Pacheco. On this, Bassegoda elaborates the following hypothesis (see p . 44-45): during the stay in Seville by Juan de Jáuregui , whose deep bond with Pacheco is well known, the latter submitted to his friend the text of the manuscript, to receive advice and make the necessary corrections. Indeed, Jáuregui intervened heavily with his notes and often also in a not elegant way vis-à-vis the author. Most probably, Pacheco must have not greatly appreciated large part of the Jáuregui’s interventions; in some cases the annotations are clearly erased, as to become almost illegible (a clear sign of the desire not to include them in the first edition). Nor do we know if Pacheco really intended to follow the directions of his friend regarding those annotations which had not been explicitly cancelled. In this regard, a second hand intervenes, probably the editor of the posthumous edition, whose role "comes down to affirm the value of what had been said by Pacheco and to warn that several pages crossed out by Jáuregui should not be abolished, warning which indeed the printer took account of".

Diego Velázquez, Filippo IV of Spain, 1632, London, National Gallery

[5] An overall assessment of the Art de la Pintura is very complex. Certainly, in the course of the Nineteenth and the first half of the Twentieth century (in an overall critical context which was not particularly tender with the Spanish treatises of 1600), Pacheco was always looked upon with some respect, first of all because he had been the father in law and master of the "sacred cow" of the Spanish realism, Diego Velázquez . Even one of the more corrosive critics, Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo, for example, ends up appreciating the theoretical eclecticism, "For me, what further enhanced Pacheco is dogmatic tolerance. He acknowledged, with rare candor in a theorist, that maybe his art does not include the absolute truth and does not reach the summit levels; he also did not put a fee or imposed any limit to good talents, since he understood that others would ultimately find their easier and better ways”. The positivist critique, then, likes all anecdotic information in the Treaty that allows you to "have important historical information (on Rubens, Velazquez and so on.) " (See Schlosser, La letteratura artistica, p. 640). But the turning point seems to be unanimously considered the judgment by Jonathan Brown in his Images and Ideas in Seventeenth Century Spanish Painting (1978): "Up to a point, Pacheco acts as an anthologist of art theory" (p. 371). Francisco Calvo Serraller goes further, and with exclusive reference to the first two books of a purely theoretical nature stresses in his Teoría dela Pintura del Siglo de Oro the need to deepen the textual analysis of the work, hitherto largely neglected and introduces the fundamental concept that the revival of earlier sources is not plagiarism (in the specific case of Pacheco, the author usually quotes the works from which he draws, a rare instance at the time), but a re-use of what is already known, aimed at recasting the overall original theory. It is a thesis that is now supported and shared by many other scholars, with regard to very different geographical contexts (for example, by Michèle-Caroline Heck about the theory of art in Northern European countries. Refer, among others, to Théorie et pratique de la peinture. Sandrart et the Teutsche Academie). In recent years, some has emphasized Pacheco’s importance, as a specific Spanish contribution, to the theory of art. Indeed, Pacheco assigned great importance to the practical aspects of arts, not only in the third book of the work (which already attracted the attention of that incredible researcher who was Mary Philadelphia Merrifield). According to Charlene Villaseñor Black (Pacheco, Velázquez and the Legacy of Leonardo in Spain in Re-Reading Leonardo. The Treatise on Painting across Europe, 1550-1900) a careful reading of the Treaty shows that Pacheco gave practical connotations to unsuspected theoretical categories. This is the case of the concept of ingenio (the talent) closely connected by Pacheco to the technical capabilities and the practical ability of the painter.

Diego Velázquez, Portrait of Juan de Pareja, 1650, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art

[6 ] In this context, Bonaventura Bassegoda i Hugas follows Calvo Serraller and proposes – first of all - two goals: a wide-ranging examination of all sources of Pacheco (not only relatively to the art literature , but also texts and repertoires of history of the Church) and a careful textual analysis of the work. We ignore the size of Pacheco’s library; however, it is certain that he was ‘the scholar’ of Seville and that he knew a very wide panorama of sources, either because owned them or because it had the opportunity to have access to them. Bassegoda lists the most significant presences (p. 33): the lion's share, as logical , goes to the Italian literature on arts. In particular Vasari's Lives on the one hand, and the Dialogo della Pittura o Aretino by Lodovico Dolce, stand out. However, also the following sources cannot be omitted: De Pictura of Leon Battista Alberti, la Lezione sulla maggioranza delle arti by Benedetto Varchi, the Discorso intorno alle immagini sacre e profane (Discourse on Sacred and Profane Images) by Gabriele Paleotti, the writings by Lomazzo, the Riposo by Raffaele Borghini and De’ veri precetti della pittura by Giovan Battista Armenini, as well as the Treaty of Dürer on the proportion of human bodies enriched in the Italian translation of a fifth book by Giovan Paolo Gallucci, without forgetting the knowledge of excerpts from the Book of Painting by Leonardo, likely through direct examination of an apograph manuscript. Pacheco allowed himself to intrude even in Northern Europe, citing Het Schilder Boeck by Karel van Mander and Ritratti di pittori celebri fiamminghi by Dominicus Lampsonius. And of course, he referred with great precision to sources in Spain, often saving them from oblivion and presenting them to us in the only available version. This ranges from Gaspar Gutiérrez de los Ríos to fray José de Sigüenza and Juan de Butron. The overall picture that emerges from the work - according to the editor (pp. 39-40 ) - "is not a repertoire in the way of Vasari’s Lives, as his goal to the contrary is doctrinal, aiming at writing down a real Tractatus, summarizing and globalizing the science of painting. But ... Pacheco is a very discreet theorist, constantly referring to practical examples to ensure his speech is meaningful, is understandable and holds. Hence the continuous flow of references to works and artists, to praise or censure their formal or iconographic proposals... Pacheco’s critical position on Italian art is eclectic and open. This eclecticism can have two very different origins. A first theoretical component, conscious, derived from reading and assimilation of aesthetics theories by Dolce, which points out to a healthy multiplicity in the aesthetic ideals (compared to Vasari),  because of the different expressive abilities of various artists.. . But we cannot ignore a second component, dramatically real in our artist. It is the absence of any journey to Italy. Therefore part of his eclecticism depends on a certain ignorance, is the image of a totum revolutum (a disorder)" . The argument, in short, is that Pacheco is actively supporting Roman art (and not coincidentally the Spanish artists who are most praised are those who have had an Italian training), but that his "Romanism" is somewhat shaped by a certain scholar and not direct knowledge of Italian painters (except the works kept in Spain).

[7] One last thing to note: there is no treaty of the Spanish Golden Century translated into Italian (Pacheco, Carducho Martinez, Palomino). It would be really high time that some editors would notice it and did address this serious shortcoming.