Jusepe Martínez, [Practicable Discourses of the Most Noble Art of Painting]

Translation by Francesco Mazzaferro

CLICK HERE FOR ITALIAN VERSION

Martínez, Jusepe

Discursos practicables del nobilísimo arte de la pintura
[Practicable Discourses of the Most Noble Art of Painting]

Edited by María Elena Manrique Ara

Preface by Bonaventura Bassegoda

Madrid, Ediciones Cátedra, 2006

Jusepe Martínez, Selfprotrait while painting his father Daniel Martínez, 1630 ca., Museum of Zaragoza
Source: http://www.museodezaragoza.es/colecciones/barroco/

[1] Text of back cover:

"Together with Carducho‘s Diálogos de la pintura (Dialogues on painting)  (1638) and Pacheco’s Arte de la pintura (Art of painting) (1649), these Discursos del nobilísimo arte de la pintura (Discourses on the Most Noble Art of Painting), written by Jusepe Martínez towards the year 1675, are the third piece of the Spanish treatises on art in the Siglo de Oro [Golden Age]. In all probability, Jusepe Martínez is our art writer of the Golden Age who is most legible to the modern reader. Much of his arguments are strenghtened by the use of referring to his long personal and professional experience during many years; hence the wealth and taste of numerous anecdotes, which are of keen interest to us today.

This critical edition, by María Elena Manrique Ara, benefits from the enormous fortune of the discovery of an apographal manuscript in the Prado Museum, with the transcript of the first draft of the treaty, allowing to finalise the text. "

Jusepe Martínez, Saint Cecilia, 1635-1640 ca., Museum of Zaragoza

[2] In this library, two previous editions of the work are included; the first, in an anthology, is included in Francisco Calvo Serraller’s Teoría de la Pintura del Siglo de Oro (Theory of Painting in the Golden Age), published in 1981 and the second, in their entirety, has been proposed in an extended version by Julian Gallego in 1988 (but, as written by the editor in the preface, is in practice a facsimile of its previous edition of 1950, enriched with an index)

The Discourses were written by Martinez when he was late (he died in 1682) and had been unpublished for a long time, although the text circulated as manuscript in the scholar circles of which the Aragonese painter was a member and by which it was deeply affected.

The first edition of the work was published in installments in the Diario Zaragozano (Diary from Zaragoza) between 1853 and 1854. A second version was printed, in one volume, by Cardarera y Solano in Madrid (1866). The third one is the 1950 edition by Gallego. In each edition the text followed the copy of a manuscript made in 1796 by Juan Antonio Larrea. As mentioned above, the new element, which is the basis of this critical edition of Martínez’s Discursos, is the discovery of an apographal but original manuscript, which contains the first version of the treaty. Certainly for our fault, while appreciating this truly critical edition, we could not find anywhere a quotation of the signature of the manuscript, which is still kept in the Museo del Prado. It appears that Gonzalo Manso de Zúñiga donated it to this institution on an unspecified date between 1972 and 1981.

In short, we will discuss the main differences between the manuscript and the apographal copy of 1796. Here we are obliged to mention that the University of Zaragoza has published a new edition of the work in 2009, also edited by María Elena Manrique Ara, whose content unfortunately we do not know. At page 113, note 406 of this volume, the curator announced she was preparing a facsimile edition of the apographal manuscript on behalf of the Prado Museum. Could it perhaps be the version published by the University of Zaragoza? According to a few lines of presentation tracked on the Internet, it seems unlikely to be the case.

Jusepe Martínez, St. Thomas the Apostle, 1630 ca, Budapest Museum of Fine Arts

[3] Naturally, the examination of the apographal manuscript allowed finalising the original text of the work with certainty. The curator intervened on this text according to the criteria that are explained on pp. 113-115. A big difference remains from previous versions: the previous ones were organized in twenty one chapters (or, more precisely, tratados), while now we know that the original structure consisted of nine sections, with a final chapter (Del historiar con propiedad – On properly narrating histories) which plenty exceeds the sum of the other eight chapters in amplitude. The text, in fact, is characterized by this large asymmetry between eight initial tratados and the final one. It goes without saying that the original structure has been restored. On this, the curator writes: "The long extension of the text was the reason that perhaps weighed when making that decision [Note of the editor: to divide the final chapter in thirtheen sections], and facilitated the fragmentation, supposing that Martinez grouped the biographies of painters according to regional schools, and set aside the sculptors almost to the end. However, in our view, this betrays his intentions. It is significant that he entitled his chapters under the name of "tratados” (treatises). This implies that, for him, the exposure of knowledge and moral utility prevailed, i.e. conceptual and ideological elements dominated literary themes. Thus, by dedicating exclusive chapters, he exposes his theses about painting [note of the editor: treatise I] and the disciplines needed to implement it properly: symmetry [note of the editor: treatise II], anatomy [III] and perspective [IV]. He also addresses architecture and its usefulness to the painter [V]. He recommends observing the aesthetic precept of "union" [VI], and also the treatment of colorito [VII] and the "attitudes" of the figures, that is, the expression of feelings [VIII]. He left to the end what he considers most important, that is what is based on his personal contribution, because up to that point he had cited existing bibliography already at the disposal of the scholars. It is the question of "historiar con propiedad”(properly narrating), i.e. how to make paintings that bring honour and esteem to its creators, and that deserve to be appreciated by the public, since the main objective of the Discursos is to defend and advocate a more positive consideration of the "noble art of painting", as stated in the title. The inclusion of the biographies of Spanish and foreign artists, among other considerations, responds to subsidiary reasons for the main argument ... "pp. 114-115).

Jusepe Martínez, The Appearance of the Virgin to an Infirm, Madrid, Prado Museum

[4] The critical edition, duly noted and with an excellent final index of names, is preceded by two chapters in which the curator focuses on the theory of the Aragonese painter. In the first one - she writes - "we will analyse the weight of the poetic and rhetoric doctrines in the Discursos, focusing on all the debts that they have contracted towards the literary work and thought of Baltasar Gracian. Their reception is primarily manifested as the link between ethics and aesthetics, authentic cornerstone upon which the whole theoretical edifice of the Discursos is built, as well as in some basic concepts of the theory of art by Jusepe Martínez, which we are going to look at in this chapter. We will see how "genio", "ingenio", "concepto”, “elección" or "prudencia" find a specific meaning in the theory of Gracian, because... he is the first to attribute the status of object of theoretical reflection to most of these concepts. In his Agudeza y arte de ingenio en que se explican todos los modos y diferencias de conceptos [n.d.t. Sharpness and art of wit, through which all modes and differences in concepts are to be explained], he analyses and defines them in a way that readers and writers had only implicitly shared previously. This system, which is based on the foundations of ancient rhetoric and overlaps with it, is also the theoretical red line of our treatise.... And yet, the similarities with Gracian and with other contemporary writers do not end there. We will not forget therefore to speak in the next chapter, devoted to the consideration of history and its use in the Discursos, about the influence of the thought of Gracian on the conception and the historical method of the Discursos, as well as on the philosophy of the painter "(pp. 17-18 ).