The Academia de Bellas Artes and the age of crisis: affluence, art, and plague in seventeenth-century Seville

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The Academia de Bellas Artes and the Age of Crisis:

Affluence, Art, and Plague in Seventeenth-Century Seville

Ellen Alexandra Dooley

A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(ART HISTORY)

AUGUST 2015

i

For Momma.

ii
Table of Contents

Dedication i

Abstract iii

Acknowledgments iv

List of Illustrations viii

Note on Documentation xiii

Introduction 1

Chapter 1 14
“He who has not seen Seville has not seen a marvel”

Chapter 2 55
The Art of Charity:
Don Miguel Mañara and the Hospital de la Caridad

Chapter 3 94
The Control of Avarice:
Don Justin de Neve and the Hospital de los Venerables

Chapter 4 133
Art and Reform:
Lucas Valdés and the Academia de las Guardias Marinas

Conclusion 173

Illustrations 177

Bibliography 243

iii
Abstract

In the sixteenth century, the city of Seville served as Spain’s principal port to the
New World and accrued unimaginable wealth. Nobles and merchants invested in trade
and profited from this enviable monopoly, and artists, poets, playwrights, and
intellectuals thrived, fostering the city’s Golden Age. However, a string of natural
disasters including the great plague of 1649, as well as a decline in trade with the
Americas and a mismanagement of finances by the Crown, marked a significant shift in
the city’s history; Seville’s providence began to fade. Despite the onset of crisis, the
city’s cultural life flourished.
Looking specifically at artists associated with the Academia de Bellas Artes and
their patrons, this dissertation employs a series of case studies to explore the enduring
vibrancy of Seville’s cultural life amidst catastrophe in the late seventeenth and early
eighteenth centuries. In light of great misfortune, artists and patrons alike deemed art a
powerful tool and a critical component of solutions to social and spiritual problems. The
story of art’s influence, and thus its efflorescence amidst chaos, is untold. This
dissertation represents a first foray into describing a vibrant culture of academicians,
patrons, craftsmen, and virtuosi against a backdrop of sometimes nearly intolerable loss
and upheaval. It argues that artistic knowledge and practice were integral not only to the
enduring magnificence and resilience of the city after the Golden Age, but also to its
ultimate advancement.

iv
Acknowledgements

There are many individuals without whom the completion of this dissertation
would not have been possible. Here, I would like to acknowledge and thank those who
made the process of studying, research, and writing a growth-producing and gratifying
experience.
Generous financial support from various institutions afforded me the luxury of
time and travel. I am immensely grateful to the Borchard Foundation for a fellowship
that allowed me to conduct primary research in Spain over the course of a year. Travel
grants from the USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute, the Del Amo
Foundation, the Center for Religion and Civic Culture, and the Program for Cultural
Cooperation between Spain’s Ministry of Culture and United States’ Universities made
several trips to Madrid and Seville possible. Most importantly, I am indebted to the
Department of Art History at the University of Southern California for its continuing
support of my studies.
USC uniquely fostered my development as a scholar, and I am lucky to have had
the continuing support of my dissertation committee members, as well as the faculty
there. Daniela Bleichmar has been an inspiring advisor, and I am enormously grateful to
her for taking me on as a student. Her knowledge of the early modern world will never
cease to amaze me, and I am forever appreciative of her insight over the years. I feel
privileged to have worked under the guidance of Sean Roberts, a model of excellence as a
scholar and mentor. We took on the exciting and complex subject of early modern
Seville together, and I am immensely thankful for his camaraderie and wisdom along the
way. Kate Flint, as both Department Chair and committee member, saw me through to
v
the finish line and was a true champion throughout the process. I am profoundly grateful
to Peter Mancall, who has been my most reliable rabbi, providing wise counsel every step
of the way. Words cannot express my gratitude to him. Working with Sherry Velasco
has been a sheer joy, and I am so grateful to her for her unrelenting support and her
insuppressible passion for all things Spanish. Also at USC, I am indebted to Deborah
Harkness, Eunice Howe, Sonya Lee, Carolyn Malone, and Ann Marie Yasin. Lastly, I
would like to express my sincere gratitude to Barbara Elwood, Jeanne Herman, Tracey
Marshall, and Elizabeth Masarri, who have shared this experience with me, and who have
helped me along the way with every want and need.
I am fortunate to have worked with scholars from outside my home institution
who have widened my horizons and provided new perspectives. I first would like to
thank Ilona Katzew for investing in my academic and professional development and for
continuously stirring my passion and love for the Spanish world. I am happy to have had
the opportunity to work with and learn from Alexander Marr, and I am grateful to him for
always having my best interests at heart. Regular luncheon meetings with Mary
Elizabeth Perry, my wise mentor and revered “reina de Sevilla,” were among the greatest
pleasures of graduate school, and I feel fortunate that we shared this journey together. I
also am thankful to Charlene Villaseñor Black, a reassuring voice throughout the years,
and to Richard Kagan, a generous scholar.
The majority of the research for this dissertation took place in Spain. This
country and the individuals I met there hold a special place in my heart; words will never
express my appreciation for the many kindnesses bestowed upon me while living abroad.
Countless individuals at the Institución Colombina, the Archivo Hospital de la Caridad,
vi
the Archivo de Protocolos de Sevilla, the Archivo General de Indias, the Archivo
Histórico Provincial de Cádiz, the Archivo Histórico Nacional, the Archivo Museo
Naval, and the Archivo General de Simancas made the difficult task of archival research
seemingly painless. I would like to pay special thanks to Antonio Domínguez Rodríguez
at the Hermandad de la Santa Caridad and to Nuria Casquete de Prado Sagrera, Antonio
Lozano, and Manuel Zambrano at the Archivo General del Arzobispado and the Archivo
de la Catedral de Sevilla. I also would like to express my gratitude to the staff at
Seville’s Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos and Madrid’s Biblioteca Nacional.
Beyond the archives and libraries, I am indebted to colleagues and friends in
Spain who served as trusted guides and welcome distractions. I am particularly grateful
to James Amelang, Bethany Aram, and Fernando Quiles García for introducing me to
academic communities in Madrid and Seville. Gonzalo Carrasco has been a fountain of
knowledge, from paleography to upcoming auctions and gastronomy, not to mention a
treasured friend. I would like to pay special thanks to the Torres family—Mely, Paco,
Miguel, and Ana—for providing me a beautiful and warm place to call home. In Seville,
I had the great fortune to make many friends, who helped to perfect my accent and edit
translations, and happily kept me out far past my bedtime. I would like to acknowledge
Susana Cidoncha Béjar, Paco Fálder, Sara Pérez Picón, Alejandro Pinzón, and Javier
Rodríguez.
The support and camaraderie of my fellow students have truly made graduate
school an enjoyable and inspiring experience. First and foremost, I would like to thank
Sean and Kellin Nelson, my closest friends, greatest sounding boards, and most reliable
support team. Brendan McMahon, my partner in crime from the streets of Mexico City
vii
to those of Seville, has made research and writing an adventure. Among other good
friends and colleagues, I would like to acknowledge and thank Sam Adams, Marcelo
Aranda, Edward Collins, Nicholas Gliserman, Rika Hiro, Igor Knezevic, José Ramón
Marcaida, Megan Mastroianni, Julia McHugh, Bess Murphy, Keith Pluymers, Alex
Ponsen, and Ambra Spinelli.
Lastly, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to my family. I wish to
remember my late father, Dr. Richard Dooley, who left a legacy of a love for learning
and an appreciation for all things beautiful. I would like to thank my sister Sarah Dooley,
my trusted ally, role model, and confidant. Last but not least, I want to express my
sincere gratitude to my mother, Mary Dooley. My mother is not only my editor-in-chief,
but also my best friend. She always has encouraged me to reach for the stars, regardless
of how far or unattainable they may seem. Without her love and infatigable devotion to
me, the completion of my doctorate would not have been possible. For this reason, I
dedicate this thesis to her.

viii
List of Illustrations
Fig. Page
1.1 Simon Wynhoutsz Frisius, Panoramic View of Seville, 1617. 177
1.2 Anonymous, Hospital de la Sangre, 1649. 177
1.3 Enea Vico, The Academy of Baccio Bandinelli, 1544. 178

1.4 Matías de Arteaga y Alfaro, Templo Panegírico, in F. de la 179
Torre Farfán, Templo panegírico, Seville, 1663.

1.5 Matías de Arteaga y Alfaro, Santa María la Blanca de Sevilla, 180
in F. de la Torre Farfán, Fiestas que celebra la Iglesia Parrochial
de S. Maria la Blanca, Seville, 1666.

1.6 Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, The Dream of the Patrician and 181
His Wife, 1664–65.

1.7 Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, The Patrician and his Wife before 181
Pope Liberius, 1664–65.

1.8 Francisco Herrera and Matías Arteaga y Alfaro, Fiestas de la 182
Santa Iglesia, in F. de la Torre Farfán, Fiestas de la Santa Iglesia,
Seville, 1672.

1.9 Matías Arteaga y Alfaro, Giralda, in F. de la Torre Farfán, Fiestas 183
de la Santa Iglesia, Seville, 1672.

1.10 Matías Arteaga y Alfaro, View of the Cathedral from the West, in 184
F. de la Torre Farfán, Fiestas de la Santa Iglesia, Seville, 1672.

1.11 Matías Arteaga y Alfaro, View of the Cathedral from the South, in 184
F. de la Torre Farfán, Fiestas de la Santa Iglesia, Seville, 1672.

1.12 Matía Arteaga y Alfaro, Plan of the Cathedral, in F. de la Torre 185
Farfán, Fiestas de la Santa Iglesia, Seville, 1672.

1.13 Juan de Valdés Leal and/or Lucas Valdés, El Triunfo, in F. de la 186
Torre Farfán, Fiestas de la Santa Iglesia, Seville, 1672.

1.14 Juan de Valdés Leal, Puerto de los Palos, in F. de la Torre Farfán, 187
Fiestas de la Santa Iglesia, Seville, 1672.

1.15 Juan de Valdés Leal, Allegory of Vanity, 1661. 188
ix

1.16 Juan de Valdés Leal, Allegory of Salvation, 1661. 189

2.1 Juan de Valdés Leal, In Ictu Oculi, 1671. 190

2.2 Juan de Valdés Leal, Finis Gloriae Mundi, 1671. 191

2.3 Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Moses Sweetening the Waters of Mara, 192
1667–70.

2.4 Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, The Feeding of the Five Thousand, 192
1667–70.

2.5 Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, The Return of the Prodigal Son, 1667–70. 193

2.6 Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Christ Healing the Paralytic, 1667–70. 194

2.7 Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Abraham and the Three Angels, 1670–74. 195

2.8 Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, The Liberation of Saint Peter, 1665–67. 196

2.9 Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, St. John of God, 1670–72. 197

2.10 Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, St. Elizabeth of Hungary, 1670–72. 198

2.11 Bernardo Simón de Pineda, Main Retablo, 1670–74. 199

2.12 Juan de Valdés Leal, Exaltation of the Cross, c. 1680. 200

2.13 Antonio de Pereda, Vanitas, 17
th
c. 200

2.14 Nicolas Poussin, The Plague of Ashdod, 1630–31. 201

2.15 Jacopo di Castino, The Three Living and the Three Dead, 14
th
c. 202

2.16 Buonamico Buffalmacco, The Triumph of Death, 1338–39. 203

2.17 Juan de Valdés Leal, Miguel Mañara, 1681. 203

2.18 Juan de Valdés Leal, Miguel Mañara, 1683. 204

2.19 Juan de Valdés Leal, Miguel Mañara, 1687. 205

3.1 Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Urchin Hunting Fleas, c. 1648. 206

3.2 Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, San Diego Giving Food to the 207
x
Poor, 1652.

3.3 Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Self-Portrait, 1670. 208

3.4 Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, The Immaculate Conception, 209
1664–65.

3.5 Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Faith Church Triumphant, 1664–65. 209

3.6 Interior, Hospital de los Venerables, Seville. 210

3.7 Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Immaculate Conception of the 211
Venerable Ones, 1660–65.

3.8 Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, The Penitent Saint Peter, 1675. 212

3.9 Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Don Justino de Neve, 1665. 213

3.10 Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, The Virgin and Child Distributing 214
Bread to Priests, 1679.

3.11 Raphael, Pope Leo X with Cardinals Giulio de’ Medici and Luigi 215
de’ Rossi, 1518.

3.12 El Greco, Portrait of a Cardinal, 1660–61. 216

3.13 Guido Reni, Cardinal Bernardino Spada, 1631. 217

3.14 Diego Velázquez, Archbishop Fernando de Valdés, 1640s. 218

3.15 Francisco de Zurbarán, Brother James of Deza, Archbishop 219
of Seville, 1631.

3.16 Pedro Núñez de Villavicencio, Archbishop Ambrosio Ignacio 220
Spínola y Guzmán, 1670.

3.17 David Weber, Gilt-Brass and Silver Table Clock with 221
Astronomical and Calendrical Dials, 1653.

3.18 Antonio de Pereda, Vanitas, 1634. 222

3.19 Antonio de Pereda, The Dream of the Knight, 1650. 222

4.1 Lucas Valdés, Hieroglyphs, in F. de la Torre Farfán, Fiestas de la 223
Santa Iglesia, Seville, 1672.

xi
4.2 Lucas Valdés, Paso de la Virgen, 17
th
c. 224

4.3 Lucas Valdés, Castaleros, 17
th
c. 225

4.4 Lucas Valdés, Diagram of supportive crossbeam, 17
th
c. 225

4.5 Lucas Valdés, Railing for the Cathedral’s Capilla Real, 17
th
c. 226

4.6 Lucas Valdés, Railing for the Cathedral’s Capilla Real, 17
th
c. 226

4.7 Lucas Valdés, David Dancing before the Ark of the Covenant, c. 1715 227

4.8 Francisco de Zurbarán, Saint Eufemia, 1637. 227

4.9 Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, The Flower Girl, 1665–70. 228

4.10 Juan de Valdés Leal, Marriage at Cana, 1660. 229

4.11 Matías Arteaga y Alfaro, Esther and Asuero, c. 1690. 230

4.12 Matías Arteaga y Alfaro, Parable of the Wedding Feast, c. 1690. 230

4.13 Lucas Valdés, Saint Elizabeth of Hungary Curing the Sick, 231
1715–19.

4.14 Andrés Pérez, David before Abimelech, 1719. 232

4.15 Andrés Pérez, Melchizedek before Abraham, 1720. 232

4.16 Domingo Martínez, Christ Welcomes the Children, 1723–26. 233

4.17 Figure 93, in A. Pozzo, Perspectiva Pictorum et Architectorum, 234
Rome, 1692.

4.18 Lucas Valdés, Carlos II Offers a Carriage to a Priest, 1685–90. 235

4.19 Lucas Valdés and/or Juan de Valdés Leal, Sacristy, 1685–90. 235

4.20 Lucas Valdés, Allegory of the Two Ways of Life, 1715–19. 236

4.21 Lucas Valdés, Two Sick Priests Arriving at the New Hospice, 237
c. 1699.

4.22 Lucas Valdés, Gentlemen Tending to Sick Priests in the 238
Hospital, c. 1699

xii
4.23 Lucas Valdés, Don Pedro Corbet, 1699. 239

4.24 Lucas Valdés, Folio 6, Juan José Navarro, Marqués de la Victoria, 240
Álbum de Construcción Naval del Marqués de la Victoria (1995
facsimile edition), 1719–56.

4.25 Lucas Valdés, Folio 5, Juan José Navarro, Marqués de la Victoria, 240
Álbum de Construcción Naval del Marqués de la Victoria (1995
facsimile edition), 1719–56.

4.26 Lucas Valdés, Folio 7, Juan José Navarro, Marqués de la Victoria, 241
Álbum de Construcción Naval del Marqués de la Victoria (1995
facsimile edition), 1719–56.

4.27 Lucas Valdés, Folio 8, Juan José Navarro, Marqués de la Victoria, 241
Álbum de Construcción Naval del Marqués de la Victoria (1995
facsimile edition), 1719–56.

4.28 Lucas Valdés, Folio 9, Juan José Navarro, Marqués de la Victoria, 242
Álbum de Construcción Naval del Marqués de la Victoria (1995
facsimile edition), 1719–56.

xiii

Note on Documentation

The following abbreviations appear in the notes:

ACS Archivo de la Catedral, Seville
AGAS Archivo General del Arzobispado, Seville
AGI Archivo General de Indias, Seville
AHN Archivo Histórico Nacional, Madrid
AHPS Archivo Histórico Provincial de Sevilla
AHSC Archivo Hermandad de la Santa Caridad, Seville
AMN Archivo del Museo Naval, Madrid
BAS Biblioteca del Arzobispado, Seville
BN Biblioteca Nacional de España, Madrid
HEH Huntington Library, San Marino
1
Introduction
“Remember, man, that you are dust and to dust you must return. This is the first
truth that must reign in our hearts: dust and ashes, corruption and worms, burial and
oblivion. Everything passes away: today we are and tomorrow we are gone; today
people miss seeing us, tomorrow we are wiped from their hearts.”
1

-----Miguel Mañara Vicentelo de Leca, Discurso de la verdad, 1671

Between 1503 and 1717, Seville served as Spain’s principal port to the Americas.
Possessing previously unimaginable fortune, the city was at the center of trade between
the Iberian Peninsula and the larger Spanish Empire. So spectacularly wealthy was
Seville that in his Historia de Sevilla (Seville, 1587), the sixteenth-century historian
Alonso Morgado claimed that “with the treasure imported into the city, every street could
have been paved with gold and silver, pearls and jewels!”
2
This affluence permitted the
city to thrive in a myriad of ways. Artists and intellectuals, in particular, flourished, and
the city basked in the glory of its Golden Age. However, the year 1649 marked a

1
“Memento homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris. Es la primera verdad que ha
de reinar en nuestros corazones: polvo y ceniza, corrupción y gusanos, sepulcro y olvido.
Todo se acaba: hoy somos, y mañana no parecemos; hoy faltamos a los ojos de las
gentes; mañana somos borrados de los corazones de hombres.” D. Miguel Mañara
Vicentelo de Leca, Discurso de la verdad (Seville, 1776; reprint, Seville, 1961), 9.
Translated in D. Miguel Mañara Vicentelo de Leca, Discourse on Truth (Seville:
Micrapel, 2001), 2–3.
2
“…que si toda la suma riqueza que ha entrado en ella, despues que ellas fueron
descubiertas, se aplicara para el empedrado de las calles de Sevilla, se vieran (si puede
assi dezirse) empedradas de Ladrillos de Plata, y Oro, Perlas, y Pedreria…” See Alonso
Morgado, Historia de Sevilla en la qval se contienen svs antigvedades, grandezas, y
cosas memorables en ella acontecidas, desde sv fvndacion hasta nvestros tiempos, con
mas el discvrso de sv estado en todo este progresso de tiempo, assi en lo ecclesiastico,
como en lo secular (Seville, 1587), 169. All translations my own unless otherwise noted.

2
significant shift in the course of Seville’s history, a unique period during which
unfounded wealth met catastrophe.
In the latter half of the seventeenth century, Seville’s providence began to fade as
the city encountered a series of setbacks. Most significantly, Seville’s monopoly on trade
with the Americas weakened. Spain’s colonies became increasingly self-sufficient, and
the demand for Spanish goods declined. By the 1680s, more fleets returned to the
southern ports of Sanlúcar and Cádiz rather than to Seville.
3
A lack of investment in
industry, a reliance on credit, involvement in wars abroad and at home, and a general
mismanagement of funds intensified the impact of this loss.
4
The city experienced an
economic downturn and witnessed a string of natural disasters including floods, famine,
and disease. While the effects of these obstacles and hardships were profound, it was the
great plague of 1649 that most significantly impacted the landscape and character of
Seville. Miguel Mañara Vicentelo de Leca (1627–79), hermano mayor (head brother) of
Seville’s Brotherhood Charity and one of the city’s greatest patrons of art, expressed a
sense of disbelief and disenchantment with the world in his Discurso de la verdad.
Mañara writes, “Everything passes away: today we are, tomorrow we are gone.” His

3
David R. Ringrose, Spain, Europe, and the “Spanish Miracle,” 1700–1900 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1996), 88.
4
For more regarding factors contributing to Spain’s financial crisis, see Antonio-Miguel
Bernal Rodríguez, La financiación de la carrera de Indias (1492–1824) (Seville:
Fundación del Monte, 1992); Marjorie Grice-Hutchinson, Early Economic Thought in
Spain (Aldershot: Edward Elgar, 1993); Henry Kamen, Empire: How Spain Became a
World Power, 1492–1763 (New York: Perennial, 2003); Ruth Pike, Aristocrats and
Traders: Sevillian Society in the Sixteenth Century (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1972); Carla Rahn Phillips, Ciudad Real, 1500–1700: Growth, Crisis, and Readjustment
in the Spanish Economy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979); and Elvira
Vilches, New World Gold: Cultural Anxiety and Monetary Disorder in Early Modern
Spain (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010).
3
words reflect a collective disillusionment with the city and a heightened propensity
among Sevillians to meditate on the frontiers between life and death. The fragility of life,
as well as the city’s glory, was undeniable.
Seville’s misfortune is an important component of a larger narrative—the alleged
“decline” of Spain. The dissolution of Spain’s power during the reign of Philip IV
(1621–65) has captured the interest of historians for centuries, and some scholars
suggested that this “decline” was inevitable, irrecoverable, and absolute.
5
Although
extensively explored, the factors contributing to this dramatic downfall remain,
nonetheless, misunderstood. Historian Richard Kagan argues that this is due to a long-
standing tendency in the historiography of Spain to interpret decline as the main subject
of inquiry and a general unwillingness to consider factors contributing to they country’s
longevity and its cultural achievements in the face of adversity.
6
I aim to do just that—to
consider those elements contributing to the fortitude of Spain, and of Seville in particular.
While I address larger narratives of “decline,” my most significant contribution is to the
history of Spanish art. By focusing on recovery and resilience rather than on defeat, we
discover that the citizens of Seville confronted misfortune in creative ways. As an art
historian, I focus specifically on interventions made by artists in seventeenth-century
Seville and their individual contributions to the enduring significance and magnificence
of the city to show that art was an important and effective tool in light of crises.

5
J. H. Elliott, “The Decline of Spain,” in Crisis in Europe, 1469–1660, Trevor Aston, ed.
(New York: Basic Books, 1965).
6
See Richard Kagan, “Prescott’s Paradigm,” The American Historical Review 2 (1996):
423–446.
4
Spain, of course, recently suffered another period of “decline.” In 2012, the New
York Times ran a photo piece titled “Spain, Austerity and Hunger.”
7
It was difficult to
recognize the photographs—desolate streets, unfinished skyscrapers, overrun soup
kitchens, and heated demonstrations. Upon my arrival the same year, the veracity of
these images was evident; the impact of this economic downturn was palpable. In
Seville, and throughout Spain, foreclosed homes, lost jobs, closed businesses, and
manifestations and strikes were commonplace. I witnessed the unemployment rate
skyrocket, especially among youth, and I saw the plaza near my apartment slowly
become an encampment for the homeless. Despite the apparent hopelessness of the
situation, the creativity that the crisis engendered was impressive. Efforts undertaken to
remedy the situation extended far beyond general strikes—cafes crafted discounted
“crisis menus,” writers sold their prose on street corners, and artists displayed their art in
local boutiques as galleries were shut down. The state of affairs made me reconsider
Spain’s complicated history of “decline” and to evaluate whether or not this familiar, yet
complicated, term was applicable to a study of artistic practice in seventeenth-century
Seville.
Tainted by the Black Legend and generally portrayed as both exotic and
backwards, the image of Spain in nineteenth and twentieth-century historical literature in
English is one largely disassociated from that of Europe as a whole.
8
For Anglophone

7
Samuel Aranda, “Spain, Austerity and Hunger,” The New York Times, September 23,
2012.
8
The Black Legend is at its essence a defamatory criticism of Spain and Spaniards. The
term is a twentieth-century neologism coined to protest the widespread perception that
Spain was uniquely brutal in conquering the New World. See Margaret R. Greer, Walter
5
historians, it was only during the 1950s that the efforts of English historian John Elliott
reunited the history of Spain with Europe’s larger narrative. Elliott associated declining
Hapsburg power in the 1640s with that of a “general crisis” in Europe, introducing Spain
as yet another actor in a long history of the continent’s defeats.
9
The journal Past and
Present became a forum for debate on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century topics, and the
subject of decline attracted competing theories among historians. Eric Hobsbawm was an
early contributor to the journal. His article “The General Crisis of the European
Economy in the Seventeenth Century” argued that expansionism in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries created its own crisis both at home and in overseas markets, leaving
feudal businessmen rich and powerful, and rural society unchanged.
10
Hugh Trevor-
Roper provided a competing model, attributing crisis not to static systems of production,
but instead to the unmitigated power of Church and State and to its relationship with the
society at large.
11
Following a 1960 conference in response to Trevor-Roper’s theory,
Elliot published an assessment of the Spain case, presenting a “spectacle of a nation”
dependent on foreign sources for food and manufactured goods and an idle populace
engaged in unproductive occupations.
12

D. Mignolo, and Maureen Quilligan, “Introduction,” in Rereading the Black Legend: The
Discourses of Religious and Racial Difference in the Renaissance Empires, Margaret R.
Greer, Walter D. Mignolo, and Maureen Quilligan, eds. (Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press, 2008), 1–24.
9
See J. H. Elliott, Spain and Its World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 217–
240.
10
E. J. Hobsbawm, “The General Crisis of the European Economy in the Seventeenth
Century,” Past & Present 5 (1954): 41.
11
H. R. Trever-Roper, “The General Crisis of the Seventeenth Century,” in Crisis in
Europe, 1560–1660, T. H. Aston, ed. (New York: Basic Books, 1965), 95.
12
J. H. Elliot, “The Decline of Spain,” Past & Present 20 (1961): 65–66.
6
In his 1981 article “The Decline of Spain: A Historical Myth?” Henry Kamen
rejected the concept of decline altogether.
13
His refusal to accept this narrative met
staunch opposition; Jonathan Israel published a pointed rebuttal. Israel held that
contemporaries were aware of an economic downturn, stating that the arbitristas
perceived decline as “a recent and sudden shift or falling away from a previously
flourishing condition.”
14
This response brought into question the idea of contemporary
awareness, later revisited by Elliott in an article titled “Self-Perception and Decline in
Seventeenth-Century Spain.” Elliott questions how Don Gaspar de Guzmán (Count-
Duke of Olivares), Spain’s prime minister from 1621 to 1643, understood and
rationalized the Empire’s predicament.
15
The historian explored how Olivares’
awareness introduced the “experience” of decline to the conversation. Following the
death of dictator Francisco Franco in 1975, Spanish historians began to make fruitful
contributions to this dialogue, investigating the localized effects of “decline” and
grappling with the complexities of this purported phenomenon.
16

In her 2002 dissertation, Amanda Wunder provided an enormously valuable
account of Seville during this supposed decline. Focusing on the canonization case of

13
Kamen noted the problematic nature of dating the crisis, the misguided correlation
posited between natural and structural phenomena, a general acceptance of Spain’s
unique culpability, and confusion regarding the distinction between Castile and Spain.
“The decline of Spain: A historical myth?,” Past and Present 91 (1981): 49.
14
Jonathan Israel, “Debate: The decline of Spain: A historical myth?,” Past and
Present 91 (1981): 71.
15
J. H. Elliott. “Self-Perception and Decline in Early Seventeenth-Century Spain,” Past
and Present 74 (1977): 42.
16
For a recent evaluation of the state of the field, see James S. Amelang, “The
Peculiarities of the Spaniards: Historical Approaches to the Early Modern State,” in
Public Power in Europe: Studies in Historical Transformations, James S. Amelang and
Siegfried Beer, eds. (Pisa: Pisa University Press, 2006).
7
San Fernando, Wunder demonstrates that the city confronted many of these challenges
head-on. In particular, she argues that the arts served as a weapon against decline.
17
This
notion, that of a city actively working to reverse its misfortunes, greatly influenced my
understanding of artistic production in Seville and, more largely, the great paradox of
seventeenth-century Spanish history—cultural efflorescence amidst crisis. My own
analysis of the roles played by artists and patrons alike expands upon her work. While
Wunder convincingly argues that such efforts were largely geared toward appeasing an
angered God, I show that patronage and artistic production were often substantially more
pragmatic. Seville’s painters and sculptors, like other artists across early modern Europe,
saw themselves as learned and talented individuals. They trained within academies,
acquiring skills in diverse media and disciplines. Moreover, they actively forged
relationships with the city’s most wealthy and powerful men. While Sevillian artists did
not generally wield political influence, they were important agents of social, not only
spiritual, change amidst crisis.
I focus here on the period that followed what R. A. Stradling refers to as the
“years of defeat,” ca. 1639–43.
18
Despite the utility of the concept of “decline,” I am
hesitant to adopt the term straightforwardly. Both loaded and complex, it oversimplifies
significant historical shifts. In Fernand Braudel’s insightful work The Mediterranean, he
provides “a word of warning”:

17
Amanda Wunder, “Search for Sanctity in Baroque Seville” (Ph.D. Dissertation,
Princeton University, 2002).
18
R. A. Stradling, “Catastrophe and Recovery: The Defeat of Spain, 1639–1643,”
History 64 (1979): 205–219.
8
when discussing the rise and fall of empires, it is as well to mark closely their
rate of growth, avoiding the temptation to telescope time and discover too early
signs of greatness in a state which we know will one day be great, or to predict
too early the collapse of an empire which we know will one day cease to be. The
life-span of empires cannot be plotted by events, only by careful diagnosis and
auscultation—and as in medicine there is always room for error.
19

Rather than asserting the concept of a general “decline,” my study examines the effects of
crisis and considers the impact of more localized and palpable challenges and setbacks,
foremost among them the 1649 plague. While the chronological span of this study is
marked by catastrophe, the main foci of my work are instances of tenacity and cultural
growth. Artists, and the patrons that financed their work, are central to this narrative.
In the spirit of such localized history, I focus on a small but pivotal group of
artists—Juan de Valdés Leal (1622–90), Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1617–82), and
Lucas Valdés (1661–1724)—and their relationships with important patrons in Seville—
Miguel Mañara (1627–79), Justino de Neve (1625–85), and Pedro Corbet (1634–98).
Artists and their patrons met daily throughout Seville. They not only crossed paths on the
winding streets of the city, but also worked together—training collectively in studios and
academies, sharing patrons, and collaborating on larger projects. Both compact and
cosmopolitan, Seville provided an artistic milieu that fostered debate, collaboration, and
cultural growth. While scholars including Vicente Lleó Cañal and Tanya Tiffany have
prudently explicated those factors contributing to the rise of Seville’s Golden Age, my
work focuses on the circumstances allowing this cultural efflorescence.
20

19
Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of
Philip II, vol. 2 (Berkeley: The University of California Press, 1995), 661.
20
See Vicente Lleó Cañal, Nueva Roma: mitología y humanism en el renacimiento
sevillano (Seville: Diputación Provincial, 1979); and Tanya J. Tiffany, Early Paintings
9
Significantly, the activities of artists depended entirely on the guidance and
financial support of patrons. Art patrons in early modern Spain provided detailed
instructions for works, and rarely entrusted painters with iconographic formulation. The
patron, then, was immensely important.
21
Despite the influential roles of those
commissioning art in early modern Spain, few patronage studies reach beyond the
context of the court. Studies of art commissioned outside Madrid are largely
monographic, and those of patronage largely focus on the support provided by religious
groups rather than by individuals.
22
While the function of the patron is central to studies
by historians of art production in early modern Europe, few scholars emphasize the
importance of this influential figure in analyses of early modern Spain.
23

and the Culture of Seventeenth-Century Seville (University Park: The Pennsylvania State
University Press, 2012).
21
Jonathan Brown, Images and Ideas in Seventeenth-Century Spanish Painting
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), 68.
22
Diego Iñiguez Angulo and Enrique Valdivieso have authored several monographs on
Sevillian artists. See Angulo, Murillo (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1981); and Valdivieso,
Juan de Valdés Leal (Seville: Ediciones Guadalquivir, 1988). Susan Verdi Webster’s
study of confraternal patronage in Golden Age Seville was a significant contribution to
the field, see Art and Ritual in Golden-Age Spain: Sevillian Confraternities and the
Processional Sculpture of Holy Week (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998).
23
The prominent role of the patron is often a subject in Renaissance studies. Many art
historians position patrons as key players in the creation of new imagery. See Anthony
Colantuono, “Dies Alcyoniae. The Invention of Bellini’s Feast of the Gods,” Art Bulletin
73 (1991): 237–56; Stephen Campbell, “Giorgione’s Tempest, Studiolo Culture, and the
Renaissance Lucretius,” Renaissance Quarterly 56 (2003): 299–332; Francis Haskell,
Patrons and Painters. A Study in the Relations between Italian Art and Society in the
Age of the Baroque (New York: Knopf, 1963); and Charles Hope, “Artist, Patrons, and
Advisers in the Italian Renaissance,” in Patronage in the Renaissance, G. F. Lytle and S.
Orgel, eds. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981).
10
This lacuna is arguably attributed to notions that patrons, unaffiliated with the
court, were mere pawns of the Catholic Church. Jonathan Brown notes that the Church
dominated Seville’s art scene and the secular population followed suit. He argues:
In the absence of a counterweight to the influence of the church, of an
independent vision of what the art of painting might be and what it might
accomplish as a means to enhance reputation and broadcast fame, a closed system
of artistic activity was fostered, which painters inevitably came to support as
strongly as their painting.
24

While Brown acknowledges that information on aristocratic and corporate patronage is
wanting, his statement minimizes the complexity of Seville’s artistic milieu. While the
influence of the Church is undeniable, an assessment of the networks of artists and their
patrons in Seville reveals a more dynamic artistic scene than suggested by Brown.
Fortunes accrued as a result of trade with the Americas completely changed the character
of Seville’s populace. Immigrants from throughout Europe amassed fortunes from
participation in trade and invested heavily in homes, land, government bonds, silver, and
art.
25
The support of these individuals and their interest in art patronage encouraged the
city’s greatest artists, namely Murillo and Valdés Leal, to remain in Seville rather than
seek courtly patronage. For this reason, the chapters that follow focus specifically on
Sevillian artists and their local patrons and reveal the undeniably significant role of the
artistic community within a larger narrative of cultural and intellectual life throughout
Spain.

24
Jonathan Brown, Painting in Spain: 1500–1700 (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1998), 99.
25
Elliott, Spain and Its World (1989), 273.
11
Chapter One, “He who has not seen Seville has not seen a marvel,” addresses
Seville’s rise and fall from grandeur, exploring the efforts undertaken by affiliates of the
Cathedral and members of the Academia de Bellas Artes to maintain the city’s prestige
amidst chaos and apparent social decline. Three festival books written by poet Fernando
de la Torre Farfán (1609–77) reveal popular efforts in Seville to preserve the pride of its
citizens and the fleeting glory of the city. Torre Farfán memorializes three key
celebrations in Seville—the inauguration of the church of the Sagrario (1663), the
completion of the renovation of the church of Santa María la Blanca (1665), and the
canonization of King Fernando III (1671). Through verse, prose, and image, the author
promotes Seville’s community of artists as the assets of a great city. He praises their
intellectual merits and endows them with the capacity to contribute powerfully not only
to the success of these documented festivities, but also to the magnificence of the city as
a whole. Torre Farfán’s publications circulated near and far, and they promulgated the
notion that Seville’s artists were integral to the city’s resilience and lasting brilliance
amidst economic downturn and unthinkable tragedy.
Chapter Two, “The Art of Charity: Don Miguel Mañara and the Hospital de la
Caridad,” examines the relationship of Juan de Valdés Leal with his patron, Don Miguel
Mañara, and explores the shifting association between art and death within the context of
healing spaces. Cultural attitudes toward mortality and salvation arguably encouraged
Mañara’s involvement with the Hermandad de la Caridad (Brotherhood of Charity), a
confraternity committed to the burial of the dead. Significantly, Mañara revitalized the
Brotherhood and financed the renovation and decoration of its facilities. For this project,
12
he commissioned Valdés Leal to execute a series of paintings grappling with the fleeting
nature of life. This case study evaluates the collaborative process informing Valdés
Leal’s masterworks, arguing that art was a remedy for Mañara’s spiritual crisis, one
brought on by the deaths of all his family members and his experiences as a witness to
the 1649 plague. His dramatic acts of piety, his aforementioned treatise, Discurso de la
verdad, and the public artworks he commissioned were powerful tools of persuasion,
convincing Mañara and his community that the patron was worthy of salvation.
Chapter Three, “The Control of Avarice: Don Justino de Neve and the Hospital
de los Venerables,” examines the life of Don Justino de Neve, a high-ranking official at
the Seville Cathedral and a celebrated patron of the arts. Most notably, he directed the
renovation of the church of Santa María la Blanca, taking place between 1657 and 1665,
and in 1676 he founded the Hospital de los Venerables, an institution providing care to
impoverished priests. Neve contributed his personal funds to both projects and directed
the decoration of each institution. Working on behalf of the Church, Neve reconciled the
ambiguous and fraught relationship between material wealth and apostolic poverty.
While Neve’s involvement in Seville’s market of exchange extended beyond the norms
prescribed by the Church, he offset collecting and lavish expenditures with his patronage
of various benevolent causes. In his role as a canon at Seville’s Cathedral, the artworks
commissioned by Neve contributed not only to the magnificence of the city, but also to
the fortification of the Catholic Church.
Chapter Four, “Recovery and Resilience: Lucas Valdés and the Academia de las
Guardias Marinas,” considers artistic knowledge and practice in the final years of the
13
seventeenth century and the early eighteenth century. The reign of Carlos II (1661–1700)
coincided with the end of Spain’s “Golden Age.” In Seville, it was the end of an
era. The Academia de Bellas Artes dissolved in 1674, and the city’s most celebrated
artists were dead by 1690. This chapter explores the generation of artists succeeding the
great masters of the seventeenth century, arguing that Seville’s venues for artistic training
and secular learning continued to cultivate local talent. Focusing specifically on Lucas
Valdés, the son of Juan de Valdés Leal, I demonstrate that artists in Seville benefitted
from thriving cultural and intellectual milieus and continued to make valuable
contributions not only to artistic production in the city, but also to science and to the
pursuits of the Crown.
These case studies collectively reveal that artistic production was an effective and
apt response to the social and spiritual crises prevelant in early modern Seville. This
argument about the power of art, and thus its efflorescence amidst chaos, represents and
initial foray into describing a vibrant culture of academicians, patrons, craftsmen, and
virtuosi against a backdrop of sometimes nearly intolerable loss and upheaval.

14
Chapter One

“He who has not seen Seville has not seen a marvel”

Simon Wynhoutsz Frisius’ Panoramic View of Seville (c. 1617) represents the layers of a
complex city (Fig. 1.1). The Torre de Oro (Golden Tower) greets ships as they move
into Seville and line the banks of the Guadalquivir River. Hidden treasures stored within
these vessels fail to faze the cast of characters standing along the water’s edge. Seville’s
citizens, dwarfed by the enormity of the cityscape, carry on with their activities—riding
in carriages, conversing, fighting, and playing. Monasteries and churches, identified by
labels, punctuate the skyline beyond the walls of the city, and the grand Cathedral
dominates the picture plane. The soaring Giralda, the Cathedral’s bell tower, interrupts
the engraving’s inscription: Quien no ha visto Sevilla no ha visto maravilla (He who has
not seen Seville has not seen a marvel).
Early modern Seville truly was a “marvel.” However, time soon revealed the
fleeting splendor of Spain’s jewel. The tides of fortune began to turn in the seventeenth
century as trade with the New World slowed and property values plummeted. Seville
concurrently witnessed a string of natural disasters—floods, famine, and disease. Most
significantly, the city experienced a bubonic plague epidemic between 1647 and 1652.
The pestilence killed between fifty and sixty thousand people, reducing the city’s
population by half. This loss of life, coupled with wars abroad and upheaval at home, a
decline in trade with the Americas, mismanagement of finances by the Crown, and
15
foreign competition brought about a crisis at the time of the city’s greatest glory.
1

Despite Seville’s worsening situation, the citizens maintained its cultural brilliance.
This chapter addresses Seville’s vanishing position as a European power and the
efforts undertaken by the city’s most learned and talented individuals to fabricate
magnificence amidst chaos and apparent social decline. I argue that the citizens of
seventeenth-century Seville were acutely aware of their city’s waning glory, and that its
communities of artists, poets, and patrons collaborated to remedy the crisis. Three
festival books authored by the Sevillian poet, playwright, and translator Fernando de la
Torre Farfán demonstrate the important roles that intellectuals and artists played to
salvage the city’s image. While the intention of each book was to record distinct
celebrations, they focus more specifically on the members of the Seville academy, their
collaborations, and artistic products. Torre Farfán pays tribute to the city, its artists, and
the patrons who, at great personal expense, supported these elaborate endeavors. He
promotes the notion that Seville continued to thrive amidst hardship, largely attributing
this success to local artists. Through the creative efforts of poets, artists, and
intellectuals, the city retained its “marvelous” luster.

Seville: “The centerpiece of the globe”
In 1503, Seville received a monopoly on Spanish trade with the Americas, becoming the
only port authorized for Atlantic travel and Europe’s primary location for exchange and

1
See Niels Steensgaar, “Seventeenth-Century Crisis,” in The General Crisis of the
Seventeenth Century, 2
nd
ed., Geoffrey Park and Lesley M. Smith, eds. (New York:
Routledge, 2005), 39; and Henry Kamen, Spain, 1469–1714: A Society of Conflict, 4
th

ed. (New York: Routledge, 2014), 270.
16
commerce with the Indies. Due to the city’s easy access to the sea and its already
established role as a center for marketing regional products such as wine, olive oil, and
grain, Seville succeeded Cádiz as the commercial capital of and port to the Atlantic
world. Following the conquests of Mexico and Peru in the 1520s and 1530s, Seville
experienced an influx of unimaginable wealth. During the 1540s and 1550s, Spaniards
discovered vast deposits of silver in Mexico and in the Andes. The sheer bulk of treasure
mandated a regulated system of trade, consolidated in the 1560s with the establishment of
the Carrera de Indias (West Indies trade route).
2
Each year two fleets loaded with
European goods such as clothing, linens, weapons, hardware, glassware, paper, and
religious artworks left from the Spanish port of Sanlúcar, one destined for Veracruz in the
Gulf of Mexico in the spring and the other for Panama in August.
3
After docking in their
respective ports through winter and meeting in Havana the following March, both fleets
returned to Seville before hurricane season. The convoys arrived in the city loaded with
pearls, cochineal, wood, hides, an assortment of wondrous and curious objects, and, most
importantly, silver. By the 1590s, imports from the New World to Seville accounted for
9,700,000 pesos in revenue per year, making the city one of the richest in Europe.
4

In order to manage and house imports arriving from the New World, King
Ferdinand and Queen Isabella founded Seville’s Casa de Contratación (House of Trade)
in 1503. The Casa de Contratación oversaw trade with the Indies and became not only a

2
Antonio Miguel Bernal, La financiación de la Carrera de Indias (1492–1824). Dinero y
crédito en el comercio colonial español (Seville: Fundación El Monte, 1992).
3
John Robert Fisher, The Economic Aspects of Spanish Imperialism in America, 1492–
1810 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1997), 58.
4
Peter Bakewell, Silver Mining and Society in Colonial Mexico: Zacatecas 1546–1700
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), 138–43.
17
general warehouse, but also the economic heart of the city.
5
It served as a repository of
wonder and a storehouse for treasure. Alfonso Ragona, a young Italian nobleman,
described the Casa in the 1550s as a place where:
one can see fantastic things and hear great news… [there] one can grasp the
diversity of the Indians, their produce, plants, herbs, fruits, dress, birds, animals,
gold work, work in bone, stone, feathers, always something new.
6

As goods from the New World accumulated, the Casa de Contratación registered the
silver and gold and sent the metals to Seville’s new royal mint, the Casa de la Moneda.
A 1595 account from the diary of Francisco de Ariño, a citizen of Triana and an
eyewitness, records the arrival of goods.
On March 22 the silver fleet from the Indies arrived at the wharf and they
unloaded and placed in the Casa de Contratación 331 cartloads of silver, gold,
and precious pearls. On May 8 they took 103 cartloads of gold and silver from
Capitana and on May 8, 583 loads of silver from the Almiranta arrived over-land
from Lisbon where she had been forced to put in because of storms. For six days
cargoes from the Almiranta continued to cross the Triana Bridge… All this
treasure in addition to what was taken from the two other fleets that arrived here
this year was placed in the Casa de Contratación and detained there by the king
for four months. As a result the chambers of the Casa could not accommodate it
all and it overflowed on to the patio.
7

This image of abundance and overflowing riches attracted international attention. All
eyes were on Seville, not only those of Spain, but also those of the great financial centers
of Europe—Italy, France, Germany, and the Netherlands.

5
Irwin Press, The City as Context: Urbanism and Behavioral Constraints in Seville
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1979), 18; Antonio Barrera, Experiencing Nature:
The Spanish American Empire and the Early Scientific Revolution (Austin: University of
Texas Press, 2006), 29–55; and María Portuondo, Secret Science: Spanish Cosmography
and the New World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 60–102.
6
Quoted in J. N. Hillgarth, The Mirror of Spain, 1500–1700 (Ann Arbor: The University
of Michigan Press, 2000), 100.
7
Quoted in Ruth Pike, “Seville in the Sixteenth Century,” The Hispanic American
Historical Review 41 (1961): 12–13.
18
The prospect of unimaginable wealth drew immigrants to the city, and Seville
quickly reached its peak in population in the early seventeenth century. It also
experienced previously unknown social unrest.
8
Despite a significant exodus of religious
minorities, Seville’s population grew. For more than a millennium, the Muslim
Umayyads and their successors developed Andalusia (al-Andalus), establishing Seville as
their administrative and religious center. In 1242, King Fernando III (1201–52)
conquered the city for the Catholic Crown, and the Christians converted the Giralda, a
minaret, into a bell tower for a massive cathedral. While inhabitants of the city achieved
some degree of harmony, the establishment of a permanent tribunal of the Inquisition in
Seville in 1480 led to the end of the coexistence among Catholics, Muslims, and Jews.
9

The Holy Office targeted conversos (Christianized Jews) and moriscos (Christianized
Muslims) suspected of apostasy and took drastic measures to ensure orthodoxy,
organizing the city’s first auto-da-fé in 1498. This resulted in the burning at the stake of
suspicious citizens.
10
These events were contemporaneous with Ferdinand and Isabella’s
edict to expel Jews in 1492 and Muslims in 1503. Amidst this climate of chaos and

8
The populations of Seville and Madrid both reached between 130,000 and 150,000 in
the early seventeenth century. See Casey, Early Modern Spain (1999), 32.
9
Literature on the subject of conversos and moriscos in early modern Spain is expansive.
See Antonio Domínguez Ortiz, Historia de Sevilla: La Sevilla del siglo XVII, 3
rd
ed.
1986 (Seville: Universidad de Sevilla, 2006); Richard L. Kagan and Abigail Dyer, eds.,
Inquisitorial Inquiries: Brief Lives of Secret Jews and Other Heretics (Baltimore: The
Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004); and Norman Roth, Conversos, Inquisition, and
the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995).
10
Henry Kamen, The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1999), 47.
19
distrust, the streets of Seville, still reflecting the city’s heterogeneous past, expanded and
further diversified.
11

Pedro de Medina (1493–1567), appointed Spanish royal cosmographer in 1549,
described Seville as “the centerpiece of the globe.”
12
Between 1520 and 1580, its
population doubled, becoming the largest city in Europe after Naples, Venice, and
Paris.
13
While many immigrants arrived from neighboring cities in Andalusia and
Extremadura, traders and merchants also came from throughout the Peninsula—Castile,
Basque Country, Galicia, and Catalonia—and beyond. Residents from the Kingdom of
Naples and that of Sicily, as well as the great banking cities of Europe, Genoa, Venice,
and Greece, relocated to Seville to engage in trade and to establish businesses; others
arrived from Flanders, France, Germany, England, and Portugal to benefit from the city’s
growing economy.
14
African slaves and a few captives from the Americas further
diversified Seville’s already mixed population.
15
Seville was not only one of the largest
cities in Europe, but it also was one of the most complex and cosmopolitan.
The demographic makeup and overall character of Seville’s citizenry underwent a
significant transition in the sixteenth century; new economic and social values surfaced as

11
Stanley J. Stein and Barbara H. Stein, Silver, Trade, and War: Spain and America in
the Making of Early Modern Europe (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press,
2000), 11.
12
Quoted in Casey, Early Modern Spain (1999), 72.
13
Mary Elizabeth Perry, Crime and Society in Early Modern Seville (Hanover:
University Press of New England, 1980), 5.
14
Ruth Pike, Aristocrats and Traders: Sevillian Society in the Sixteenth Century (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1972), 12–13.
15
For more on the subject of slaves in Spain, see William D. Phillips, Jr., Slavery in
Medieval and Early Modern Iberia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
2014).
20
a result of the city’s profitable role as Spain’s chief port. While historically detached
from commercial pursuits, nobles invested in trade, eagerly aligning themselves with the
merchant class. In turn, merchant families identified with the aristocracy by way of
purchasing titles of nobility.
16
Affluent individuals with expendable income channeled
their resources in support of religious institutions, charitable foundations, universities,
and toward the patronage of artists, poets, and playwrights. For the most part, the elite
financed the spiritual, intellectual, and cultural growth of the city. Inspired by Seville’s
marvelous past and present and supported by the cultivated elite, scholars and artists
thrived.

Fading Providence
Seville’s prosperity, however, was short lived. The city’s monopoly on trade deteriorated
in the late sixteenth century and what followed was a slow and relentless decline. The
initial boom in commerce with the New World waned, as indigenous populations
decreased in number and colonists became increasingly self-sufficient because of their
inability to afford the export prices manipulated by Sevillian merchants.
17
While the
ships returning to the Peninsula throughout the seventeenth century carried great wealth,
these riches did not always reach Seville. By the 1680s, trade with the New World
increasingly became a multi-state and multinational operation, resulting in fewer fleets

16
Teofilo F. Ruiz, Spanish Society, 1400–1600 (New York: Routledge, 2014), 60.
17
Henry Kamen, Spain, 1469–1714: A Society of Conflict (New York: Routledge,
2014), 95–102.
21
departing from Seville and more returning to Seville’s financial rival, Cádiz.
18
When
times were good, Seville’s elite invested in properties rather than in production, leaving
few industries to support the city as the economy weakened.
In January of 1649, authorities associated with the Seville Cathedral reported the
spread of pestilence from cities to the south—Cádiz, Sanlúcar, and Jerez.
19
While plague
did not manifest itself everywhere, the Peninsula experienced a series of localized
outbreaks.
20
Pestilence repeatedly affected several cities including Valencia, Barcelona,
and Aragon. Seville, hit particularly hard by the great plague of 1649, experienced
another epidemic from 1675 to 1685.
21
Diego Ortiz de Zúñiga (1633–80), the
seventeenth-century chronicler of Seville and eyewitness to the 1649 plague, recorded the
“violent fevers, lumps, carbuncles, buboes, and other kinds of deadly complications” that
devastated the city and affected all strata of society.
22
Even the city’s most devout,
including Archbishop Don Agustín de Spínola (1597–1649), fell ill to its wrath and
died.
23

18
Patrick O’Flanagan, Port Cities of Atlantic Iberia, c. 1500–1900 (Hampshire: Ashgate
Publishing Limited, 2008), 73.
19
ACS, Autos Capitulares (1649–1650), Libro 60.
20
Regarding the various outbreaks of plague in Spain, see Casey, Early Modern Spain
(1999), 36–42.
21
Ibid., 36.
22
“… y por el mismo mes de Abril se fué enfureciendo en tabardillos violentos, landres,
carbunclos, bubones, y otras especies complicadas de accidented mortíferos de
grandísima vehemencia.” Diego Ortiz de Zúñiga, Anales eclesiásticos y seculares
de…Sevilla IV (Madrid,1796), 398. Antonio Domínguez Ortiz, Orto ocaso de Sevilla:
estudio sobre la prosperidad y decadencia de la ciudad durante los siglos XVI y XVII
(Seville: Junta de Patronato de la Sección de Publicaciones de la Excma. Diputación
Provincial, 1946), 86.
23
Fernando Chueca Goitia, Los Hospitales de Sevilla (Seville: Real Academia Sevillana
de Buenas Letras, 1989), 106.
22
In April 1649, the Seville Cathedral noted the accelerated rate at which citizens
were dying.
24
Doctors and medicine were not available, and the cost of basic necessities
was beyond the reach of most. By May, officials reported that dead bodies filled the
churches, and the sick fled to the Hospital de la Sangre for treatment.
25
Located beyond
the walls of the city, the Hospital de la Sangre admitted a significant number of plague
victims. An unsigned 1649 painting of the scene (Fig. 1.2) provides visual orientation for
the descriptive words of Ortiz de Zúñiga—horror, tears, and misery.
26
There are pools of
blood in the courtyard, and the bodies of the dead and dying litter the ground. Those
capable of providing relief tend to the physical needs of the sick, collect corpses, and
pray. The image begs Francisco Salado Garcés’s question, “Who could paint such
unhappiness?”
27
While many sought refuge and treatment at the Hospital de la Sangre,
others did not make it that far. As Ortiz de Zúñiga wrote, the entire city was like a
hospital.
28

Amidst this crisis, authorities associated with the Seville Cathedral attempted to
manage the demands presented by the pestilence, as well as to maintain some degree of
normalcy, including the celebration of feast days. Because early modern Sevillians
generally understood that the plague was contracted through contact with or proximity to
infected individuals, large gatherings were inherently risky and threatened to further

24
“Mueren acelerada.” ACS, Autos Capitulares (1649–1650), Libro 60.
25
“Yglesia muy llena de cuerpos muertos.” ACS, Autos Capitulares (1649–1650), Libro
60.
26
Diego Ortiz de Zúñiga, Anales eclesiásticos y seculares de…Sevilla IV (1796), 400.
27
Francisco Salado Garcés, Varias materias, de diversas facultades, y sciencias: política
contra peste, gobierno espiritual, temporal y medico (Utrera, 1655), 50r.
28
Ortiz de Zúñiga, Anales eclesiásticos y seculares de…Sevilla IV (1796), 401.
23
spread the disease.
29
Despite the looming danger, public celebrations and displays of
devotion were integral to a population in need of relief and desperate for divine
intervention. Cathedral canons debated the pros and cons of holding religious
celebrations, and more often than not, the city chose not to postpone or cancel them.
Shortly after the plague’s initial onslaught, the Cathedral decided to move forward
with its plans for Semana Santa (Holy Week), and the city celebrated Domingo de Ramos
(Palm Sunday) as planned. The looming impact of the plague could not quiet the
music.
30
Ortiz de Zúñiga reported that this celebration, in particular, provided a brief
respite from the plague’s wrath.
31
The faithful perceived these events as attempts to
implore spiritual intervention in response to the crisis; festivals organized by the Church
were an opportunity to offer prayers, alms, and public penance.
32
Within the context of
these celebrations, the religious symbols employed wielded great power. Ortiz de Zúñiga
reported that an image of the Virgin of la Estrella allegedly performed many miracles,
and the procession of a representation of Christ brought about the end of the plague’s
reign of terror.
33
When activated in processions, these sculptures and paintings delivered

29
Kristy Wilson Bowers, Plague and Public Health in Early Modern Seville (Rochester:
University of Rochester Press, 2013), 34.
30
“Música no faltando desde el domingo de Ramos.” ACS, Autos Capitulares (1649–
1650), Libro 60.
31
Diego Ortiz de Zúñiga, Anales eclesiásticos y seculares de…Sevilla IV (1796), 86.
32
Ibid., 259 and 398.
33
Ibid., 259.
24
heavenly succor in a tangible form and made possible intercessions on behalf of the
faithful.
34

The plague subsided in July 1649, but the hardships did not end. Seville
subsequently endured widespread famine between 1651 and 1652 due to a lack of rain
and a dwindling number of able-bodied men to tend the fields. Despite this state of crisis,
artistic production continued to thrive. Nearly a decade after the plague’s wrath, the city
of Seville undertook three major projects—the inauguration of the Sagrario (the
Cathedral’s sanctuary for the consecrated host), the renovation of the church of Santa
María la Blanca, and the canonization case of King Fernando III. Torre Farfán’s
publications documented these festivities and promoted the idea that Seville continued to
prosper amidst crisis. Artists associated with Seville’s Academia de Bellas Artes were
essential to the success of these endeavors.

Drawing on the Academy
Artists Francisco Herrera the Younger (1622–85) and Bartolomé Esteban Murillo
founded Seville’s first drawing academy in 1660. Seville’s Academia de Bellas Artes
offered practical artistic training—a center where artists met to conceive and test ideas.
Herrera the Younger and Murillo modeled the community after similar institutions in
Italy, where the earliest artist academy dates back to 1563 with the formal incorporation

34
Susan Verdi Webster, Art and Ritual in Golden-Age Spain: Sevillian Confraternities
and the Processional Sculpture of Holy Week (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1998), 59.
25
of Cosimo I de’ Medici's Florentine Accademia del Disegno.
35
While Cosimo’s
Accademia was an official institution, more informal organizations are also found in
Italy. Enea Vico’s engraving from the 1540s (Fig. 1.3) provides a window onto Baccio
Bandinelli’s supposed studio in Florence.
36
The engraving depicts artists huddled
together and drawing around candlelit tables, surrounded by fragments of skeletons and
classicizing sculpture. Informal academies, like that depicted here, provided artists a
venue, where they could practice and hone their craft. They also facilitated the dialogue
that shaped Italian and ultimately European art theory.
The Academia de Bellas Artes developed out of a tradition of literary academies
in Seville in the sixteenth century. At this time, Spaniards looked to foreign models
when developing learned societies at home. In Seville, Juan de Mal Lara (1524–71), a
Spanish humanist scholar and poet, reflected:
Although it is not done in Spain, in other countries it is a laudable custom for all
learned men to assist someone who is writing, and even to have the authors read
their work in the academies formed for this purpose, and for everyone to give

35
As historian James Hankins notes, the term “academy” is largely ambiguous, carrying
multiple meanings. The Italian “academy” was often not a structured institution but
instead a group of individuals who shared an interest in and passion for literature, art, and
music. They were casual forums for philosophical exchange and places where learned
individuals explored various theoretical paths. While artists, including Leonardo da
Vinci, were involved with associations of this type, the deliberate application of the
concept of the academy to the visual arts was new to sixteenth-century Italy. See, James
Hankins, “The Myth of the Platonic Academy of Florence,” Renaissance Quarterly 44
(1991): 434–435; and Jill Pederson, “Henrico Boscano’s Isola beata: New Evidence for
the Academia Leonardi Vinci in Renaissance Milan,” Renaissance Studies 22 (2008):
450–478.
36
Bandinelli previously ran an academy in Rome. Clement VII, a Medici pope, invited
Florentines to Rome, including Bandinelli, and gave them rooms at the Vatican’s
Belvedere for the restoration of excavated ancient sculpture. See Karen-edis Barzman,
The Florentine Academy and the Early Modern State: The Discipline of Disegno
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 4–5.
26
their opinions and to say notable things and, with a certain modesty, to give it all
to the author without publishing the fact that they did him favors.
37

In 1548, Mal Lara’s concept came to fruition with the opening of his estudio in Seville.
There, he hosted spirited debates and trained boys in the humanistic letters. The estudio
was a place for collaboration, where friends and colleagues participated in the writing
process. Mal Lara attracted an illustrious following, including his pupil Fernando de
Herrera (c. 1534–97), a poet and man of letters; Francisco de Medina (1544–1615), a
prodigy in Greek and Latin; and Canon Francisco Pacheco (1535–99), the uncle of the
noted artist Francisco Pacheco (1564–1664), teacher to and father-in-law of Diego
Velázquez (1599–1660).
38
Significantly, Mal Lara and his circle of friends and
colleagues were interested in the visual arts. Medina was an avid collector, a skilled
painter, and an authority on color and perspective. Canon Pacheco deliberately engaged
and collaborated with Seville’s artistic community, working with artist Juan de Arfe
(1535–1603) between 1580 and 1587 to conceive a monumental monstrance for the
Seville Cathedral.
39

In turn, the men associated with Mal Lara’s estudio attracted their own followers
and colleagues. Among the group were Pablo de Céspedes (1538–1608); Francisco
Pacheco (1564–1644), the nephew of Canon Pacheco; and, Rodrigo Caro (1573–1647).

37
Quoted in Mar E. Barnard, “Inscribing Transgression, Siting Identity: Arguijo’s
Phaëthon and Ganymede in Painting and Text,” in Writing for the Eyes in the Spanish
Golden Age, Frederick A. de Armas, ed. (Cranbury: Associated University Presses,
2004), 123.
38
Jonathan Brown, Images and Ideas in Seventeenth-Century Spanish Painting
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), 22–26.
39
José Cascales y Muñoz, Las bellas artes plásticas en Sevilla (Toledo: Colegio de
huérfanos de María Cristina, 1929), 14
27
Céspedes, a painter and senior member of the clergy, began his artistic career in Rome
and studied ancient languages at the University of Alcalá de Henares.
40
A native of
Córdoba, Céspedes started making trips to Seville in 1585 to work in partnership with his
close friend, Fernando Herrera. Orphaned at a young age, Francisco Pacheco came under
the care of his uncle, the Canon, who trained his nephew as a painter and granted him
access to his many influential friends and colleagues. Upon the deaths of Herrera and the
Canon, Pacheco assumed greater authority not only within his circle, but also in Seville’s
wider religious and artistic communities, serving as censor of Seville’s Inquisition and
inspector for Seville’s branch of the long-established painter’s guild of Saint Luke.
41

For artists like Pacheco, the academy fulfilled a role that was important and quite
distinct from that of the guild.
42
Within Seville’s academic system, artists intermingled
with a cadre of scholars, poets, and prominent nobles—their interested sponsors.
Palomino frequently described the academy in his biography of Velázquez, noting: “The
house of Pacheco was a gilded cage of art, the academy and school of the greatest minds
of Seville.”
43
Members of the cultivated elite, such as the third Duke of Alcalá, Fernando
Enríquez Afán de Ribera (1583–1637), joined artists and poets in their intellectual and

40
Tanya J. Tiffany, Early Paintings and the Culture of Seventeenth-Century Seville
(University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012), 16.
41
Anthony Bailey, Velázquez and the Surrender of Breda: The Making of a Masterpiece
(New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2011), 21.
42
Peter Cherry, “Artistic Training and the Painters’ Guild in Seville,” in Velázquez in
Seville, Michael Clarke ed. (Edinburgh: National Galleries of Scotland, 1996), 68.
43
Quoted in Tiffany, Early Paintings and the Culture of Seventeenth-Century Seville
(2012), 23–48.
28
creative pursuits.
44
The Duke of Alcalá, a friend and patron of Pacheco, particularly
involved with the academies, hosted members in his home, the Casa de Pilatos.
45
The
Duke of Alcalá’s family chronicle describes how
He spent his childhood studying divine and human history, and his teenage
years in more advanced studies: Latin, logic, philosophy, and theology, to the
approbation of his teachers. He also mastered the liberal arts. He was skilled in
counterpoint and the guitar; astronomy; poetry, and painting to which he devoted
an Academy in his house. There are today notable drawings by his hand, not
counting those he collected from the great Spanish masters…
46

The passage suggests that the Duke engaged in the artistic process alongside those artists
he invited to his mudéjar palace. This collaborative working environment allowed
Pacheco and his colleagues to form a relationship with one of the city’s most influential
patrons.
Pacheco’s treatise, Arte de la pintura (Seville, 1649, published posthumously),
one of the most important texts on art produced in early modern Spain, gives some
indication of the discussions and debates that might have taken place among members of
the artist’s inner circle. Divided into three parts, the treatise grapples with the history,
theory, and practice of painting; it also includes a lengthy appendix on religious
iconography. For Pacheco, drawing was the foundation of painting. He held that
draftsmanship was the key to invention, a window onto the artist’s creative imagination,

44
The Duke’s uncle, Don Per Afán de Ribera, the first Duke of Alcalá and Viceroy to
Naples, feverishly amassed Spain’s most impressive collection of antique statuary,
housed at his private residence, the Casa de Pilatos, and later bequeathed to his nephew.
Vicente Lleó Cañal, “The Cultivated Elite of Velázquez’s Seville” (1996), 25.
45
Amanda Wunder, “Classical, Christian, and Muslim Remains in the Construction of
Imperial Seville (1520–1635),” Journal of the History of Ideas 64 (2003), 197–202.
46
Jonathan Brown and Richard Kagan, “The Duke of Alcalá: His Collection and Its
Evolution,” The Art Bulletin 69 (1987), 233.
29
expressing the purest form of what the artist conceives. Pacheco’s writing, clearly
influenced by works such as Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the Most Excellent Painters,
Sculptors, and Architects (Florence, 1550 and 1568) and Ludovico Dolce’s Dialogue on
Painting (Venice, 1557), is not simply a derivative of Italian art theory. Rather,
Pacheco’s treatise is a unique work, documenting contemporary debates that relate to
artistic theory and practice in early modern Seville.
47

Pacheco championed the value of dibujo (drawing) over colorido (coloring) and
maintained that painting was an intellectual pursuit, a belief also held by famed art
theorist Vicente Carducho (1568–1638).
48
Carducho, a Florentine by birth, arrived in
Madrid in 1585. He painted at the Escorial for Philip II, helped decorate the rebuilt
Palacio del Pardo for Philip III, and worked under Philip IV, creating paintings for the
decoration of the Prado. Carducho was a meticulous draftsman, making preparatory
drawings and studies of individual figures for most commissions. Throughout his own
career, Carducho exhibited a commitment to works on paper; he also wrote prolifically
on the subject in his treatise, Dialogos de la pintura (Madrid, 1633). In his treatise,
Carducho championed Michelangelo’s predilection for drawing and promoted
draftsmanship as the basis of artistic practice. Carducho argued that the foundation of art
is drawing, warning against the “hechizo de los colores”—the bewitching quality of

47
Charlene Villaseñor Black, “Pacheco, Velázquez and the Legacy of Leonardo in
Spain,” in Re-Reading Leonardo. The Treatise on Painting across Europe, 1550–1900,
Claire Farago, ed. (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), 349–374.
48
For a concise summary of Spanish art theory in the seventeenth century, see Giles
Knox, The Late Paintings of Velázquez: Theorizing Painterly Performance (Burlington:
Ashgate Publishing Company, 2009), 17–22.
30
color.
49
Like other Italian theorists, Carducho associated line with matter, form, and
intellect and color with emotion. Clearly embedded in the minds of Herrera and Murillo
when they founded Seville’s Academia de Bellas Artes were the value of dibujo and its
associations with higher learning.
In January 1660, approximately twenty artists attended the first meeting of the
Academy. Among those in attendance were its founders, Murillo and Herrera; Juan de
Valdés Leal, who served as its second president; Sebastián de Llanos y Valdís (1605–77),
a pupil of Francisco Herrera the Elder; Cornelis Schut (1597–1655), a Flemish painter;
Matías Arteaga y Alfaro (1630–1704), who worked under Valdés Leal; and, Bernabé de
Ayala (1625–1689), a student of Francisco de Zurbarán (1598–1664). Weekly, Murillo
and Herrera alternated the responsibilities of the position of president, responding to
students’ questions and doubts relating to art and the exercise of painting, as well as
conferring degrees to those found capable.
50
While the Academy’s presidents were
flexible when it came to dues, there was the expectation that students pay six reales,
roughly the daily salary for a laborer, or the amount affordable. Fees covered the cost of

49
Emilie L. Bergmann, “Optics and Vocabularies of the Visual in Luis de Góngora and
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz,” in Writing for the Eyes in the Spanish Golden Age, Frederick
Alfred de Armas, ed. (Cranbury: Associated University Presses, 2004), 152.
50
“Primeramente queramos que esta academia tenga dos presidentes, que uno una
semana, y otro otra, asistan a ella a sean jueces en las cuestiones y dudas que sobre los
preceptos de nuestro arte y su ejercicio se ofrecieren, y para hacer cumplir estos y los
demás estatutos que se hicieren, y multar a los que los quebrantaren, y principalmente
habiliten y den grados de académicos a los que vieren cursado y hallaren capaz, y esto
harán con consulta de los cónsules y asistencia la fiscal, para lo cual se dará en los dichos
estatutos generales la forma / conveniente; y por ágora nombramos en los dichos oficios
de presidentes a los señores Bartolomé Murillo y Don Francisco Herrera.” Antonio de la
Banda y Vargas, El manuscrito de la academia de Murillo (Seville: Confederación
Española de Centros de Estudios Locales, 1982), 8r.
31
models, coal, oil, dyes, basins, and jugs. An itemized list of expenses from the Academy
reveals that the Casa Lonja, Seville’s trade exchange, was an active workshop which the
tools of the trade.
51
The members of the Academy met nightly in their hall at the Casa
Lonja. There, under the protection of their noble sponsor, Don Juan Fernández de
Hinestrosa, and King Philip IV, who was a symbolic guardian of painting, the members
drew from nude male models.
52

Members also discussed the art of drawing with discourse centering on the
mandated subject matter. The statutes of the Academy dictated that introducing a topic
of conversation unrelated to drawing resulted in the imposition of a fine.
53
Likely also
discussed were the merits of drawing. Familiar with debates regarding dibujo circulating
in Italy and in Spain at the time, the Academy deemed drawing to be an expression of
intellect, and its members promoted art as an academic activity requiring study, practice,
and refinement.
54
Drawing demanded not only theory, but also knowledge of
perspective, anatomy, symmetry, physiognomy, mathematics, and astrology.
While Seville’s artistic community was quite small, a mere thirty guild members,
it was distinct from Madrid’s artistic community in that it claimed both a guild as well as

51
Ibid., 14v. For an explanation of seventeenth-century Spanish currency, see Amanda
Wunder, “Search for Sanctity in Baroque Seville” (Ph.D. Dissertation, Princeton
University, 2002), 102–105.
52
Ibid., 48.
53
”Ítem el que introdujere alguna conversación que no sea tocante al arte de la pintura
mientras se estuviere dibujando pague en lo que le condenaren.” Antonio de la Banda y
Vargas, El manuscrito de la academia de Murillo (1982), 9r.
54
Herrera lived in Italy until 1654 and came to Madrid in 1658. The two likely visited
drawing academies during these trips. Peter Cherry, “Murillo’s Drawing Academy,” in
Bartolomé Esteban Murillo: Paintings from American Collections, Suzanne Stratton-
Pruitt, ed. (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2002), 47.
32
informal academies.
55
The establishment of the Academia de Bellas Artes, in particular,
was significant in that it united artists in Seville and provided a place for
experimentation, collaboration, and competition. The members not only worked together
within the context of the Casa Lonja, but also in churches, convents, and monasteries
throughout the city. Leaders at Seville’s Cathedral and members of the religious
hierarchy commissioned artists belonging to the Academy to create paintings and
sculpture for the adornment of religious institutions and for use in processions and
festivals taking place in the city’s streets. Liturgical life in Seville was theatrical, and
local churches and confraternities turned to poets, painters, sculptors, and architects when
they organized public displays of devotion. These events were productive diversions,
providing relief and hope to a populace confronting a series of serious threats. Amidst
crisis, they were welcome distractions and helped maintain a sense of normalcy.
Festivals and processions were commonplace, yet spectacular—magnificent displays of
piety and prosperity.

Fernando de la Torre Farfán’s Ode to the Seville School
Torre Farfán, a Sevillian poet, playwright, and translator, was a learned member of the
city’s scholastic community who gained recognition in a city-wide poetry contest held in
1656.
56
The Confraternity of the Holy Sacrament sponsored a competition to select an

55
See Maarten Prak, “Painters, Guilds, and the Art Market during the Dutch Golden,” in
Guilds, Innovation and the European Economy, 1400–1800, S. R. Epstein and Maarten
Prak, eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 168.
56
See Antonio Bonet Correa, “El poeta Torre Farfán y la fiesta de canonización de San
Fernando, en 1671,” in Andalucía Monumental. Arquitectura y ciudad del Renacimiento
y el Barroco, Antonio Bonet Correa, ed. (Seville: Andaluzas Reunidas, 1986), 127–47.
33
author to document the festivities for the dedication of the Cathedral’s Sagrario. Torre
Farfán competed against Seville’s most erudite individuals, including the poet Don
Cristobal Bañes de Salcedo, and won.
57
This recognition opened up many opportunities,
allowing his alignment with Seville’s elite and with various artists throughout the city.
58

Torre Farfán’s three most influential works record the festivities associated with
the inauguration of the church of the Sagrario (1663), the completion of the renovation of
the church of Santa María la Blanca (1665), and the canonization campaign on behalf of
King Fernando III (1671). Like other early modern festival books, they record festivities
for posterity, contribute to the fame of their organizers, and promote particular agendas.
59

Significantly, Torre Farfán sheds light on local artists and their collaborations and artistic
products. For this reason, these publications are significant products of the Golden Age;
they are early and important attempts to describe and document works of art and to
recognize the artists responsible.
Religious institutions and universities in Andalusia and throughout Spain were the
intended audiences for Torre Farfán’s books. While in the seventeenth century they
documented the Cathedral’s achievements and served as evidence of the celebrations,
they today are important windows onto the art scene of seventeenth-century Seville.
Significantly, Torre Farfán’s work precedes Antonio Palomino’s El museo pictórico y

57
“Don Cristóbal Bañes de Salcedo estudió en Salamanca, y u fue mi erudito en los
idiomas Griego, Latino, y Toscano.” Fermín Arana de Varflora, Hijos de Sevilla:
ilustres en santidad, letras, armas, artes o dignidad (Seville, 1791), I/77.
58
Rogelio Reyes, “Fernando de la Torre Farfán, un animador de justas poéticas en la
Sevilla del XVII,” Dicenda 6 (1987): 502.
59
See Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly, “Festival Books in Europe from Renaissance to
Rococo,” The Seventeenth Century 3 (1988): 181–201.
34
escala óptica (Madrid, 1715–24), a three-volume folio that contains important
biographical material on Spanish artists. Much like Palomino’s work, Torre Farfán’s
publications provide a record of artists and their achievements. They are early
indications of a growing interest in the personality of the artist in Spain.
Torre Farfán’s first important commission was to create a publication for the
dedication of the chapel of the tabernacle. The author employed verse and prose to paint
a portrait of the new Sagrario. While the intention of the Templo panegírico was to
document the festivities associated with the dedication, the text instead focuses on
aesthetic issues. The fundamental role of the visual arts becomes clear in the
introduction, as Torre Farfán evokes Architecture, Painting, and Poetry through the
writings of Vitruvius, Timanthes, and the Spanish poet Góngora.
60

Matías Arteaga de Alfaro, a member of the Academy, created the frontispiece for
the publication (Fig. 1.4). While not celebrated as an important painter, Arteaga was a

60
“Doy a las bellezas de la tabla, aquellas soberanas tintas: dedico a las purezas del aire
aquella ingeniosa Arquitectura: consagro á la inmortalidad de la Fama, aquellas
alentadas plumas: cuyos pinceles de unas, cuyos cinceles de otras, y cuyo vuelo de todas
(ó animen las líneas de Timantes, ó suden los escoplos de Vitrubio, ó finjan las ideas de
nuestro Góngora) ni han colorido más cultos Lienzos; ni han elevado más supremas
Fabricas; ni han saludado tan benignos Aires. Pero que mucho! Si son líneas, si son
relieves, y al fin, si son rasgos, de pinceles, de escoplos, de plumas Sevillanas, alentadas
de purísimo cando (dígase todo) del Instante, sin mancha, de la siempre bella, antes que
se arrullasen las niñeces del Mundo.” Fernando de la Torre Farfán, Templo panegírico,
al certamen poético, qve celebro la Hermandad insigne del Smo. Sacramento, estrenando
la grande fábrica del Sagrario nuevo de la Metropoli Sevillana: con las fiestas en
obseqvio del breve concedido por la Santidad de N. Padre Alexandro VII al primer
instante de Maria Santissima Nvestra Señora sin pecado original qve ofrece... al... Dean
y Cabildo de la S. Iglesia Cathedral, y Patriarchal (Seville, 1663), 1v.
35
prolific etcher and master draftsman.
61
The engraving includes a representation of the
Giralda, the Cathedral’s bell tower and the symbol of Seville, with the Sagrario floating
above a view of a thriving port city. The image of the Giralda, flanked and supported by
cherubs, dwarfs the Sagrario, suggesting that the book is more about the Cathedral’s
power than about the inauguration of this new edifice. The great Cathedral rises above a
densely populated landscape, and the Guadalquivir River carries two large boats,
symbolizing the city’s involvement with trade. Torre Farfán makes clear that the profits
derived from commercial enterprise were integral to the completion of the project. He
describes the influx of wealth into the city from the New World, and he calls special
attention to the importance of silver from “sacred” Potosí, the Empire’s main supplier of
this metal and the location of Spain’s colonial mint.
62

Torre Farfán opens the text with praise for the Sagrario as an architectural
achievement. He refers to the artistic process, noting that the ideas for the space were
first articulated in drawings.
63
In technical terms, he calls attention to carved reliefs,
stating that they are the products of chisels and brushes.
64
The statement orients the
reader and establishes that, above all, the Sagrario is the product of the artist and his
tools. Torre Farfán utilizes architectural vocabulary, and he emphasizes that the

61
Duncan T. Kinkead, “The Triumph of St. James by Matías de Arteaga de Alfaro,”
Master Drawings 20 (1982), 257.
62
“Ni se negó el Potosí sagrado, la pirámide única de plata, para que exaltase tan digno
ministerio.” Torre Farfán, Templo panegírico (1663), 6r.
63
“Demostraron las ideas, en dibujos, el ya propuesto en las planas antecedentes.” Ibid.,
9r.
64
“Si son líneas, si son relieves, y al fin, si son rasgos, de pinceles, de escoplos, de
plumas Sevillanas, alentadas de purísimo cando (dígase todo) del Instante, sin mancha, de
la siempre bella, antes que se arrullasen las niñeces del Mundo.” Ibid., 1r.
36
successful completion of the Sagrario mandated that its creators master several academic
fields. In order to convey the prowess of its makers and to iterate that they adhered to the
laws of proportion, he provides a precise and technical description of the Sagrario that
includes the latitude and longitude of the structure. He writes that while the space is
enormous, its excesses obey the laws of proportion.
65
This explanation of the chapel
conveys the intellect of the architects and their command of perspective, symmetry,
mathematics, and astrology as well as the enormity and significance of their work.
The space, presented as an architectural triumph, is also one of magnificent
ornamentation and adornment. Torre Farfán focuses on the “brow-raising” art housed
within the Sagrario, paying careful attention to the artists involved with the project,
naming the architect Sebastián de Ruesta and the sculptors Francisco Dionisio de Ribas
(1616–79) and Juan Martínez Montañés (1568–1649). Torre Farfán further celebrates the
ingenuity of Montañés in particular, granting his unique works of sculpture the power to
ennoble the entire space, most significantly a sculpture of the Virgin Mary.
66
In his
praise of painting, he also acknowledges great colorists, recognizing both foreigners and
local talent:
I am very surprised (said the Sun) that that fellow (whoever is paying him) is not
satisfied with such illustrious art: look what the foreign Dürers, Titians and
Rubenses have to say, and here at home the Xáuriguis, Velázquezes, Murillos and

65
“Organizó se con medidas de Gigantes, un cuerpo, en quien todos los excesos de la
deformidad estaban obedeciendo las reglas de la proporción.” Ibid., 9v.
66
“Fue este hermosísimo bulto, obra singular, de mano que besó la vanidad Toscana, y
que en su tiempo reverenciaran las presunciones Griegas. Al fin estudio, y devoción del
único Juan Martínez Montañes, a cuyo relieve le debió el mas fiel traslado la cabeza
coronada de Orbes de nuestra Cuarta luz de nuestro primer Móvil de nuestro único Filipo.
Ilustra siempre esta singular imagen del triunfo de la Limpieza, una de las perfectas
capillas que ennoblecer el ámbito.” Ibid., 20v.
37
Herreras. I am Apollo (and as you know), nature’s best assistant, as if I did not
mix her colors for her I do not think she could produce a sketch of any
importance, and despite everything she would barter all this natural grace in order
to play a part in such noble artifice.
67

Torre Farfán emphasizes the quality of Seville’s artists, placing them in competition with
Europe’s finest and makes reference to the nobility of their profession.
Torre Farfán’s next publication, Fiestas que celebra la Iglesia Parrochial de S.
Maria la Blanca (Seville, 1665), documents the renovation of that church, whose name
alludes to Mary’s Immaculate Conception. During the seventeenth century, the
Inmaculada remained an intensely debated and widely supported topic in Seville. While
the Franciscans maintained the doctrine that Mary’s conception was without sin, the
Dominicans proposed that this was absolved only after birth. The Dominican Order
adhered to Thomas Aquinas’ argument regarding the universality of redemption, and they
held that Mary was no exception.
68
Pedro de Castro y Quiñones (1534–1623),
Archbishop of Seville, was a fervent advocate of the Immaculate Conception, and he
sought its official indoctrination. This goal was partly achieved on December 8, 1661
when Pope Alexander VII issued the Bull Sollicitudo, a papal document in support of the
adoption of the Immaculate Conception.
69
Seville celebrated this event and in
recognition ordered the remodeling of the church of Santa María la Blanca. Upon its
completion in 1665, the director of the project, Justino de Neve, canon of Seville’s

67
Quoted and translated in Portús Pérez, “Discourses on the Art of Painting in Seville in
Justino de Neve’s Time” (2012), 48.
68
Mary Elizabeth Perry, Gender and Disorder in Early Modern Seville (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1990), 39.
69
Amanda Wunder, “Search for Sanctity in Baroque Seville” (2002), 102–105.
38
Cathedral, petitioned for an eight-day feast with a procession on the final day.
70
Neve
commissioned Torre Farfán to execute a publication to document not only the festivities,
but also the renovations made to the church.
The commission surely pleased Torre Farfán, who readily professed his devotion
to the Inmaculada in the publication, referring to the citizens of Seville as sons of this
cult.
71
The frontispiece addresses the city’s commitment to the Immaculate Conception
(Fig. 1.5). Arteaga’s engraving includes an image of Santa María la Blanca, or Our Lady
of the Snows, supported by cherubs atop a diminutive representation of the Giralda.
While the Giralda dominates the picture plane of Arteaga’s frontispiece for Templo
panegírico, here the image of the Virgin dwarfs the landscape, suggesting that the city’s
piety supersedes its commercial pursuits.
Torre Farfán presents the contributions of architects and artists to the renovation
of the church as articulations of devotion to the Immaculate Conception; he emphasizes
the talent and piousness of the local artists involved. Juan González, the architect
responsible for the changes made to Santa María la Blanca, collaborated with a team of
joiners, sculptors, and painters, many of whom are identified throughout the text. Torre
Farfán’s explanation of them includes a recreation of the space—a lavish picture of the
interior. He describes a painting by Valdés Leal of the Immaculate Conception, stating
that the artist’s inventiveness is the product of the Betis, the former name of the

70
ACS, Autos Capitulares, Lib. 69 (1665–1666), fol. 31v.
71
Fernando de la Torre Farfán. Fiestas que celebra la Iglesia Parrochial de S. Maria la
Blanca, Capilla de la Sta Iglesia Metropolitana ... de Sevilla en obsequio del nvevo breve
concedido por ... Alejandro VIJ en favor del ... mysterio de la Concepcion sin culpa
original de Maria ... con la circunstancia de averse fabricado de nuevo su Templo para
esta fiesta (Seville, 1666).
39
Guadalquivir River, the lifeblood of the city.
72
Torre Farfán praises several other artists
involved—“the celebrated Vargas,” “the famous Roelas,” “two great Herreras,” and the
“illustrious Murillo.”
73
While Torre Farfán acknowledges the work of Sevillian artists
Luis de Vargas, Juan de Roelas, Herrera the Elder, and Herrera the Younger, the text
clearly identifies the real hero of the project as the “great hand” of Murillo, the artist
responsible for the majority of paintings commissioned for the redecoration of the
space.
74

Murillo, Neve’s neighbor and friend, worked closely with his patron to articulate
the images of the Virgin of the Snows and of the Immaculate Conception. The Golden
Legend, a medieval collection of hagiographies, asserts that the Virgin appeared to the
patrician Joannes in 352, asking him to build a church on the Esquiline Hill in Rome.
Miraculously, snow fell on the site, leading to the construction of the basilica of Santa
Maria Maggiore there.
75
For the small dome of the new church, Murillo created two
lunettes depicting this narrative—Dream of the Patrician and his Wife (1664–65, Fig.
1.6) and The Patrician and his Wife before Pope Liberius (1664–65, Fig. 1.7). Murillo,
who had painted over two-dozen representations of the Immaculate Conception
throughout his career, executed yet another masterpiece for this space. Torre Farfán
highlights this work, describing it as a thoughtful study executed with special vigilance.

72
Ibid., 12.
73
Ibid., 13.
74
Ibid., 7.
75
Teodoro Falcón Márquez, “The Church of Santa María la Blanca in Seville, Meeting
Point between Murillo and Justino de Neve,” in Murillo and Justino de Neve: The Art of
Friendship, Gabriele Finaldi, ed (Madrid: Museo Nacional del Prado, 2012), 61.
40
He continues, maintaining that the painting is admirable and beautiful—a judge never
before has seen a better application of color atop an exceptionally excellent drawing.
76

Torre Farfán celebrates the artists involved with the remodeling of the church and
the accompanying festivities. He also recognizes those who made donations to the effort,
both monetary and material in nature. Financial support from individuals was integral to
both the church’s renovations and the subsequent celebration. As a result of Neve’s
personal contributions and successful fundraising efforts, the remodeling of Santa María
la Blanca came at no cost to the Cathedral.
77
Early in the text, Torre Farfán makes clear
that the remodeling of the Church was expensive, highlighting the most costly aspects.
78

He addresses a unique ornament used during the festivities—a carpet that covered the
steps of the altar. Its patron, Don Andrés Corbet, a member of a wealthy Sevillian
merchant family with Flemish roots, came to the city in the sixteenth century.
79
Torre
Farfán praises the patron’s zealous devotion to the Immaculate Conception, as well as the
textile’s quality, and he acknowledges the significant value of the gift. The author
continues with a description of its colors, comparing them to flowers and further stating

76
“En el Nicho que mediaba como principal, se coloco una admirable pintura de
Concepción: estudio meditado con particular desvelo, de Bartolomé Murillo, mano tan
grande por lo que alcanza estudiosa, como por la modestia que usa natural. Es, pues, el
Cuadro (sin lisonja) de admirables hermosura, donde nunca, juzgo, se vieron más
decentes, ni mejor aplicados los colores sobre tan elegante dibujo.” Torre Farfán, Fiestas
que celebra la Iglesia Parrochial de S. Maria la Blanca (1666), 7.
77
Portús Pérez, “Discourses on the Art of Painting in Seville in Justino de Neve’s Time”
(2012), 41.
78
Torre Farfán, Fiestas que celebra la Iglesia Parrochial de S. Maria la Blanca (1666),
4.
79
Fernando Quiles García, Sevilla y América en el Barroco: Comercio, ciudad, y arte
(Sevilla: Bosque de Palabras, 2009), 94
41
that it does not appear as if the carpet were woven, but instead came about organically.
80

While Torre Farfán brings attention to several notable donors like Corbet, he does not
make mention of Neve, his own modest patron without whose support the publication
was not possible.
81

However, the relationship between Torre Farfán and Neve continued, and in 1671
the Cathedral appointed them to jointly produce a book providing a written and visual
record of the festivities associated with the canonization case of King Fernando III. The
two collaborated to produce Fiestas de la Santa Iglesia de Sevilla al culto, nuevamente
concedido al señor rei San Fernando III de Castilla i Leon (Seville, 1672), Torre
Farfán’s most recognized publication (Fig. 1.8). Upon the death of Fernando III in 1252,
many Spaniards immediately revered him as a saint because of his alleged special
relationship with God. Sevillians held that the medieval king was divinely guided and
the recipient of holy apparitions.
82
From the thirteenth century forward, the city
undertook several attempts to influence his potential canonization, but not until the 1620s
did the Seville Cathedral fully embraced the effort. Requirements imposed by Pope

80
Torre Farfán, Fiestas que celebra la Iglesia Parrochial de S. Maria la Blanca (1666),
64.
81
He also makes mention of Don Miguel Mañara and his contributions of silver. Ibid.,
166.
82
A statement by Alfonso X suggests a popular belief that the reconquest was divinely
guided. Alfonso X stated: “…through the union of the kingdoms of Spain, so that what
other kings had lost for lack of wisdom or evil counsel… God joined together so that he
might inherit it in peace.” Joseph O’Callaghan, A History of Medieval Spain (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1975), 354. Claims regarding Fernando III as a recipient of
holy apparitions hinge on legends recounting the battle of Xeres, where the medieval king
received a vision of Santiago, contributing to the success of his troops. M. R. S.
Jameson, Legends of the Monastic Orders as Represented in Fine Arts (London, 1867),
188.
42
Urban VIII for achieving sainthood called for proof that Sevillians had venerated
Fernando III for at least one hundred years, a newly installed imperative further
complicating the official canonization process. In order for the Pope to formally
acknowledge Fernando III’s sainthood, a trial with witnesses, judges, and tangible proof
of an existing cult were necessary.
83

As the trial of Fernando III proceeded, the medieval king gradually accumulated
privileges, but the Pope did not formally canonize him.
84
In May of 1671, the city of
Seville planned a magnificent festival in hopes of attracting Rome’s attention to and
support for canonization. Torre Farfán turned to the members of the Academia de Bellas
Artes. He enlisted the aid of Seville’s most accomplished artists, including Murillo,
Valdés Leal, his son Lucas de Valdés, Herrera the Younger, and Arteaga to assist with
the illustrations. The product of Torre Farfán’s efforts, Fiestas, was outstanding not only
for its size, but also for its quality and complexity. The text includes twenty-one pages of
copperplate engravings containing architectural plans, reproductions of artworks and
ephemera, and emblems.
85
The Cathedral inspected the manuscript of the book in 1671
and, following its approval, ordered two thousand copies intended for distribution to

83
Peter Burke, “How to be a Counter-Reformation Saint,” in The Historical
Anthropology of Early Modern Italy, Peter Burke, ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2005), 48.
84
In 1671, there was a formal canonization in Rome at St. Peter’s Basilica. The Pope
officially canonized five saints including Cajetan, Francis Borgia, Philip Benizi, Louis
Bertrand, and Rosa of Lima. This canonization did not include Fernando III. Wunder,
“Search for Sanctity in Baroque Seville” (2002), 161.
85
Ibid., 160.
43
various institutions throughout Spain, including churches, civic offices, and universities,
and one hundred and fifty copies destined for Rome.
86

Torre Farfán sought not simply to document but to recreate the festivities that
unfolded on the streets of Seville. The author situates his audience with an introduction
that promises a true reflection of the festivities; he states that the book presents the events
with “the clarity of a mirror.”
87
The narrator quickly invites readers to explore the city
and to find a place on the streets alongside the citizens of Seville. Arteaga created three
foldout prints that afford different views of the Seville Cathedral, the primary location of
the festivities.
88
The first (Fig. 1.9) is an illustration of the Cathedral itself, offering a
commanding view of the Giralda and depicting an array of characters—a woman with
her child, a crippled beggar, members of the clergy, and an aristocrat, all situated along
the bottom of the foldout. The subsequent prints (Figs. 1.10–11) provide varying
perspectives of the Cathedral from both western and southern vantage points, allowing
the reader to adequately orient himself within the total space. The introduction concludes
with a foldout architectural plan (Fig. 1.12) delineating the individual spaces within the
massive Cathedral.
Both the descriptive language of Torre Farfán and this architectural plan facilitate
a virtual tour of the Cathedral. The text focuses almost exclusively on the paintings and

86
Duncan Kinkead, “Juan de Valdés Leal” (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Michigan,
1976), 220.
87
“Delante de los reales ojos de V. M. se pone, como augusto, y clarissimo espejo, la
descripción de las Fiestas que celebró la Santa Iglesia de Sevilla.” Fernando de la Torre
Farfán, Fiestas de la Santa Iglesia de Sevilla al culto, nuevamente concedido al señor rei
San Fernando III de Castilla I Leon (Seville, 1672), 1.
88
Duncan Kinkead, “‘The Triumph of St. James’ by Matías de Arteaga y Alfaro,” Master
Drawings 20 (1982), 257.
44
sculptures housed in each chapel and identifies those artists responsible for their creation.
Torre Farfán aggrandizes local artistic talent, using laudatory descriptors such as
“excelente,” “famoso,” and “gran” before their names. He also stresses locality, focusing
solely on the works of Sevillian artists and referring to them as part of or belonging to the
city—Francisco de Herrera and his father “both born in Seville,” “our Sevillano”
Pedro Roldán, and Luis de Vargas the “Sevillian painter.”
89
The author further validates
his complimentary assessments of local artistic talent referring to their acceptance at the
Court and abroad. He speaks of Zurbarán’s imperial accreditation and the “applause” for
Montañés received from Italy.
90
He claims that Murillo’s name is known throughout
Europe, and he refers to him as “our superior Titian.”
91
Throughout, Torre Farfán comes
across as a professional promoter of artists and the individuals who support them. He
persistently stresses the significant price their works command, implying Seville’s ability
to afford such splendor.
The canonization campaign came at great expense to the city, requiring the
support of numerous patrons. Fundraising for the beatification process began early and
involved individuals and institutions from throughout the Spanish Empire. Responses to
the effort by way of monetary contributions began to flow in to the Cathedral as early as
1632. The Duke of Alcalá gifted the Cathedral a work from his impressive collection, a
painting of San Fernando.
92
That same year assistance also came from archdioceses

89
Torre Farfán, Fiestas de la Santa Iglesia de Sevilla (1672), 159, 173, and 176.
90
Ibid., 155 and 179.
91
Ibid., 164 and 233.
92
For more regarding the Duke of Alcalá’s art collection, see Brown and Kagan, “The
Duke of Alacalá,” (1987), 231–255.
45
throughout Spain, including Badajoz, Llerena, and Mérida in Extremadura, Cuenca in
Castile-La Mancha, as well as from several cities throughout Andalusia—Jerez de la
Frontera, Ronda, Antequera, Écija, and Cádiz. The Casa de Contratación, the
Archbishop of Seville, Ambrosio Spínola, and King Philip IV all pledged monetary
support. Donations also arrived from far beyond the Iberian Peninsula—pesos de plata
from royal officials in Mexico and guarantees of money from Lima as well.
93

Torre Farfán makes note of permanent artworks destined for the Cathedral and of
ephemera commissioned specifically for the festivities. He provides textual and visual
documentation of these apparatuses, granting his readers access to works that no longer
exist, among them a throne made to enshrine a sculpture of King Fernando III. Torre
Farfán provides a written description, notes its dimensions and aesthetic qualities, and
also identifies the great architects responsible for its creation, Valdés Leal and Bernardo
Simón de Pineda (1638–1702), while at the same time lavishing praise on them for their
achievements. The author writes that the throne, its arrangement, and the architectonics
behind its making are the products of the men’s ingenuity and their commitment to the
Church, thereby aligning skill and intelligence with piety. While the author does not
include an image of the throne, he provides reproductions of El Triunfo (Fig. 1.13) and
Puerta de los Palos (Fig. 1.14), two other ephemeral structures also designed and
constructed by Valdés Leal and Pineda.
Standing over thirty meters tall and placed between the four piers of the
Cathedral’s crossing, El Triunfo was a four-sided structure carved from wood with three

93
AGAS Lib. 37(7), Doc. 10a.
46
triumphal arches at its base, decorated with sculptures of Fernando III, banners,
medallions, and paintings.
94
The construction was a great success with the Cathedral’s
hierarchy, which awarded Valdés Leal and Pineda one thousand additional ducats for
their superior design and work.
95
A foldout print in Fiestas illustrates the structure in the
context of its display during the festival, adorned with garlands intertwined with cherubs
and banderoles. The print commemorates not only the ephemeral structure, but also the
groups of artists and patrons responsible for its creation. Along the bottom edge of the
print, the artist includes the ground plan for the structure and a cast of characters—men
engaged in studying, measuring, and discussing plans for the festival.
96
The artist
responsible for the print, likely Lucas Valdés, includes a depiction of his father, Valdés
Leal, conversing with cathedral canons, as Pineda, his partner, takes measurements in the
foreground. Holding his hand in an expository gesture, Valdés Leal explains the plan to
his patrons. The engraving serves as documentation of the artistic process, and it
deliberately acknowledges the importance of the artists’ collaborations with their patrons.
Valdés Leal and Pineda also constructed a gate for the Cathedral, Puerta de los
Palos, located immediately south of the Giralda. An etching, attributed to Valdés Leal,
depicts the gate as an elaborate arrangement over the main door. The decoration of
Puerta de los Palos incorporated the coats of arms of Spain, Seville, Pope Clement X,
and Archbishop Spínola, as well as hieroglyphs, tapestries, mottoes, and scenes relating

94
Kinkead, “Juan de Valdés Leal” (1976), 220.
95
Ibid., 220.
96
Elizabeth du Gué Trapier, Valdés Leal: Spanish Baroque Painter (New York: The
Hispanic Society of America, 1960), 50.
47
to the festival.
97
The illustration includes trumpeters on either side of the gate, blowing
their instruments and announcing the commencement of the festivities. Similar to the
representation of El Triunfo, the print documents the ephemeral construction in a moment
of its use amidst the festivities. Valdés Leal includes a cast of Sevillians along the
bottom of the print—ladies, ecclesiastics, two noblemen with swords pointing to the
decorations, courtiers wandering around the immediate foreground, and two churchmen
pointing to and discussing a drawing, likely the plan for Puerta de los Palos.
98
Included
here is a rendering of the artist Pineda, who appears with a compass, actively engaged
with a group of ecclesiastics. Again, the engraving highlights the importance of the artist
and his work, while stressing the collaborative nature of the project and the operative
roles played by those organizing and financing the festivities.
Torre Farfán’s publications advertised Seville’s magnificence to an international
audience. While the city was at the center and the seat of book printing, Seville, and
Spain in general, produced very few illustrated publications, among them the 1622
account of Philip III’s journey to Portugal.
99
During the seventeenth century, only
Germans illustrated the majority of their festival books. While Italian and Northern
printmakers and publishers reproduced and circulated the works of accomplished artists
in their respective locales, this tradition did not gain wide popularity in Spain. Jusepe

97
Ibid., 50.
98
Wunder, “Search for Sanctity in Baroque Seville” (2002), 188.
99
For more on the history of printing in Seville, see Clive Griffen, The Crombergers of
Seville: The History of Printing and Merchant Dynasty (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1988). Regarding the account of Philip III’s journey, see Pedro de Moura Carvalho,
Luxury for Export: Artistic Exchange between India and Portugal around 1600 (Boston:
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 2008), 13.
48
Martínez (1602–82), an Aragonese artist, commented to an Italian friend that Spanish
artists were not afforded the attention of international audiences, as were their Italian and
Northern counterparts, complaining:
All nations except this one have such an inclination to engrave in prints, so that all
the world sees the subtleties produced by its talented artists, both in major and
minor works, and as you will know, in your Rome and Italy they have printed
three and four times the very same thing, even the rocks, where by this means
they have acquired great fame and esteem: completely the opposite of what
happens in our Spain.
100

Responses by art enthusiasts to Torre Farfán’s work reveal that his publications
successfully documented the achievements of local artists. Ortiz de Zúñiga speaks
directly to the significant contribution Torre Farfán made to Seville’s artistic community,
commenting upon the inventiveness and sumptuous grandeur with which the author
represented the details of each event. In addition, Ortiz de Zúñiga praises the author for
the beautiful and meaningful language adopted to describe the activities of the work of
local artists and his ability to articulate the art of drawing and the execution of painting,
sculpture, and architecture.
101

100
The 1610 letter from Martínez to the Italian painter Pedro Antonio reads: “…todas las
naciones menos ésta, tienen tal inclinación a grabar en estampas, para que todo el mundo
veo lo sutil de sus ingenios, así en obras mayores como menores, y como vos sabéis, en
vuestra Roma e Italia han grabado tres y cuatro veces una misma cosa, hast alas piedras
Viejas, donde por este medio han adquirido grande fama y estimación: bien al contrario
de lo que sucede en nuestra España.” Jusepe Martínez, Discursos practicables del
nobilísimo arte de la pintura (Madrid: Catedra, 1988), 279–280.
101
“Ejecutase esta gran inventiva con tan suntuosa grandeza, que sin el socorro del la
estampa, aun á describirla no huyera bastado toda la elocuencia de Don Fernando de la
Torre Farfán en el ya citado libro de estas fiestas aunque la agudeza de su ingenio, la
propiedad de su estilo, y lo grande de sus estudios, se emplearon en dar á entender en
descripción de hermoso y significativo lenguaje cuanto y cual fue este rico esmero de las
más estudiosas artes del dibujo, y la ejecución en pintura, escultura y arquitectura.” Ortiz
49
Torre Farfán’s publications served a variety of purposes. First and foremost, they
documented for wider dissemination important constructions and events. As works in
print, they granted both audiences in Spain and abroad access to events occurring in
Seville. Secondly, Torre Farfán’s writings promoted local talent and made significant
contributions to the development of art theory in the city. These publications were novel
in that they promoted local artists and detailed specific artworks. Lastly, and most
importantly, the texts and accompanying images supported the notion that Seville
continued to prosper, and its citizens remained strong in their commitment to God. In
each publication, Torre Farfán makes clear that artists were integral to the
communication of this perception and to the message in and of itself. Seville’s art and
artists made the city marvelous.
Torre Farfán’s publications circulated near and far, and they upheld the notion
that Seville and its populace were thriving in spite of economic downturn and
unthinkable tragedy. Torre Farfán acknowledges the significant roles played by artists,
and he presents them not as passive craftsmen, but rather as learned individuals making
significant contributions to the intellectual, cultural, and spiritual life of Seville. The
publications, whether documentary or aspirational, are lasting vestiges of the valiant
efforts made by Torre Farfán and his collaborators to fabricate magnificence amidst
crisis.

de Zúñiga. Anales eclesiásticos y seculares de la muy noble y muy leal ciudad de Sevilla
(Madrid, 1795), 237.
50
Conclusion
In his recent examination of Spanish festivals, A King Travels: Festive Traditions in Late
Medieval and Early Modern Spain (2012), Teófilo Ruiz argues for the “fluid ideological
boundaries” of festival spaces. Ruiz upholds the basic thesis of Sir Roy Strong’s Art and
Power: Renaissance Festivals, 1450-1600 (1984), affirming the relationship between
festivities and hierarchical displays of power.
102
Ruiz complicates this argument,
however, highlighting the opaque nature of these spaces and the variety of messages and
meanings they instilled. For Ruiz, “Festivals were always—and they remain so to this
very day—sites for complicated and unpredictable performances open to a multiplicity of
readings.”
103
Festivities associated with the inauguration of the church of the Sagrario,
the completion of the renovation of the church of Santa Maria Blanca, and the
canonization of King Fernando III involved a wide range of performances—the Church’s
exercise of power, the festivities unfolding in the streets, and the creative processes of
architects and artists in collaboration with their patrons. Seville’s unique and trying
circumstances further complicate possible analyses of these events.
The success of Torre Farfán’s publications relied largely on the cooperative
efforts among artists, members of the clergy, the cultivated elite, and illustrious nobles.
There was a precedent for such collaborative projects within the context of academies.
This concept moved beyond the academy and into the streets and churches of the city as
well as onto the pages of these books. However, these individuals—ecclesiastics, artists,

102
Roy Strong, Art and Power: Renaissance Festivals, 1450–1650 (Woodbridge:
Boydell Press, 1973).
103
Teófilo F. Ruiz, A King Travels: Festive Traditions in Late Medieval and Early
Modern Spain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012), 8.
51
and elites—remained divided in terms of position, association, and class. For this reason,
the motivations guiding religious institutions and their patrons, most importantly officials
at the Seville Cathedral and the city’s aristocratic class, likely differed from those of
Torre Farfán and the artists with whom he collaborated.
While the Church’s purpose was largely deemed devotional, it also was aligned
with the articulation of power and authority. Similarly, wealthy individuals equated their
financing of and involvement with these events not only as benevolent in nature, but also
as expressions of prestige. Their ostentatious contributions went toward the common
good, allowing the citizenry of Seville to enjoy the structures, art, and festivities. Artists,
on the other hand, devoted their talent and time rather than their money. While they
largely relied on ecclesiastical patronage to make a living and to enhance their
reputations, they possibly also believed that there were spiritual benefits to reap from
their involvement with these commissions.
In her study of the canonization case of San Fernando, Amanda Wunder argues
that efforts to canonize the medieval king were geared towards appeasing an angered
God.
104
One possible motivation guiding artists and patrons alike was a desire to make
spiritual amends in an effort to reverse damage already done. Many Sevillians attributed
the social decline and series of natural disasters to years of societal sin—corruption,
greed, and religious latency during the height of Seville’s prosperity. While artists were
central to the Cathedral’s agenda, the idea that art remedied sins remained contested in

104

Amanda Wunder, “Search for Sanctity in Baroque Seville” (Ph.D. Dissertation,
Princeton University, 2002).
52
seventeenth-century Seville. Valdés Leal brings this question—the worth of art—into
visual form in an important diptych.
Allegory of Vanity (Fig. 1.15) and Allegory of Salvation (Fig. 1.16), both painted
in 1661 by Valdés Leal, are essentially still-lifes falling within the vanitas tradition,
calling attention to the worthlessness of worldly pursuits. In Allegory of Vanity a
representation of an angel pointing to a canvas dominates the upper half of the picture
plane. Light filters onto the illustrated painting, illuminating the face of the celestial
figure, holding back a pink drapery to reveal a painting of the Last Judgment.
105
Valdés
Leal positioned the body of the angel in a downward bend, directing the eyes of the putto
toward an unsystematic and multifarious assortment of material goods representative of
worldly vanity. The collection includes playing cards, dice, money, pearls, jewels, a
jewel box, wilting roses, a miniature portrait of a woman, a crown and scepter, a bishop’s
miter, and the tiara of a pope.
106
A collection of books, representing a broad spectrum of
subjects including art, architecture, anatomy, agriculture, and astronomy, dwarf these
items. Included among identifiable titles are Vicente Carducho’s Dialogos de la pintura,
Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola’s Le due regole della prospettiva (Rome, 1583), and the
works of Leon Batttista Alberti and Sebastiano Serlio.
107
Valdés Leal couples these
treatises relating to painting, perspective, and architecture with morbid reminders of

105
Trapier notes that the image of the Last Judgment was likely inspired by a painting of
the same subject by Martin de Vos completed in 1570. Both represent Christ as judge in
the upper portion of the canvas with the Virgin interceding for the souls to the left. Both
include large crosses with Saint Michael in the foreground. Trapier, Valdés Leal (1956),
31.
106
Folke Nordström, “The Crown of Life and the Crown of Vanity: Two Companion
Pieces by Valdés Leal,” Figura Nova 1 (1959): 135–36.
107
Kinkead, Juan de Valdés Leal (1976), 199; and Trapier, Valdés Leal (1956), 32.
53
mortality—the skull, the clock, the dying roses, and an extinguished candle.
108
The
painting, especially when considered alongside Allegory of Salvation, equates artistic
practice with the worthlessness of earthly pursuits and suggests that engagement with the
arts and sciences carries deleterious effects when considering one’s salvation.
Allegory of Salvation depicts the transition from decadent and meaningless
pursuits to a life of austerity and piety. Holding a rosary in his hand, a devout man
studies a theological text with other books within reach. A painting of Calvary serves as
a reminder of Christ’s sacrifice, a stem of lilies is a symbol of chastity, and an hourglass
held by the guiding angel urges the viewer to consider the inevitable—death and the hope
of salvation. Rather than commit oneself to secular learning and worldly pleasures, one
should adopt a life committed to God. Allegory of Salvation unquestionably suggests that
one’s allegiance to God should be unwavering and without distraction.
Valdés Leal’s inclusion in his painting of treatises relating to architecture and
artistic practice makes the case that the virtue of art making remained contested in
seventeenth-century Seville. Nonetheless, art was immensely powerful. In the religious
processions unfolding during the plague’s wrath and for the events documented by Torre
Farfán, the works of local artists played a key role. While Valdés Leal places art making
in opposition to more virtuous pursuits, Torre Farfán clearly communicates that the
artistic community and their products were essential to the success of the Church-
organized events he documented. The festivities and their associated publications

108
Ronda Kasl, Sacred Spain: Art and Belief in the Spanish World (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2010), 168.
54
maintain the notion that Seville truly was a marvel, making it evident that artists were
integral to the city’s lasting brilliance.
55
Chapter 2

The Art of Charity: Don Miguel Mañara and the Hospital de la Caridad

Fernando de la Torre Farfán’s publications illustrate that the citizens of Seville personally
benefitted from the philanthropy of wealthy and powerful individuals, who financed the
city’s thriving culture. Among the city’s illustrious patrons, Miguel Mañara y Vicentelo
de Leca (1627–79) is one of the most widely recognized. Mañara, a wealthy nobleman
and the alleged “original Don Juan,” underwent a dramatic conversion in the aftermath of
the plague of 1649. Following this life-changing event, he assumed the role of hermano
mayor of the Brotherhood of Charity and dedicated his life to helping the poor. In this
position, Mañara became a champion of charity and an important patron of art, funding
the renovation of the Brotherhood’s church of San Jorge and directing the decoration plan
for its interior. Arguably, Mañara’s experience of personal loss deeply encouraged this
dramatic life transformation. Using his biography as a case study, I argue that
conceptions of mortality and salvation prevalent in seventeenth-century Seville motivated
Mañara’s involvement with the Brotherhood of Charity and his commitment to art
patronage.
In his study of attitudes towards death and the afterlife in sixteenth-century Spain,
Carlos Eire argues that Spanish culture confronted death in unique ways; Spaniards once
did and continue to this day to fix their gaze upon death. Eire applies the popularity of
the bullfight as evidence for this claim.
1
The author stresses that this fascination with

1
Carlos M. Eire, From Madrid to Purgatory: The Art and Craft of Dying in Sixteenth-
Century Spain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 4.
56
death and the hereafter was specifically useful to the Church and employed as a
mechanism of control.
In the case of Catholic Europe before the Enlightenment, death was the moment
when salvation was decided, the instant when the soul began its journey into the
unseen spiritual realm that was the church’s special dominion. Hence, death was
the unique moment, common to all, when the church could make the ultimate
claim over each individual and over society as a whole; it was arguably the
consummate Catholic experience, the ultimate expression of a society’s beliefs,
and also the ultimate opportunity for shaping and controlling a society’s
behavior.
2

As Eire suggests, heaven, hell, and purgatory were as real as any city in Spain;
individuals made significant preparations for their ultimate destination. Central to this
Catholic experience was art, an essential tool of communication mediating between the
Church and the faithful. Amidst crisis, macabre artworks reinforced the program of the
Church and perpetuated interests in death that influenced popular sentiment. Art also
highlighted the message that this was a shared experience, one common to all. While the
history of death in Spain is, as Eire acknowledges, a limitless endeavor, this chapter
addresses Mañara’s personal, yet hardly unique, obsession with death and its articulation
through charity and art.
Death was an omnipresent threat amidst epidemic, wars, and the general
hardships associated with early modern life; however, death also was a unifying
experience. As a member of the elite, Mañara was hardly exempt from its influence. He
witnessed the devastating impact of Seville’s 1649 plague and the deaths of most of his
family members. Mañara articulated his views on death and his associated anxieties in
his treatise Discurso de la verdad (Seville, 1671) and in the art he financed. While

2
Ibid., 5.
57
Mañara commissioned artworks by several members of the Academia de Bellas Artes,
including Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, he entrusted artist Juan de Valdés Leal with his
most important projects. In 1672, Valdés Leal painted two works for the Brotherhood of
Charity, In Ictu Oculi and Finis Gloriae Mundi (Figs. 2.1–2). These paintings consider
the fragility of life and the indiscriminate nature of death. The message of the painting
group titled Hieroglyphs of Our Last Days is clear: our time is short and neither worldly
success nor riches guarantees salvation. These lasting remnants of Mañara’s self-
fashioning efforts reveal that he was changed by loss and reflect his sincere concern with
the hereafter. His treatise and Valdés Leal’s painting group served as a conduit through
which Mañara publicly articulated his fears and prepared for his own salvation.
Significantly, Mañara’s efforts to ensure fast passage into heaven became
spectacles set within the Brotherhood of Charity and against the backdrop of Seville. At
the turn of the seventeenth century, the city was the capital of theater in Spain. By 1600,
Seville was home to four public theaters, and the Coliseo, a municipal theater, opened in
1607.
3
While these venues were important, the city itself proved to be the greatest stage
of all. Street theater, elaborate religious processions on feast days and during Holy
Week, and public festivities, such as those recorded by Torre Farfán, were integral to
daily life in Golden Age Seville. Mañara’s dramatic conversion and his subsequent
actions were theatrical displays in their own right. However, Mañara’s individual
concerns intersected productively with broader efforts by Seville’s patrons to provide an
antidote for the ailments that seemed, increasingly, to plague their city.

3
J. H. Elliott, Spain, Europe and the Wider World, 1500–1800 (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2009), 282.
58
Miguel Mañara
Since the seventeenth century, the biography of Mañara has evolved into a mix of fact
and fiction, and the legends surrounding his life prove more colorful than reliable.
4

Mañara’s fame extended far beyond Seville, attracting the interest of scholars, novelists,
and playwrights from near and far. Czechoslovakian author Josef Toman reinterpreted
the life and death of Mañara in his 1944 novel Don Juan. Toman described his
protagonist as a troubled man:
Dread possessed Miguel’s heart. Creatures steeped in vice turned and twisted in
his mind, his head was filled with a clamor of drunken tenderness and cruelties,
and the psalmist’s sobbing voice pierced the midnight.
5

Toman and other authors fictionalizing the life and death of Mañara stress his sinful past
and often conflate his biography with that of Don Juan Tenorio, the fictional protagonist
of Tirso de Molina’s 1630 drama The Trickster of Seville and the Stone Guest (El
burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra).
6
Among others, Aleksey Konstantinovich
Tolstoy’s play Don Juan (1863), Arnold Bennett’s opera Don Juan de Mañara (1923),
and Mirko Jelusich’s novel Don Juan: The Seven Deadly Sins (Don Juan: Die sieben
Tadsünden, 1931) portray Mañara as a seductive debauchee.
7
These fanciful
reinterpretations of his life contrast sharply with the legacy Mañara crafted for himself.

4
Jesús M. Granero, Don Miguel Mañara Leca y Colona y Vicentelo: Un caballero
sevillano del siglo XVII (Seville: Fundación Caja Rural del Sur, 2008), Chapter 1.
5
Josef Toman, Don Juan: The Life and Death of Don Miguel Mañara (New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1958), 33.
6
Tirso de Molina, El burlador de Sevilla (Barcelona: Random House Mondadori, S. A.,
2003).
7
Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, Don Juan (Dresden: B. G. Teubner, 1863); Arnold
Bennett, Don Juan de Marana (London: Privately printed by T. Werner Laurie, 1923);
and Mirko Jelusich, Don Juan: Die Sieben Todsünden (Wien: Speidel, 1931). For an
59
Such works of fiction contributed significantly to modern mythologies
surrounding Mañara’s life. Despite the fact that these literary fabrications associating
Mañara with Tirso de Molina’s Don Juan are far removed from historical reality, they
remain integral to any scholarly understanding of this colorful personality. Don Juan,
partial to sex, money, and power, characterized the reckless nobleman as typical of
seventeenth-century Seville. Don Juan holds titles of nobility, yet he lacks honor. He is
conniving, irresponsible, passionate, and depraved, and his misguided pursuits speak to
themes central to Tirso de Molina’s play—injustice, privilege, pleasure, and the passage
of time. For several authors of fiction and playwrights writing in the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries, there was a clear correlation between the biography of Mañara and
the fictional character. While not altogether removed from Mañara’s self-professed
perception, these characterizations are seemingly farfetched. Mañara, like Don Juan, was
representative of an entire community of the titled elite—rich in wealth and lacking in
integrity. Born to one of Seville’s wealthiest families, Mañara abandoned his privileged
life to care for the disadvantaged and to bury the dead. Exaggerated accounts of
Mañara’s indulgent life of depravity further dramatize this conversion and shift in
lifestyle. Mañara, it should be said, was his own worse critic. Not only those authors
appropriating his biography, but also Mañara himself, contributed to the mythologies
surrounding his life and death.

overview of fiction inspired by the life and death of Mañara, see Olivier Piveteau, El
Burlador y el santo: Don Miguel Mañara frente al mito de Don Juan (Seville: Cajasol,
2007); and Pierre Brunel, Don Juans insolites (Paris: Presses de l'Université Paris-
Sorbonn, 2008).
60
While fiction is deeply entangled with the facts surrounding Mañara’s life, several
biographies provide a clearer picture.
8
Mañara’s father, Tomasso Mañara, was born in
1574 in Calvi, Corsica and immigrated to Seville as a young man to profit from the
recently established business with the New World.
9
He traveled to Peru before 1600 and
likely made his fortune there.
10
After returning to Seville, in 1612 he married Doña
Jerónima Anfriano, a daughter of Juan Antonio Vicentelo, who was one of Seville’s
wealthiest merchants and, like Mañara, a Corsican immigrant. The couple had eleven
children, three of whom died in infancy.
11

As members of the Hermandad de San Pedro Mártir, a group closely aligned with
the House of the Inquisition, the Mañara family was guaranteed honor and enjoyed access

8
Among others, monographs on Miguel Mañara include Juan de Cárdenas, Breve
relación de la muerte, vida y virtudes del venerable caballero Don Miguel de Mañara
Vicentelo de Lecca, caballero de la Orden de Calatava, hermano mayor de la Santa
Caridad (Seville, 1679); José Andrés Vázquez, Miguel Mañara (Madrid: Atlas, 1943); J.
M. Granero, Don Miguel Mañara (Seville: Artes Graf Salesianas, 1963); J. M. Granero,
Muerte y amor: Don Miguel Mañara (Madrid: El autor, 1981); Francisco Martín
Hernández, Miguel Mañara (Seville: Secretariado de Publicaciones de la Universidad de
Sevilla, 1979); Olivier Piveteau, Don Miguel Mañara frente al mito de Don Juan
(Seville: Cajasol Fundación, 2007); and Enrique Valdivieso, Miguel Mañara:
Espiritualidad y arte en el barroco sevillano (1627–1679) (Seville: Hermandad de la
Santa Caridad, 2010).
9
Little is known regarding immigrants to Seville from Corsica because they are often
confused with others coming from various Italian groups. For more, see Enriqueta Vila
Vilar, Los Corzo y los Mañara: Tipos y arquetipos del mercader con América (Seville:
Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos de Sevilla, 1991), 31–37.
10
Vila Vilar, Los Corzo y los Mañara (1991), 42.
11
The children baptized in the parish of San Nicolás include: Juan Antonio (b. 1613),
Jácome (b. 1614), Nicolás (b. 1616), Isabel (b. 1617), Ana María (b. 1618), Jerónima (b.
1619), Francisco (b. 1621), and Jacinta (b. 1623). Jácome, Nicolás, and Jacinta died
shortly after birth. See Diego Oliva Alonso, Casa-palacio de Miguel Mañara:
restauración (Seville: Junta de Andalucia, Consejería de Cultura y Medio Ambiente,
1993), 284.
61
to offices of political power as well as to the material symbols of high status.
12
Tomasso
Mañara’s income from trade and collected rents totaled 30,000 ducats. This afforded the
family a luxurious lifestyle—a home resplendent in art, staffed by servants, and supplied
with carriages. An inventory of the Mañara residence drafted upon Tomasso Mañara’s
death in 1648 reveals an impressive collection of exotic furniture, including biombos
(folding screens) and writing desks from Japan, beds from Damascus, and a large
collection of paintings, tapestries, prints, sculptures, wrought silver, jewels, and textiles.
The family also owned four slaves.
13
Tomasso Mañara not only collected luxury items
but also purchased titles of nobility for his two surviving sons, Juan Antonio and
Miguel.
14
Juan Antonio entered the Order of Santiago, and Miguel, at the age of eight,
the Order of Calatrava.
15

While we know very little of Miguel Mañara’s childhood and education, other
than that he was well-versed in Latin, we can assume he enjoyed a privileged existence.
16

However, while worldly goods and pleasures were abundant in his life, so too were
tragedies. Although Mañara survived the plague of 1649, he bore witness to the passing
of almost his entire immediate family before the age of thirty-five. Following the deaths

12
The Hermandad de San Pedro Mártir was a select group of fifty men whose blood was
without trace of ancestry from Jews, Moors, heretics, or converts. The group was closely
aligned with the Inquisition. See Timothy Mitchell, Passional Culture: Emotion,
Religion, and Society in Southern Spain (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
1990), 54.
13
AHPSPN 1648-Mayo-24-Sevilla-Inventorio de bienes a la muerte de Don Tomás
Mañara. For transcription of the inventory, see Oliva Alonso, Restauración (1993), 482–
489.
14
Mitchell, Passional Culture (1990), 54.
15
AHN, Consejo de Órdenes. Escribanía de cámara de la Orden de Calatrava, Exp. n.
9993.
16
Martín Hernández, Miguel Mañara (1981), 45.
62
of his father, mother, and two older brothers, he became the sole heir to the family’s
fortune. Fabulously rich and married to Doña Jerónima Carillo de Mendoza, a beautiful
noblewoman and daughter of a Granadan grandee, Mañara held a covetable position in
Sevillian society.
17
He partook in worldly delights—or, as he later put it, “served
Babylon and the devil, its prince, with a thousand abominations, arrogance, adulteries,
profanities, scandals and thefts, whose sins and crimes are beyond counting.”
18
Much
like Saint Augustine of Hippo (354–480) and the protagonist of Mateo Alemán’s
picaresque novel, Guzmán de Alfarache (Madrid, 1599 and Lisbon, 1604), Mañara
emphasizes his sinful past in an effort to dramatize his conversion.
19

Mañara’s carefree existence dissolved in 1616 upon the death of his wife. While
his sinful past is surely self-exaggerated, there is no doubt that her demise dramatically
changed his outlook on life and direction. The most noted biographer of Mañara,
historian Jesús M. Granero, writes that he succumbed to nervous agitation, and that it was
impossible for the brave knight to pass one night alone in his bedroom.
20
Soon, Mañara
committed himself to a life of seclusion and meditation, and he retired to a hermitage of

17
Jonathan Brown, “Hieroglyphs of Death and Salvation: The Decoration of the Church
of the Hermandad de la Caridad, Seville,” The Art Bulletin 52 (1970): 266.
18
Padre Juan de Cárdenas, Breve relación de la muerte, vida y virtudes del venerable
caballero D. Miguel Mañara Vicentelo de Leca (Seville, 1679), 146.
19
See Miles Hollingworth, Saint Augustine of Hippo: An Intellectual Biography (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 197. There are significant similarities between
Alemán’s fictional protagonist and the biography of Mañara. The novel follows the
adventures of Guzmán de Alfarache, a scoundrel from Seville, and the narrator eventually
pleads with his reader to convince him that the protagonist rightly converted before death.
See Mateo Alemán, Guzmán de Alfarache (Madrid, 1599, and Lisbon, 1604).
20
Granero writes: “En tales casos, su agitación nerviosa le angustiaba, sin que lograse
sobreponerse, y el valiente caballero no se atrevía a pasar solo la noche ni aun en el
refugio de su propia alcoba.” Granero, Don Miguel Mañara (2008), 294.
63
the Discalced Carmelites. Father Juan de Cárdenas (1613–84), a Jesuit chronicler writing
in the seventeenth century, states that during this period Mañara made confession and
fervently fulfilled his acts of contrition.
21
“Guided by the light,” he returned to Seville to
do the work of Christ and to lead a life of holy service.
22
Biographers of Mañara suggest
that this transformation was dramatic. Mañara was falsely labeled mad upon his return to
Seville; he was unmistakably a changed man, absolutely and definitively another.
23

Following this conversion, Mañara met members of the Brotherhood of Charity
along the Guadalquivir River. The brothers were in the midst of collecting bodies for
burial—nameless beggars, invalids, and criminals.
24
As the men worked, Mañara
petitioned them for admission to the Brotherhood.
25
Knowing of his alleged reputation,
the brothers were initially hesitant to admit him because of his previous life. Was service
to the poor a realistic lifestyle for Mañara? Despite reservations, the Brotherhood of
Charity accepted Mañara in 1662. Shortly thereafter, Mañara assumed a guiding role in
the redirection of the Brotherhood, devoting not only money, but also his life to its
mission. Because of his contributions, Mañara’s fellow brothers elected him to the

21
“Allí se dispuso para una confesión general, que hizo con fervientes actos de
contrición, y todo bañado de lagrimas.” Cárdenas, Breve relación (1679), 9.
22
“Guiado de acuesta luz, tomó resolución de entregarse todo al amor, y servicio de Jesús
Cristo; y no determinándose a entrar en religión, se resolvió de venir a Sevilla a su casa
con grande confianza, de que nuestro Seño le manifestaría su voluntad acerca del estado,
y modo de vida, que le convenía escoger para su santo servicio.” Ibid., 9.
23
“Cuando, a los pocos meses, la Sevilla siempre ruidosa y alborotada vio de nuevo a
Don Miguel Mañara por sus calles, quedó estupefacta. Aquel hombre era otro. ¿Estaba
loco? ¿Era aquélla una perturbación, que la desgracia irreparable explicaba, pero que el
tiempo se encargaría de serenar? Lo que el tiempo demostró fue que Don Miguel Mañara
era absoluta y definitivamente otro.” Granero, Don Miguel Mañara (2008), 288.
24
Mitchell, Passional Culture (1990), 55.
25
Granero, Don Miguel Mañara (2008), 288.
64
position of hermano mayor in 1663. He held this position until 1679. He rejoined
Sevillian society as a champion of the poor, the sick, and the dying, emerging as the
“personification of charity.”
26

Mañara’s transformation from scandalous libertine to pious Christian combines
genuine belief and clever self-fashioning. His actions were deliberate and often recorded
by him for posterity. He sought to prove that he had truly abandoned his former way of
life as a wealthy nobleman and was fully committed to one in service to others.
However, Mañara’s new identity certainly relied heavily on his personal fortune. A log
recording Mañara’s charitable donations sheds light on the wealth at his disposal and the
number of citizens he assisted. Mañara’s meticulous note taking ensured that no
charitable act went undocumented; he kept track of each monetary and material gift as
well as its beneficiary. Mañara gave money, food, clothing, beds, and blankets to
widows, the poor, the sick, and the elderly.
27
While he made numerous contributions to
individuals, as well as to various churches and religious orders throughout the city, he
directed the bulk of his wealth to the Brotherhood of Charity.
The realization of Mañara’s vision for the confraternity demanded substantial
capital. His personal donations facilitated the establishment of a hospice to shelter the
sick and to feed the poor. He also initiated an ambulance service and a Christian
education program.
28
In addition, Mañara promoted and organized the growth and
renovation of the Brotherhood’s facilities. Once elected hermano mayor, Mañara

26
Mitchell, Passional Culture (1990), 55.
27
AHSC Cuaderno N. 1 de el S. Mañara – Limosnas.
28
Brown, “Hieroglyphs of Death and Salvation” (1970), 267.
65
immediately assessed the state of the dilapidated church of San Jorge.
29
He ordered the
Brotherhood to complete the construction of its capilla mayor and renovate its interior.
30

Upon the project’s completion, Mañara directed the church’s decoration scheme,
commissioning Seville’s most celebrated artists, including Murillo, Bernardo Simón de
Pineda, Pedro Roldán, and Valdés Leal to adorn the interior with splendid artwork.
Mañara continued to finance the Brotherhood of Charity and actively involved
himself in its charitable causes. Biographers document Mañara’s extreme and at times
bizarre behavior under the mantle of charitable acts. Some displays were reportedly so
shocking that they attracted crowds of onlookers. Granero recounts Mañara’s interaction
with a man undergoing treatment for a skin ulcer, allegedly kissing a lesion “so
disgusting that one could hardly look at it” and dirtying his face with pus.
31
On another
occasion, Mañara claims he drank the vomit of a dying beggar.
32
Many of Mañara’s
documented acts of piety hold elements of exhibitionism; these devotional acts evolved
into dramatic and captivating public spectacles. Mañara also undertook acts of self-
mortification. He fasted and flagellated himself daily, asked his fellow brothers to deride
him, and he wore harsh scapulary that irritated his skin.
33
While undeniably dramatic,
these kinds of public and emotive displays of penitence and devotion were common in

29
Cárdenas describes the church, writing: “Cuando entró en esta hermandad este
venerable varón, hallo la Iglesia muy desmentida, el suelo era terrizo, el techo estaba a
teja vana, tenía abiertas unas buhardes, por donde entraban, y salían una bandada de
Palomas, que continuamente andaban saltando los maderos…” Cárdenas, Breve relación
(1679), 42.
30
Brown, “Hieroglyphs of Death and Salvation” (1970), 268.
31
Granero, Don Miguel Mañara (2008), 610–611.
32
Martín Hernández, Miguel Mañara (1979), 185.
33
Mitchell, Passional Culture (1990), 55.
66
the lives of saints as standard fare when proving sanctity, suggesting that Mañara
modeled his behavior after popular hagiographies.
34

Mañara’s public acts of humiliation and suffering speak to larger questions
concerning ritual and spectacle in early modern Spain. These extraordinary displays of
charity and penitence were theatrically performed for all to witness. Seville, famous for
its Holy Week processions and associated reenactments of the Crucifixion, normalized
such acts. This, in turn, provided an outlet for Mañara to make public demonstrations of
his own agonies and grief. While rooted in and informed by Seville’s history of
spectacle, Mañara’s behavior was nonetheless personally significant. In his study of
public life in Renaissance Florence, Richard Trexler argues that ritual behavior is a
unique experience, one that responds to a specific social environment, but it is in essence
personal. Ritual, he writes:
can be studied as a solution to social and cultural problems, as the basis of a
cosmology, or as a communications system. But the ritual act is first and always
an individual technique and experience. Only if we understand how the
individual Florentine citizen worked through forms, and how he experienced such
experiments can we finally understand the significance of the whole commune at
work. To describe the persons in a chapel as mere pawns on a social chessboard
or the members of a citywide procession as if they were only a crowd would be to
understand nothing.
35

Trexler suggests that rituals, while in part social acts, are in practice fundamentally
individual experiences. While definitive evaluation of the true psychological motivations

34
Catherine of Siena and Catherine of Genoa ate bodily filth to demonstrate they had
overcome the natural instincts of repulsion in an effort to prove sanctity. See Susan
Signe Morrison, Excrement in the Late Middle Ages: Sacred Filth and Chaucer’s
Fecopoetics (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 75.
35
Richard C. Trexler, Public Life in Renaissance Florence (New York: Academic Press,
Inc., 1980), 129.
67
guiding Mañara’s public displays of piety and humiliation remain elusive and outside the
scope of historical analysis, informed understandings of the public artworks he
commissioned and a close reading of his treatise, Discurso de la verdad, shed light on his
dramatic and seemingly idiosyncratic behavior.

The Art of Charity
In the fifteenth century, Pedro Martínez, an administrator for the Seville Cathedral,
founded the Brotherhood of Charity and established its mission—the recovery and burial
of bodies. As port activity in Seville increased in the sixteenth century, so did the
number of deaths by drowning in the Guadalquivir River. In an effort to work more
efficiently, the Brotherhood relocated from their original meeting place in the cemetery
of San Miguel to the Arenal to be nearer to the river.
36
Shortly following the move to the
Royal Armory Grounds and the establishment of the associated church of San Jorge, the
confraternity’s membership declined. Between 1613 and 1640, only twenty-nine
members enrolled in the Brotherhood, a dramatic drop from 1565 when one hundred and
twenty men joined. These numbers largely reflect Seville’s changing demographics. The
population of the city began to shrink in the seventeenth century due to emigration,
military service, and the expulsion of Muslims in 1610.
37
Small in number and lacking in
resources, the Brotherhood found it impossible to maintain the new property near the
river. The church of San Jorge was susceptible to flooding, and it quickly fell into

36
Enrique Valdivieso, A Guide for a Cultural Visit to the Church of el Señor San Jorge
and the Courtyards of la Santa Caridad Hospital in Seville (Seville: Guadalquivir
Ediciones, n/d), 2.
37
See Susan Verdi Webster, Art and Ritual in Golden-Age Spain (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1998), 40.
68
disrepair. The administrative board of the brotherhood moved in 1640 to demolish,
rebuild, and expand the church. Architect Pedro Sánchez Falconete (1586–1666) began
the project in 1644, but he quickly exhausted all available funds. The brothers abandoned
construction efforts shortly thereafter.
38

Following this period of recession, membership in the Brotherhood of Charity
again rebounded. The plague, it seems, drove this resurgence, as Seville was in desperate
need of burial services.
39
While approaches to crisis management in Seville were
multifaceted—including processions, prayers, isolation, and emergency care—the
provision of burial services was of critical concern.
40
The proper burial of bodies and the
purification of the air were of utmost importance in terms of public health. Foul smells
were considered a sign of decomposition and a cause of infection; the odors emitted from
exposed bodies not only posed a health risk, but also a psychological threat.
41
People
lived in constant fear. Diego Ortiz de Zúñiga, chronicler of Seville and eyewitness to the
epidemic, wrote that bodies were “barely covered with earth giving off an intolerable
stench.”
42
Despite the critical need for burial services, gravediggers remained in short
supply. However, enrollment in the brotherhood reached a turning point in 1650 when
the confraternity accepted twenty-eight new members. Between 1651 and 1653, ninety

38
Enrique Valdivieso and J. M. Serrera, El Hospital de la Caridad de Sevilla (Sevilla:
Micrapel, 2004), 15–18.
39
Brown, “Hieroglyphs of Death and Salvation” (1970), 266.
40
See Mary Lindemann, Medicine and Society in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2010), 200.
41
Kristy Wilson Bowers, Plague and Public Health in Early Modern Seville (Rochester:
University of Rochester Press, 2013), 33–34.
42
Deigo Ortiz de Zúñiga, Anales eclesiásticos y seculares de…Sevilla (Madrid, 1677),
708–709.
69
men joined to assist in the mission of the Brotherhood.
43
While this need for burial
services surely inspired many to join the cause, it is more likely that new members
viewed membership as an opportunity to do good works in general, thereby redeeming
their own souls in preparation for death under the threat of plague.
The Brotherhood’s growing elite membership introduced new capital, but it was
Mañara’s limitless wealth and generosity, first and foremost, that permitted the brothers
to expand services and to improve facilities. Mañara’s philanthropic work was also
inspirational, as it encouraged other wealthy members to similarly commit their financial
resources to the cause.
44
His involvement with the confraternity contributed to its growth
by attracting numerous counts, dukes, and other titled nobility.
45
While the Brotherhood
directed the bulk of its wealth in support of charitable services to the community, the
renovation of its campus in the Arenal required a significant infusion of money. Under
Mañara’s direction, the Brotherhood accumulated sufficient funds to resume the
construction of the church of San Jorge and its capilla mayor. Mañara organized a works
committee in 1666, and he and his associates conceived an impressive decoration plan for
the new space.
46
Arguably, Mañara invested heavily in art as opposed to other charitable
causes because paintings and sculpture are durable and public, serving as lasting and
accessible monuments to the patron’s piety.

43
Brown, “Hieroglyphs of Death and Salvation” (1970), 265.
44
Also actively involved in the Brotherhood of Charity was Don Pedro Corbet, a
descendent of the wealthy Corbet family.
45
Mitichell, Passional Culture (1990), 60.
46
Brown, “Hieroglyphs of Death and Salvation” (1970), 268.
70
Mañara commissioned Murillo, Valdés Leal’s greatest competitor in Seville, to
create a series of paintings illustrating six of the Seven Acts of Mercy. As one of the
city’s most accomplished artists and a member of the Brotherhood, Murillo was a natural
choice. The artist began the project in 1667, and it was completed and installed by
1670.
47
The cycle comprised Moses Sweetening the Waters of Mara, The Feeding of the
Five Thousand, The Return of the Prodigal Son, Christ Healing the Paralytic, Abraham
and the Three Angels, and The Liberation of Saint Peter (Figs. 2.3–8).
48
These paintings
allude to the charitable deeds performed by the Brotherhood of Charity—feeding the
hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, caring for the sick, housing
pilgrims, and redeeming prisoners, respectively. Representations of St. John of God (Fig.
2.9), the apostle of charity, and St. Elizabeth of Hungary (Fig. 2.10), a queen caring for
the diseased and poor, complemented the program.
49
The large-scale narrative scenes
reflect some of Murillo’s highest artistic achievements. Stylistically, they are in sharp
contrast to the loosely handled, violent, dark, and exaggerated forms of Valdés Leal.
Murillo’s painting style is restrained and the scenes are luminous and marked by a high

47
Enrique Valdivieso, Murillo: catálogo razonado de pinturas (Madrid: Ediciones el
viso, 2010), 148–49.
48
Four of these paintings are in foreign collections. Today, reproductions of these works
are found at the church of San Jorge. While Moses Sweetening the Waters of Mara and
The Feeding of the Five Thousand are in situ, The Return of the Prodigal Son is in
Washington’s National Gallery of Art, Christ Healing the Paralytic is in the National
Gallery, London, Abraham and the Three Angels is in Ottowa at the National Gallery of
Canada, and The Liberation of Saint Peter is in St. Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum.
49
Also by Murillo are two renderings of Saint Salvador and Saint John the Baptist as
children, and the Annunciation.
71
degree of sentimental naturalism.
50
As such, these new paintings provided a strong
counterpoint to the more somber subjects of the retablo mayor and Valdés Leal’s
Hieroglyphs of Our Last Days.
Mañara and his fellow brothers chose to highlight the seventh Act of Mercy, the
burial of the dead, for the high altar of the new capilla mayor (Fig. 2.11). Mañara
personally commissioned the retablo mayor in 1666, and he elected Bernardo Simón de
Pineda to design the structure. Pedro Roldán (1624–99) served as sculptor, with Valdés
Leal providing the polychrome. To illustrate the work most central to the mission of the
confraternity, Roldán crafted an impressive scene representing the entombment of Christ.
Solomonic columns enshrine the masterfully sculpted figures, and angelic
personifications of Faith, Hope, and Charity oversee the unfolding drama. San Roque,
the patron saint of gravediggers, and San Jorge, for whom the church was named, flank
the traditional cast of polychrome characters cradling the dead Christ and preparing his
body for burial. Pineda’s design for the retablo frames and stages Roldán’s cast of
characters as they work in fractured harmony. Flowing drapery, grasping limbs, and a
palpable sense of weight impart on the sacred narrative the character of a visceral and
emotive snapshot.
Mañara further entrusted Valdés Leal with the production of three monumental
paintings for the chapel—The Exaltation of the Cross (Fig. 2.12), In Ictu Oculi, and Finis
Gloriae Mundi. The Exaltation of the Cross, Valdés Leal’s final major commission,

50
For more on the stylistic difference between Valdés Leal and Murillo, see Enrique
Lafuente Ferrari, Breve historia de la pintura española, vol. 2 (Madrid: Editorial Tecnos,
1953), 348.
72
dominates the space above the choir.
51
Before exiting the church, the faithful looked
above and contemplated the massive canvas illustrating an early Christian legend on the
theme of worldly vanity. Nearly six centuries after the death of Christ, the Byzantine
Emperor Heraclius returned the True Cross, that upon which Christ was crucified, to
Jerusalem and its citizens following its theft by the Persians. In Valdés Leal’s rendering,
the patriarch of Constantinople, dressed in a bishop’s miter and white robe, meets the
Emperor at the gates to Jerusalem. Emperor Heraclius, lavishly clad and accompanied by
his court, is unable to enter. The Golden Legend recounts that an angel appeared to the
Emperor and told him to leave behind his garb and riches, take up the cross, and enter
Jerusalem in modesty, as did Jesus. The Exaltation of the Cross speaks to the
worthlessness of worldly goods, a message reiterated in Valdés Leal’s Hieroglyphs of
Our Last Days, the painting group first seen upon entering the church.
Central to Mañara’s iconographic program for the interior of the church are In
Ictu Oculi and Finis Gloriae Mundi. Despite their importance, the Brotherhood’s council
makes no significant mention of either painting in its records. The only reference made
to the painting group is found in a 1674 inventory with a description that reads:
Item two other canvases of the Hieroglyphs of death by the hand of Juan de
Valdés with large gilt frames and backgrounds, of dark color, and each one with
its pinnacle of the hearts of the Sta. Caridad. And these are pictures of the

51
Despite Juan de Valdés Leal’s renown, bibliography on the artist is limited. The most
comprehensive study of Juan de Valdés Leal and his work for the Hospital de la Caridad
is Duncan Theobald Kinkead’s Juan de Valdés Leal: His Life and Work (Ph.D.
Dissertation, University of Michigan, 1976). See also, Enrique Valdivieso, Juan de
Valdés Leal (Seville: Guadalquivir, 1988); Elizabeth du Gué Trapier, Valdés Leal:
Spanish Baroque Painter (New York: The Hispanic Society of America, 1960); and
Elizabeth du Gué Trapier, Valdés Leal: Baroque Concept of Death and Suffering in His
Paintings (New York: The Hispanic Society of America, 1956).
73
Postrimerías; one facing the other, making a set and correspondence with those of
the above item, in the two arches which fall below the choir; the cost five
thousand seven hundred and forty reales.
52

The Brotherhood’s archives contain no further details regarding these two important
works. However, the congruence between the paintings’ iconography and Mañara’s
writings suggest that the artist consulted his treatise, Discurso de la verdad. It is clear
that the painting group was a project of personal significance and one closely guided by
Mañara.
Discurso de la verdad provides some insight into Mañara’s thought process and
the conversations he possibly shared with Valdés Leal which would have informed his
painting of Hieroglyphs of Our Last Days. While the themes explored in this treatise—
the fleeting nature of life and the worthlessness of earthly pursuits—were widespread in
Spanish art and literature at the time, the work is significant in that it is a lasting remnant
of a layman’s dramatic and public conversion. Mañara’s treatise was a critical
component of Mañara’s self-fashioning efforts.

Discurso de la verdad
Discurso de la verdad is a brief treatise in which Mañara shares his ruminations on life,
death, and salvation.
53
The text calls to mind, both stylistically and conceptually, other

52
AHSC, Libro general de inventarios, folio 15. Text reads: “Item Otros dos lienzos de
Jeroglíficos de la muerte de mano de Juan de Baldes con molduras randas, doradas y
fondos, de color pardo, y cada uno con su remate de los corazones de la Sta. Caridad. Y
estas estar por pinturas de las Postrimerías; uno frente de la otra, hacienda juego y
correspondencia con las de la partido de arribo, en los dos arcos que caen debajo del
choro; costaron cinco mil setecientos y cuarenta reales.” Quoted and translated in
Duncan Theobald Kinkead, Juan de Valdés Leal: His Life and Work (Ph.D. Dissertation,
University of Michigan, 1976), 229.
74
theological texts popular in seventeenth-century Spain, such as Diego de Estella’s
Tratado de la vanidad del mundo (Toledo, 1562), Juan Eusebio Nieremberg’s Diferencia
entre lo temporal y lo eterno (Madrid, 1640), and Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet’s Méditation
sur la brièveté de la vie (Paris, 1648).
54
Despite such obvious precedents, Mañara
assumes a distinct voice.
55
His tone is threatening and direct as he summons, rather than
invites his readers to meditate on death. He opens the treatise stating:
Momento, homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris. Remember, man, that
you are dust and to dust you must return. This is the first truth that must reign in
our hearts: dust and ashes, corruption and worms, burial and oblivion.
Everything passes away: today we are and tomorrow we are gone; today people
miss seeing us, tomorrow we are wiped from their hearts.
56

Mañara immediately commands his audience to pay attention and to reflect upon the
fleeting nature of life. He emphatically calls for contemplation on mortality, stressing
temporality and the ephemerality of possessions, successes, and bodies, as well as the
importance of timely repentance.
However, themes articulated in Discurso de la verdad are not exclusive to
Mañara. Rather, ruminations on life and death were central to baroque mentality. The
impact of Juan Eusebio Nieremberg’s Diferencia entre lo temporal y lo eterno is clear.

53
Granero, Muerte y Amor (1981), 222.
54
Valdivieso, Miguel Mañara (2010), 106; Antoine de Latour, Don Miguel de Mañara:
Don Miguel de Mañara, sa vie, son discours sur la vérité, son testament, sa profession de
foi (Paris, 1857), 68.
55
Martín Hernández, Miguel Mañara (1979), 167.
56
“Momento, homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris. Es la primera verdad que
ha de reinar en nuestros corazones: polvo y ceniza, corrupción y gusanos, sepulcro y
olvido. Todo se acaba: hoy somos, y mañana no parecemos; hoy faltamos a los ojos de
las gentes, mañana somos borrados de los corazones de los hombres.” D. Miguel Mañara
Vicentelo de Leca, Discurso de la verdad (Seville, 1776; reprint, Seville, 1961), 9. All
translations drawn from D. Miguel Mañara Vicentelo de Leca, Discourse on Truth
(Seville: Micrapel, 2001).
75
Nieremberg (1595–1648), a Spanish Jesuit and champion of Counter Reformation
thought, was the first professor of natural history at the Reales Estudios of the Jesuit
Colegio Imperial of Madrid, and he wrote several books in this field.
57
However,
Nieremberg is best known for his religious works. In Diferencia entre lo temporal y lo
eterno, Nieremberg stresses the futility of earthly pursuits:
Wherefore Christians, especially those who aim to be perfect, are rather to
endeavor in themselves a strong conception of Eternity, then to stir up the fear of
death, whose memory ought not to be needful for the contempt of what is
temporal, since the first step unto Christian perfection (according to the Counsel
of Christ) is to renounce all that we possess of earth, that being so freed from
those impediments of Christian perfection, we may employ ourselves in the in the
consideration and memory of that Eternity which expects us hereafter, as a reward
of our holy works, and exercises of virtue.
58

Because there is no existing record of the contents of Mañara’s library, it is impossible to
determine whether or not he consulted Nieremberg’s work. However, Valdés Leal was
clearly familiar with and valued De la diferencia entre lo temporal y lo eterno; he
included an illustration of Nieremberg’s treatise in Allegory of Vanity (Fig. 1.15).
Situated directly below a skull, the book serves as a reminder of mortality amidst
representations of vanity. The congruencies between Discurso de la verdad and De la
diferencia entre lo temporal y lo eterno further corroborate Nieremberg’s influence on
both Mañara and Valdés Leal.
59

57
José Ramón Marcaida, “Juan Eusebio Nieremberg y la ciencia del Barroco.
Conocimiento y representación de la naturaleza en la España del siglo XVII” (Ph.D.
Dissertation, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 2011), 8–12.
58
Juan Eusebio Nieremberg, De la diferencia entre lo temporal y eterno (Seville, 1640.
Translated in, A treatise of the difference bbtwixt [sic] the temporal and eternal, trans. by
Sir Vivian Mullineaux (London, 1672), 15.
59
For more regarding the relationship between Nieremberg’s treatise and Allegory of
Vanity, see José Ramón Marcaida, “Ciencia, Barroco, y la Polifonía de las Cosas,” in Le
76
The temporal and the eternal are central to Nieremberg’s writings. While the
earthly realm is volatile and unpredictable, eternity is constant and unchanging. “With
good reason then,” Nieremberg writes “is life itself to be valued as nothing, since nothing
is more frail, nothing more perishing, and in conclusion is little more than if it had no
being at all.”
60
Like Nieremberg, Mañara stresses the fragility of life, reiterating
throughout the text that all we know and possess are short-lived. Valdés Leal invokes the
image of the skeleton extinguishing the candle, and the phrase “in the twinkling of an
eye” resounds throughout the text.
Oh instant that changes everything! Oh instant from being to not being! Oh
instant, the gateway from this world to the other! Oh instant at which everything
goes wrong or everything comes right! Oh instant when nobody will say I will
cross safely! Because no one knows whether he is a son of Your wrath or a son of
Your love.
61

Fixated on the “instant that changes everything,” Mañara begs the reader to immediately
question the utility of earthly possessions and pursuits. He asks, “What good will it be to
you at that hour to be rich, powerful, great or small?”
62
Material goods are useless, a
distraction from and hindrance to salvation.

milieu naturel en Espagne et en Italie (XVe–XVIIe siècles): savoirs et représentations,
eds. Nathalie Peyrebonne and Pauline Renoux-Caron (Paris: Presses Sorbonne nouvelle,
2011); and “Juan Eusebio Nieremberg y la ciencia del Barroco” (2011), 279–306.
60
Nieremberg, De la diferencia entre lo temporal y eterno (1640). Translated in,
Nieremberg, A treatise of the difference bbtwixt [sic] the temporal and eternal (1672),
74–75.
61
“¡Oh instante, que mudas las cosas! ¡Oh instante, del ser al no ser! ¡Oh instante,
puerta de los siglos! ¡Oh instante en que todo se acierta o todo se yerra! ¡Oh instante, en
que ninguno dirá, yo te pasaré seguro! Porque ninguno sabe si es hijo de tu ira o de tu
amor.” Mañara, Discurso de la verdad (1776; reprint, 1961), 27.
62
¿Qué te aprovechará en aquella hora ser rico, poderoso, grande o pequeño?” Ibid., 14.
77
Mañara also emphasizes individual insignificance and the futility of the body.
While Mañara as author does not explicitly reveal his anxieties, it is clear he feared being
forgotten, dying without leaving a lasting imprint. He writes: “our life is like a ship that
sails fast leaving neither track nor trace of where it went.”
63
Mañara fixates on the
transience of life and dwells on the ephemerality of flesh and bones. The process of
decomposition was also of concern to him, and like many, he dreaded the eventual fate of
his own flesh:
And this is the truth, and there is not any other: the shroud that we must wear
seeing it every day or at least keeping in mind that you must be covered by earth
and stepped on by everyone. And if you consider the vile worms that must eat
that body, and how ugly and abominable it must be in the tomb, and how those
eyes which are reading these words must be consumed by the earth, and those
hands must be eaten and dry, and the silks and finery that you have today will be
turned into a rotten shroud, your perfumes into a stench, your beauty and grace to
worms, your family and greatness into the greatest dissolution imaginable.
64

Mañara’s exposure to corpses, both as a witness to the plague and through his ministry
with the Brotherhood of Charity, likely fueled this preoccupation with the deterioration of
the human body. Mañara was cognizant that meeting the same end was inevitable, and
worldly possessions provided no safeguard.

63
“Es nuestra vida como el navío, que corre con presteza, sin dejar rastro ni señal por
done pasó.” Ibid., 10.
64
“Si tuviéramos delante la verdad, esta es, no hay otra, la mortaja que hemos de llevar,
viéndola todos los días, por lo menos con la consideración, de que has de ser cubierto de
tierra y pisado de todos, con facilidad olvidarías las honras y estados de este siglo; y si
consideras los viles gusanos que han de comer ese cuerpo, y cuán feo y abominable ha de
estar en la sepultura, y cómo esos ojos, que están leyendo estas letras, han de ser comidas
y secas, y las sedas y galas que hoy tuviste, se convertirán en una mortaja podrida, los
ámbares en hedor, tu hermosura y gentileza en gusanos, tu familia y grandeza, en la
mayor soledad que es imaginable.” Mañara, Discurso de la verdad (1776; reprint, 1961),
12.
78
Repentance is yet another theme central to Discurso de la verdad. Mañara
preaches the necessity of committing one’s life to God in order to ensure a quick passage
into heaven, thereby bypassing purgatory. He conveys a sense of urgency regarding this
spiritual journey and emphasizes the impending nature of death. Deeply engrained in the
early modern imagination were the concepts of purgatory and the importance of dying
well.
65
Consistently questioning the validity of penitence, specifically the compunction
of those who commit to God late in life, Mañara states: “You fool, now that the sun is
setting are you asking for time to do penitence? What were you doing when I lighted
your way through the day?”
66
Mañara probes the motivation behind the failure to convert
in a timely manner and expresses his condemnation and disbelief for the insincere
penitence of others.
The penitence of such men as these certainly seems false, since if they get better
they return to their vices; necessity forces them to speak the truth, not good will.
They are like robbers who do not confess their crimes except under torture, whose
confession does not free them from punishment, but brings them death.
67

Having already made his own amends with God, Mañara assumes a certain authority.
However, there is a thread of anxiety and uncertainty that runs throughout the treatise.
Mañara, it seems, questioned the validity of his own conversion and sought to dispel
doubts emerging both from his own insecurities and the community at large.

65
See Jacques Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1986); and Stephen Greenblatt, Hamlet in Purgatory (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 2002).
66
“Necio, ¿ahora que el sol se pone, pides tiempo de penitencia? ¿Qué hacías, cuando te
alumbraba todo el día?” Mañara, Discurso de la verdad (1776; reprint 1961), 21.
67
“Bien parece ser falsa la penitencia de los tales, pues en sanando vuelvan a sus vicios;
la necesidad les fuerza a que digan verdades, no la Buena voluntad; son como los
ladrones, que no confiesan sus delitos sino a puros tormentos, cuya confesión no los libra
de la pena, antes les da la muerte.” Ibid., 16.
79
Arguably, Mañara sought to convince not only himself, but also his community
that he was a spiritual authority and worthy of salvation. Discurso de la verdad is a
mechanism of persuasion (in part self-persuasion) produced by a man rife with angst.
Employing a long-standing metaphor, Mañara described the world as a stage:
And Epictetus said wisely that this world was like a comedy, and that we are
all players in it; some take the role of kings, some take the role of slaves, some
of cripples and others of rich men; some of wise men and others of ignorant
people; some scarcely say four words, others have a very long role, depending on
what the author of this comedy gave them, and each one must perform the role
that falls to him with perfection in the time allotted to him. The dividing up of the
speeches and the roles is the task of the author alone, since eventually these
figures that we play must come to an end, and when we depart from the stage of
this world we all become equal and are brought together as dust and earth. We
played what we were not, and we are not what we played.
68

Mañara sought to develop his own character, to control his fate, and to write a desirable
life’s ending. Having abandoned his earthly possessions, Mañara invested heavily in
establishing his legacy in preparation for the eternal. Discurso de la verdad is a durable
remnant of these efforts, efforts reiterated by Valdés Leal in Hieroglyphs of Our Last
Days.

Hieroglyphs of Our Last Days
As their collective title suggests, Valdés Leal’s In Ictu Oculi and Finis Gloriae Mundi

68
“Y así dijo muy bien Epicteto, que este mundo era una comedia, que en él todos somos
farsantes; unos hacen papel de Reyes, otros de esclavos; unos de tullidos, y otros de ricos;
unos de sabios, y otros de ignorantes; unos apenas representan cuatro palabras, otros
tienen el papel muy largo, según el autor de esta comedia les dio: y cada uno de lo que
debe hacer es el papel que le cupiere con perfección, el tiempo que le durare; que el
repartir los dichos y papeles, al autor solo le toca, que por postre estas figuras que
representamos, se han de acabar, y en quitándonos del tablado de este mundo, todos
quedamos iguales, y en polvo y tierra resueltos: representamos lo que no fuimos, y no
somos lo que representamos.” Ibid., 16.
80
were “hieroglyphs.” Hieroglyphs were of interest in Spain and throughout the Spanish
world in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Jesuits particularly embraced the
application of emblems and hieroglyphs as pedagogical and didactic tools.
69
Entwined
with attitudes toward the writing systems of the New World, as well as Egyptian
hieroglyphs and Hebrew letters, novel hieroglyphic images were developed to express the
truth of the cosmos and of God in a fashion ostensibly more direct than did less
privileged and familiar forms of writing.
70
These images were keys to the unknown, as
well as effective teaching tools. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1651–95), the poet, scholar,
and nun of New Spain, points out that Christ spoke to his followers in parables. For most
early modern Catholics, scripture was not translated into vernacular languages as a sign
of reverence, and symbolic language and images were used to communicate ideas
difficult to comprehend.
71
Valdés Leal’s paintings are hieroglyphs employing symbols
and visual language to relay the mysterious and incomprehensible nature of death as well
as the greatest unknown of all—the hereafter.
Though distinctive, the paintings Finis Gloriae Mundi and In Ictu Oculi are far
from unique. Valdés Leal’s paintings comprise part of the thriving vanitas tradition in
early modern Europe. Originating in the fifteenth century and flourishing within still life
painting in Flanders and the Netherlands for the next several centuries, these tableaux

69
Octavio Paz, Sor Juan, or, The traps of faith, Margaret Sayers Peden, trans.
(Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1988), 163.
70
Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, How to Write the History of the New World: Histories,
Epistemologies, and Identities in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 2001), 69.
71
Alejandro Cañeque, The King’s Living Image: The Culture and Politics of Viceregal
Power in Colonial Mexico (New York: Routledge, 2004), 29–30.
81
poignantly suggest the worthlessness of both worldly goods and ambitions in the face of
death and judgment, heaven and hell.
72
The vanitas painting tradition is a space in which
“the macabre and the ephemeral, the sinister and the sublime, are summoned and
represented.”
73
Rich in iconography, these paintings resonated with early modern
preoccupations with death. This genre, referred to as desengaño del mundo in Spanish,
was particularly popular in seventeenth-century Spain and clearly embraced by both
Valdés Leal and Mañara.
Within baroque mentality, engaño referred specifically to disillusionments,
deceits, and the act of fooling. Desengaño, however, is the use of human reason to strip
away illusions. It refers to truths—truths that lift one out of a state of being deceived or
mistaken.
74
The intention of these painting was to do just that—to expose deceits. For
this reason, vanitas paintings were powerful conduits of truth. Artists including Antonio
de Pereda (1611–78) produced works focusing on the ephemeral nature of life (Fig. 2.13).
Many paintings by Pereda include reminders of mortality and references to the
hollowness of pleasures and possessions—clocks, armory, skulls, extinguished candles,
coins, terrestrial globes, and jewelry.
75
Pereda and artists from throughout Europe

72
Enrique Valdivieso, Vanidades y desengaños en la pintura española del siglo de oro
(Madrid: Fundación Instituto de Empresa, 2002), 21–22.
73
José Ramón Marcaida and Juan Pimentel, “Dead Natures or Still Lifes? Science, Art,
and Collecting in the Spanish Baroque,” in Collecting Across Cultures: Material
Exchanges in the Early Modern Atlantic World, eds. Daniela Bleichmar and Peter C.
Mancall (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 107.
74
Barbara Cassin, Steven Rendall, and Emily S. Apter, eds. Dictionary of
Untranslatables: A Philosophical Lexicon (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2014), 206–210.
75
William B. Jordan and Peter Cherry, Spanish Still Life from Velázquez to Goya
(London: National Gallery Publications, 1995), 22–24.
82
utilized a shared symbolic language relating to death, one that became particularly
popular, but not contingent upon, crisis. Given the impact of the plague in Seville, the
genre is in dialogue with plague art.
Art historians have tried to discern the cultural repercussions of specific
epidemics throughout Europe; the impact of the plague on art is a recurring point of
inquiry in the historiography of Europe. Millard Meiss’s seminal work, Painting in
Florence and Siena after the Black Death (1951), argues that the plagues of 1340 and
1348 brought about a noticeable change in style and iconography in Italy. In particular,
Meiss claims that patrons and artists gravitated toward more overtly pious images, a
theme later developed by other scholars.
76
Christine Boeckl, for example, argues that
imagery and the macabre in general—decomposing bodies, skeletons, and the
juxtaposition of putrefied and uncorrupted flesh—emerged as visual responses to
ubiquitous fears associated with the Black Death. She holds that rather than passively
awaiting an inevitable demise, early modern Europeans—steeped in Church tradition and
confronting death on a quotidian basis—developed “psychological weapons” in order to
take back control of their environments.
77
Art historian Louise Marshall similarly
suggests that art was a tool used to combat the threat posed by plague, and that it served
to provide protection from its effects by invoking heavenly intercessors.
78
Religious art,

76
See Millar Meiss, Painting in Florence and Siena after the Black Death (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1951).
77
Christine M. Boeckl, Images of Plague and Pestilence: Iconography and Iconology
(Kirksville: Truman State University Press, 2000), 75.
78
Louise Marshall, “Manipulating the Sacred: Image and Plague in Renaissance Italy,”
Renaissance Quarterly 46 (1995): 486–487
83
grappling with themes relating to death, emerged alongside the systematic interventions
undertaken by statesmen and medical personnel to combat disease.
79

While Nicolas Poussin’s The Plague of Ashdod (1630–31, Fig. 2.14) is distinctive
in that it is a religious work illustrating a Biblical epidemic as opposed to an artistic
response to experience of plagues, it illustrates that early modern understandings of and
reactions to plague were twofold—medicinal and spiritual. Poussin’s painting adopts a
passage from the First Book of Samuel as its theme. The artist represents the horrors
associated with plague inflicted upon the Philistines by God as punishment for stealing
the Ark of the Covenant. The victims, representative of different stages of plague
infection, communicate the terror of God’s wrath. The unlucky ones collapse among
already deceased bodies as vermin lurk in the foreground; those that survive seek to
protect themselves from infection, covering their mouths while fleeing the scene. While
Poussin refers to the biological causes for the spread of disease through indicators like the
inclusion of rodents, the work remains infused with the Biblical theme of sin and
punishment.
80
Although the perception and understanding of plague evolved during the
early modern period, pestilence remained fundamentally a test of faith, one that
encouraged the devout to prepare for death and to make amends with God. Faced with
widespread epidemic, measures undertaken by civic and medical personnel were as
essential as expressions of devotion and acts of penitence among the faithful.

79
James Casey, Early Modern Spain: A Social History (New York: Routledge, 1999),
19–60.
80
Sheila Barker, “Poussin, Plague, and Early Modern Medicine,” The Art Bulletin 86
(2004): 659.
84
In confronting death, early modern Catholics assumed active roles to ensure their
own salvation. While Protestants tended to emphasize reliance on faith and the power of
divine grace, Catholics depended on pious action as a means of mitigating lengthy
sentences in purgatory. Because death was unpredictable, and God’s judgment was based
on the state of one’s soul at the time of death, the faithful made attempts to ensure a
“good death” while still in good health.
81
These acts were not only to encourage God’s
forgiveness, but also to allow one to face death calmly, salvation assured.
82
Mañara’s
conversion and commitment to the Brotherhood of Charity are powerful examples of just
such preparations. His extraordinary and deliberate displays of piety, devotion to
charitable works, and self-deprecation suggest that he was fully cognizant of his capacity
to make reparations for a sinful past to decrease time spent in purgatory. Mañara’s
commitment to art patronage was an integral component of these efforts; his
extraordinary expenditures on artwork went hand in hand with his commitment to
charity.

81
The concept of the “good death” emerged from the ars moriendi tradition. Ars
moriendi, translated as the “art of dying” or the “science” or “knowledge” of dying, often
refers to a genre of western European writings from the fifteenth century on preparation
for death. See Philippe Ariès, The Hour of Our Death: The Classic History of Western
Attitudes Toward Death over the Last One Thousand Years, Helen Weaver, trans.
(London: Vintage Books, 1982).
82
The Council of Trent mandated in Chapter XII of the Sixth Session: “No one,
moreover, so long as he lives this mortal life, ought in regard to the sacred mystery of
divine predestination, so far presume as to state with absolute certainty that he is among
the number of the predestined, as if it were true that the one justified either cannot sin any
more, or, if he does sin that he ought to promise himself an assured repentance. For
except by special revelation, it cannot be known whom God has chosen to Himself.”
Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, trans. Rev. H. J. Schroeder, O.P. (Rockford:
Tan Books and Publishers, Inc., 1978), 38.
85
In Ictu Oculi and Finis Gloriae Mundi are rich in meaning and exemplars of
baroque vanitas painting and plague art. In his employment of visual language associated
with these genres, Valdés Leal paints striking scenes, reliant on a remarkable degree of
surface naturalism that impressed later observers. Writing in the eighteenth century,
Antonio Palomino described the painting group:
Returning to Seville, he made a celebrated picture for la Caridad, of the Triumph
of the Cross, a most curious piece! And there likewise is a Hieroglyph of Death,
representing a dead Corpse corrupted and half devoured with Worms, which gives
a horror and dread to look at; besides it is so natural, that many seeing it,
inadvertently have either shrunk back with fear, or stopped their noses, left they
should be infected with the stench of the corruption.
83

While Palomino adopts a descriptive trope used by Pliny, he clearly conveys that the
paintings are affective and visceral, providing an unsettling welcome to the church of San
Jorge. Palomino suggests that Valdés Leal’s canvases are so naturalistic that one can
smell the disgusting odors the festering bodies exude; viewers find themselves at risk of
infection and death. The paintings likely startled many early modern onlookers as they
entered the church, at least briefly, into consideration of the transience of life and the
value of worldly possessions and pursuits.
Contemporary Jesuits, who sought to “shock” sinners into repentance in
preparation for the inevitability of their demise, greatly influenced Mañara and Valdés
Leal.
84
The church’s program begins with In Ictu Oculi, hanging on the left vestibule
wall below the choir. The striking painting is an elaborate mélange of objects and
symbols composed as though frozen in time. Valdés Leal haphazardly crowds

83
Antonio Palomino de Castro y Velasco, An Account of the Lives and Works of the Most
Eminent Spanish Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, trans. U. Price (London, 1739), 129.
84
Trapier, Valdés Leal (1956), 30.
86
representations and symbols of material possessions and terrestrial success below
reminders of mortality. The inscription, “In Ictu Oculi,” encircles a candle recently
extinguished by a gesticulating skeleton. “In Ictu Oculi,” meaning in the twinkling of an
eye, refers to the fragility of life and the unpredictable nature of death, a message
articulated in Corinthians 15:52:
Behold, I show you a mystery; we shall not all sleep,
But we shall all be changed.
In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye at the last trump:
For the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised
Corruptible, and we shall all be changed.

The painting’s composition and title encourage a meditatio mortis; life is a great illusion,
our being and our bodies are corruptible. The skeleton central to the image emphasizes
the ephemeral nature of our identity and flesh and serves as an indisputable reminder of
mortality.
The inclusion of the skeleton is significant, as its outward stare places the painting
in direct communication with its viewer. It is yet another medium through which Mañara
engages with his community and with future generations. There is little question that
Valdés Leal’s skeleton and the sentiments it imbues resonated with seventeenth-century
audiences. While the image is a symbol of death and temporality, the figure held many
implications within Spanish baroque culture. José Ramón Marcaida and Juan Pimentel
write:
The representation of the human skeleton, and of the skull in particular, is a
central theme in vanitas paintings, those moral allegories whose chief aim was to
invite the observer to reflect on the brevity of life and the caducity of early
87
glories. The skulls in these paintings are naked, discarnate bones. They hardly
turn their gaze to the viewer, claiming his or her stare instead.”
85

This observation resonates with In Ictu Oculi. Valdés Leal’s skeleton’s command over
the audience is a conduit through which Mañara reached the wider public.
The skeleton central to In Ictu Oculi is distinctive, as it directly confronts the
spectator. The painting is almost aggressively captivating, demanding the viewer’s gaze
rather than inviting it. While Valdés Leal imbues the figure with unnatural life, the artist
associates the skeleton with a collection of worldly goods. Both the corporal body and
the personal trappings are impermanent. One foot of the skeleton rests atop a globe and
the other on a haphazardly assembled collection of objects representing a wide range of
worldly pleasures and pursuits—richly colored red, pink, and white textiles drape a
marble tomb as well as armor, a sword and baton of command, and a chain and medal of
the Order of the Golden Fleece.
86
To the left is a stack of books with curled pages. The
artist incorporates sacred texts and secular histories in the paintings, many with titles
inscribed on the spine. Included among the collection are a book labeled plinio, likely
one of Pliny the Elder’s volumes on natural history; Prudencio de Sandoval’s history of
Charles V (labeled Historia de los V I P te); Padre Francisco Suárez’ editions on Thomas
Aquinas (labeled Suarez in 3 p. D. Th); and Johannes Casparus Gevartius’s festival book,
Pompa introitvs honori serenissimi principis Ferdinandi Avstriaci hispaniarvm infantis
(Antwerp, 1635).
87
The aggregation of these texts, rather than their isolated and fixed

85
Marcaida and Pimentel, “Dead Natures or Still Lifes?” (2011), 106.
86
Kinkead, Juan de Valdés Leal (1976), 231.
87
Alejandro Guichot y Sierra, Los famosos jeroglíficos de la muerte de Juan de Valdés
Leal de 1672. Análisis de sus alegorías. Estudio Critico (Seville: n.p., 1930), 48.
88
symbolism, conveys an overarching message—the worthlessness of secular learning and
terrestrial power.
In Ictu Oculi’s companion piece, Finis Gloriae Mundi, is a complex work painted
in a subdued palette primarily of browns, blacks, reds, and whites. The painting depicts
three decomposing figures lying in open coffins. Bones and skulls are piled up and
scattered about in the background, and a snake slithers in the lower right-hand corner.
An ethereal hand delicately suspends a scale, an obvious reference to Judgment Day and
to the uncertainty of salvation. Valdés Leal includes representations of vice and virtue
within the opposing pans of the scale. The left pan holds animals associated with the
seven deadly sins—a peacock, for pride; a dog, anger; a goat, avarice; a monkey, lust; a
hog, gluttony; a sloth, laziness; and, a bat, for envy. The opposing side contains objects
relating to penance and charity. Valdés Leal includes a rosary, a hair shirt, bread, and
books, one of which titled Salt de David or the Psalms of David. Suspended above the
collection of objects is a heart carrying the monogram IHS, a reference to the Society of
Jesus. Below the animals is a label that reads NI MAS—no more—, and beneath the pan
representing the life worthy of salvation, NI MENOS—no less.
Three coffins, each holding a body in various states of decomposition, dominate
the lower register of the painting. These are included to serve not only as visualizations
of the body’s expiration, but also as a direct reference to the mission of the Brotherhood
of Charity. Valdés Leal depicts one as a skeleton and two in the process of
decomposition. While the artist never traveled to Italy, it is likely that Valdés Leal was
familiar with the legend of “The Three Living and the Three Dead.” It is also possible he
89
saw reproductions of Jacopo di Castino’s fourteenth-century illustration of the tale (Fig.
2.15), or Buonamico Buffalmacco’s fresco, The Triumph of Death (1338–39, Fig. 2.16),
from Pisa’s Camposanto, a work widely circulated in print.
88
The figures illustrated by
Valdés Leal include an unidentified skeleton, a bishop clothed in white robes and
clasping a crosier, and a knight with dark hair and olive-colored skin, wearing a white
mantle decorated with the red cross of the Order of Calatrava, the pureblood rank to
which Mañara belonged.
89
Art historians widely hold that the knight is indeed a
premature “portrait” of Mañara following death.
90

The portrayal of Mañara as a corpse is shocking and departs from traditional
modes of representation; it is what makes this painting group significant and remarkable.
Art historian Elizabeth du Gué Trapier suggests that Mañara’s representation as a corpse
is so gruesome that Mañara likely provided the direction for this representation, rather
than Valdés Leal alone. The depiction of a decomposing body not only suggests
Mañara’s anticipation of his own demise, but also implies an intimate relationship
between the painting and its patron. Mañara invested heavily in the construction and
preservation of his identity, and Valdés Leal executed several postmortem portraits.
91

The painter consistently portrays his patron engaging the viewer through an expository
gesture. In Valdés Leal’s 1681 portrait (Fig. 2.17), Mañara instructs a young boy,

88
Lorenzo Carletti and Francesca Polacci, “Transition between Life and Afterlife:
Analyzing The Triumph of Death in the Camposanto of Pisa,” Signs and Society 2
(2014): S84–S120.
89
See Trapier, Valdés Leal (1956), 56, Trapier, Valdés Leal (1960), 57; and Mitchell,
Passional Culture (1990), 54.
90
Peter Cherry, “Valdés Leal,” The Burlington Magazine 133 (1991): 569.
91
Valdivieso, Miguel Mañara (2010), 128–133.
90
reading from the rules of the Brotherhood. In another example from 1683 (Fig. 2.18),
Mañara directs his hand toward a cross and a painting of the Mountain of God, holding a
copy of Discurso de la verdad in his right hand. Mañara similarly displays a copy of his
treatise in a 1687 portrait (Fig. 2.19), resting his free hand on a skull. While Valdés Leal
consistently includes allusions to death, he portrays Mañara as vivacious, engaging, and
instructive to the viewer. Valdés Leal’s gruesome portrayal of Mañara in Finis Gloriae
Mundi is in sharp contrast to these later portraits.
While Hieroglyphs of Our Last Days is rich in symbolism, employing a complex
visual language, the overall message and purpose are clear: to illustrate the
indiscriminate nature of death and to encourage piety and repentance, as well as
repentance. Contemporaries deemed the painting group efficacious; it worked as an
impetus for reflection within the context of the space. Cárdenas includes his
understanding of the intended function of the painting group stating “he was so full of
this knowledge, of how much it mattered to be brothers to exercise themselves in
meditation on Death and on the other Novísimos he put in the church of the Holy Charity
all the paintings and hieroglyphs of death.”
92
Cárdenas understood the painting group as
a gift from Mañara to his adopted community. The inclusion of Mañara’s body
complicates the intended purpose and meaning of the diptych, linking the paintings
inextricably to the biography of its patron and his self-fashioning program.
Since the seventeenth century, the life of Mañara and the mysterious nature of
Valdés Leal’s two Spanish Baroque masterpieces have attracted the attention of scholars.

92
Cárdenas, Breve relación (1679), 78, translated in Kinkead, Juan de Valdés Leal
(1976), 229–230.
91
While the overt meanings of In Ictu Oculi and Finis Gloriae Mundi are clear, a
comprehensive and conclusive explanation of the painting group proves elusive. Despite
the wealth of information centered on Hieroglyphs of Our Last Days, the paintings prove
polyvalent and less fixed than scholars ever hoped. Valdés Leal’s masterpiece gains
clarification through consideration in tandem with Mañara’s displays of piety and his
own ruminations on death, as expressed in Discurso de la verdad. While Mañara’s
fixation on death was not entirely unusual for early modern Spain, his significant wealth
permitted him to articulate his anxieties in elaborate and lasting forms.

Conclusion
Mañara is a unique and at times fantastical character in the history of early modern
Seville. He was pompously humble, promoting his shortcomings and exaggerating his
sins. While there is an evident disparity between these defamations and his record of
good deeds, some of Mañara’s self-critiques were valid. While his commitment to the
poor was seemingly unwavering, he continued to lead a privileged life. Unwilling to live
alongside those he served, Mañara remained in his family’s magnificent home until
1674.
93
The abandonment of worldly goods was seemingly easier to preach than to
practice.
Despite this paradox and his alleged past sins, Mañara’s commitment to charity
was nothing short of remarkable. Upon his death in 1679, he requested a simple funeral
and left his remaining wealth to the Brotherhood. His tombstone reiterated those
sentiments of humility that he promoted throughout his later life. The epitaph reads:

93
Mitchell, Passional Culture (1990), 59.
92
AQVI YAZEN LOS HVESSOS Y CENIZAS
DEL PEOR HOMBRE QVE A AVIDO EN EL MVNDO
RVEGVEN A DIOS POR EL.

HERE LIE THE BONES AND ASHES
OF THE WORST MAN THERE HAS BEEN IN THE WORLD
PRAY TO GOD FOR HIM.

Citizens of Seville continue to pray for their local hero, and members of the Brotherhood
of Charity made two attempts to have him sanctified.
94
To this day, the city hails Mañara
as one of its most pious and honorable citizens.

The church of San Jorge and the
treasures held within serve as a lasting monument to Mañara’s legacy.
The art commissioned by Mañara for the decoration of the church of San Jorge
remains in situ.
95
These artworks, coupled with Discurso de la verdad, are enduring
testaments to Mañara’s contributions to the Brotherhood of Charity and his allegiance to
its mission. Mañara was a dedicated member of the group and abandoned a life of luxury
to serve the poor. Valdés Leal’s paintings for the Brotherhood of Charity, The Exaltation
of the Cross, In Ictu Oculi, and Finis Gloriae Mundi, each illustrates that material goods
serve merely as hindrances to the achievement of salvation. Curiously, Mañara
commissioned the city’s most accomplished and highly paid artists to illustrate and
celebrate his newfound commitment to austerity. Mañara’s desire to disassociate from
his worldly possessions ultimately contributed to his own self-fashioning efforts as well
as to the efflorescence of art in the city.

94
The Brotherhood of Charity petitioned for Mañara’s sainthood in 1679 and in 1735.
Valdivieso, Miguel Mañara (2010), 77–81.
95
The majority of Murillo’s paintings for the Brotherhood were taken from the church by
the French general and statesman Jean-de-Dieu Soult in 1810. Standing in the places of
the originals are faithful reproductions.
93
Mañara’s commitment to charity and art reveals both the efficacy and
ambivalence of patronage in seventeenth-century Seville. His motivations for authoring a
treatise and for patronizing artworks were self-serving and deeply personal, yet ultimately
contributed to the cultural life and brilliance of the city. The works of those artists
commissioned to decorate the renovated church of San Jorge—Murillo, Pineda, Roldán,
and Valdés Leal—responded not only to the expectations of the confraternity as a whole,
but also to those needs specific to Mañara. These paintings, as well as Discurso de la
verdad, encouraged a wider public to validate Mañara’s belief that he was worthy of
salvation.
It is clear that death, while inextricably linked to the mission of the Brotherhood
of Charity, was the impetus for and guiding force behind Mañara’s approach to charity,
the writing of his treatise, and to art patronage in general. Mañara articulated his fears
and anxieties relating to his own demise; he prepares for his salvation through these
lasting media. At the same time, Mañara bolstered the city’s magnificence. Art, for all to
enjoy, was a remedy to Mañara’s spiritual crisis, one brought on by the deaths of his
family members and that of his wife, as well as his experiences associated with the 1649
plague.
94
Chapter Three

The Control of Avarice: Don Justino de Neve and the Hospital de los Venerables

Despite the city’s vicissitudes in the latter half of the seventeenth century, a network of
Seville’s elite families remained prosperous. Many merchants, who achieved success in
trade, continued to profit from investments in land, government bonds, silver, and other
precious goods. Others took advantage of established commercial ties with the New
World, Italy, and the Netherlands and continued to prosper in business amidst economic
downturn. Seville’s aristocrats and mercantile elite remained engaged with the city’s
cultural life, participating in informal literary academies and supporting local artists. In
imitation of the Court, nobles amassed elaborate private collections.
1
By the time of
Philip IV’s death in 1665, art collecting was in vogue, not only within the capital, but
also throughout the Spanish Empire.
2

In Seville, wealthy citizens like the Dukes of Alcalá and the Counts of Olivares
invested heavily in amassing important collections, acquiring artworks from both near
and far.
3
While collecting was hugely popular, the practice presented spiritual risks. The
Catholic Church held that the rejection of worldly goods and the adoption of apostolic
poverty assured good favor with the heavens. While the Church prohibited the
accumulation of material riches and associated conspicuous consumption with the mortal

1
See Jonathan Brown, Kings & Connoisseurs: Collecting Art in Seventeenth-Century
Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 95–145.
2
Jonathan Brown, Painting in Spain: 1500–1700 (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1998), 175–177.
3
J. H. Elliott, Spain and Its World 1500–1700 (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1989), 273.
95
sin of avarice, there remained flexibility when it came to expenditures on cultural
products. Although considered the most appropriate use of wealth, donations to the
Church and patronage of charitable services were not the only way for an individual to
realize philanthropic aims. The Church encouraged the elite to support the production of
religious art to benefit the populace. Wealthy individuals freely acquired sculptures and
paintings for public display, as well as for private collections, that would educate the
faithful, stimulate spiritual experiences, and bring the citizenry closer to God.
4

Members of Seville’s expanding noble class and religious hierarchy
commissioned and purchased fine art. Often drawn from the city’s most eminent families
and canons retained small fortunes often directed in support of the city’s magnificence.
This chapter focuses on the collecting practices and artistic patronage of Don Justino de
Neve, a canon at the Seville Cathedral who belonged to the city’s wealthy merchant class.
Like other ecclesiastics of his time, Neve made significant contributions to the city’s
religious and cultural life. Most notably, he directed the renovation of the church of
Santa María la Blanca and founded the Hospital de los Venerables, an institution
providing relief to destitute priests. Neve contributed his personal funds to these projects
and directed the decoration of each institution. Working on behalf of the Cathedral, Neve
successfully reconciled the ambiguous and fraught relationship between material wealth
and apostolic poverty. While Neve’s involvement in Seville’s market of exchange

4
Peter Cherry, “Justino de Neve: Life and Works,” in Murillo and Justino de Neve: The
Art of Friendship, Gabriele Finaldi, ed. (Madrid: Museo Nacional del Prado, 2012), 39–
40.
96
extended beyond those norms prescribed by the Church, he offset collecting and lavish
expenditures with his patronage of various benevolent causes.
Here, I consider Neve’s relationship with Murillo, focusing specifically on the
spiritual ramifications of Neve’s involvement with the city’s dynamic art market.
5
For
Mañara, a member of the noble elite, there was no societal expectation for him to redirect
his entire fortune to benevolent causes. For this reason, his actions were remarkable.
However, as a descendent of a wealthy merchant family and a member of the clergy,
Neve’s patronage of art carried heavy responsibilities and expectations. While Mañara’s
Discurso de la verdad suggests material wealth was a hindrance to salvation, Neve
reconciled his family fortune with his vows of apostolic poverty, employing worldly
riches for spiritual benefit.

The Control of Avarice: Art and the Counter-Reformation
In early modern Spain, nobles and the clergy traditionally made up the privileged estates.
While these two groups accounted for approximately one eighth of the population, they
were disproportionately influential when it came to cultural production.
6
The Church, in
particular, wielded significant influence and wealth, collecting revenue from its rank-and-

5
This chapter comes on the heels of the 2012 show, “Murillo and Justino de Neve: The
Art of Friendship.” The exhibition, organized by the Museo Nacional del Prado,
Fundación Focus-Abengoa, and the Dulwich Picture Gallery, showcased mature works
by Murillo and explored Neve’s relationship with the artist. On display were paintings
by Murillo commissioned by Neve for the church of Santa María la Blanca, the Hospital
de los Venerables, and works by the artist from the patron’s private collection. Its
organizers contextualized these works and explored the social, religious, and artistic
milieus in which they emerged. See Gabriele Finaldi, ed. Murillo and Justino de Neve:
The Art of Friendship (Madrid: Museo Nacional del Prado, 2012).
6
Antonio Domínguez Ortiz, The Golden Age of Spain 1516–1659 (New York: Basic
Books, 1971), 122.
97
file members and the surplus incomes of wealthy ecclesiastics.
7
This imbalance of power
attracted negative attention among members of the Church, and condemnation of the
religious hierarchy gained particular momentum in light of the Protestant Reformation
during the debate over the meaning and value of apostolic poverty.
8
Vows of poverty
surfaced as one solution to the corruption and greed plaguing the Church. In response to
criticisms targeting the lifestyle of the clergy, the Council at Trent (1545–63) specifically
addressed the privileges enjoyed by ecclesiastics.
The goals of the Council of Trent were twofold—the Council condemned
Protestantism and related heretical movements, while clarifying Catholic doctrine and
bringing reforms to Church discipline and to administration. As part of the proceedings,
the Council considered the threat posed by worldly goods and wealth and enacted
regulations prohibiting regulars—that is, clergy belonging to religious orders—from
owning property. The Twenty-Fifth Session ruled:
To no regular, therefore, whether man or woman, shall it be lawful to possess or
to hold as his own or even in the name of the convent any movable or immovable
property, of whatever nature it may be or in whatever manner acquired; but the
same shall be handed over immediately to the superior and be incorporated in the
convent. Neither shall it in the future be lawful for superiors to grant immovable
property to any regular, not even the usufruct or use, or the administration thereof
or convents shall belong to the officials thereof only, who are removable at the
will of their superiors. Superiors shall so permit the use of movable goods that
the furniture is consistent with the state of poverty which they have professed;
there shall be nothing superfluous, neither shall anything that is necessary be

7
Ecclesiastics had full control over their property and incomes, but they were expected to
redistribute surplus income to charitable and pious causes. Fray Antonio de Molina,
Instrucción de Sacerdotes (Burgos, 1610), Tratado 2, Ch. 13–16; and Manuel Martín
Riego, “La iglesia de Sevilla a finales del siglo XVI y inicios del XVII,” Isidorianum 20
(2001), 357.
8
See Hans Joachim Hillerbrand, The Division of Christendom: Christianity in the
Sixteenth Century (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007), 423–32.
98
denied them. But should anyone be discovered or convicted of possessing
something in any other manner, he shall be deprived for two years of his active
and passive voice and shall also be punished in accordance with the prescriptions
of his rule and order.
9

While regulars were under strict jurisdiction when it came to the ownership of property,
the bulk of the clergy, including parish priests, were not. Nonetheless, the Council of
Trent carefully defined avarice and warned clerics against its corrosive effects. Chapter
XI from the Twenty-Second Session of the Council of Trent (1562) asserts that avarice is
the root of all evil, and it claims that those who benefit personally from wealth and do not
apply it to ministerial or charitable causes are punishable.
10

Despite reforms made at the Council, the proper allocation of Church resources
remained a point of heated argument in the seventh century. In light of Spain’s declining
economy, many questioned not only the Church’s finances, but also the worthiness of its
contribution to society.
11
The backgrounds of the clergy were quite diverse, ranging from
the elite to the poor and uneducated. In Spanish society, many of them were strictly
pastoral and involved in “life-cycle” events associated with the sacraments—baptism,
marriage, Holy Communion, and last rites.
12
Others held few responsibilities, while
benefitting from many privileges, including exemption from military service and
taxation. Canons, in particular, held few obligations to the Church and enjoyed ample

9
Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, trans. Rev. H. J. Schroeder, O.P.
(Rockford: Tan Books and Publishers, Inc., 1978), 218–219.
10
Ibid., 158–159.
11
See Allyson M. Poska, Regulating the People: The Catholic Reformation in
Seventeenth-Century Spain (Leiden: Brill, 1998).
12
Gretchen Starr-Lebeau, “Clergy,” in Lexikon of the Hispanic Baroque, Evonne Levy
and Kenneth Mills, eds. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2013), 69.
99
discretionary time not devoted to the duties associated with their position.
13
Rather,
many became involved in various activities unrelated to their clerical duties. For
example, as discussed in Chapter One, Canon Francisco Pacheco invested heavily in the
city’s literary academies, developing his skills as a Latinist, while collaborating with
local artists.
The Catholic Reformation imposed strict supervision not only on the clergy, but
also on the laity. This period of “order seeking” bred a culture of control that extended to
every stratum of society.
14
In Spain, the spirit of the Catholic Reformation was fierce.
For this reason, some historians trace the beginnings this movement to Spain, as did
historian Eberhard Gothein in his seminal Ignatius Loyola and the Counter Reformation
(1895).
15
The impact of the Catholic Reformation was particularly palpable in Seville,
the seat of the Inquisition. Founded in 1480 to enforce the orthodoxy of converted Jews
and Moors, the Inquisition took on new tasks in light of the Reformation, enforcing
doctrine, advancing religious knowledge, and restoring respect for and interest in the
Catholic faith.
The Council of Trent imaginatively reconstructed early Church traditions,
stressing their importance. Members of the hierarchy staunchly defended those tenets
challenged by Protestants—the value of good works, the powerful roles of the Virgin

13
Domínguez Ortiz, The Golden Age of Spain 1516–1659 (1971), 122.
14
Quoted in Anne J. Cruz and Mary Elizabeth Perry, “Culture and Control in Counter-
Reformation Spain” in Culture and Control in Counter-Reformation Spain, Anne J. Cruz
and Mary Elizabeth Perry, eds. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992), ix.
15
I apply the term Catholic Reformation to address those changes made from within the
Catholic Church. Hubert Jedin, “Catholic Reformation or Counter-Reformation?,” in The
Counter-Reformation: The Essential Readings, ed. David M. Luebke (Oxford:
Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 1999), 23–24.
100
Mary, saints and relics, as well as, the Papacy, religious orders, Mass, and the seven
sacraments. The Church held that its survival rested largely on the education of the
faithful in religious matters. These efforts resulted in the establishment of church schools
and the mandating of attendance at sermons and recitation of prayer.
16
Because art was
accessible even to the illiterate, it was integral to improvements in religious education.
Painters began to study the early history of the Church and to create images of Christ and
the saints in strict adherence to scripture.
17
Representations of religious themes were
powerful, yet dangerous, so the Inquisition supervised their making. The Holy Office
recruited censors to assess the appropriateness of religious imagery and to ensure that
likenesses of religious figures positively influenced members of the Church.
18
In an
effort to avoid censorship, artists invested heavily in the correctness of their imagery,
studying scripture and debating popular subjects, such as the number of nails used to
crucify Christ and the age of the Virgin Mary.
19
Standards for visual representations
became intrinsically linked with Biblical facts and truths.
The Holy Office also closely censored artists and their products in accordance
with the decrees of the Council of Trent. In 1618, the Inquisition appointed Francisco

16
Henry Kamen, The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision (London: Weidenfld &
Nicolson, 1997), 263.
17
Tanya Tiffany, Diego Velázquez’s Early Paintings and the Culture of Seventeenth-
Century Seville (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012), 4–5.
18
See Kamen, The Spanish Inquisition (1997), 335; and Palma Martínez-Burgos, Ídolos e
imágenes. La controversia del arte religioso en el siglo XVI español (Valladolid:
Universidad de Valladolid, 1990).
19
Anthony Bailey, Velázquez and the Surrender of Breda: The Making of a Masterpiece
(New York: Henry Holt and Company, LLC, 2011), 21.
101
Pacheco to the position of inspector of paintings.
20
As an overseer of artistic production
in Seville, Pacheco enforced orthodoxy and theorized on the role of the artist and the
power of objects produced. Pacheco held that the correctness of religious imagery was
more important than its beauty, and he considered art a tool rather than an aesthetic
object. In his Arte de la pintura (Seville, 1649, published posthumously), Pacheco states:
And although I may seem to have strayed from my intention to deal with the
matter of sacred images (it also pertains to other arts), I want it known that if they
are not the sole application of painting, they are nonetheless the most illustrious
and majestic part and that which gives it greater glory and splendor, being used
for sacred histories and divine mysteries that teach the faith, the works of Christ
and His Most Holy Mother, the lives and deaths of the holy martyrs, confessors
and virgins, and all that pertains to this; and it is the most difficult part of this
noble art because of the strong obligation it owes to faith, propriety and decorum
which so few achieve, however great they may be as painters.
21

The viewpoint Pacheco expresses here is not novel—the artist was parroting the Council
of Trent’s decree on religious art:
Moreover, let the bishops diligently teach that by means of the stories of the
mysteries of our redemption portrayed in paintings and other representations the
people are instructed and confirmed in the articles of faith, which out to be borne
in mind and constantly reflected upon; also that great profit is derived from all
holy images not only because the people are thereby reminded of the benefits and
gifts bestowed on them by Christ, but also because through the saints the miracles

20
Brown, Images and Ideas in Seventeenth-Century Spanish Painting (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1978), 57.
21
“Y aunque parezca haberme apartado de mi intento á tratar la materia de las imágenes
(pues también competen á otras artes), hago saber que si no son todo el empleo de la
pintura, son, empero, la parte más ilustre y majestuosa y que le da mayor gloria y
esplendor, empleándose en las historias sagradas y misterios divinos que enseña la fe, de
las obras de Cristo y de su Santísima Madre, vidas y muertes de los santos, mártires,
confesores, y vírgenes, y todo lo que á esto pertenece; y es la más dificultosa parte que
ejercita esta noble arte, por las obligaciones forzosas que tiene de verdad, propiedad y
decoro, en que tan pocos aciertan, aunque sean grandes pintores.” Francisco Pacheco,
Arte de la pintura I (Madrid: Imprenta de Manuel Galiano, 1866), 204. Quoted and
translated in Brown, Images and Ideas in Seventeenth-Century Spanish Painting (1978),
57.
102
of God and salutary examples are set before the eyes of the faithful, so that they
may give God thanks for those things, may fashion their own life and conduct in
imitation of the saints the miracles of God and salutary examples are set before
the eyes of the faithful, so that they may give God thanks for those things, may
fashion their own life and conduct in imitation of the saints and be moved to
adore and love God and cultivate piety.
22

Images were powerful tools—they not only instructed, but they also confirmed to the
faithful the tenets of the Church to the faithful.
Control on artistic production was not isolated to Spain; it was widespread
throughout Catholic Europe. The most famous case of art censorship by the Holy Office
is that associated with Paolo Veronese’s The Last Supper (1573), painted for the refectory
of the Basilica di Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Venice. Veronese’s inclusion of parrots,
dwarfs, buffoons, and Germans outraged the Venetian Inquisition. Veronese, forced to
find a solution, changed the subject and title of the painting to a depiction of Christ in the
House of Levi.
23
As this incident reveals, mechanisms of control failed to suppress the
creative spirit or to hinder cultural growth. Despite the pervasiveness of the Inquisition,
artists continued to produce original imagery, and artistic license, to a degree, prevailed.
This unique culture of control allowed art to flourish in, at times, remarkable ways. For
this reason, the “Baroque” is inextricably linked to the Catholic Reformation.
In his 1946 essay, “An Introduction to the Ideology of the Baroque in Spain,”
Stephen Gilman argues that the baroque is a reflection of Tridentine doctrine. He asserts
that the style’s efficacy, in terms of “ideological” force, was in direct relation to the

22
Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, trans. Rev. H. J. Schroeder, O.P.
(Rockford: Tan Books and Publishers, Inc., 1978), 216.
23
Andrew Graham-Dixon, Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane (New York: W. W.
Norton, 2011), 35.
103
degree to which art of the period succeeded in communicating Catholic Reformation
orthodoxy to the public at large. He adopts the term “ideology” to communicate the
resulting system of norms:
By it [ideology] I mean not only a system or complex of ideas but also a cohesive
system of values. This latter, alone, could perhaps be referred to by using the
technical term ‘axiology,’ but this, also, would not carry the full meaning desired.
Actually the thought lying behind ‘ideology’ is something corresponding to the
German erlebnis, that is to say, a living totality of the points of view, attitudes
towards life, and patterns of thought occurring in those generations of men
actively partisan to the Counter-Reformation. Only an understanding of how
ideas become integrated to life and flow with its flow and of how values become
integrated to things and transform their objectivity will prepare us for the strange
transformation of a polemic waged by individuals into a style expressive of a
culture age.
24

Art was one way in which the Church’s system of values became integrated into the life
and flow of the city. Those ideas promoted by the Church were indisputable. Gilman
goes on to write that following the Council of Trent, the Catholic Church stressed
“absolute and dogmatic standards of truth” and applied them with irrefutable logic.
25

This resulted in the association of the concepts of propaganda and control with Church art
produced amidst the Catholic Reformation.
26

The Catholic Reformation affected patrons and artists alike, influencing both
Neve’s approach to collecting and Murillo’s artistic production. Just as artists followed
the parameters set down by the Council of Trent and enforced by the Inquisition, patrons
also carried out their dealings with the city’s community of artists in a way that upheld

24
Stephen Gilman, “An Introduction to the Ideology of the Baroque in Spain,”
Symposium: A Quarterly Journal in Modern Literatures (1946): 82–107.
25
Ibid., 85.
26
See Evonne Anita Levy, Propaganda and the Jesuit Baroque (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2004), 39.
104
the standards of the Catholic Church. Murillo, a devout Catholic, and Neve, an agent of
the Church, were careful to conduct business in accordance with doctrine.

Bartolomé Esteban Murillo and Justino de Neve
Murillo’s Urchin Hunting Fleas (c. 1648, Fig. 3.1) is a portrait of daily life in the streets
of seventeenth-century Seville.
27
The genre painting, now housed at the Louvre in Paris,
depicts a young boy sitting and searching his body for the pesky insects. Sunlight
streams through a window, casting light and shadow on a modest enclosure. Dressed in
tattered clothing, the anonymous boy is shoeless. The scene is peaceful and quiet, yet the
boy’s appearance speaks to a larger context—the grimy streets of Seville. Murillo
painted several genre scenes portraying Seville’s poor, focusing primarily on the
disadvantaged children of the city. These paintings are not simply snapshots of daily life;
they are carefully contrived characterizations of the devout poor, a socio-economic group
essential to early modern Christian society.
Murillo, one of the most celebrated and highly paid artists of his time, rubbed
elbows with Seville’s elite. While Murillo worked closely with the city’s privileged,
reaping the financial benefits of their support, he also involved himself with a wide range
of charitable activities as a member of the Confraternity of the Rosary, the Franciscan
Third Order, and the Brotherhood of Charity. Murillo’s professional success relied
heavily on the generosity of wealthy patrons. Paradoxically, his spiritual wellbeing
depended on the underprivileged—the subject of many of Murillo’s paintings. However,

27
See Xanthe Brooke and Peter Cherry, Murillo: Scenes of Childhood (London:
Merrell, 2001).
105
the rich and the poor were interdependent in early modern Spain. While the poor
embodied Christ’s virtue of humility in suffering, there was an expectation that the rich
would care for those less fortunate; the privileged gained merit through charity and the
carrying out of good deeds. This symbiotic relationship facilitated salvation for the poor
and rich alike.
28

Murillo was the youngest of fourteen children. His father, Gaspar Esteban, a
barber-surgeon, was financially stable and provided wealth for a large family. Following
the deaths of his father in 1627 and his mother in 1628, Murillo came under the
guardianship of his older sister and her husband. Members of Murillo’s family, including
his uncle, the painter Antonio Pérez, thereafter nurtured his career as an artist. Murillo
entered the studio of Juan del Castillo (1590–1657), a provincial painter and a relative of
his mother, where he apprenticed between the ages of twelve and fourteen years. There,
he began to produce paintings for trade fairs and for export to the Indies. Despite claims
that Murillo trained abroad in Italy, his early work evidences the influence of his mentor,
as well as that of Juan de Roelas (1570–1625), an influential Flemish painter active in
Seville at the time.
29

28
This was a common relationship in early modern Europe. See Brian S. Pullan, Rich
and Poor in Renaissance Venice: The Social Institutions of a Catholic State, to 1620
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971); and Nick Terpstra, Cultures of
Charity: Women, Politics, and the Reform of Poor Relief in Renaissance Italy
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013).
29
Joachim von Sandrart (1606–88), the artist’s first biographer from Germany and active
in Amsterdam, wrote that the artist traveled to the New World and studied painting in
Italy. Palomino, the artist’s first Spanish biographer, refutes Sandart’s assumption that
Murillo trained in Italy, writing “The fact is that foreigners do not want to grant the
laurels of fame to any Spaniard unless he has passed through the customhouse of Italy.”
See Suzanne L. Stratton-Pruitt, “Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, 1617–1682,” in Bartolomé
106
Quite early in Murillo’s career, religious institutions throughout the city entrusted
him with major projects. In 1652, at the age of thirty-five, he received his first significant
commission—to decorate the cloister of the monastery of San Francisco del Grande, the
largest religious house in Seville. He created eleven paintings, each illustrating events
from the lives of Franciscan saints. The earliest work in the series, San Diego Giving
Food to the Poor (Fig. 3.2), reflects the styles of Francisco de Zurbarán and Francisco de
Herrera the Elder.
30
Characterized by naturalistic realism, the painting appears staged,
cast against a black background. Having proven his abilities, in 1655 the monastery of
San Leandro commissioned Murillo to paint four scenes from the life of Saint John the
Baptist and one of Saint Augustine washing the feet of Christ.
31
That same year, Juan de
Federigui, archdeacon of Carmona and the canon of Seville, commissioned Murillo to
paint effigies of Saints Isidore and Leandro for the Cathedral. After seeing these
paintings, Federgui declared that Murillo was the best artist in Seville.
32
Murillo proved
his talents, and he had little competition in the city. Francisco Pacheco died in 1644, and
by then Zurbarán was at the end of his career. Valdés Leal was involved with an
important commission for the Carmelites in Córdoba, and Francisco de Herrera the

Esteban Murillo (1617–1682): Paintings from American Collections, Suzanne L.
Stratton-Pruitt, ed. (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2002), 11–12. Regarding Juan de
Roelas, see Enrique Valdivieso, Juan de Roelas (Seville: Diputación Provincial de
Seville, 1978).
30
Xavier Bray, Murillo: at Dulwich Picture Gallery (London: Philip Wilson Publishers,
2013), 9.
31
Suzanne L. Stratton-Pruitt, “Bartolomé Esteban Murillo” (2002), 20.
32
Details of the artists life and work are drawn from Diego Angulo Iñiguez, Murillo: Su
vida, su arte, su obra (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1981); and Enrique Valdivieso, Murillo:
Catálogo razonado de pinturas (Madrid: Ediciones el viso, 2010).
107
Younger left Seville for Madrid shortly following the establishment of the Academia de
Bellas Artes. Murillo was easily the most sought-after artist in the city.
33

Murillo secured a successful career for himself and fostered the growth of the
city’s artistic community through the establishment of the Academia de Bellas Artes in
1660. He was a champion of the arts and was proud of his role as an artist. He manifests
this attitude visually in his self-portrait of 1670 (Fig. 3.3). Murillo, wearing a black
jacket over a white shirt with a lace collar, encloses his half-portrait within a faux oval
frame. The artist confidently engages the viewer, meeting his gaze. Arranged to either
side of the frame are the tools of his profession—brushes, a palette prepared with
pigments, a compass, ruler, red chalk holder with chalk included, and a curled piece of
paper. The Latin inscription on the cartouche reads: “Bartolomé Murillo, portraying
himself to fulfill the wishes and prayers of his children.”
34
This curious inscription
suggests that Murillo made this rather formal, yet intimate, painting for his family.
35
In
this portrait, Murillo makes his profession obvious and conflates his role as a painter with
that of his self.

33
Gabrielle Finadli, “The Art of Friendship,” in Murillo and Justino de Neve: The Art of
Friendship, Gabriele Finaldi, ed. (Madrid: Museo Nacional del Prado, 2012), 18.
34
The inscription reads: “Bartolomeus Murillo seipsum depin/gens pro filiorum votis ac
precibus explendis.”
35
Susanne Waldmann argues that Murillo painted this portrait for the members of the
Academy as a gift to his artistic offspring. Gabriele Finaldi rejected this proposition
because the portrait may have been in the family’s possession. See Gabriele Finaldi, ed.,
Murillo and Justino de Neve: The Art of Friendship (Madrid: Museo Nacional del
Prado, 2012), 99–100; and Susanne Waldmann, El artista y su retrato en la España del
siglo XVII. Una aproximación al studio de la pintura retratística española (Madrid:
Alianza, 2007).
108
Biographers of Murillo highlight not only his talent as a painter, but also his
character. Palomino, a contemporary, wrote: “our Murillo was favored by Heaven not
only in the eminence of his ability but also in his natural endowments; he had a good
figure and an amiable disposition and was humble and modest.”
36
The nineteenth-
century chronicler of the city, Juan Agustín Ceán Bermúdez (1749–1829), shared those
sentiments:
Bartolomé Esteban Murillo’s amiability corresponded perfectly with the
sweetness and style of his paintings. This virtue and other natural gifts he
demonstrated in teaching his followers gently directing them along the correct
path that leads to the imitation of nature.
37

This idea that Murillo was as good a man as he was a painter persisted throughout the
eighteenth century. Edmondo de Amicis’ 1880 guidebook to Spain observes, “His
canvases make him known as if he had lived with us. He was handsome, good, and
pious; many knew not where to touch him; around his crown of glory he wore one of
love. He was born to paint the sky.”
38
In her 1884 biography of the artist, American
author Emelyn W. Washburn romanticizes both Spain and the artist, writing:
We find on his canvas the biography of all the scenes of the market-place, the
everyday life of the common people. In his Holy Families we recall the very
image of his youth; the earnest, dark-eyed peasant women; the somber
Franciscans; the happy, laughing children. We breathe everywhere the air of
Andalusia; we look on its bare hills, the transparent waters and the valleys that
laugh and sign; the gayest flowers, the freshest fields, and the cattle feeding in

36
Antonio Palomino de Castro y Velasco, An Account of the Lives and Works of the Most
Eminent Spanish Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, trans. U. Price (London, 1739), 173.
37
Juan Agustín Ceán Bermúdez, Carta de D. Agustín Ceán Bermúdez a un amigo suyo
sobre el estílo y gusto en la pintura de la Escuela Sevillana y sobre el grado de
perfección a que se elevó Bartolomé Esteban Murillo cuya vida se inserta, y se inserta y
se describen sus obras en Sevilla (Cádiz, 1806; reprint, Seville, 1968).
38
Edmondo de Amicis, Spain and the Spaniards, trans. Wilhelmina W. Cady (New York,
1880), 140.
109
green nooks; along the road at every turn you meet a rough shrine, with a figure
of the Virgin or Christ, and an inscription calling you to prayers. It is a series of
fair pictures it brings before you; but more than all we have the purity of a man
who, through all the temptations of an artist’s life, has known a higher power than
nature,–whose life is hymn of faith and love.
39

Collectively, these testaments to Murillo’s character paint a picture of a man who is both
talented and good. These authors celebrated Murillo for his artistic abilities and as well
as for his human qualities, alluding to his piety. Each of these biographers writes from a
different and specific perspective about Murillo in particular and Spanish painting in
general, and some accounts are in part based on earlier ones. This overall view prevails.
Arguably, the artist’s alleged favorable disposition contributed to his success. While
competition in the city was steep, Murillo secured countless commissions, and he gained
not only the respect and loyalty, but also the friendship of the city’s most illustrious
individuals.
The artist’s nephew José de Veitia Linaje (1620–88), an important affiliate of the
Casa de Contratación and member of the Brotherhood of the True Cross, favorably
influenced the opinions of wealthy merchants regarding Murillo, as well as those of
various religious institutions throughout the city. As a member of the Brotherhood of
Charity, Murillo was himself familiar with the leading figures associated with lay
religious life in Seville. The painter enjoyed a close relationship with Miguel Mañara,
who served as godfather to his son José Esteban.
40
Such connections proved vital to
Murillo’s success. In light of economic decline and the depletion of the city’s resources,

39
Emelyn W. Washburn, The Spanish Masters: An Outline of the History of Painting in
Spain (New York and London, 1884), 140–141.
40
Jonathan Brown, Painting in Spain (1998), 216.
110
these relationships allowed Murillo to prosper, while celebrated artists like Zurbarán lost
their steady flow of commissions.
41

Among Murillo’s many patrons in the city was his most important client Justino
de Neve, born to an affluent family during the city’s Golden Age. Miguel de Neve,
Justino de Neve’s Flemish grandfather, relocated to Seville from Herentals in 1570 to
profit from the city’s monopoly on trade with the New World. He and his son Miguel,
Justino de Neve’s father, were successful merchants. Their commercial dealings afforded
the Neve family a large home in the wealthy parish of San Bartolomé and access to the
city’s most influential individuals. Positioned for success, two of his brothers went into
trade and assumed positions of authority—one was appointed to Seville’s veinticuatro
(city council) and served as a familiar of the Inquisition—Justino de Neve and his two
sisters entered religious life, as was common at the time for daughters and younger sons
of prominent families. His sister María Luisa entered the Augustinian convent of San
Leandro, and Francisca Paula was a nun at the convent of La Madre de Dios. Justino de
Neve entered ecclesiastical studies and was ordained a priest in 1646. He later became a
canon of the Cathedral in 1658.
42

At the Cathedral, Neve involved himself with major ventures, such as the
renovation of the church of Santa María la Blanca, the canonization case of San
Fernando, and the establishment of the Hospital de los Venerables. The success of each
endeavor, and of Neve’s career with the Church in general, rested largely on his family’s

41
Jonathan Brown, “Patronage and Piety: Religious Imagery in the Art of Francisco
Zurbarán,” in Zurbarán, Jeannine Baticle, ed. (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1987),
18.
42
Cherry, “Justino de Neve” (2012), 31–32.
111
fortune. Neve raised and donated funds for the renovation of the church of Santa María
la Blanca and directed its redecoration. For this project, he commissioned Murillo to
paint four large-scale lunettes for the space—The Dream of the Patrician and his Wife
(Fig. 1.6), The Patrician and his Wife before Pope Liberius (Fig. 1.7), The Immaculate
Conception (Fig. 3.4), and The Church Triumphant (Fig. 3.5). The renovation and
decoration of the space were huge successes, and contemporary chroniclers of the city,
including Ceán Bermúdez and Gabriel Aranda, hailed Neve for his achievements.
43

Murillo honored Neve’s commitment to the project in visual form. In The Immaculate
Conception, the artist illustrates six figures to the left of the Virgin Mary. Two are
clearly biblical types, and four are portraits of individuals affiliated with the church of
Santa María la Blanca. Art historian José Fernández López identified a parish priest, the
Marquis of Villamanrique, and a man with his arms crossed on his chest resembling
Neve.
44
Considering that Neve was Murillo’s patron and confidant, it is more likely than
not that this is indeed a representation of Neve.
The friendship between Neve and Murillo is significant to the biographies of both
men. While it is clear they grew close during the renovation process for the church of
Santa María la Blanca, it is likely their strong relationship preceded this project. Murillo

43
“Y en 65, pintó los quarto medios puntos de la iglesia de santa María la Blanca á
expensas del fervoroso racionero D. Justino Neve.” Juan Agustín Ceán Bermúdez,
Diccionario histórico de los más ilustres profesores de las bellas artes en españa, tomo
Segundo (Madrid, 1800), 54; and “Pues pudiera decir tanto de su piedad, como lo publica
la grande obra, costosa renovación, y adorno precioso de la Iglesia de Santa María la
Blanca (blanco de su devoción) Capilla de la Catedral, acabada de labrar a muy
quantiosas expensas por su gran zelo el año de 1665.” Gabriel de Aranda, Vida del siervo
de Dios, Fernando de Contreras (Seville, 1692), 464.
44
José Fernández López, “Nuevas pinturas de Lucas Valdés,” Laboratorio de
arte/Departamento de Historia del Arte 2 (1989): 79–80.
112
traveled in Neve’s social circle and lived in close proximity to his patron. In 1663, the
painter moved to the parish of San Bartolomé, where Neve resided with his family until
1669.
45
The two worked together, decorating religious spaces in the city and calling upon
one another to handle personal affairs. Murillo appraised Neve’s deceased mother’s
estate, and Neve served as the executor of the painter’s will. When Neve undertook his
next major project—the establishment, construction, and decoration of the new Hospital
de los Venerables—he called upon Murillo, his good friend and neighbor, for
assistance.
46

The Art of Healing: Hospital de los Venerables
In 1248, Ferdinand III ordered that each parish in Seville establish a hospital and
confraternity to provide for the care of the sick and dying.
47
The initial fervor for this
cause dissipated by the fifteenth century, and Don Diego Hurtado de Mendoza,
Archbishop of Seville from 1486 to 1502, called for the closure of some hospitals in the
city.
48
The diocese recognized that while there were many hospitals in the city, few
functioned efficiently. In response to the Archbishop’s mandate, the majority of the
city’s smaller hospitals closed by 1566.
49
The sick and the dying then sought medical

45
Teodoro Falcón, “El Canónigo Justino de Neve y la Iglesia de Santa María la Blanca
de Seville,” Laboratorio de Arte 23 (2011): 593.
46
Gabriele Finadli, “The Art of Friendship” (2012), 18.
47
Mary Elizabeth Perry, Gender and Disorder in Early Modern Seville (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1990), 154.
48
Antonio Hermosilla Molina, Cien años de medicina sevillana (Sevilla: Consejo
Superior de Investigacions cientificas y del instituto de estudios sevillanos, 1970), 610.
49
María Jesús Sanz Serrano, “El legado del cardenal Hurtado de Mendoza a la catedral
de Sevilla” Laboratorio de Arte 17 (2004): 94; and José Rodríguez Molina, “Patrimonio y
rentas de la Iglesia en Andalucía,” in La iglesia en el mundo medieval y modern, María
113
attention at either the Hospital del Amor de Dios or the Hospital del Espíritu Santo.
These two hospitals, providing treatments for fevers, tuberculosis, and other acute
illnesses, remained essential to the populace.
50

However, the closure of hospitals in the city did not mean that religious
organizations ceased to provide care. The Council of Trent’s emphasis on monastic life
encouraged a burgeoning of convents and monasteries and a proliferation of lay
organizations. This resulted in the establishment of one hundred and sixty-nine
monasteries and convents in Seville during the sixteenth century, with approximately an
additional ninety the following century.
51
The city’s monopoly on trade with the New
World and the omnipresence of the Inquisition further encouraged interest in and the
growth of lay organizations. The influx of foreigners to the city also significantly
encouraged membership in these organizations. Native Sevillians, like citizens of most
early modern cities, were suspicious of newcomers because their family histories and
religious backgrounds were largely unknown. Affiliation with a lay organization often
mitigated the mistrust relating to purity of ancestral blood and commitment to the
Church.
52
While smaller hospitals were no longer in operation, these religious

Desamparados Martínez San Pedro and María Dolores Segura del Pino, eds. (Almería:
Instituto de Estudios Almerienses, Diputación de Almería, 2004),130.
50
Hermosilla Molina, Cien años de medicina sevillana (1970), 611.
51
Diego Ortiz de Zúñiga, Anales eclesiásticos y seculars: de la muy noble y muy leal
ciudad de Sevilla, metrópoli de la Andalucía, Tomo IV (Madrid, 1796), 123–24.
52
Susan Verdi Webster, Art and Ritual in Golden-Age Spain: Sevillian Confraternities
and the Processional Sculpture of Holy Week (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1998), 30–35.
114
organizations continued to provide rest homes for the elderly and shelter for travelers,
pilgrims, orphans, and the impoverished.
53

Confraternities in Golden Age Seville assumed a greater importance in light of the
plague. The needs of the populace intensified with the onslaught of the 1649 epidemic,
and the increasing number of underprivileged citizens mandated that latent hospitals, like
the Hospital de la Caridad, reopen. Many of these previously shuttered hospices and
hospitals did not provide care for victims of plague; however, they assisted with much
needed services to survivors; the plague left many citizens of Seville impoverished and
alone. Neve recognized the need for more hospitals and channeled his energies toward
the establishment of a new institution, the Hospital de los Venerables. This hospital
merged with and assumed the mission of the Hospital de San Bernardo, founded in 1355
by the Hermandad de Sacerdotes.
54
Working from within that brotherhood, Neve
proposed the establishment and building of a new hospital. He specified that its mission,
like the Hospital de San Bernardo, was to care for aging and impoverished priests and to
welcome travelers and pilgrims. The brotherhood accepted the proposition and the Rules
and Statutes of the new Hermandad de los Venerables Sacerdotes in 1676.
55

Construction began immediately, with Neve in charge of the building project. Soon
thereafter, the Hospital opened its doors to a diverse community of clergymen.

53
See José María de Mena, Historia de Sevilla (Barcelona: Plaza & Janes, 1985).
54
AGAS, Archivo Hospital de San Bernardo, Leg. 137, n. 9.
55
AGAS, Archivo Hospital de los Venerables, Leg. 1, Exp. 1, Regla de esta Hermandad
… aprobada de 17 de junio de 1676.
115
A record of visitors and patients arriving at the Hospital de los Venerables
provides an idea of the workings of the hospital and the services provided.
56
A log of
entries reveals the Hospital admitted nearly two hundred clerics between 1693 and 1700,
an average of twenty-two men per year.
57
These records provide the name, age, and
geographical origin of each visitor, as well as the reason for the visit, differentiating
between visitors and patients. The majority of those entering the Hospital de los
Venerables were travelers or pilgrims seeking short-term room and board. Visitors
arrived from the far-reaches of the Spanish empire and from throughout Europe—
Flanders, Malta, Damascus, France, Rome, Venice, and Poland. While most came from
throughout the Iberian Peninsula, including twelve from Portugal, there were many who
arrived from the Kingdom of Sicily, which at the time was part of the Spanish crown.
58

The majority remained there for two to four nights, while others stayed for several weeks.
Although the scribe often omitted the final destinations of these men, the log documents
that many traveled to neighboring cities in Andalusia, Santiago de Compostela, and to
Rome.
The record of admissions differentiates between those seeking medical attention
and those requiring hospice care. Many of those labeled “enfermo,” or sick, were
travelers. Guests rested, received treatment, and recuperated. Those who proved
incurable remained at the hospital until death.
59
Some transferred to the Hospital del

56
AGAS, Archivo Hospital de los Venerables, Leg. 3-A, n. 2.
57
195 visitors were recorded between 1693 and 1700, an average of 21.7 per year.
58
Thirty-one guests came from Naples and seventeen from Sicily.
59
Andres Morelo, thirty-three years of age, was traveling from Naples when he arrived at
the Hospital de los Venerables on May 28, 1698. The young man was ill, and he
116
Espíritu Santo or to the Hospital de la Sangre for specific treatments. Among those under
the care of the Hospital de los Venerables was a small community of elderly men who
came to “live and die” there.
60
These individuals were more or less permanent residents
at the Hospital. Those receiving long-term hospice care were older, in their sixties and
seventies, primarily from Seville and Córdoba, and they remained in residence for
extended periods of time, ranging from one to eleven years.
The Hospital de los Venerables, like other hospitals associated with
confraternities, served a disadvantaged population by fulfilling much needed social
services, as well as attending to their spiritual needs. Located somewhere between the
ecclesiastical and the secular, and accessible to laymen, confraternities became venues
for widened philanthropic activity. Seville’s upper class financed the charitable services
provided there and patronized the decoration of these healing spaces, channeling their
resources into worthy, rather than morally suspicious, art production. Wealthy members
donated luxury items to the brotherhood and commissioned altarpieces, sculptures, and
paintings. Others gifted clothing, adornments, censers, lamps, cult objects, and other
liturgical goods. The ability to acquire luxury items and to donate these to religious
institutions was indicative of wealth and power and an expression of piety, integral to
Catholic tradition.
Lay religious groups considered donations of money and material objects as
important gestures of devotion. Ironically then, the goods maintained by various

remained at the Hospital until September 27
th
the same year, the day of his death. Ibid.,
fol. 5r.
60
The scribe notes that these men came to “vivir y morir,” “a pasar el resto de su vida,”
or “viene para morir.”
117
religious institutions became measures of piety. Reflecting on his natal city’s religiosity,
Alonso Sánchez Gordillo (1561–1644), an abbot from Seville, wrote:
it is right to note that it is our city of Seville, universal marketplace of the world,
where all nations come to see to purchase not only temporal wealth such as
jewels, pearls, silver, gold and merchandise and fruits of the land, as an emporium
and the wealthiest and most fruitful and powerful that is known in Europe, and
where all that is necessary for human life overflows… and in spiritual riches the
city is also a good example of devotion and sanctity;

Sánchez continues:

This is demonstrated in the great number of churches, secular and regular of nuns
and monks of diverse orders, in their continual and perpetual praise of God, in
which some are always outdoing others; and exemplifies how there are so many
sacred places and devout images of devotion….
61

Sánchez makes the case for interconnectedness between material wealth and spiritual
wellbeing. The sheer number of confraternities in the city contributed both to its
prosperity and its religiosity. Like other lay groups throughout the city, the Hospital de
los Venerables attracted some of Seville’s wealthiest individuals as members. Because of
their economic standing, these well-off brothers assumed active and influential roles
within the context of lay organizations, making generous contributions of capital and
material goods as expressions of devotion. As a member of the elite and of the city’s
religious hierarchy, Neve was well suited to contribute both to the magnificence and
spiritual grandeur of the city.
The Brotherhood built the Hospital de los Venerables on a site donated by Pedro
Manuel Colón y Portugal, Duke of Veragua (1651–1710). Placed in charge of the new
design and construction, Juan Domínguez, chief architect to the archdiocese, oversaw the

61
Quoted in Susan Verdi Webster, Art and Ritual in Golden Age Spain (1998), 31.
118
project between 1676 and 1695.
62
In 1696, Archbishop Jaime de Palafox y Cardona
(1642–1701) agreed to pay for the completion of the project, naming Leonardo de
Figueroa (1650–1730) as the chief architect.
63
The church of the Hospital de los
Venerables is a rectangular space with one nave, covered with a barrel vault with lunettes
and arches (Fig. 3.6). While the architectural design of the church is typical for its time
and place, the artworks commissioned for its interior are national treasures. The Hospital
de los Venerables, like many confraternal hospitals throughout the city, became a
repository for liturgical and funerary goods, as well as for art.
While many of the city’s most esteemed artists involved themselves with the
decoration of its interior, the works of Juan de Valdés Leal and his son, Lucas Valdés,
dominate the space. Having gained the support and admiration of Pedro Corbet (1634–
98), the first president of the Hospital de los Venerables, Lucas Valdés inherited the most
significant of the Hospital’s commissions after the illness and death of his father. The
young artist painted a representation of San Fernando, as well as a series of murals for the
nave, the vault, and the presbytery. He also completed the estofado work for several
polychrome sculptures, including one of San Pedro by Pedro Roldán. The work of Lucas
Valdés, further explored in the following chapter, is testament to his developing skills as
an artist. However, Murillo oeuvre attracted the most attention from contemporary
chroniclers.

62
Enrique Valdivieso and José Fernández Lopez, “El patrimonio artistico,” in Los
Venerables, Francisco Morales Padrón, et. al., ed. (Seville, 1991), 26–28.
63
AGAS, Hospital de los Venerables, Leg. 4, Exp. 5.
119
A 1701 inventory of the Hospital de los Venerables, published by Diego Angulo
Iñiguez, lists four paintings by the hand of Murillo, including the Immaculate Conception
(Fig. 3.7); the Penitent Saint Peter (Fig. 3.8), today in a private collection; a portrait of
Neve (Fig. 3.9); and, the Virgin and Child Distributing Bread to Priests (Fig. 3.10).
64

These works, considered a triumph, attracted wide acclaim. At the end of the eighteenth
century, the Spanish painter Antonio Ponz (1725–92) commented upon Murillo’s
paintings, writing in his Viaje de España:
In it there are superb paintings by Murillo, as is the Saint Peter in the first
altarpiece on entering the church on the right, in which work he set out to imitate
Lo Spagnoletto; but, without a doubt, he surpassed him in the gentleness and
softness of the coloring. The artist’s [Immaculate] Conception on a throne of
angels and clouds, located by the door to the sacristy, is held to be one of the most
excellent works; and among the portraits which the aforesaid Murillo executed
with utmost skill should be included that of Don Faustino [sic] de Neve, canon of
the Holy Church, one of the first priests who founded this house, in the ante-
refectory in whose portrait is a little dog that seems alive. On the main wall of the
refectory is a celebrated painting by no means inferior to the aforementioned, in
which he represented Our Lady seated, and the Christ Child, who takes from a
basket held out to him by a beautiful Angel some loaves of bread and gives them
to three priests, half-length figures.
65

Ponz calls particular attention to a portrait of Neve by Murillo. This painting, now at the
National Gallery in London, was not only one of the most remarkable artworks displayed
at the Hospital, but it also serves as a lasting testament to Murillo’s relationship with his

64
Murillo’s Immaculate Conception is now at the Museo del Prado, The Penitent Saint
Peter is in a private collection, and the Virgin and Child Distributing Bread to Priests is
now at the Szépművészeti Múzeum in Budapest. Diego Angulo Íñiguez, “Casa de
Venerables Sacerdotes,” Boletín de Bellas Artes 4 (1976): 43–96.
65
Antonio Ponz, Viage de España, en que se da noticia de las cosas más apreciables, y
dignas de saberse, que hay en ella (Madrid, 1772–94), vol. IX, 794–95. Quoted and
translated in Benito Navarrete Prieto, “Murillo, Neve and the ‘Venerables,’” in Murillo
and Justino de Neve: The Art of Friendship, Gabriele Finaldi, ed. (Madrid: Museo
Nacional del Prado, 2012), 73–74.
120
patron. Neve died in 1685 before the completion of the project, but his portrait remained
there as an important reminder of his commitment to the Hospital and to his friend
Murillo.

A Gift of Gratitude
Neve was one of Murillo’s most loyal patrons. An inventory of his private collection
reveals that he owned eighteen works by the painter, a number rivaled only by Nicolás
Omazur (1609–89), a wealthy silk merchant who, upon his death in 1698, owned thirty-
one Murillo originals.
66
Among Omazur’s paintings was Murillo’s portrait of Neve,
painted the same year as the inauguration of the church of Santa María la Blanca, likely
done as an expression of gratitude to his patron. Arguably, this image is the most
renowned work from Neve’s collection and one of Murillo’s most famous paintings. On
his deathbed, Neve bequeathed the painting to the Hospital de los Venerables. The 1701
inventory affirms that the Hospital de los Venerables accepted this gift and proudly
displayed it on site.
67

In the painting, Murillo portrays Neve in a domestic setting, possibly his family’s
home in the parish of San Bartolomé, in a space opening onto a terrace. In the
foreground, a pilaster bears his family’s arms. Murillo depicts Neve in black
ecclesiastical robes, both austere and sumptuous, sitting at his desk in an elegant chair
upholstered in red velvet. To the right, resting on the desk, are a book, a bell, and a gilt

66
Justino de Neve’s inventory is found in AHPS, Prot. 13031, fols. 247r–61v and
transcribed in Peter Cherry, “Documentary Appendix on Justino de Neve,” in Murillo
and Justino de Neve: The Art of Friendship, ed. Gabriele Finaldi (Madrid: Museo
Nacional del Prado, 2012), 163–165.
67
Diego Angulo Iñíguez, “La Casa de Venerables Sacerdotes” (1976), 43–96.
121
clock. The introduction of a third party momentarily distracts Neve. He marks a page in
a breviary, held in his left hand, and gazes beyond the confines of the painting at the
onlooker. Neve’s contrived engagement with the individual breaks the formality of the
portrait, allowing some degree of intimacy between the viewer and the sitter.
68

Contributing to the action of the moment is an English lap dog, looking up at Neve and
wearing a red ribbon and bells. The inscription indicates that the portrait was a gift from
Murillo to Neve: “His age 40. Bartolomé Murillo of Seville painted this with the
intention of making a gift of it in the year 1665.”
69

The painting, which originally hung in the sacristy of the church at the Hospital
de los Venerables, attracted the attention of writers from an early date. In 1715,
Palomino was the first to offer an assessment, writing:
Murillo was also eminent as a portrait painter [; that of Neve] is exceptionally
faithful to the sitter and extremely skillfully painted. More particularly accurate is
the little English bitch dog, which is by his side. Male dogs are inclined to bark
at these, and it looks as if she is about to attack them, and one is surprised to hear
her actually barking, so lifelike she seems.
70

68
See David R. Smith, “Irony and Civility: Notes on the Convergence of Genre and
Portraiture in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Painting,” The Art Bulletin 69 (1987): 407–
430; and Sean Roberts, “Silence and Secrets in Domenico Fetti’s Portrait of a Man with a
Sheet Music,” Renaissance Studies 27 (2013): 270–290.
69
Inscribed: ETATIS SV Æ. 40 / Bartholome Murillo Romulensis / Pr æcirca
Obsequium desiderio pingebat, / A. M. [D] C.L.X.V.
70
Alan Braham, “Murillo’s Portrait of Don Justino de Neve,” The Burlington Magazine
122 (1980): 193. Palomino’s words quoted and translated in Spanish Art in Britain and
Ireland, 1750–1920: Studies in Reception in Memory of Enriqueta Harris Frankfort,
Nigel Glendinning, Hilary Macartney, Enriqueta Harris, eds. (Woodbridge: Tamesis,
2010), 237.
122
Ponz noted that he observed the painting in the ante-refectory in 1780, and in 1806 Ceán
Bermúdez compared the work to a Van Dyck portrait.
71
The Scottish art historian Sir
William Stirling-Maxwell wrote in 1910 that the sitter is “delicate and pleasing” and that
his face “bespeaks the gentleman and the scholar.”
72
Not until recently have art
historians delved more deeply into the meanings of this painting. Art historian Gabriele
Finaldi notes that the leather-bound book included in the work testifies to Neve’s
intellectual curiosity and serves as a reference to his moderately sized library, consisting
of 325 books on subjects ranging from religion and history to poetry. He states that the
bell is indicative of social status—Neve likely used it to summon servants and slaves in
either of his home. Lastly, Finaldi asserts that the gilt clock alludes to the canonical
hours of the day and Neve’s duties at the Cathedral. Here, I explore the clock as an
object owned by Neve and propose new meanings within the context of this painting.
The full-length portrait draws on a long tradition of papal portraits, Italian
representations of cardinals, and Flemish paintings depicting ecclesiastics. Raphael’s
Pope Leo X with Cardinals Giulio de’ Medici and Luigi de’ Rossi (1518, Fig. 3.11), El
Greco’s Cardinal (1600–1601, Fig. 3.12), Guido Reni’s portrait of Cardinal Bernardino
Spada (1631, Fig. 3.13), Velázquez’s portrait of Archbishop Fernando de Valdés (1640s,
Fig. 3.14), and portraits of ecclesiastics by Zurbarán (Fig. 3.15), all serve as touchstones

71
Antonio Ponz, Viage de España (1772–94), vol. IX, 794–95; and Juan Agustín Ceán
Bermúdez, Carta de D. Agustín Ceán Bermúdez (1968), 95.
72
Sir William Stirling Maxwell, Stories of the Spanish Artists Until Goya (London:
Chatto & Windus, 1910), 258.
123
for Murillo’s painting.
73
While the influence of these earlier works is clear, a comparison
between Murillo’s portrait of Neve and contemporary portraits of Seville’s religious
hierarchy is equally instructive. There is a significant difference between Murillo’s
representation of Neve and Pedro Núñez de Villavicencio’s portrait of Archbishop
Ambrosio Ignacio Spínola y Guzmán (1670, Fig. 3.16), Seville’s Archbishop from 1668–
1684. The half-portrait of Spínola (1632–84), who was a collector in his own right,
presents the archbishop within a frame, wearing ecclesiastical robes and a simple cross,
void of the lavish trappings of wealth that characterize Neve’s portrait.
74
The stark
contrast between these two paintings suggests that a closer consideration of the objects
included in Murillo’s portrait, most importantly the lavish clock, is crucial.
The inventory of Neve’s personal collection documents that upon his death, he
owned eight clocks, four large and four small.
75
The clock represented in Neve’s portrait
was part of a larger grouping of precious objects, including paintings and sculptures
amassed by him, an avid and eclectic collector. In 1685, painters Matías de Arteaga and
Francisco de Meneses Osorio (1630–1705) and sculptor Bernardo Simón de Pineda
appraised Neve’s collection of paintings and sculpture. Largely religious in nature, it
included images of saints, sculptures and paintings of the Virgin Mary and Child, and
representations of the Incarnation and the Resurrection. Neve also owned secular
paintings—still lifes, landscapes, and portraits of laymen—as well as decorative items

73
Gabriele Finaldi, “Don Justino de Neve,” in Murillo and Justino de Neve: The Art of
Friendship, ed. Gabriele Finaldi (Madrid: Museo Nacional del Prado, 2012), 98.
74
Archbishop Ambrosio Ignacio Spínola y Guzmán commissioned works by Valdés Leal
and Murillo for the adornment of his palace.
75
Angulo Iñiguez, Murillo (1981), vol. 1, 463–65; and vol. 2, 325–56.
124
such as vases and luxurious furnishings. Upon his death, Neve donated several works to
close friends and to religious institutions, while the remaining items sold at auction.
Neve bequeathed the drawing for Murillo’s Virgin and Child Distributing Bread
to Priests, likely a small oil painting on copper, to Don Pedro Corbet.
76
While not
directly donated to the Hospital de los Venerables, the institution acquired Murillo’s
Immaculate Conception of the Venerables Sacerdotes, a work commissioned by Neve, in
1685. Wealthy citizens of Seville purchased other artworks from Neve’s collection at
auction. Juan Salvador Navarro, a surgeon and possible art dealer, bought the painting on
obsidian of Christ at the Column with Saint Peter, a work later listed in a 1690 inventory
of the collection of Murillo’s patron, Omazur. Neve’s massive collection seemingly
posed no conflict to his vows of apostolic poverty. Rather, his possessions proved
integral to his identity. So essential were these items that, in Neve’s portrait, Murillo
highlights and memorializes his patron’s interest in and relationship to luxury goods.
However, Neve likely aligned collecting with the virtue of magnificentia rather than
luxuria, a term associated with extravagance and excess in the early modern period.
77

The term magnificence is central to an understanding of Neve’s patronage.
Magnificence, Aristotle’s second virtue, relates directly to displays of elite wealth.
Aristotle regarded the magnificent person as a philanthropist, an individual who spends
his wealth on the community, not on himself. However, Aristotle’s definition of
magnificence implies neither altruism nor sacrifice. Rather, magnificence is large-scale

76
AGAS, Archivo Hospital de los Venerables, Leg. 13, exp. 12, fol. 64.
77
Catherine Kovesi, “Luxury in the Renaissance: A Contribution to the Etymology of a
Concept,” in Renaissance Studies in Honor of Joseph Connors, Machtelt Israëls and
Louis A. Waldman, eds. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013), 236–242.
125
spending for the common good—architectural patronage, festivities, and philanthropic
causes. The concept of magnificence distinguished virtuous expenditures by “great men”
from frivolous spending driven by sinful greed, gluttony, and pride.
78
The early modern
period embraced Aristotle’s virtue, transforming extravagance and conspicuous
consumption into civic virtue.
79
Potentially, this idea informed Neve’s commitment to
various charitable institutions, as well as his collecting of religious artworks, and the
ultimate dispersal of his belongings. However, this does not explain his ownership of
luxury goods, such as the elaborate clock.
Clock making was not a specialized, dedicated craft in Europe until the sixteenth
century. Despite the prevalence of clocks in public spaces, those destined for domestic
use were rare, luxury items, produced primarily for noble and royal courts, as well as for
the bourgeois as conversation pieces and additions to cabinets of curiosity.
80
These
devices were unreliable for keeping minutes and seconds until the late seventeenth
century, and they served more as mechanical calendars than as exact time-telling
devices.
81
Neve’s timepiece, lavishly decorated and quite complex, is likely from
Augsburg, the center of clock making in early modern Europe. The production of these

78
Paul G. Schervish and Keith Whitaker, Wealth and the Will of God: Discerning the
Use of Riches in the Service of Ultimate Purpose (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 2010), 27–28.
79
See David Fraser Jankins, “The Cosimo de’ Medici and the Theory of Magnifience,”
Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes XXXIII (1970): 162–170; and
Catherine Kovesi, “Luxury in the Renaissance” (2013), 236–242.
80
Silvio A. Bedini, “The Map of Time” in Time: The Greatest Innovator, Rachel
Doggett, ed. (Washington, D.C.: The Folger Shakespeare Library, 1986), 15.
81
Eva Gross, “The Augsburg Clockmaker’s Craft” in The Clockwork Universe: German
Clocks and Automata 1550–1650, Klaus Maurice and Otto Mayr, eds. (New York: Neale
Watson Academic Publications, 1980), 57.
126
unique timepieces required the skills of a goldsmith and a mechanic.
82
These devices
were particularly popular additions to cabinets of curiosities as they represented the
universe in miniature.
83
Neve’s clock, like others of this type, has more than one face. A
similar seventeenth-century clock from Augsburg, now part of the Frick Collection,
includes seven dials, providing astronomical, calendrical, and horary information, as well
as an astrolabe and an alarm (Fig. 3.17). This clock, like Neve’s, is not a utilitarian
object.
While timepieces were more readily available at the time when Murillo painted
his portrait of Neve, this particular domestic clock was an expensive and opulent
curiosity. Despite its rarity, Murillo’s choice to represent his patron alongside a
timepiece is not entirely surprising or unique. The clock illustrated in this painting was
an actual object drawn from Neve’s collection as well as a rich visual motif. Clocks
similar to that included by Murillo in the portrait of Neve were commonplace in
representations of rulers and powerful ecclesiastics.
84
When included in portraits of
influential individuals, high-ranking members of the clergy, the court, and dignitaries,
clocks referenced power and omnipresence.
Artists sought to make visual comparisons between the clock and the ruler,
marking a shift in the analogy of the state as a human body to that of a mechanical
device, namely the clock. In seventeenth-century Spain, theorists began to consider the

82
See Carlo M. Cipolla, Clocks and Culture, 1300–1700 (New York: Norton, 1977),
Chapter I.
83
Bedini, “The Map of Time” (1986), 17.
84
For example Philippe de Champaigne included the same style of timepiece in his
portrait of Cardinal Richeliue (1636), as did Velázquez in his portrait of Queen Maria
Anna of Spain (1653).
127
Spanish Empire as a “complex interacting clockwork.”
85
The clock stood for the control
of the state, as expressed by the Spanish political thinker, Diego de Saavedra Fajardo:
The wheels of a clockwork move in such secrecy that one can neither see nor hear
them; … such harmony should likewise prevail between a prince and his
councilors … A monarchy is distinguished from other forms of government in
that only one commands, others however obey … Therefore in the clockwork of
government the prince should be not only a hand but also the escapement that tells
all other wheels the time to move.
86

Because Neve was a member of the clergy, Murillo likely did not employ the clock as a
metaphor for secular rule. However, the Church and the Crown were inextricably linked
in early modern Spain. The inclusion of the clock possibly references the authority of the
Church, further denoting the power of the religious office. Following the Council of
Trent and amidst the Counter Reformation, the Church assumed a more absolutist stance
vis-à-vis the populace; the institution of the Church was an obvious extension of the
Spanish state at large. As a representative of the Cathedral and as an ambassador of the
Catholic Church, Neve, in no uncertain terms, held a position of authority and influence.
While there exists a legitimate case to argue that the clock is an expression of
power, a reference to the authority of the Church, its inclusion seems hardly to be
exhausted by this interpretation. The clock, included in the portrait of Neve, references
his title as a canon at the Seville Cathedral and signifies Neve’s relationship to material
wealth and the power afforded by affluence. Murillo’s decision to depict an object that
was not only metaphorical, but also real, encourages one to consider Neve’s relationship

85
Otto Mayr, “A Mechanical Symbol for an Authoritarian World,” in The Clockwork
Universe: German Clocks and Automata, 1550–1650 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian
Institution, 1980), 6.
86
Diego de Saavedra Fajardo, Idea de un principe politico christiano (Amsterdam,
1659). Quoted in Mayr, “A Mechanical Symbol for an Authoritarian World” (1980), 6.
128
to luxury goods and to bring it into contrast with that of Mañara. While Valdés Leal
sought to completely disassociate his patron from the symbols of material wealth,
depicting Mañara wearing stark black robes in portraits and in a state of decomposition in
Finis Gloriae Mundi, Murillo makes the affluence of his patron clear. When brought into
comparison with Hieroglyphs of Our Last Days, it is possible to argue that Murillo’s
painting of Neve is not simply a portrait espousing the importance of the sitter, but rather
a complex vanitas painting.
Metaphorically, the clock directly relates to those tenets frequently explored by
Mañara—the fleeting nature of life and the temporality of worldly possessions. The
clock is particularly evocative, as it conjures up themes associated with the vanitas
painting tradition. In the work of artist Antonio de Pereda the clock was an important
iconographic symbol associated with the ephemeral nature of life. Pereda’s masterpiece
titled Vanitas (1634, Fig. 3.18) includes reminders of mortality and references to earthly
pleasures—armory, skulls, extinguished candles, coins, terrestrial globes, jewelry, and
portraits of women.
87
Also in the collection is a gilt clock similar to the one owned by
Neve. The Dream of the Knight (1650, Fig. 3.19), also attributed to Pereda, incorporates
the same style of Augsburg clock, similarly situated among symbols of pleasure and
glory. Pereda’s clock is not merely another luxury item among many, but rather a
reminder of a significant truth—time’s passing. The clock is at the very essence of the
vanitas painting tradition as it references the fleeting nature of life and the triviality of
worldly possessions.

87
William B. Jordan and Peter Cherry, Spanish Still Life from Velázquez to Goya
(London: National Gallery Publications, 1995), 22–24.
129
The proliferation of mechanical clocks contributed to a growing obsession with
time in early modern Europe. According to art historian Erwin Panofsky,
no period has been so obsessed with the depth and width, the horror and
sublimity of the concept of time as the Baroque, the period in which man found
himself confronted with the infinite as a quality of the universe instead of as a
prerogative of God.
88

Theorist José Antonio Maravall echoes the significance of time in early modern Spain
and attributes that to innovations made in the clock making industry. While invented
much earlier, the mechanical clock made time living and visible. This was the impetus
for a growing interest in time in general. Maravall writes:
My life goes flying away, time runs on,” said Lope with emotion. And rather
than being able to measure in Galilean fashion the past periods of this flowing,
what interested the baroque writer was bringing into view the irreducible schema
of this temporal course: its fleetingness. The course of time is the successive
occurrence of the changes, the substitution of things that pass out of existence
with others that will later suffer the same fate.
89

The association of the clock with the passing of time encouraged artists to employ the
object in vanitas paintings. However, the inclusion of the valuable object is, ironically, a
direct reference to its worthlessness.
The case of Mañara reinforces the sense that the brevity of life and the
meaninglessness of earthly goods were of central concern to seventeenth-century Spanish
Catholics. The Spanish Jesuit and mystic, Juan Eusebio Nieremberg, wrote on the true
end of human existence—salvation. Written with the intent to save souls, De la
diferencia entre lo temporal y eterno (Madrid, 1640) speaks at lengths to the passing of

88
Erwin Panofsky, Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the
Renaissance (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1967), 92.
89
José Antonio Maravall, Culture of the Baroque: Analysis of a Historical Structure
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986), 187.
130
time and the fleeting nature of material goods. He invites the reader to “Compare
eternity, which continues ever in the same state, with time, which runs violently on, and
is ever changing; and consider that as eternity gives a value and estimation unto those
things which it preserves, so time disparages and takes away the value of those that end
in it.”
90
For Nieremberg the temporal world distracts from the attainment of eternal
salvation. Neve was most certainly familiar with Nieremberg’s writings, as well as
various other expressions of popular concepts circulating in seventeenth-century Spain.
The meaning of the clock in Murillo’s portrait is thus twofold: it calls to mind not only
Neve’s material wealth, but simultaneously and paradoxically, its ultimate worthlessness.
The inclusion of the clock begs the question: was this a decision made by Murillo
or Neve? Murillo, a member of the Brotherhood of Charity and closely acquainted with
Mañara, demonstrated a fixation with time and an awareness of the fleeting nature of life.
Mañara was fully aware of the contradictions that his privileged position held. He
countered this inconsistency with generous gifts to the Brotherhood of Charity,
extraordinary and public displays of penitence, and a general awareness of the
ramifications of conspicuous consumption. The case of Neve is quite different—we have
little evidence of any charitable acts performed by him, other than his benevolence
toward religious institutions throughout the city. While Mañara donated his fortune to
the betterment and mission of the Brotherhood, Neve distributed his remaining wealth
and collections among members of his family, friends, and favored religious institutions.

90
Juan Eusebio Nieremberg, De la diferencia entre lo temporal y eterno (Madrid, 1640),
translation from, A treatise of the difference bbtwixt [sic] the temporal and eternal, trans.
by Sir Vivian Mullineaux (London, 1672), 74.
131
Unlike Mañara, there is no evidence that Neve condemned material possessions, and no
indication that he considered his own wealth to be a hindrance to salvation.

Conclusion
Neve meditated on death, making thoughtful preparations for his own demise. In his
will, Neve bequeathed his belongings to family and friends, and he took special care to
account for the fate of Murillo’s portrait, requesting that it remain at the Hospital de los
Venerables. He requested:
I especially want a full-length portrait of me, a painting by Don Bartolomé
Murillo, be entrusted to the current or future administrator of the said House and I
request that he place it wherever he pleases in the house where they [the priests]
can remember to pray to God our merciful Lord for my soul.

Neve acknowledges that the real value of Murillo’s painting is its inherent ability to
encourage prayers on his behalf. When the end was near, Neve beat his chest and kissed
the crucifix. He also requested 6,000 masses with a particular intention—the release of
his soul from purgatory.
91

As demonstrated in the 1701 inventory of the Hospital de los Venerables, the
brothers of the confraternity fulfilled Neve’s wish and displayed the portrait in the
sacristy alongside Murillo’s painting of the Virgin and Child Distributing Bread to
Priests (Fig. 3.10). This painting illustrates the charitable mission of the Hospital de los
Venerables—the care of impoverished and elderly priests. Neve’s wealth made possible
not only a wide range of benevolent services administered by the confraternity, but also
Murillo’s visual interpretation of his philanthropic work. For Neve, charity and artistic

91
Cherry, “Justino de Neve: Life and Works” (2012), 31.
132
patronage went hand in hand, both expressions of devotion. However, luxury items, like
large-scale paintings by Murillo and the gilt clock, maintained delicate positions in
seventeenth-century Spain, serving both as aids and as obstacles to salvation. Neve
skillfully managed his good fortune, reconciling material wealth with apostolic poverty
and employing worldly riches for spiritual benefit.
Neve’s position as a canon at the Seville Cathedral permitted his collecting.
Commissioning artworks from the city’s most accomplished artists was not indicative of
avarice, but rather, a form of ministry. Members of the clergy with means employed the
skills of local artists to educate members of the Church and to reinforce the doctrine
reinstated at the Council of Trent. Religious art was a tool employed by the Church to
fortify an institution under threat. As a canon at the Seville Cathedral, Neve’s investment
in the decoration of the Hospital de los Venerables was as valuable as his commitment to
its charitable causes. The art Neve commissioned was a powerful tool, strengthening the
spiritual health of Seville.
133
Chapter 4

Art and Reform: Lucas Valdés and the Academia de las Guardias Marinas

Seville proved resilient in the aftermath of the 1649 plague, regaining much of its lost
citizenry by 1665. Shortly following the epidemic’s devastating impact, immigration to
the city resumed; the population eventually grew to 85,000.
1
While Seville appeared on
the road to recovery, the city immediately faced yet another onslaught of challenges and
tragedies. Amidst an inflation crisis, Spain also suffered severe famine from 1676 to
1679 as a result of harvest failures. Shortly thereafter, a series of natural disasters
devastated Seville—in 1680 an earthquake toppled several buildings, and flooding,
followed by draught, wreaked havoc between 1680 and 1683.
2
Andalusia underwent yet
another epidemic of plague between 1676 and 1682, and typhus ravaged the region
between 1683 and 1685. The city’s financial position increasingly worsened. In the
early 1680s, the hub of the Carrera relocated from Seville to Cádiz, and the coastal city
emerged as Spain’s primary colonial port. In 1717, Seville’s monopoly on trade
officially transferred to Cádiz, where it maintained its stronghold until 1765. Seville’s
artistic community also suffered significant losses. The Academia de Bellas Artes closed
in 1674, and Bartolomé Esteban Murillo died in 1682 and Juan de Valdés Leal in 1690.

1
In 1665, sixty-two percent of guild members were from outside Seville. Quoted in
Patrick O’Flanagan, Port Cities of Atlantic Iberia, c. 1500–1900 (Hampshire: Ashgate
Publishing Limited, 2008), 87.
2
Suzanne Stratton, “Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, 1617–1682,” in Bartolomé Esteban
Murillo, 1617–1682: Paintings from American Collections, Suzanne Stratton, ed. (New
York: H. N. Abrams, 2002), 15.
134
As the seventeenth century drew to a close, the city’s Golden Age seemingly came to an
end.
Significantly, Seville’s misfortunes mirrored those of Spain at large. Unwilling to
change and unable to keep pace with its European neighbors, the House of Habsburg
failed to maintain Spain’s position of dominance.
3
However, in response to threats on
land and at sea, the Crown made reforms relating to both the military and to education.
This chapter focuses on measures taken to fortify the Spanish Empire and the
involvement of one artist, Lucas Valdés, in these efforts. The biography and oeuvre of
Lucas Valdés broadly evidence Seville’s lasting cultural vitality, the changing nature of
intellectual interchange in the city, and, more specifically, the fluctuating nature and
value of art and artistic production following the Golden Age. Unlike Murillo and
Valdés Leal, Lucas Valdés did not commit his life to religious painting. Rather, he
applied his artistic training to the pragmatic endeavors of a secular institution.
Lucas Valdés, son of Juan Valdés Leal, was a direct descendant of Seville’s
Golden Age. While Valdés Leal’s celebrated career largely overshadows that of his son,
Lucas Valdés’s trajectory is one of a progressive and engaged artist and intellectual. The
biography of Lucas Valdés intersects with that of his father, yet the two artists pursued
quite distinct courses. Lucas Valdés’s education with the Jesuits was far superior to that
of his father. He also had access to new venues for artistic production. The artist’s
oeuvre, including works on paper, paintings, and murals, shows an individual in
confident command of mathematics, perspective, and architectural design. Rather than

3
J. H. Elliott, Imperial Spain, 1469–1716 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1963), 378.
135
devote the entirety of his career to art, as did his father, Lucas Valdés left his natal city in
1719 to serve as a professor of mathematics at the new Academia de las Guardias
Marinas (f. 1717) in Cádiz.
As the previous chapters demonstrate, the Catholic Church wielded significant
influence over artistic production in Seville. While artists collaborated within the context
of the Academia de Bellas Artes, their livelihoods rested largely on commissions from
religious institutions. This interdependent relationship, shared between the city’s artistic
community and the Church, encouraged Jonathan Brown’s aforementioned assessment
that patrons and artists alike supported a closed system of artistic production.
4
The case
of Lucas Valdés and his involvement with the Academia de Guardias Marinas, however,
signals an important departure from this model. The artist’s involvement with both
religious institutions in Seville and the Academy in Cádiz, an important site for military
and education reforms, signals an important continuum between the Baroque and Spain’s
Scientific Revolution.

Trouble at Sea
King Philip IV died in 1665, leaving Spain with a treasury exhausted and the territories of
its expansive empire under threat. Although Philip signed the Treaty of the Pyrenees,
marking the end of a protracted war with France (1635–59), Louis XIV continued to eye
Portugal and its domains.
5
Furthermore, Philip’s successor to the throne, his son, Charles

4
Jonathan Brown, Painting in Spain: 1500–1700 (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1998), 99.
5
Christopher Storrs, The Resilience of the Spanish Monarchy (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2006), 1.
136
II (1661–1700), was unfit to rule; a papal nuncio characterized the boy as “weak in body
as in mind. Now and then he gives signs of intelligence, memory and a certain liveliness;
usually he shows himself slow and indifferent, torpid and indolent. One can do with him
what one wishes because he lacks his own will.”
6
Philip IV’s heir was wanting in
capacity and too young, a mere four years old at the time of his father’s death. His
mother, Mariana of Austria (1634–96), assumed the role of Regent. Her major advisors
were Juan Everard Nithard (1607–81), a Jesuit from Austria and the Inquisitor General,
and Fernando Valenzuela (1638–89), the husband of the Queen’s lady-in-waiting.
7
Also
vying for a position of influence was Don Juan José, the illegitimate son of Philip IV’s
mistress, María Calderón (1611–46).
Spain lacked strong leadership and the resources necessary to protect its holdings.
Charles II’s navy, considered second or third class and smaller than those of the Dutch
Republic, England, and France, provided little protection against threats posed from
outside the Peninsula.
8
Throughout the latter half of the seventeenth century, the Spanish
Empire was in a constant state of war with conflicts raging on all fronts—Catalonia,
Flanders, Portugal, and in the waters of the Mediterranean, Atlantic, and Caribbean.
9

Spain’s sprawling domains demanded a wide deployment of its naval forces. The Crown
lost its stronghold in Flanders as Louis XIV and his forces captured tactically significant
towns there, including Condé and Bouchain in 1676, St. Omer and Cambrai in 1677, and

6
Quoted in Kamen, Spain 1469–1714: A Society of Conflict (New York: Routledge,
2014), 257.
7
Ibid., 258.
8
Storrs, The Resilience of the Spanish Monarchy (2006), 64–65
9
R. A. Stradling, “A Spanish Statesman of Appeasement,” The Historical Journal 19
(1979): 11.
137
Ghent in 1678.
10
France also took advantage of revolts in Messina (1674–78) and seized
Porto Longone on the coast of Tuscany. An attack on Oran by Muslim forces in 1677
distracted the Spanish armies defending Sicily against North Africa. In 1691, the French
attacked Barcelona and Alicante, and in 1693 Louis XIV’s navy threatened the entirety of
Spain’s Mediterranean coastline. In the Indies, pirates targeted Spanish fleets throughout
the 1670s and ’80s. France captured Cartagena in 1697, and the Scots colonized Darien
in 1699, leading to Spain’s loss of all major possessions in the Caribbean.
11
With its
weaknesses exposed, Spain made efforts to galvanize its navy into a unified fleet,
implement innovative battle tactics, and improve training.
Charles II died in 1700, and with him the Habsburg dynasty. Philip of Anjou,
Louis XIV’s grandson and the first Bourbon king, assumed the throne, symbolizing a
new beginning for Spain. Following the numerous crises associated with the Habsburg
reign, the Empire’s economy and military demanded immediate attention. In a letter to
Louis XIV in 1700, a Castilian grandee lamented the current state of his homeland,
calling it “the saddest in the world, for the feeble government of the last few kings has
produced a horrible disorder in affair: justice is abandoned, income spent, resources sold,
the people oppressed, and love and respect for the sovereign lost.”
12
While the Bourbon
king brought hope, the accession of a Frenchman prompted the War of the Spanish

10
Storrs, The Resilience of the Spanish Monarchy (2006), 3.
11
Ibid., 65.
12
Quoted in Kamen, Philip V of Spain: The King Who Reigned Twice (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 2000), 16.
138
Succession (1701–14).
13
The conflict resulted in a near world war, involving Spain and
its allies, France, Bavaria, and Cologne, against England, the United Provinces, Austria,
Prussia, Hanover, Savoy, and Portugal.
14

With the weaknesses of Spain’s military already exposed in the 1690s, Philip V
and Jean Orry (1652–1719), minister to the King, made concerted efforts to retire
antiquated weaponry, replenish supplies, and strengthen brute force.

Despite these
improvements, Philip V failed to counter foreign advances; years of conflict ended with
the treaties of Utrecht in 1713. While these peace agreements recognized Philip V as
king, they demanded that Spain disband its expansive Empire. Among Spain’s territories
forfeited were Sicily, the Kingdom of Naples, Sardinia, parts of the Duchy of Milan, the
Spanish Netherlands, Gibraltar, and Minorca. Philip V retained Spain and the Indies, and
he and his advisors enacted reforms to improve upon the defense of the Empire’s
remaining territories.
Because of these military threats at sea, Spain made many reforms centered on its
navy. The Crown invested heavily in new equipment and sought to improve the
education of cadets. In this vein, the Seafarers’ Guild, with the support of Charles II,
founded the Royal School of San Telmo in Seville in 1681. The school provided
orphaned boys a rudimentary education and preparation for maritime careers, as well as
housing and financial support.
15
It also offered exceptional training in mathematics and

13
See Carla Rahn Phillips, The Treasure of the San José: Death at Sea in the War of the
Spanish Succession (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), 2.
14
See Kamen, Philip V of Spain (2000), 34–71.
15
Valentina Tikoff, “Not All the Orphans Really Are,” in Raising an Empire: Children
in Early Modern Iberia and Colonial Latin America, Ondina E. González and Bianca
139
the sciences, while at the same time pioneering new standards of learning.
16
In response
to technological and theoretical advances in warfare, instructors taught arithmetic,
algebra, artillery, geometry, trigonometry, physics, as well as geography and astronomy.
The school provided lessons in these areas of study, as well as textual resources and a
laboratory for nautical instruments, including models of ships, canons, globes, and
maps.
17
The quality of education was so high that nobles and wealthy merchants elected
to enroll their children for coursework there.
18
The establishment of the Royal School of
San Telmo in Seville symbolized the introduction of a new center for knowledge and
scientific advancement in the city, as well as a new strategic response to dangers facing
the Empire.
This narrative is integral to the biography of Lucas Valdés. Born in 1661, the
artist would have been well aware of the serious threats facing Spain. His ultimate
involvement with the Academia de las Guardias Marinas in Cádiz indicates that in
response he participated in reforms aimed at this critical state of affairs and the recovery
of the Spanish Empire. His training as an artist, deemed a valuable asset among Seville’s
most illustrious patrons, as well as among the most high-ranking members of Spain’s
military, proved invaluable to his ultimate trajectory.

Premo, eds. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2007), 48; and Valentina
Tikoff, “Gender and Juvenile Charity, Tradition and Reform: Assistance for Young
People in Eighteenth-Century Seville,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 41 (2008): 320.
16
Tikoff, “Not All the Orphans Really Are” (2007), 56.
17
Elisa María Jiménez Jiménez, El Real Colegio Seminario de San Telmo de Seville
(1681–1808) (Seville: Universidad de Sevilla, 2002), 89.
18
Tikoff, “Not All the Orphans Really Are” (2007), 56.
140
Lucas Valdés: Biography and Oeuvre
Lucas Valdés was born in Seville to artists Juan de Valdés Leal and Isabel Morales
Carrasquilla, an amateur painter from Córdoba.
19
Lucas Valdés was baptized in the
Church of San Martin on March 24, 1661, and Valdés Leal and Morales chose for their
only son the name Lucas, that of the evangelist and protector of the painter’s guild of
Seville.
20
Lucas Valdés was the middle child among four sisters, Luisa Rafaela (b. 1654),
Eugenia María (b. 1657), María de la Concepción (b. 1664), and Antonia Alfonsa (b.
1667).
21
At their home in the Parish of San Andrés, Valdés Leal and Morales encouraged
art making; three of their five children were artists.
22
Luisa Rafaela, the eldest, worked as
a drawer and painter, collaborating with her father on specific projects and providing
estofado work for some sculptures.
23
While María de la Concepción entered the Convent
of San Clemente el Real, Juan Agustín Ceán Bermúdez indicates that she, too, was a
talented painter. He states that she executed works in miniature well and portraits with

19
Sara Fuentes Lázaro, “La práctica de la cuadratura en España: el caso de Lucas Valdés
(1661–1725),” Anales de Historia del Arte 19 (2009): 195.
20
“En Jueves 24 marzo 1661 yo el bachiller Francisco Navarro cura en esta iglesia
parroquial de Señor San Martín de Sevilla bautice a Lucas Gregorio hijo de Juan de
Valdes y de Doña Isabel de Morales y Carrasquilla su legítima mujer, fue su padrino D.
Juan de la Varcenas vecino de San Andrés.” Quoted in Duncan C. Kinkead, Pintores y
Doradores en Sevilla: 1650–1699 Documentos, 2
nd
ed. (AuthorHouse, 2009), 543.
21
José Fernández López, Lucas Valdés (1661–1725) (Seville: Arte Hispalense, 2003),
15.
22
“Dexó un hijo que fue Don Lucas de Valdés, y dos hijas llamadas Doña Maria, y Doña
Luisa discipulos todos de su Padre en la pintura, y herederos de su habilidad en ella.”
Fermín Arana de Varflora, Hijos de Sevilla: Ilustres en Santidad, Letras, Armas, Artes o
Dignidad (Seville, 1791), III/61.
23
Luisa Rafaela did the estofado for a sculpture of San Fernando made by Valdés Leal
and Pedro Roldán for the Cathedral. See María Dolores Salazar, “Pedro Roldán,
Escultor,” Archivo Español de Arte 48 (1949), 329.
141
ease and accuracy.
24
While both older sisters exhibited artistic capability, Valdés Leal
focused on the development of his son’s talent.
Lucas Valdés established his career as an artist at a young age, integrating himself
into his father’s circle and training alongside his pupils. Valdés Leal surely brought his
son to his workshop, where he learned from his apprentices and collaborators, and the
young artist likely also frequented the Casa Lonja, where Valdés Leal served as president
of the Academia de Bellas Artes between 1663 and 1666.
25
While Valdés Leal and
Morales encouraged their son’s development as an artist, they also supported his training
in a wide range of subjects. Valdés Leal’s success and his apparent relationship with the
Jesuits afforded Lucas Valdés an opportunity to gain access to a superior education.
While the nature of Valdés Leal’s relationship with the Jesuits is unclear, the artist
painted two cycles relating to the life of St. Ignatius Loyola, one for the Casa Profesa of
the Jesuits in Seville, created between 1674 and 1676, and another, sometime between
1680 and 1690, for the church of San Pedro in Lima, Peru.
26
It is likely that Valdés
Leal’s working relationship with the Jesuit order made it possible for Lucas Valdés to
enroll as a student at the Colegio de San Hermenegildo, a school founded in Seville in

24
“…pintó muy bien al oleo y de miniatura, e hizo retratos con facilidad y semejanza.” J.
A. Ceán Bermúdez, Diccionario histórico de los más ilustres profesores de las bellas
artes en España (Madrid: Reales Academias de Bellas Artes de San Fernando y d la
Historia, 1965), 107.
25
Apprentices and collaborators of Valdés Leal include Cristóbal Leandro, Cristóbal
Pérez, Pedro Varinelos, and Juan de Neira. See Fernández López, Lucas Valdés (2003),
16.
26
José de Mesa and Teresa Gisbert, “Seis cuadros inéditos de Valdés Leal en Lima,”
Anales del Instituto de Arte Americano e Investigaciones Estéticas 17 (1964): 74–78.
142
1590 by the Jesuits where members of the nobility studied.
27
Remarkably, at the age four
or five, Lucas Valdés began lessons in Latin and mathematics, as well as in literature and
theology, reading the works of great Jesuit thinkers.
28

As the son of an acclaimed artist, Lucas Valdés had the opportunity to train
alongside Seville’s most talented individuals, and he gained access to the city’s
wealthiest patrons, including Miguel Mañara and Justino de Neve. Lucas Valdés further
advanced his position through marriage. In 1682, he married Francisca María Ribas y
Sandoval, the daughter of Francisco Dionisio de Ribas (1616–79), an established sculptor
with whom Valdés Leal shared several projects.
29
The marriage of Antonia Alfonsa, the
youngest daughter of Valdés Leal, and José Ribas, the youngest son of Francisco
Dionisio de Ribas, further solidified the families’ bond. Lucas Valdés, with ties to two
prominent artists, was privy to major commissions.
Lucas Valdés is more recognized than his contemporaries because of his
relationship to Valdés Leal, with whom he worked alongside, assisting him with several
major commissions. Well into the 1680s, Valdés Leal remained involved with the
Brotherhood of Charity, for whom Lucas Valdés completed the Exaltation of the Cross
(Fig. 2.12). While still engaged with painting at the Hospital de la Caridad, Valdés Leal

27
John J. Silke, “The Irish College, Seville,” Archivium Hibernicum 24 (1961): 112.
28
“… pero su padre antes de enseñársela quiso que aprendiera la latinidad y las
matemáticas con los jesuitas.” Ceán Bermúdez, Diccionario histórico de los más ilustres
profesores de las bellas artes en España (1965), 104.
29
“6 noviembre 1682. Lucas Valdés, hijo legítimo de Juan de Valdés Leal y Doña Isabel
de Morales y Carrasquilla, natural de Sevilla, soltero, sin impedimento para casarse,
testigos Juan de Valdés Leal y D. Luis Fernández de Fuenmayor; Doña Francisca
Trujillo, natural de Sevilla, hija legítima de D. Francisco de Ribas y Doña Laura de
Trujillo y Rojas, testigos D. Andrés de Ribas, presbítero y Doña María de Estrada.”
Quoted in Kinkead, Pintores y doradores en Sevilla (2009), 545.
143
accepted a new contract in 1680 with the nuns of Seville’s convent of San Clemente el
Real, the community into which his daughter, María de la Concepción, entered as a
novice.
30
In 1686, Valdés Leal began yet another major commission for the Hospital de
los Venerables, decorating the interior of its church with a series of murals. It was
around this time that Valdés Leal’s health began to decline. While the celebrated artist
completed the Triumphal Entry of Saint Ferdinand into Seville for the convent of San
Clemente el Real, he was unable to finish several other large paintings. A contract dated
1689 reveals that Valdés Leal was ill and unable to complete the project for the convent.
On October 9,

1690, Valdés Leal died, passing these unfinished commissions, as well as
those at the Hospital de los Venerables, onto his son.
31

Art historians lament this seemingly unfortunate succession. Lucas Valdés fails
to fulfill history’s expectations of a great master’s son, and instead is often seen as an
impediment to Valdés Leal’s legacy. Duncan Theobald Kinkead, a historian of Golden
Age art in Seville, expresses relief that Valdés Leal is likely not responsible for the
paintings found at the Convent of San Clemente el Real. He writes: “As the work was
carried out by Lucas, it does not pertain to this study, but the oeuvre of Valdés is relieved

30
“Sépase como yo Juan de Valdés, pintor de imaginería, vecino desta ciudad de Sevilla,
otorgo y conozco que doy carta de pago a las señoras abadesa y monjas del convento de
San Clemente el Real de 2,500 ducados en moneda de vellón por cuenta de los 7,000
ducados en que tengo todo a mi cargo el dorar y estofar el retablo de altar mayor del
dicho convento y lo demás que se contiene en la escritura de concierto y obligación de lo
susodicho, los cuales 2,500 ducados proceden de los dotes de Doña Juana de Aranda y
Doña María de Aranda, su hermana, novias en el dicho convento, 18 diciembre 1680.”
Quoted in Ibid., 591.
31
Quoted in Ibid., 548.
144
of some very poor paintings in San Clemente el Real by this document.”
32
Elizabeth du
Gué Trapier echoes Kinkead’s sentiment regarding Valdés Leal’s descendant, stating:
“The latter [Lucas Valdés] grew up to be a painter and to assist his father in carrying out
commissions, but he was not endowed with the gifts of the parent and he never achieved
any great distinction.”
33
Kinkead and Trapier bemoan the failed endurance of the Golden
Age, neglecting to acknowledge its evolution. Their critiques speak to larger
historiographic issues inherent to the study of Spanish art, largely excluding the cultural
achievements of the eighteenth century and neglecting to acknowledge later talent.
34

An historical engagement with late-seventeenth century Sevillian painting allows
for a better understanding of the impact of the Academia de Bellas Artes on artistic
production in the city. Rather than simply recognize its closure in 1674, it is important to
consider the Academy’s reverberations. Arguably, the values upheld among members of
the Academy—namely academic learning and the value of drawing—significantly
influenced Lucas Valdés’ ultimate trajectory.

After 1674: The Lasting Influence of the Academia de Bellas Artes
Pacheco, Carducho, and the artists associated with the Academia de Bellas Artes
championed dibujo. Among those artists belonging to the Academy, Valdés Leal was, in

32
Duncan Theobald Kinkead. “Juan de Valdés Leal (1622–1690): His Life and Work”
(Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Michigan, 1976), 304.
33
Elizabeth de Gué Trapier, Valdés Leal: Spanish Baroque Painter (New York: The
Hispanic Society of America, 1960), 35.
34
Traditional scholarship on the history of Spanish art held that following the death of
Murillo, the pictorial school was nonexistent until the birth of Romanticism in the
nineteenth century. Enrique Valdivieso, Historia de la pintura sevillana, siglos XIII al XX
(Sevilla: Ediciones Guadalquivir, S. L., 1986), 283.
145
particular, an important proponent and practitioner of draftsmanship. Murillo, on the
other hand, was principally a great colorist. In his biographical sketch of the artist,
Antonio Palomino, writing in the eighteenth century, pays the artist a backhanded
compliment, belittling those who admire color over drawing and implying that only a
trained eye fully appreciates the art form. Palomino writes:
We cannot deny that Michelangelo, Raphael, Annibale, and all the Carracci
school (without lacking the essentials of coloring) drew better than Titian,
Rubens, Van Dyck, Correggio, and our Murillo, but nonetheless it was the latter
painters who won popular acclaim, for the superior excellence of what is purest
and more transcendental in drawing is not understood by the layman. And since
its substance was not lacking in them, and on the other hand they excelled in the
more attractive beauty of coloring, they drew to themselves the applause of
laymen, who are incomparably more numerous than the entire throng of artists.
35

Palomino’s words suggest the existence of an inner circle, an exclusive club of learned
artists and enthusiasts qualified to evaluate excellence. The execution and appreciation
of drawing demanded practice and study. While Palomino aligns Murillo with colorists,
he associates Valdés Leal, Murillo’s greatest contemporary and competitor, with the art
of drawing. Palomino, who trained under Valdés Leal, highlights his former instructor’s
talents as a draftsman, a skill his biographer and the artist himself held in high esteem.
He writes that Valdés Leal was a great draftsman and architect, a master of perspective,
and an excellent sculptor. Palomino describes his instructor’s drawing process, writing
that the artist, seated at the Casa Lonja, embraced charcoal as though it were an extension

35
Quoted in Suzanne Stratton, “Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, 1617–1682” (2002), 24.
146
of his finger. He rubbed the surface of paper with the carbon substance and then used a
breadcrumb to discover and define the contours and tighten the shadows.
36

Valdés Leal trained Lucas Valdés as a draftsman at a young age. At age ten,
Lucas Valdés illustrated hieroglyphs (Fig. 4.1), converted into print, for Torre Farfán’s
Fiestas de la Santa Iglesia de Sevilla al culto, nuevamente concedido al señor rei San
Fernando III de Castilla i Leon (Seville, 1672). The project afforded the young artist
exposure to the Academia de Bellas Artes and the opportunity to participate in an
important local cause—the canonization case of King Fernando III. The images,
depicting the virtues of the medieval king, portray Fernando III as a crusader, clad in zeal
and vengeance and protected by righteousness.
37
These complex pictures communicate
the artist’s early aptitude for composite allegory and sophisticated imagery, as well as for
design.
The Cathedral recognized Lucas Valdés’s potential as a draftsman, and officials
commissioned the artist to execute various technical plans for proposed structures. Three
drawings from the Seville Cathedral and destined for Rome attest to the artist’s

36
Palomino directly speaks to Valdés Leal’s talent, stating: “Fue en nuestro Valdés
grandisimo Dibujante, Perspectivo, Arquitecto, y Escultor Excelente.” He also provides
a firsthand account of his process: “…entrar a dibujar. Tomó su asiento, y sacó unos
carbones como dedos, y un pliego de papel blanco de marca mayor, á el cual lo estregó
todo con un carbón; y hecho esto, comenzó a limpiar unos claros con miga de pan; y fue
descubriendo, y determinando contornos, y apretando los oscuros, de suerte que en breve
concluyó una figura muy bien dibujada, y de esta suerte hacía dos cada noche; y con tal
destreza, y blandura, que Valdés se quedó corrido, y no consintió que entrase más que
tres o cuatro noches” See D. Antonio Palomino Velasco, El museo pictorico, y escala
optica, Tomo II (Madrid, 1724), 436–37.
37
Fernando de la Torre Farfán, Fiestas de la Santa Iglesia de Sevilla al culto,
nuevamente concedido al señor rei San Fernando III de Castilla I Leon (Sevilla, 1672).
147
propensity for architectural design.
38
In 1686, Cardinal Savo Mellini, a papal nuncio in
Spain, became involved in a dispute regarding the proper handling of processional
floats—whether by hand or from below with a team of costaleros.
39
Detailed plans by
Lucas Valdés provide visual documentation of the float under examination and its
handling, as well as explanatory notations in both Latin and Italian. The artist sketched
an illustration of the float and its dimensions (Fig. 4.2), a representation of its carriers
dressed for the task (Fig. 4.3), and a diagram of the supportive crossbeam handled during
the procession (Fig. 4.4). The drawings describe the makeup of the structure and the
mechanics of its handling. Having gained recognition for this work, the Cathedral called
upon Lucas Valdés’s skills on numerous occasions, commissioning plans for a Holy
Week monument and for the railings of the Cathedral’s Capilla Real (Figs. 4.5–6).
40

Lucas Valdés applied his training as an artist to technical plans, as well as to the
creation of complex pictures. A set of five drawings in Córdoba demonstrates the
application of his technical skills to religious narrative imagery. These drawings,
executed in reddish-brown pen and gray wash, illustrate scenes from the Old Testament.
Included in the group is an illustration of David dancing before the Ark of the Covenant
(Fig. 4.7).
41
Lucas Valdés depicts the account, from the Second Book of Samuel, within
an elaborate background, situating the drama in the nave of a classical building. Flanked
by columns, the priests carry an ark, decorated with reliefs and topped with a cherub, as

38
ACS, Sección de Mapas y Planos, n. 204–206.
39
Rocío Luna Ferández-Aramburu and Concha Serrano Barberán, Planos y dibujos del
Archivo de la Catedral de Sevilla (Seville: Diputación Provincial, 1986), 209.
40
ACS, Sección de Mapas y Planos, n. 112–113.
41
Fuensanta García de la Torre, Dibujos del Museo de Bellas Artes de Córdoba (Seville:
Junta de Andalucía, Consejería de Cultura, 1997), 131.
148
King David plays the harp, moving his right foot to the rhythm of the music. The striking
perspectival framing of the scene dominates the painting; columns, archways, balconies,
and a vaulted ceiling overshadow the figures. Lucas Valdés cleanly and precisely renders
architecture, demonstrating mastery of perspective and his ability to create the illusion of
expansive spaces beyond the picture plane.
Beginning with the generation succeeding those artists associated with the
Academia de Bellas Artes, we see, overall, a growing interest in architectural design
within artistic production. Valdés Leal, an accomplished draftsman and a champion of
perspectival drawing, arguably promoted and fostered this notable stylistic shift in
Sevillian painting. It is not surprising that Valdés Leal’s illustration of Vignola’s Le due
regole della prospettiva (Rome, 1583) finds a prominent place in the foreground of his
Allegory of Vanity (Fig. 1.15). While this detail signals Valdés Leal’s interest in the
subject of perspective, his oeuvre evidences his practice and application of the study.
Exceptionally gifted among his contemporaries, Valdés Leal excelled at creating
the illusion of deep spaces in two dimensions. The backdrops for Valdés Leal’s paintings
are especially distinctive when compared with those of Francisco de Zurbarán (1598–
1664), who favored religious figures posed against neutral and amorphous backgrounds
(Fig. 4.8). While Murillo occasionally developed more complex settings for portraits and
religious narratives (as in The Flower Girl [Fig. 4.9] and The Return of the Prodigal Son
[Fig. 2.5]), the primary focus remains the dramatic action evident in the foreground.
Valdés Leal instead dazzled viewers with elaborate backgrounds, often subordinating
149
scriptural episodes within deep, classicizing architectural spaces (e.g. Marriage at Cana
[1660, Fig. 4.10]).
Matías Arteaga, Valdés Leal’s student, also made concerted efforts to
convincingly render architectural space on the flat surface of a canvas. The
accomplishments of Arteaga far exceeded his teacher’s abilities in perspective and
architectural design. Arteaga’s paintings for the Hermandad Sacramental del Sagrario—
Esther and Ahasuerus (Fig. 4.11) and The Parable of the Wedding Feast (Fig. 4.12)—are
particularly illustrative of this artist’s facility; light strikes columns and archways, casting
shadows that intensify the illusion of fictive space. Lucas Valdés and his contemporaries,
most notably Andrés Perez and Domingo Martínez, painted scenes that appear
elaborately staged for theatrical production. Saint Elizabeth of Hungary Curing the Sick
(1715-19, Fig. 4.13) is an impressive example of Lucas Valdés’ prowess. Within the
painting, the tiled floor reinforces the illusion of three-dimensionality, and columns and
arches impart the sense of an expansive fictive environment. Andrés Perez’s David
before Ahimelech (1720, Fig. 4.14) and Melchizedek before Abraham (1719, Fig. 4.15)
are large-scale paintings where monumental architecture overshadow the foci. In
Domingo Martínez’s Christ Welcomes the Children (1723-26, Fig. 4.16), the artist stages
the religious scene against a backdrop of receding archways. Works by these artists
demonstrate an advanced knowledge of architectural design and facility in application to
narrative imagery.
Much like his father, Lucas Valdés was, by nature, a social rather than solitary
artist, who developed his style in close dialogue with his contemporaries. While there is
150
no clear acknowledgement of an academy in Seville following the close of the Academia
de Bellas Artes, period sources suggest the endurance of these establishments within the
residences of local artists.
42
Artist Domingo Martínez (1688–1749), Lucas Valdés’s
student, maintained an extensive library. The inventory of this collection reveals texts
relating to theology and science, treatises on architecture, geometry, perspective, and
painting, as well as a diverse collection of illustrated books, prints, and models for
drawing.
43
Martínez owned works by authors including Juan Eusebio Nieremberg, Pliny,
Euclid, Leon Battista Alberti, Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola, Andrea Pozzo, Vicente
Carducho, and Palomino. Céan Bermúdez goes so far as to suggest that Martínez
organized an informal academy in his home. In his biography of Lucas Valdés, the
chronicler notes that Martínez’s house was a meeting place for artists, where some
studied, copied from prints, and drew from plaster models and mannequins.
44
It is likely
that through this informal academy, Martínez attracted many of his followers, including
Juan de Espinal (1714–83), Andrés de Rubira (d. 1760), and Pedro Tortolero (1700–66).
It is clear that the study of perspective was of keen interest among members of
this circle. Martínez owned several treatises on the subject, as did the painter Alonso
Miguel de Tovar (1678–1752). Tovar owned a copy of Salvador Muñoz’s Las dos reglas

42
Ana María Aranda Bernal and Fernando Quiles García, “Las academias de pintura en
Seville,” Boletín de la Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando 90 (2000): 121.
43
Ana María Aranda Bernal, “La Biblioteca de Domingo Martínez: el Saber de un Pintor
Sevillano del XVIII,” Atrio 6 (1993): 63–98.
44
“Su casa parecía una academia, a la que concurrían muchos discípulos. Unos
estudiaban principios (efectivamente veremos cómo para ello contaban con cartillas y
libros especializados), otros copiaban estamaps, aquellos dibuxaban models de yeso y el
maniquí y estos el natural, que pagaba Martínez a sus expensas” Ceán Bermúdez,
Diccionario histórico de los más ilustres profesores de las bellas artes en España (1965),
74.
151
de perspectiva práctica (Madrid, 1642), a translation of Vignola’s Le due regole della
prospettiva, a costly purchase indicative of the artist’s interest in the subject and the
importance of book learning.
45
The publication of Andrea Pozzo’s Perspectiva Pictorum
et Architectorum (Rome, 1693 and 1700) also contributed to a renewed interest in the
subject. At the time, the treatise, owned by Martínez, wielded significant influence on
the Peninsula and throughout the Empire. Published in two volumes, Pozzo intended that
his work serve as an introduction to architecture and as a guide for artists and architects,
both to create perspective drawings and paintings and to construct stage design (Fig.
4.17). By 1693, the first volume was the most widely published and translated treatise on
perspective written to date. Between 1700 and 1725, the book, translated into six modern
European languages, realized influence stretching beyond Europe and serving as a source
for the construction of buildings throughout the Spanish Empire, in the Portuguese
colonies, and even as far afield as China.
46
Although seemingly not translated into
Spanish, Pozzo’s image-based treatise was, nonetheless, hugely influential among
eighteenth-century Iberian artists.
Indeed, Pozzo’s treatise was popular, in part, on account of its utility for
illusionistic mural painting, for which he was renowned. Contemporaries of Lucas
Valdés were quite interested in the study of perspectival drawing and applied their
command of the subject to the adornment of architectural spaces. For this reason, the late

45
See Fernando Quiles García, Alonso Miguel de Tovar (1678–1752) (Seville: Arte
Hispalense, 2005), 14–15.
46
Rodney Palmer, “’All is very plain, upon inspection of the figure’: the visual method
of Andrea Pozzo’s Perspectiva Pictorum et Architectorum,” in The Rise of the Image:
Essays on the History of the Illustrated Art Book, eds. Rodney Palmer and Thomas
Frangenberg (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2002), 157–214.
152
seventeenth century in Seville is known as the great age of mural painting. In early
modern Europe, the study of perspective and the execution of fresco painting went hand-
in-hand. While art historians are largely critical of Lucas Valdés’s skills as a painter, his
accomplishments within the realm of mural painting are undeniable. Art historian
Enrique Valdivieso acknowledges his ability to identify novel solutions to pictorial
representation amidst the most important moment for mural painting in the city.
47

Patrons of Seville’s religious institutions recognized his extraordinary ability to skillfully
decorate interior walls, and his murals and ornamentation are found throughout the city—
at the Hospital de los Venerables (1686–1700), the convents of San Clemente el Real
(1689) and of Casa Grande de San Francisco (1700), the chapel of San Laureano at the
Cathedral (1709), the churches of San Pablo (1709–1715) and San Luis de los Franceses
(1715–1719).
48
While Lucas Valdés received commissions from throughout Seville, he
did his greatest work at the Hospital de los Venerables.
Scholars contend that Valdés Leal painted the vault of the presbytery and the
dome at the Hospital de los Venerables and that Lucas Valdés executed the murals for the
nave.
49
Images adorning the walls of the church promote the ministry of the clergy and

47
“Su arte, por otra parte, apenas evolucionó en busca de soluciones nuevas,
permaneciendo estático con el paso del tiempo. Quizás la mayor virtud pictórica de
Lucas Valdés Valdés es su facilidad para concebir grandes y aparatosos escenarios
arquitectónicos en perspectiva, aprovechando sus conocimientos en esta cienca, que le
permitio realizar los conjuntos decorativos más atractivos de su época, cubriendo cuno de
los capítulos más importantes de la historia de la pintura mural sevillan de todos los
tiempos.” Valdivieso, Historia de la pintura sevillana (1986), 284–285.
48
Ibid., 284–85.
49
Diego Angulo Iñíguez “La Casa de Venerables de Sacerdotes.” Boletín de la Real
Academia de Bellas Artes de Santa Isabel de Hungría 4 (1976): 41–96; and José Gestoso
153
the superiority of the spiritual world over the temporal (Fig. 4.18). The identity of the
artist responsible for the impressive decoration of the sacristy remains disputed (Fig.
4.19). There, the confines of the ceiling appear to open to the heavens, and four angels
elevating a cross seem to float above the viewer. While art historians José Gestoso Pérez
and Diego Angulo Iñíguez argue that Valdés Leal was responsible for this work, these
attributions are based largely on notions of Lucas Valdés’ inferiority as an artist. Sara
Fuentes Lázaro, on the other hand, attributes the mural to Lucas Valdés, basing this
reattribution on his expertise in the fields of geometry and perspective.
50
She argues that
Valdés Leal’s oeuvre suggests that he was incapable of such illusionistic mural painting,
an assessment corroborated by Lucas Valdés’s education and body of work.
Valdés Leal instilled in his son a strong interest in draftsmanship and its
associated fields of study. However, as evidenced in Chapter 1, Valdés Leal conveyed in
his painting an uneasy relationship with intellectual pursuits, deeming such activities as
hindrances to salvation. The themes of Valdés Leal’s Allegory of Vanity (Fig. 1.15) and
Allegory of Salvation (Fig. 1.16) suggest that secular learning was trivial and worthless, a
mere distraction to one’s spiritual preparation for death. Allegory of Vanity includes
books relating to art, architecture, anatomy, agriculture, and astronomy, as well as
scientific instruments—an armillary sphere and tools of measure. Also included are
symbols of material wealth and reminders of mortality—the skull, clock, and
extinguished candle. In keeping with the tradition of desengaño del mundo, the painting

Pérez, Biografía del pintor sevillano Juan Valdés Leal (Seville: Oficina tip. de J.P.
Gironés, 1916), 153.
50
Fuentes Lázaro, “La práctica de la cuadratura en España” (2009), 204.
154
illustrates the great illusions of the world. Allegory of Salvation, on the other hand,
brings visual form to the righteous path with symbols of piety, including a stem of lilies,
a scourge, and books popular among the devout. The painting warns against secular
learning and promotes devotion.
Lucas Valdés similarly characterizes the right and wrong paths, yet he challenges
those virtues promoted in his father’s diptych. Allegory of the Two Ways of Life (1715–
19, Fig. 20) reflects Lucas Valdés’s imagination of righteous pursuits.
51
Central to the
large canvas is a young boy, guided by the allegorical figures for vice and virtue. In this
painting, Christian and pagan worlds represented by statuary, are at odds. Opposing
images of San Jerónimo, a priest, confessor, theologian, historian, and Doctor of the
Church, as well as an ancient philosopher flank the archway. Directly below are
representations of Parnassus and the Final Judgment, reflections of the departure from
mundane activities in search of asceticism. Pursuits presented as valuable include
commerce, military service, and the study of science, art, and letters. Temptations that
lead one astray include those associated with love, gambling, gluttony, and vanity. Time
and Death preside over these conflicting approaches to life. Involvement with worthy
secular pursuits is not a hindrance to salvation, but is rather an encouraged activity.
Painted immediately before his departure for Cádiz, Allegory of the Two Ways of
Life reflects Lucas Valdés’s ultimate direction. Despite their shared experiences, Lucas
Valdés chose a path far different from that of his father. His education and artistic
training prepared him for major commissions with religious institutions throughout the

51
Enrique Valdivieso, Vanidades y desengaños en la pintura española del siglo de oro
(Seville: Fundación Instituto de Empresa, 2002), 159.
155
city and grounded his practice as a muralist. Interestingly, this background also equipped
him to become a professor of mathematics at the Academia de Guardias Marinas, a
secular pursuit. I argue here that an important patron supported this transition. His
relationship with Don Pedro Corbet (1634–98), the first president of the Hospital de los
Venerables and a high-ranking military official, likely encouraged the artist’s ultimate
leap from artist of religious themes to that of academic mathematician, aligned with the
state.
Lucas Valdés and Don Pedro Corbet
Valdés Leal and Lucas Valdés started the decoration of the Hospital de los Venerables in
1686. Lucas Valdés was then twenty-five years old. At age twenty-nine, upon the death
of his father, he assumed the commission in full and continued work at the Hospital until
1700. For fourteen years the artist worked regularly at the Hospital de los Venerables.
Two paintings from 1690 demonstrate his familiarity with the institution’s benefactors,
patients, and caretakers, and these images provide a window onto daily life at the
Hospital. The Arrival of the Cleric Pilgrims to the Hospital de los Venerables (1699, Fig.
4.21) depicts a reception for travelers. Neve, along with an unidentified ecclesiastic, a
porter, and a layman, possibly the Marquis de Paradas, welcome the new guests.
52
The
arriving priests appear worn and tired, presumably after a long journey. The pilgrim at
the center of the composition carries a sheet of paper in one hand and his hat in the other,
wearily clinging to his walking stick. Neve and his colleagues extend their arms in
welcome, ushering the travelers into the Hospital. The second cartoon reflects the

52
José Fernández López, Lucas Valdés Valdés (2003), 90.
156
mission of the Hospital de los Venerables—the care of aging and destitute clerics.
Assistance to the Priests in the Infirmary of the Hospital de los Venerables (Fig. 4.22)
depicts Pedro and Luis Corbet and an aid tending to four patients. The men depicted
bedside provide food and drink to bedridden patients with assistance from two others.
These images are important, as they provide some suggestion, idealized or not, that these
wealthy nobles, the Marqués de Paradas and the Corbet brothers, not only committed
financial resources to the institution, but also actively participated in its charitable
mission.
As an artist working routinely at the Hospital, Lucas Valdés became acquainted
with those involved with its day-to-day operations. Those individuals identifiable in the
cartoons—Neve, the Marqués de Paradas, and the Corbet brothers—were also central to
the building and decoration of the church. These benefactors made significant monetary
contributions to the project and interacted closely with the artists. While Neve held a
bond with Murillo, Pedro Corbet, the president of the Hospital, developed a particularly
close relationship with Lucas Valdés. The Hospital’s historical archive details that Pedro
Corbet was an important patron of the artist and influenced the eventual direction of his
career.
Pedro and Luis Corbet belonged unquestionably to Seville’s elite. Born in Lima,
Peru in 1634, Pedro Corbet was a knight of the Order of Santiago, Captain of the Cavalry
in Flanders, and Administrator of the Royal Armada.
53
Highly acclaimed for his
accomplishments as a naval captain, Pedro Corbet is recognized for leading successful

53
Ortiz de Zúñiga, Anales eclesiásticos y seculares de…Sevilla V (Madrid, 1796) 457–
458.
157
combat missions and navigating convoys destined for New Spain, the Viceroyalty of
Peru, New Granada, and Buenos Aires.
54
His brother, Luis Corbet (d. 1698), was a
religious man, an esteemed canon at the Seville Cathedral. Both brothers were also
trustees at the Hospital de los Venerables and friends of Neve.
55
Neve valued their
camaraderie and trusted the Corbet brothers with matters of business.
56
Pedro and Luis
Corbet were wealthy and well aligned socially. Their family’s successful business
dealings with the New World afforded Pedro and Luis Corbet the opportunity to become
highly respected individuals and champions of charity.
57

Pedro and Luis Corbet’s backgrounds reflect the changing character of affluence
and philanthropy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Their maternal grandfather
Pedro de Cea y Morales was born in Navas del Marqués, Spain and traveled to Lima in
1587 as a valet.
58
He was one of many Spaniards, who, enticed by promises of a better
life, immigrated to the New World in the final decades of the sixteenth century.
59
While

54
AGI, Casa de la Contratación, n. 1222 and n. 1223.
55
Luis Corbet served as Neve’s guarantor for the payment of his niece’s dowry, and
Pedro Corbet was an executor of his will. Regarding Baustista’s dowry, see AHPS, Prot.
12959, fols. 690r–92r and 693r–99v. Quoted in Peter Cherry, “Appendix,” in Murillo
and Justino de Neve: The Art of Friendship, ed. Gabriele Finaldi (Madrid: Museo
Nacional de Prado, 2012), 148. Regarding Neve’s nomination of Pedro Corbet as
executor, see Diego Angulo Iñiguez, Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe,
1981) 144.
56
“[…] a D. Pedro Corbet, Caballero de la orden de Santiago […] una lamina que yo
tengo del diseño del cuadro que esta en la Casa y aparo de Señores Benerables
Sacerdotes.” AGAS, Leg. 13, exp. 12, p. 64.
57
Gabriel de Aranda, Vida del siervo de Dios exemplar de sacerdotes el venerable Padre
Fernando de Contreras ... del abito clerical de N.P.S. Pedro (Seville, 1692), 463.
58
Guillermo Lohman Villena, Los Americanos en las Ordenes Nobiliarias, Tomo I
(Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1993), 109–110.
59
Peter Boyd-Bowman, “Patterns of Spanish Emigration to the Indies until 1600,” The
Hispanic American Historical Review 56 (1976): 584.
158
working in Lima, Cea y Morales met and married an indigenous Andean woman, Juana
Monjaraz.
60
Their daughter, Mariana de Cea, married a native of Seville, Roberto
Corbet, who made his fortune in business with the Americas and likely met his bride on
an expedition to Peru.
61
The couple had two children in Lima, Pedro and Luis. In 1642,
the family of four returned to Seville. Upon Roberto Corbet’s homecoming, he assumed
positions of influence in the city, serving alongside his brother Andrés Corbet as a
member of Seville’s municipal assembly, the veinticuatro, so called for its twenty-four
members.
62

Pedro Corbet served assumed the positions of hermano mayor of the Hermandad
de la Santa Caridad following the death of Mañara and of the first president of the
Hospital de los Venerables.
63
While involved with several organizations, he was
particularly committed to the Hospital de los Venerables, financially supporting its
decoration and services. Documents relating to the adornment of the church at the
Hospital de los Venerables reveal that Pedro Corbet made significant contributions to the
institution, and that he was a great admirer of Lucas Valdés. Accounting records from
1698 suggest that Lucas Valdés became a permanent fixture at the Hospital and received
regular payments for adorning the altar of its new church. The notary clearly
distinguished among the different accounts from which the Brotherhood paid artists’
salaries. These documents reveal that Pedro Corbet chose to make several payments to

60
He worked with “el oficio de Defensor de Bienes de Difuntos.” Lohman Villena, Los
americanos en las órdenes nobiliarias (1993), 109–110.
61
Fernando Quiles García, Sevilla y América en el Barroco: comercio, ciudad y arte
(Seville: Bosque de Palabras, 2009), 94–95.
62
Lohman Villena, Los americanos en las órdenes nobiliarias (1993), 109–110.
63
Pedro Corbet was hermano mayor from May 31–December 28, 1679. AHSC
159
Lucas Valdés with his personal funds, which suggests a personal commitment to the
artist.
64
Ortiz de Zúñiga further attests to this patron-artist relationship, stating that Pedro
Corbet took it upon himself to direct those paintings executed by Lucas Valdés and to
install them personally.
65

While written sources imply that the two worked together closely, a portrait of
Pedro Corbet painted by Lucas Valdés is the greatest testament to the patron’s admiration
for and confidence in the artist (Fig. 4.23). Archival records reveal that on April 13,
1698, Pedro Corbet paid Lucas Valdés for this portrait.
66
The artist depicts his patron
within a faux oval frame with his hand resting above the Corbet family’s coat of arms.
Displayed on the left arm of Pedro Corbet is the cross of the Order of Santiago, the
knighthood to which he was accepted in 1654.
67
In the foreground, enclosed by the
frame, is a marine scene punctuated by ships, a reference to the patron’s decorated naval
background. Lucas Valdés includes several objects that further stress Pedro Corbet’s
military service—the barrel of a musket and a helmet with a white plume, and a
navigational sphere, alongside two books and a sheet of paper. The books, Diego de

64
“Los ochenta y cuatro R. Que montan los jornales a los días sábado 13 de septiembre
de 98 y Lunes 15 de dicho mes (Septiembre) no se ande abonar en esta cuenta aunque
están apunta dos en ella por que dicho jornales se pagaron en casa de S. Don Pedro
Corbet con papel de D. Lucas de Valdés.” AGAS, Archivo Hospital de los Venerables,
Leg. 4, n. 4, f. 50.
65
“… fue el que dirigió y dispuso las pinturas que se hallan en su Iglesia ejecutadas por
Don Lucas Valdés, hijo de Don Juan Valdés, ambos profesores de conocido mérito,
naturales de Sevilla.” Ortiz de Zúñiga, Anales eclesiásticos y seculares de…Sevilla V
(Madrid, 1796), 457.
66
“Más pague a D. Lucas de Valdés ciento y ochenta y siete reales y medio de vellón por
el retrato que hizo de S. D. Pedro Corbet de lo cual tengo recibo.” AGAS, Archivo
Hospital de los Venerables, Leg. 4, n. 4, f. 55.
67
AHN, Expedientillos, n. 3533.
160
Álava y Viamon’s El Perfecto Capitán (Madrid, 1590), Alain Maneson Mallet’s Les
Travaux de Mars (Paris, 1672), a compilation of three books on fortifications and a plan
for a fortress set atop the texts further speak to his role as a naval captain.
68
Above all,
Pedro Corbet’s association with the Armada and his service to the Crown, rather than his
charitable activities, are emphasized through these wide-ranging attributes.
Following the unexpected death of Pedro Corbet in October 1698, disputes ensued
regarding the future of the family’s estate. These lengthy disagreements illuminate not
only the extent of the family’s assets, but also their long-standing commitment to charity.
The institution of the mayorazgo dictated the line of inheritance. Following the death of
Teresa Claudia Morel y Corbet, the heir of the mayorzago, institutions financially
supported by the family’s fortunes made claims against one another. These arguments
reveal that Roberto Corbet and his sons subsidized the Hospital de los Venerables, the
Hospital de la Santa Caridad, the Hospital de la Misericordia, and the Hospital del Santo
Cristo de los Dolores.
69
Pedro Corbet, in particular, invested in these charitable
institutions, provided significant funds and assumed positions of leadership.
In contemporary biographies, Pedro Corbet emerges as a figure far more revered
than his brother, a member of the clergy. Ortiz de Zúñiga and Aranda make brief
mention of Luis Corbet, noting his financial contributions to the Hospital de los

68
Sebastián Fernández de Madrano, El arquitecto perfecto en el arte militar (Brussels,
1708), 91.
69
Diego José Monge, Informe en Derecho por Doña Teresa Claudia Morel, y Corbet,
Vezina de ste Ciudad en pleyto del abintestato, del General Don Pedro Corbet,
Cavaellero … sobre que se declare aver sucedido en el Mayorazgo del Veintiquarto
(Seville, 1713).
161
Venerables and his role as a Cathedral canon.
70
The same authors laud Pedro Corbet as a
staunch defender of the Spanish Empire, a patron of art, and as a champion of charity.
Above all, chroniclers recognize Pedro Corbet for his military service. Aranda
specifically stresses his role as Administrator of the Armada “whose valor in war, and
wisdom and counsel in peace, service to the King in defense of the monarchy, are
sufficiently notable, and whose positions qualify his heroic act.”
71

Pedro Corbet’s involvement with the navy came at a pivotal moment for the
Spanish Empire. Spain’s ultimate survival relied on more than the prayers of the devout;
it demanded a strong and unified military capable of thwarting its enemies. Perhaps in
part, Pedro Corbet’s service to the Armada helped inspire Lucas Valdés to abandon his
successful career as a painter and to contribute to new military reforms through teaching
mathematics to young cadets in Cádiz. The technical skills Lucas Valdés mastered as an
artist-in-training made him a valuable asset within the context of the new Academia de
Gaurdias Marinas.

Lucas Valdés at the Academia de Guardias Marinas
In 1719, Lucas Valdés and his wife terminated the lease on their home in Seville located

70
Ortiz de Zúñiga, Anales eclesiásticos y seculares de…Sevilla V (Madrid, 1796) 457;
and Aranda, Vida del siervo de Dios exemplar de sacerdotes el venerable Padre
Fernando de Contreras ... del abito clerical de N.P.S. Pedro (1692), 463.
71
“Don Pedro Corbet, cuyas prendas de valor en la guerra, y de prudencia y consejo en la
paz, empleadas en servicio del Rey defensa de esta Monarquía, son bastantemente
notorias, y cuyos puestos califican lo heroico de su obrar.” Aranda, Vida del siervo de
Dios exemplar de sacerdotes el venerable Padre Fernando de Contreras ... del abito
clerical de N.P.S. Pedro (1692), 463.
162
near the Hospital del Espíritu Santo.
72
At this time, the artist and his family relocated to
Cádiz. There, Lucas Valdés joined the ranks of the military, assuming a new career as a
professor of mathematics at the Academia de Guardias Marinas. Although Lucas
Valdés’s body of work evidences his knowledge of perspective and design, his
appointment to this position in Cádiz also implies a wide recognition as an accomplished
mathematician.
The Academia de Guardias Marinas was integral to the Crown’s efforts to
improve its navy. Following the treaties of Utrecht, Philip V enacted a series of reforms
with the purpose of improving the Empire’s administration and protection.
73
In 1714,
with the establishment of the Secretary of State and the Office of the Navy and the Indies,
the fleets came under the direction of the Intendant General of the Navy, a position linked
to the President of the Casa de Contratación.
74
While the Crown issued the reform in
1714, the restructuring of the Navy and its command were not realized until 1717, the
same year Seville’s monopoly on trade ended, and its institutions relocated to Cádiz.
José Patiño (1666–1736), the son of the veedor general (general supplier) of the Army of
Milan, assumed the role of Intendant General of the Navy.
75
Patiño, born in Milan,

72
Fernando Quiles García. Noticias de pintura: 1700–1720 (Sevilla: Ediciones
Guadalquivir, 1990), 229.
73
I am indebted to Marcelo Aranda for sharing with me his chapter on Juan José Navarro
and early Spanish Enlightenment. Please see, Marcelo Aranda, Between Discovery and
Enlightenment: Spanish Scientific Culture through Decline, War and Reform 1670–
1735. Ph.D. Dissertation, Stanford University (2013), 175–219.
74
Carlos Pérez Fernández-Turégano, Patiño y las reformas de la administración en el
reinado de Felipe V (Madrid: Ministrio de Defensa, 2006), 89.
75
Gildas Bernard, “La Casa de la Contratación de Sevilla, Luego de Cádiz en el Siglo
XVIII,” Anuario de Estudios Americanos 12 (1955): 258–264.
163
studied Latin, theology, and literature at the Jesuit Curia in Rome.
76
He then entered
military service.
77
Patiño relocated to Spain in 1711, where he served as Intendant of
Extremadura and of Catalonia until assuming the position of Intendant General of the
Navy.
78
Integral to Patiño’s reforms was the establishment of Cádiz’s Academia de
Guardias Marinas in 1717.
While the first class entering the Academy in the early months of 1717 attracted a
mere thirty-seven cadets, the school expanded rapidly with enrollment reaching 122
students within a year.
79
The recruits were young, ranging in age from twelve to eighteen
years. The academy mandated that each cadet be literate and a member of the nobility.
80

Patiño and Juan José Navarro (1687–1772), an erudite officer serving in the War of the
Spanish Succession, assumed significant roles in the formation of the new institution.
81

While initially conceived as a site for training in piloting, hydrographical studies,
artillery, maneuvering, and daily life on the ship, the Academia de Guardias Marinas also
educated young boys in skills beyond those required for a naval career. In a 1720 letter

76
Perez Fernández-Turégano, Patiño y las reformas de la administración en el reinado
de Felipe V (2006), 30.
77
Ibid., 30.
78
Aranda, “Between Discovery and Enlightenment” (2013), Ch. 5.
79
Pérez Fernández-Turégano, Patiño y las reformas de la administración en el reinado
de Felipe V (2006), 98.
80
“Viendo la Nobleza de España sin carrera poco aplicada a seguir ninguna y en una
crianza que no la distinguía de la plebe; y conociendo que sus genios eran a propósito
para cualesquiera facultades a que se dirigiesen, se pensó en reducirlos a terminas en que
pudiese aprovecharse la Buena disposición de su material; y no se propusieron otros mas
proporcionados que el recogerla en una compañía con nombre de Guardias Marinas,
siguiendo la máxima de otros principes.” Written in a letter to King Philip V by Patiño in
1720 (AMN, ms. 580). Quoted in Ibid., 98.
81
Guadalupe Chocano Higueras, “Don Juan José Navarro de Viana y Búfalo, primer
Marqués de la Victoria y Director General de la Real Armada,” in España y el mar en el
siglo de Carlos III, ed. Vicente Palacio Atard (Madrid: Marinvest, S. A., 1989), 443–47.
164
to Andrés de Pez (1657–1723), President of the Council of the Indies, Patiño addresses
the goals of the school:
The main goal of the formation, maintenance, and establishment of this Corps, is
that the King shall not only acquire an able nobility for his kingdoms, one that can
serve within the Navy and Army, adorned with the Sciences and subjects of
mathematics such as the rules of discrete quantities, Geometry, Trigonometry,
Cosmography, Nautical Science, Maneuver, Military Fortification, the theory of
gunnery and naval construction, but also allow those who due to a lack of
robustness or inclination, desire to go into a profession other than a military or
naval one. An Academy will be built, whose campus will be owned by the
Crown, with classrooms large enough to accommodate teaching by masters in
each of these subjects in the manner that is most suitable at the same time to
employ and instruct those officers in the exercise of arms, military evolutions, the
handling of artillery, dancing and fencing.
82

Patiño stressed the importance of mathematics, mechanics, and nautical sciences,
associating this knowledge base with a cadet’s ability to demonstrate allegiance to and
defense of the Crown. New cadets would be well versed in the latest advances in Europe
and were to comport themselves as gentlemen.
83
Such a comprehensive education was
essential not only to the mission of the academy, but also to the larger efforts afoot—the
fortification and strengthening of the Spanish Empire.
Lucas Valdés arrived in Cádiz two years after the establishment of the Academy.
The acting professor of mathematics, Francisco de Orbe, was an instructor at the

82
AMN, MSS 1181, Article 19. Quoted and translated in Aranda, Between Discovery
and Enlightenment (2013), Ch. 5.
83
“…el nuevo oficial que se pretende formar ha de ser galante caballero de salon y estar
en disposición de mantener con idéntica soltura una conversación acerca de los nuevos
adelantos científicos europeos.” María Dolores Higueras Rodríguez, “Enseñanzas
náuticas e Instituciones científicas en la Armada española.” Quoted in España y el mar en
el siglo de Carlos III, ed. Vicente Palacio Atard (Madrid: Marinvest, S. A., 1989), 144.
165
academy and its headmaster.
84
While there is little documentation relating to the details
of Lucas Valdés’s tenure, Patiño’s description of this position sheds light on his role. In
his writings regarding the mission of the naval academy and its organization, Patiño first
addresses the duties of the mathematics professor, who was invariably present upon the
arrival of the cadets to explain concepts and to provide daily exercises.
85
With the
assistance of various instruments, the professor taught the principles of navigation, the
division of time, the solar circle, tides, currents, and winds.
86
These expectations suggest
that Lucas Valdés’s knowledge base extended far beyond the principles of perspectival
design.
Patiño’s vision for the Academia de Guardias Marinas, and its course offerings in
subjects including geometry, trigonometry, and mechanics, among others, made it one of
the most important institutions for the advancement of scientific knowledge in Spain.
87

Like Patiño, Navarro demonstrated a strong commitment to the academy’s program of
study and held that the quality of its education was integral to its success. Upon his
arrival in Cádiz in 1719, Navarro drafted a collection of documents relating to the
academy’s curriculum, collectively titled Escuela de Marina. In a letter addressing the
motivations for this project, Navarro explains:
I was both aware of and alarmed by the reprehensible disrepair of our nation,
where there could not be found even the least of the latest advances in naval
matters ... [there were] only a few books or manuals on navigation, a few small

84
Pérez Fernández-Turégano, Patiño y las reformas de la administración en el reinado
de Felipe V (2006), 98.
85
AMN, MSS 1181, Article 44.
86
AMN, MSS 1181, Articles 44–51.
87
For more on the Academia de Guardias Marinas, see Antonio Lafuente and Manuel
Sellés, El observatorio de Cádiz (1753–1831) (Madrid: Ministerio de Defensa, 1988).
166
vocabularies, and as many in manuscripts, as in print. Being ambitious, driven
and full of incessant desire to know, I resolved to apply myself (with the guidance
of geometry and drawing) toward the goal of attempting to circulate the new
information that would be of most service to the king and the nation.
88

The repair of the nation hinged on the dissemination of knowledge; print and drawing
were integral to the circulation of new information and to making improvements in the
state of the Spanish Empire.
89
In this vein, included among Navarro’s lifework is an
impressive collection of technical drawings, many executed in watercolor and
collectively titled Diccionario Demostrativo con la Configuración o Anatomía de toda la
Architectura Naval Moderna or the Álbum del Marques de la Victoria.
90
Lucas Valdés
was instrumental in Navarro’s efforts.
Navarro worked on the Diccionario demostrativo for thirty-seven years, between
1719 and 1755. In 1756 he presented the manuscript to King Ferdinand VI.
91
Navarro
explained to the King in an introduction to the text the purpose of the work: “This book
which I lay at Your Majesty’s royal feet has within it everything there is to see and know
regarding nautical science and the construction of warships, which till now, no one in any

88
José de Vargas y Ponce, Varones ilustres de la marina española: vida de Juan José
Navarro, primer Marques de la Victoria (Madrid, 1808), 382–83. Quoted and translated
in Aranda, Between Discovery and Enlightenment (2013), Ch. 5.
89
Views relating to the utility of print and drawing were part of a growing discourse on
reform and the importance of visual arts in the military. See Gabriele B. Paquette,
Enlightenment, Governance, and Reform in Spain and its Empire, 1759–1808 (New
York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 4–5.
90
Álbum del Marqués de la Victoria is the title of the 1995 facsimile edition. See Juan
José Navarro, Álbum del Marqués de la Victoria (Madrid: Lunwerg, 1995).
91
Mónica Piera Miquel, “El Álbum del Marqués de la Victoria y su aportación a la
historia del mueble,” Archivo Español de Arte 79 (1998): 79.
167
other nation has attempted.”
92
The collection, comprised of one hundred and twelve
folio-sized drawings, each measuring three by one and a half feet, details the various
types of ships and their respective components. Illustrations are extensively labeled with
exhaustive information ranging from the types of lumber and nails used to build a
particular vessel to the appropriate vestments and furnishings for an onboard chapel.
While Navarro presented the manuscript to Ferndinand VI as a gift, it is clear the
document was intended as an instrument in search of the King’s support for naval and
imperial reform.
Navarro executed many of the illustrations himself. However, varying stylistic
approaches suggest that he collaborated with other artists as well; modes of
representation shift suggesting the work of different hands. The images are unsigned,
and those artists responsible for their creation are unknown. However, I argue here that
Lucas Valdés is responsible for five drawings in the manuscript. Folio six (Fig. 4.24)
acknowledges that Lucas Valdés invented the boat illustrated—a flat-bottomed riverboat
suggestive of a gondola that is capable of navigating against the current. A legend reads:
“Figure of a boat invented by Don Lucas Valdés, celebrated painter and mathematician of
our Royal Academy of Caballeros.”
93
The text makes clear that Lucas Valdés is
responsible for the design of the boat, yet it fails to attribute the drawing to his specific
hand. Clues regarding the artist responsible for folio six are found in folio five (Fig.

92
Navarro, Álbum del Marqués de la Victoria (1995), Fol. iv. Quoted and translated in
Aranda, “Between Discovery and Enlightenment” (2013), 212.
93
“Figura de un Bote que inventó Dn Lucas Valdés Celebre Pintor y Mathematico de
nuestra Real Academia de Cavalleros Guardias Marinas para que pudiesse navegar contra
la corriente de un Rio.” AMN, MV–06.
168
4.25), which includes three vignettes. The framed nautical scenes running along the
upper edge reflect Lucas Valdés’s command of perspective and his propensity for
composite design, recalling his aforementioned drawings in Córdoba (Fig. 4.7). Stylistic
patterns between folios five and six, as well as seven through nine (Figs. 4.26–28),
suggest the artist responsible for folio six executed four others; there is a striking
similitude among the drawings in regards to watercolor application and the renderings of
the sea. It is likely that Lucas Valdés assisted Navarro with the illustrations for the
manuscript.
At the Academia de Guardias Marinas, Lucas Valdés assumed many roles. The
Academy recognized him as the master maker of nautical instruments, a professor of
mathematics, and as a drawing instructor.
94
Lucas Valdés’ training as an artist prepared
him to make a valuable contribution to Navarro’s project and to the larger program to
resurrect and fortify the Spanish Empire. As historian Marcelo Aranda argues, the
Diccionario Demostrativo suggests that much of the later activity of the Spanish
Scientific Revolution was based in the practical knowledge of mariners and craftsmen in
Spain.
95
This case study reaffirms Aranda’s assessment regarding the locality of the early
Spanish Enlightenment. Lucas Valdés’ Jesuit education in Seville, as well as his training
under Valdés Leal and exposure to the Academia de Bellas Artes, prepared him to make
valuable contributions to Spain’s education and military reforms.

94
Hugo O’Donnell y Duque de Estrada and María del Carmen Iglesias. El primer
Marqués de la Victoria, personaje silenciado en la reforma dieciochesca de la Armada:
discurso leído el día 1 de febrero de 2004 en el acto de su recepción pública (Madrid:
Real Academia de la Historia, 2004), 24–25.
95
Aranda, “Between Discovery and Enlightenment” (2013), 219.
169
In 1758, Luis Godin (1704–60), the director of the Real Observatorio
Astrónomico, the institution into which the Academia de las Guardias Marinas later
evolved, published a treatise on the importance of mathematical instruction for naval
cadets.
96
According to Godin, a command of mathematical principles shapes a better
naval officer and allows for superior service to the King.
97
He suggests that this
knowledge and the pursuit of truth are always useful and sometimes necessary in order to
serve the mother country.
98
It was Lucas Valdés’s command of mathematical principles
that made him a valuable asset to the Crown, allowing him to dedicate the final years of
his life to the service of his homeland—“la Madre Patria.” Rather than working as a
painter of religious themes in Seville, he applied his artistic training to the military efforts
of the State. Lucas Valdés died as an artist and mathematician in service to the Crown
and in defense of the Spanish Empire.

96
Antonio Rumeu de Armas, “La política naval,” in España y el mar en el siglo de
Carlos III, ed. Vicente Palacio Atard (Madrid: Marinvest, S. A., 1989), 39.
97
“Sin esse estudio muchos Oficiales han sido Buenos; en un decir común, no es un
parecer fundado en principios, por no estar impuestos en ellos, y no tener voto los que
hablan así: Que se debe entender por un perfecto Oficial de Marina? Convéngase en su
definición exacta, uniendo en ella las precisas calidades del entendimiento y de la
instrucción con las del ánimo; y con ella sola se desvanecerá la contrariedad. Unos
Oficiales sin Matemáticas han sido Buenos; con ellas hubieran sido mejores; con ellas en
algunas ocasiones hubieran cumplido mejor con su obligación; hubieran sido mejores;
con ellas en algunas ocasiones hubieron cumplido mejor con su obligación; hubieran
adelantado más el servicio del Rey, cuyas órdenes requieren y suponen siempre la mayor
capacidad posible: Negarse á esto cualquiera oficial, es negarse a la atención que debe á
lo que le importa; es negarse á la razón que manda, á la obligación que no permite yerro
de voluntad; o cuando menos es querer disimular la infelicidad, y solapar el sonrojo de
los que han carecido de instrucción.” Luis Godin, Compendio de mathematicas para el
uso de los cavalleros guardias-marinas (Cádiz, 1758), 1.
98
“Su estudio es siempre útil, y á veces preciso para servir á la Patria, perfeccionar las
artes, adelantar la filosofía; lo es también para aprender a raciocinar, para gobernarse en
lo particular, tratar las demás ciencias, y generalmente para inquirir la verdad en todo lo
que se ofrece, y es permitido a la curiosidad humana.” Ibid., 2.
170
Despite his fascinating trajectory, Lucas Valdés remains a relatively unknown
figure in both the history of Spanish art and in that of Spain’s larger historiography.
While his obscurity as an artist is likely due in part to perceptions of his inferior talent, it
is possible that his identification with both the visual arts and mathematics contributes to
this understanding. However, in seventeenth-century France, mastery of disparate fields
was lauded and largely associated with the Enlightenment. Frenchman Claude Perrault
(1628–1703), remembered and celebrated for having operated in two distinct fields,
comes to mind. Contemporaneous with Lucas Valdés, Perrault belonged to the medical
faculty at the University of Paris and was a founding member of the Academy of Science
in Paris. Despite having no architectural training, Louis XIV’s minister entrusted him
with significant architectural projects, and he is widely recognized for his translation of
Vitruvius, as well as for his design for the Colonnade of the Louvre.
99
Historians note
that Perrault’s interdisciplinary approach to medicine and architecture was somewhat
normal among architectural thinkers before the French Revolution, and they align him
and his approach with the emergence of Enlightenment thought.
100
This is not the case
for Lucas Valdés, who remains historically estranged from his achievements in both
mathematics and painting.

99
See Indra Kagis McEwen, “On Claude Perrault: Modernising Vitruvius,” in Paper
Palaces: The Rise of the Renaissance Architectural Treatise, Vaughan Hart and Peter
Hicks, eds. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 321; and Wolfgang Herrmann,
The Theory of Claude Perrault (London: A. Zwemmer, Ltd., 1973), 1–3.
100
Martin Fitspatrick, “Louis XIV and Early Enlightenment France,” in Enlightenment
World, Martin Fitzpatrick, Peter Jones, Christa Knellwolf, and Ian McCalman, eds. (New
York: Routledge, 2004), 142–43.
171
While Lucas Valdés’s reputation prevails as a lesser-known artist, his role at the
Academia de Guardias Marinas is even more obscure. This is due in part to his
association with Golden Age painting, art largely disassociated from advancements in the
field of science and staunchly aligned with the heavy hand of the Catholic Church.
Arguably, long-standing narratives relating to Spain’s intellectual stagnation in the early
modern period further remove its art from the underpinnings of the Enlightenment.

Conclusion
The motivations ultimately guiding Lucas Valdés’s artistic practice were quite different
from those of his predecessors. While he similarly trained at the Academia de Bellas
Artes and relied on religious institutions for commissions throughout most of his career,
his move to Cádiz and involvement with the Academia de Guardias Marinas signal a
clear departure from traditional models for Spanish painters and models baroque painting.
For this reason, this chapter is important to consider in relation to the larger narrative arc
of the Golden Age. Rather than spiritual, Lucas Valdés’s artistic production was
pragmatic. His commitment to secular causes, namely military and education reforms, is
a break from the supposed hegemony of the Church and notions of its control over artistic
production in this period. However, at the time, Lucas Valdés’s move to Cádiz
seemingly was not even noteworthy. Mentions in period sources of his relocation are
brief and anticlimactic, suggesting that contemporaries perceived his involvement with
the Academia de Guardias Marinas as neither remarkable nor surprising.
101

101
Juan Agustín Ceán Bermúdez makes mention of his superior education in
mathematics, and Fermín Arana de Varflora notes that he assumed a position in service to
172
While the case of Lucas Valdés and Pedro Corbet is quite different from those
presented in previous chapters, the artist’s biography and oeuvre are integral to the
narrative they collectively chronicle—the relationship between artistic practice and crisis.
Lucas Valdés’s success, both in Seville and in Cádiz, suggests that the close of the
Academia de Bellas Artes was not the end of an era, but rather, a continuum. While his
trajectory is unique, Lucas Valdés was closely aligned in training and tradition with
Valdés Leal and Murillo. For this reason, this case study challenges overarching notions
of the Baroque as estranged from the currents of the Enlightenment and encourages an art
historical engagement with the relationship between these disparate periods.
102

the King at the Academy. See Ceán Bermúdez, Diccionario histórico de los más ilustres
profesores de las bellas artes en España (Madrid, 1800), 104; and Arana de Varflora,
Hijos de Sevilla (Seville, 1791), III/83.
102
José Ramón Marcaida has recently made important contributions relating to this
subject, looking at the idea of ingenio (ingenuity) in early modern Spanish culture, the
practice of collecting curiosities, and the recreation of scientific subjects in traditional
genres of Baroque art, namely the vanitas painting. See José Ramón Marcaida López,
Arte y ciencia en el Barroco español: Historia natural, coleccionismo y cultura visual
(Seville: Fundación Focus-Abengooa, 2014).
173

Conclusion

Righteous portraits of saints, not so subtle reminders of mortality, and correct
representations of the Virgin are the iconic images that embody Spain’s Golden Age.
However, as these case studies reveal, artwork associated with this period does not
properly reflect the complex milieu from which it materialized. In the latter half of the
seventeenth century, Spain, and Seville in particular, faced overwhelming challenges and
unthinkable tragedies. Despite these significant setbacks, the cultural life of Seville and
in many parts of Spain flourished. The lives and works of artists Juan de Valdés Leal,
Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, and Lucas Valdés, as well as their respective patrons, Miguel
Mañara, Justino de Neve, and Pedro Corbet, demonstrate that in early modern Seville, art
making was an apt and effective response to various crises. The hardships the populace
confronted were powerful catalysts, fueling the city’s artistic efflorescence.
Each chapter presented here illuminates an instance in which artistic production
was an appropriate response to critical situations. The first chapter focused on the
spiritual and civic importance of art in the aftermath of the 1649 plague, and it argued
that art was an intermediary between the populace and the heavens, as well as an
important propaganda tool. Torre Farfán’s publications promoted the notion that Seville
continued to thrive despite ongoing crises, attributing much of the city’s success to those
artists associated with the Academia de Bellas Artes. Shifting attention to the relationship
between an individual artist and his patron, the following chapter focused specifically on
the relationship between Mañara and Valdés Leal. I argued that Mañara’s Discurso de la
174
verdad and Valdés Leal’s Hieroglyphs of Our Last Days were integral components of an
elaborate self-fashioning program as Mañara made preparations for his own death. The
case of Murillo and Neve demonstrated that art was a valuable tool employed by the
Church, but also a potential threat, exposing one to the mortal sin of avarice. As a
member of the clergy and a patron of religious institutions, Neve offset the deleterious
effects of amassing worldly goods. Lastly, the case of Lucas Valdés introduced the
expanding arenas in which artists operated and the potential roles they assumed in secular
institutions. The involvement by Lucas Valdés with the Academia de Guardias Marinas
reveals that state officials deemed artistic training practical and applicable to the Crown’s
endeavors.
Significantly, the careers of those artists central to this narrative fall between the
great chronological bookmarks of Spanish art history—the death of Velázquez (d. 1660)
and before the birth of Francisco de Goya (b. 1746). Despite the fact that this moment of
transition is integral to the ultimate development of Spanish art, scholarship on the period
largely lacks the contextual framework necessary to fully understand the artistic culture
of this time and place. Arguably, this tendency within the field of art history mirrors the
larger historiography of Spain, omitting those years between Charles II’s accession and
Philip V’s death, 1665 to 1746.
1
Scholars associate the former’s rule with decay and
Habsburg incompetence and reduce the latter to the mere underpinnings of Spain’s late

1
Enrique Valdivieso, Historia de la Pintura Sevillana, Siglos XIII al XX (Sevilla:
Ediciones Guadalquivir, S. L., 1986), 283.
175
eighteenth-century revival.
2
Arguably, this tendency is attributable to a framework of
decline and a general predilection among historians to underestimate those factors
contributing to Spain’s fortitude.
3

While historians have made notable progress dismantling Spain’s narrative of
decline, I argue that the field of art history also can make a valuable contribution to this
growing body of scholarship. Rather than thinking of this period as the end of an era, it
important to seriously engage with those factors that fostered the development of Spanish
artists like Goya. The historiographic arc of decline, as well as prevalent notions relating
to the Church’s influence over and control of artistic production in Spain, largely shaped
scholarship on those artists central to this study. The vignettes presented here reveal that
artists, and patrons alike, were key players in a dynamic narrative of resilience and
progress, rather than one of defeat. They responded to setbacks in creative ways and
made significant contributions to Seville’s lasting brilliance, proving that their talents and
commitment to artistic production were great assets during formidable times.
In conclusion, two terms, “engaño” and “desengaño,” speak to the conclusions of
this study. As earlier defined, engaño refers specifically to disillusionment, deceit, and
the act of fooling. Desengaño, however, signals the revelation of truth and the process of
acquiring the knowledge that allows one to escape from error.
4
Confusion and surely

2
Enrique Valdivieso, Historia de la Pintura Sevillana, Siglos XIII al XX (Sevilla:
Ediciones Guadalquivir, S. L., 1986), 283.
3
Richard Kagan, “Prescott’s Paradigm,” The American Historical Review 2 (1996):
423–446.
4
Barbara Cassin, Steven Rendall, and Emily S. Apter, eds. Dictionary of
Untranslatables: A Philosophical Lexicon (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2014), 206–210.
176
disappointment marked this period of unthinkable tragedy and significant economic loss.
However, as these chapters demonstrate, crisis was met with resolve and solutions. Art
was indeed a response to and remedy for engaño because it revealed an important truth—
the transience of life. Amidst upheaval and unthinkable loss, art served as a reminder
that Seville’s misfortune, like life, was fleeting. Arguably, it is for this reason that artists,
patrons, and the larger populace deemed art so powerful and important in Golden Age
Seville. Significantly, the nature of those truths for which art was a conduit ranged from
the spiritual to the practical.

177
Illustrations

Fig. 1.1
Simon Wynhoutsz Frisius, Panoramic View of Seville, 1617.
The British Library, London

Fig. 1.2
Anonymous, Hospital de la Sangre, 1649.
Hospital del Pozo Santo, Seville

178

Fig. 1.3
Enea Vico, The Academy of Baccio Bandinelli, 1544.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

179

Fig. 1.4
Matías de Arteaga y Alfaro, Templo Panegírico, in F. de la Torre Farfán, Templo
panegírico, Seville, 1663.
Biblioteca Nacional de España, Madrid (2/62094)

180

Fig. 1.5
Matías de Arteaga y Alfaro, Santa María la Blanca de Sevilla, in F. de la Torre Farfán,
Fiestas que celebra la Iglesia Parrochial de S. Maria la Blanca, Seville, 1666.
Biblioteca Nacional de España, Madrid (ER/5311)

181

Fig. 1.6
Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, The Dream of the Patrician and his Wife, 1664–65.
Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid

Fig. 1.7
Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, The Patrician and his Wife before Pope Liberius, 1664–65.
Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid

182

Fig. 1.8
Francisco Herrera and Matías Arteaga y Alfaro, Fiestas de la Santa Iglesia, in F. de la
Torre Farfán, Fiestas de la Santa Iglesia, Seville, 1672.
Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (NA5811.S487 T6)

183

Fig. 1.9
Matías Arteaga y Alfaro, Giralda, in F. de la Torre Farfán, Fiestas de la Santa Iglesia,
Seville, 1672.
Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (NA5811.S487 T6)

184

Fig. 1.10
Matías Arteaga y Alfaro, View of the Cathedral from the West, in F. de la Torre Farfán,
Fiestas de la Santa Iglesia, Seville, 1672.
Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (NA5811.S487 T6)

Fig. 1.11
Matías Arteaga y Alfaro, View of the Cathedral from the South, in F. de la Torre Farfán,
Fiestas de la Santa Iglesia, Seville, 1672. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles
(NA5811.S487 T6)
185

Fig. 1.12
Matía Arteaga y Alfaro, Plan of the Cathedral, in F. de la Torre Farfán, Fiestas de la
Santa Iglesia, Seville, 1672.
Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (NA5811.S487 T6)
186

Fig. 1.13
Juan de Valdés Leal and/or Lucas Valdés, El Triunfo, in F. de la Torre Farfán, Fiestas de
la Santa Iglesia, Seville, 1672.
Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (NA5811.S487 T6)
187

Fig. 1.14
Juan de Valdés Leal, Puerto de los Palos, in F. de la Torre Farfán, Fiestas de la Santa
Iglesia, Seville, 1672.
Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (NA5811.S487 T6)
188

Fig. 1.15
Juan de Valdés Leal, Allegory of Vanity, 1661.
Wadsworth Athenaeum, Hartford
189

Fig. 1.16
Juan de Valdés Leal, Allegory of Salvation, 1661.
York Art Gallery, York

190

Fig. 2.1
Juan de Valdés Leal, In Ictu Oculi, 1671.
Hermandad de la Santa Caridad, Seville.

191

Fig. 2.2
Juan de Valdés Leal, Finis Gloriae Mundi, 1671.
Hermandad de la Santa Caridad, Seville.

192

Fig. 2.3
Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Moses Sweetening the Waters of Mara, 1667–70.
Hermandad de la Santa Caridad, Seville

Fig. 2.4
Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, The Feeding of the Five Thousand, 1667–70.
Hermandad de la Santa Caridad, Seville
193

Fig. 2.5
Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, The Return of the Prodigal Son, 1667–70.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C.

194

Fig. 2.6
Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Christ Healing the Paralytic, 1667–70.
National Gallery, London
195

Fig. 2.7
Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Abraham and the Three Angels, 1670–74.
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

196

Fig. 2.8
Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, The Liberation of Saint Peter, 1665–67.
Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg
197

Fig. 2.9
Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, St. John of God, 1670–72.
Hermandad de la Santa Caridad, Seville
198

Fig. 2.10
Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, St. Elizabeth of Hungary, 1670–72.
Hermandad de la Santa Caridad, Seville

199

Fig. 2.11
Bernardo Simón de Pineda, Main Retablo, 1670–74.
Hermandad de la Santa Caridad, Seville
200

Fig. 2.12
Juan de Valdés Leal, Exaltation of the Cross, c. 1680.
Hermandad de la Santa Caridad, Seville

Fig. 2.13
Antonio de Pereda, Vanitas, 17
th
c.
Uffizi Gallery, Florence
201

Fig. 2.14
Nicolas Poussin, The Plague of Ashdod, 1630–31.
Musée du Louvre, Paris

202

Fig. 2.15
Jacopo di Castino, The Three Living and the Three Dead, 14
th
c.

203

Fig. 2.16
Buonamico Buffalmacco, The Triumph of Death, 1338–39.
Piazza dei Miracoli, Pisa

Fig. 2.17
Juan de Valdés Leal, Miguel Mañara, 1681.
Hermandad de la Santa Caridad, Seville

204

Fig. 2.18
Juan de Valdés Leal, Miguel Mañara, 1683.
Hermandad de la Santa Caridad, Seville

205

Fig. 2.19
Juan de Valdés Leal, Miguel Mañara, 1687.
Hermandad de la Santa Caridad, Seville

206

Fig. 3.1
Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Urchin Hunting Fleas, c. 1648.
Musée du Louvre, Paris

207

Fig. 3.2
Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, San Diego Giving Food to the Poor, 1652.
Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid

208

Fig. 3.3
Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Self-Portrait, 1670.
National Gallery, London

209

Fig. 3.4
Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, The Immaculate Conception, 1664–65.
Musée du Louvre, Paris

Fig. 3.5
Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Faith Church Triumphant, 1664–65
Trustees of the Faringdon Collection, Buscot Park
210

Fig. 3.6
Interior, Hospital de los Venerables, Seville.

211

Fig. 3.7
Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Immaculate Conception of the Venerables Ones, 1660–65.
Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid
212

Fig. 3.8
Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, The Penitent Saint Peter, 1675.
Private collection

213

Fig. 3.9
Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Don Justino de Neve, 1665.
National Gallery, London

214

Fig. 3.10
Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, The Virgin and Child Distributing Bread to Priests, 1679.
Szépmuvészeti Múzeum, Budapest

215

Fig. 3.11
Raphael, Pope Leo X with Cardinals Giulio de’ Medici and Luigi de’ Rossi, 1518.
Uffizi Gallery, Florence

216

Fig. 3.12
El Greco, Portrait of a Cardinal, 1660–61.
Metropolitan Museum, New York

217

Fig. 3.13
Guido Reni, Cardinal Bernardino Spada, 1631.
Palazzo Spada, Rome

218

Fig. 3.14
Diego Velázquez, Archbishop Fernando de Valdés, 1640s.
National Gallery, London

219

Fig. 3.15
Francisco de Zurbarán, Portrait of Fray Diego Deza, c. 1630.
Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena
220

Fig. 3.16
Pedro Núñez de Villavicencio, Archbishop Ambrosio Ignacio Spínola y Guzmán, 1670.
Private collection

221

Fig. 3.17
David Weber, Gilt-Brass and Silver Table Clock with Astronomical and Calendrical
Dials, 1653.
The Frick Collection, New York
222

Fig. 3.18
Antonio de Pereda, Vanitas, 1634.
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Fig. 3.19
Antonio de Pereda, The Dream of the Knight, 1650.
Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid

223

Fig. 4.1
Lucas Valdés, Hieroglyphs, in F. de la Torre Farfán, Fiestas de la Santa Iglesia, Seville,
1672.
Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (NA5811.S487 T6)

224

Fig. 4.2
Lucas Valdés, Paso de la Virgen, 17
th
c.
Archivo General del Arzobispado, Seville (N
o
204)

225

Fig. 4.3
Lucas Valdés, Costaleros, 17
th
c.
Archivo General del Arzobispado, Seville (N
o
205)

Fig. 4.4
Lucas Valdés, Diagram of supportive crossbeam, 17
th
c.
Archivo General del Arzobispado, Seville (N
o
206)
226

Fig. 4.5
Lucas Valdés, Railing for the Cathedral’s Capilla Real, 17
th
c.
Archivo General del Arzobispado, Seville (N
o
112)

Fig. 4.6
Lucas Valdés, Railing for the Cathedral’s Capilla Real, 17
th
c.
Archivo General del Arzobispado, Seville (N
o
113)

227

Fig. 4.7
Lucas Valdés, David Dancing before the Ark of the Covenant, c. 1715.
Museo de Bellas Artes, Cordoba

Fig. 4.8
Francisco de Zurbarán, Saint Eufemia, 1637.
Museo del Prado, Madrid
228

Fig. 4.9
Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, The Flower Girl, 1665–70.
Dulwich Picture Gallery, London

229

Fig. 4.10
Juan de Valdés Leal, Marriage at Cana, 1660.
Musée du Louvre, Paris

230

Fig. 4.11
Matías Arteaga y Alfaro, Esther and Asuero, c. 1690.
Hermandad Sacramental del Sagrario, Seville

Fig. 4.12
Matías Arteaga y Alfaro, Parable of the Wedding Feast, c. 1690.
Hermandad Sacramental del Sagrario, Seville
231

Fig. 4.13
Lucas Valdés, Saint Elizabeth of Hungary Curing the Sick, 1715–19.
Museo de Bellas Artes, Seville

232

Fig. 4.14
Andrés Pérez, David before Abimelech, 1719.
Museo de Bellas Artes, Seville

Fig. 4.15
Andrés Pérez, Melchizedek before Abraham,
1720.

Museo
de
Bellas
Artes,
Seville
233

Fig. 4.16
Domingo Martínez, Christ Welcomes the Children, 1723–26.
Iglesia del Seminario de San Telmo, Seville
234

Fig. 4.17
Figure 93, from Andrea Pozzo, Perspectiva pictorum et architectorum Andreae Putei…
(Rome, 1702).
Huntington Library, San Marino (761752, v. 1)
235

Fig. 4.18
Lucas Valdés Carlos II Offers a Carriage to a Priest, 1685–90.
Hospital de la Hermandad de los Venerables Sacerdotes, Fundación Focus-Abengoa,
Seville

Fig. 4.19
Lucas Valdés and/or Juan de Valdés Leal, Sacristy, 1685–90.
Hospital de la Hermandad de los Venerables Sacerdotes, Fundación Focus-Abengoa,
Seville
236

Fig. 4.20
Lucas Valdés, Allegory of the Two Ways of Life, 1715–19.
Private collection

237

Fig. 4.21
Lucas Valdés, Two Sick Priests Arriving at the New Hospice, c. 1699.
Hospital de la Hermandad de los Venerables Sacerdotes, Fundación Focus-Abengoa,
Seville

238

Fig. 4.22
Lucas Valdés, Gentlemen Tending to Sick Priests in the Hospital, c. 1699
Hospital de la Hermandad de los Venerables Sacerdotes, Fundación Focus-Abengoa,
Seville

239

Fig. 4.23
Lucas Valdés, Don Pedro Corbet, 1699.
Hospital de la Hermandad de los Venerables Sacerdotes, Fundación Focus-Abengoa,
Seville

240

Fig. 4.24
Lucas Valdés, Folio 6, Juan José Navarro, Marqués de la Victoria, Álbum de
Construcción Naval del Marqués de la Victoria (1995 facsimile edition), 1719–56.
Museo Naval, Madrid

Fig. 4.25
Lucas Valdés, Folio 5, Juan José Navarro, Marqués de la Victoria, Álbum de
Construcción Naval del Marqués de la Victoria (1995 facsimile edition), 1719–56.
Museo Naval, Madrid
241

Fig. 4.26
Lucas Valdés, Folio 7, Juan José Navarro, Marqués de la Victoria, Álbum de
Construcción Naval del Marqués de la Victoria (1995 facsimile edition), 1719–56.
Museo Naval, Madrid

Fig. 4.27
Lucas Valdés, Folio 8, Juan José Navarro, Marqués de la Victoria, Álbum de
Construcción Naval del Marqués de la Victoria (1995 facsimile edition), 1719–56.
Museo Naval, Madrid

242

Fig. 4.28
Lucas Valdés, Folio 9, Juan José Navarro, Marqués de la Victoria, Álbum de
Construcción Naval del Marqués de la Victoria (1995 facsimile edition), 1719–56.
Museo Naval, Madrid

243
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Abstract (if available)

Abstract In the sixteenth century, the city of Seville served as Spain’s principal port to the New World and accrued unimaginable wealth. Nobles and merchants invested in trade and profited from this enviable monopoly, and artists, poets, playwrights, and intellectuals thrived, fostering the city’s Golden Age. However, a string of natural disasters including the great plague of 1649, as well as a decline in trade with the Americas and a mismanagement of finances by the Crown, marked a significant shift in the city’s history

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