Art and Architecture (SP3055)

King visits artist's studio

The topic of the King visiting the Painter's studio has a long history going back to classical writing, to the particular account of the close relationship between Apelles and Alexander the Great. The story of how Alexander held Apelles' work in such esteem that he visited the artist at work and how he made him the gift of the most loved of his mistresses, was remembered and cited by those who wished to strengthen the bond between the royal patron and the artist. Carlos V recalled the story when he ennobled Titian, and Pacheco, Velázquez's father-in-law, remembers the classical precdent in the context of how his son-in-law was similarly favoured by Felipe IV.

The art of painting

In seventeenth-century Spain, we find a dispute about the nature of painting (is it craft or art?) that was conducted in the context of appeals against value-added tax being levied on paintings. Writers came to the defense of painters against the Inland Revenue. The arguments put forward about the nobility of painting and its preminence among the sciences offer insight into the status of the artist and art.

One particular deposition, by the dramatist Calderón de la Barca, is eloquent about art as a superior way of knowledge, indeed transcending the liberal arts themselves by incorporating the qualities of all the others. Here is a typical praise by Calderón of the artist's ability to create the illusion of space on a flat plane: he describes an imagined painting of a royal palace [the subject of the first sentence is la perspectiva]:

cuando en el primer término demuestra el real frontispicio de suntuoso alcázar, tan regularment ejecutadas arquitecturas y escultura que, desprendidas del lienzo estatuas y columnas, dan a entender en sus resaltos que por detrás de ellas se pasa al segundo término, en cuyo espacio, ejecutando la óptica sus grados se van disminuyendo su fábrica y la vista hasta tocar en el tercero que, apenas perceptible, le ofrece tan cabal como el primero, con tanta consonancia templados sus diseños que unísonos no dejan de carearse con la música, pues si ella tiene por objeto suspender el espíritu a cláusulas sonoras, a no menos acordes cláusulas le suspende la pintura con las ventajas que lleva el sentido de la vista al del oído; y más si terminando el horizonte, se corona de nubes y de cielos, llevándose tras sí la imaginativa a la especulación de signos y planetas; ... Quoted from "Calderón's 'Deposición en favor de los profesores de la pintura'", ed. A.K.G.Paterson, in Art and Literature in Spain: 1600 - 1800. Studies in honour of Nigel Glendinning, ed. C.Davis and P.J.Smith, Tamesis, London, 1993.