(Un)True Colors: Pintura as Pharmakon in Tirso's La vida y muerte de Herodes

The concept of pintura permeates and dominates Tirso de Molina's La vida y muerte de Herodes on literal, figurative and symbolic levels. This study places Tirso's use of pintura within a Derridean context by demonstrating how painting functions as Plato and Derrida's simultaneously salutary and poisonous pharmakon. Portraits of Herodes's royal characters serve as visual aphrodisiacs which ultimately bring about only tragedy. Verbal descriptions, repeatedly introduced with the verb pintar, similarly deceive and destroy. The text even directly constitutes writing as a form of pintura; it too acts mendaciously and harmfully. All these illusory manifestations of pintura counterpoint the painted onstage tableau of the Adoration of the Christ Child. Here pintura becomes a vehicle of spiritual healing and salvation, emphasizing its pharmakon-esque self-contradiction and mutability. (CBW)