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Genre/Gender/Género “Que no eS uno ni otro, ni eStá claro” género: In Spanish it is commonly understood as sex, as masculine or feminine gender, or as what is strictly called species, such as: there is a type of lamb that has six horns. It warrants a condition: There is a type of men who have a propensity towards evil. In mode (by that I mean a conditional): It is a type of intense mockery to play with hands. Term and mode of proceeding: A type of a well-reared child should respect his elders. [Comunamente en castellano, se toma, o por sexo, como género masculino o feminino, o por lo que en rigor se llama especie, como: ay un género de carneros que tienen seys cuernos. Vale condición: Ay género de hombres que quieren ser llevados por mal. Por modo: Es un género de burla muy pesado jugar de manos.Termino y modo de proceder: En genéro de buena criança el moço deve respetar al anciano.] SeBaStián de covarruBiaS orozco Tesoro de la lengua casTellana o española 1995 [1611] Género is, by its etymological nature, a multifaceted word. When employed, it works to define, to distinguish, and to categorize so as to bring into proper focus social and cultural specificities. This means that first and foremost género is about the boundaries of representation and recognition. It is a term that is critical to the articulation of Western art and artistic practices and with regard to the visual 2 54 • • • chaPter 2 arts of which this chapter is concerned, this sense of discretion is its defining element. Francisco Pacheco, the father-in-law of Diego Velázquez, wrote in his El arte de la pintura that “painting is the art that teaches to imitate with lines and colors. This is the definition. In order to explain it, it is necessary to know that all definitions should consist of genre and difference. Genre, according to logicians, is a common reason that belongs to many different species; difference is all that by which a species is distinguishable from all others of the same genre” (Pacheco 1990 [1649], 75).1 That is, for example, there are many different portraits, and all portraits belong to the genre of portraiture, or else they are not portraits. However, as we shall see, in practice it is more complicated than that. Género for Pacheco, following Italian theorists such as Alberti but most especially Lomazzo, is used in its broadest discretionary sense for organizing the conditions of artistic practice and production.2 But within painting, género acts to distinguish one type of painting from another. So, for example, in 1599, the court artist, Juan Pantoja de la Cruz uses the word género instrumentally in his description of the fifth room of the treasury in the Alcázar of Madrid to differentiate between the kinds of paintings hung there and their relation to each other. Here, the royal portraits of Charles V and Philip II by Titian were hung with other portraits that together created an extended allegory of imperial rule (Cummins 2005, 16). Concerning a painting that depicted Philip II defending the church against her enemies, Pantoja de la Cruz writes, “This painting is burdened by the genre of devotional painting and there it is valid and here it is not.”3 The phrase is enigmatic, as allí (there) and aquí (here) have no reference other than within the sense of genre as he employs the term. That is, for Juan Pantoja de la Cruz there exists some notion of a proper relationship among the heterogeneity of images, such that one of them, a devotional painting perhaps similar to Cabrera de Córdoba’s frontispiece ,4 an allegorical image of Phillip II defending the church, seems out of place in the midst of imperial portraits of CharlesV, Philip II, Inca kings, and the Conquest of Peru (ibid., 16–17). Género is more multifaceted in translation to English as it becomes, simultaneously, “genre” and “gender.” But género as genre/gender is still about clarity, propriety, and proper distinction. It is possessed of a quality or condition that can be recognized and agreed upon, be it human gender, animal species, or categories of representation. Hence Covarrubias and Pantoja de la Cruz, although talking about different forms of representation, are in agreement as to the clarity that the term género...

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