Painting Danaë, Diana, Europa and Venus: : Titian and Argensola’s A Nuño de Mendoza

P A I N T I N G D A N A E , D I A N A , E U R O P A A N D V E N U S : T I T I A N A N D A R G E N S O L A ' S A NUNO DE MENDOZA Frederick A. d e A r m a s University of Chicago While Spanish literature of the Golden Age is replete with scenes and allusions from classical mythology, Spanish art of the period reveals a notable absence of the mythological, a topic most popular in Italian Renaissance art. This paper seeks to explore the tensions between literature and art in Bartolome Leonardo de Argensola's satirical poem A Nuno de Mendoza, showing how Titian's art becomes, for the Spanish moralist, a symptom of the decadence and effeminacy of Spanish society. At the same time, the classical education and the antique models utilized by Argensola often undermine his moralistic verse, while his use of allegorical interpretations of Titian's paintings subvert his contrast between the pagan sensuality of Renaissance Italian art and the ascetic teachings of the Christian writers. Spanish painting of the Golden Age was for the most part religious in nature. Pacheco's dictum that painting was to "induce men to piety and bring them to God," was not, according to Jonathan Brown, a mere platitude. Rather, it voiced "a conviction universally held in his society. And the consensus was that this goal was best achieved through direct, unambiguous, dogmatic imagery that inspired intense involvement in the events of the New Testament, the lives of saints, and the doctrines of the church" (312). Mythological subjects, on the other hand, were "nearly absent" from Spanish art of the period, since the "home market was confined mainly to an ecclesiastical clientele" (Brown 4). The secular and even "immoral" character of classical mythology together with the propensity of the ancients and their imitators to sculpt or paint these figures as nudes, made the ecclesiastical clients shun this type of art. Indeed, as Rosa Lopez Torrijos notes, these characteristics made them subject to the church's censorship, following the dictates of the Council of Trent (19).1 And yet, the Spanish Court, its kings and nobles, were well aware of the beauty, sensuality and value of Italian Renaissance paintings, which often depicted mythological and allegorical subjects through partly clothed and nude human figures. Indeed, it has been argued that many Renaissance paintings use the "cloak of mythology" to revel in sensuality and sexuality.2 Titian's Dana'e, for example, was commissioned for Cardinal Alessandro Farnese in Rome, with the express command that CALIOPE Vol. 6, Nos. 1-2 (2000): pages 181-197 182 «S Frederick A. de Armas she be given the face of the cardinal's mistress. As Bette Talvacchia asserts : "the nude image with the features of a recognizable courtesan would have been more than unseemly in the prelate's residence; but with the sanctioning cover of Danae's story, the existence of the figure was justified on a moral level by a literary reference, even if its visual impact remained the same" (46). It may come as a surprise, then, to learn that the Spanish Counter-Reformation kingpar excellence, Philip II, was delighted to receive, among other mythologies, a version of Titian's Danae in 1554, while he was still Crown Prince (Panofsky 149). But, responding to "the growing militancy of Philip's defense of the faith" and the building of the Escorial (Brown 58), Titian generally refrained from sending him mythological paintings after The Rape ofEuropa arrived in Spain in 1562. From then on, "most of his paintings for the king were on religious subjects" (Brown 57). In spite of these late religious paintings, Spanish writers would remember Titian for his sensuous mythological works. Whether exhibiting on stage Titian's portrait of Rossa Sultana, the Russian red-head who came to control the sultan's heart, the harem and the politics of Constantinople (De Armas "The Allure"); or comparing the beauty of the fainting and crying Dorotea to Titian'sAndromeda,3 Lope de Vega often evoked Titian to further charge his plays...