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on e BETWEEN TWO WOR LDS The Life and Writings of Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés was a man between two worlds. He spent nearly equal time on both sides of the Atlantic and endured the dangerous transatlantic crossing between Spain and America eleven times. While in Europe, Oviedo played many roles in the royal courts, from bureaucrat and chronicler to wardrobe keeper and entertainer. In the New World, too, he had a long and varied career that included town councilman and supervisor of the king’s gold, slaveholder and pearl merchant. Oviedo was also a prolific writer who had many talents and played many roles in the tumultuous politics of America and Spain in the early modern era. He wrote about medieval mythical creatures and knights errant and yet cited contemporary humanists and employed a method of inquiry into the natural world that prefigured modern scientific empirical methods. Oviedo described this in-between-worlds status when he announced he would write about “another half of the world” (otra mitad del mundo) that famous ancient Greco-Roman authors never knew. By understanding the diversity of Oviedo’s worlds and life, we will better understand the complexities of his General and Natural History. Oviedo began his lifelong service to the monarchs of Castile and Aragón in early childhood.1 Born of Asturian ancestry in Madrid in 1478 to Miguel de Sobrepeña and Juana de Oviedo, Gonzalo entered the service of the family households of King Ferdinand de Aragón in 1490.2 He first served as a page to the duke of Villahermosa, the king’s nephew. By at least 1493, at age fourteen, he was a mozo de cámara, in charge of the wardrobe for the Catholic King’s only son and heir to the throne, Prince Don Juan.3 During these years at the court, Oviedo saw the consolidation of a confederation of kingdoms under the leadership of the Catholic Kings, between two worlds 13 a development that laid the foundation for the emergence of Spain as a nation and an imperial power. In 1492 he witnessed the surrender of Granada by the Moors after five hundred years of rule and observed the negotiations between Queen Isabella and Columbus that led to the funding of Columbus’s first voyage. A year later, Oviedo was present upon Columbus’s triumphal return to the court. Indeed, years later the chronicler remarked that the event served as the catalyst for his lifelong project of writing about America. Just as his father had done, Oviedo began to write memoranda of the personalities and events he observed. This privileged court position came to an abrupt end when the young prince Don Juan suddenly died in 1497. Apparently no longer needed at the court, Oviedo embarked within a year or so for Italy, a destination of many young, ambitious Spaniards of the time. T H E I TA LI A N Y E A R S (1499 –1502) From about 1499 to 1502 Oviedo lived an itinerant life in the noble and royal households of Italy. Drawn into the complex political struggle for control among the Italian states, the papacy, Spain, and France, Oviedo first worked in the court of the duke of Milan. When the duke was defeated by French troops and the powerful son of Pope Alexander VI, Cesar Borgia, Oviedo moved briefly to the court of Isabella d’Este in Mantua before joining the military campaigns of the Borgias in central Italy. Given his background, Oviedo probably was not a soldier but rather worked as a supply clerk or quartermaster sergeant.4 In 1500 he visited Rome for the Jubilee Year and went on to serve as steward, entertainer, and clothes designer for King Ferdinand’s relative, King Frederick of Aragón, and Queen Juana in Naples. He aroused curiosity and amused the court with unusual diversions, such as his deft use of scissors to create paper designs. His position, however, was short-lived. The royal house of Naples was forced into exile by the Spanish and French in 1501, and Oviedo followed Queen Juana’s exiled court to Sicily for a year before returning to Spain with her.5 Oviedo’s three years in Italy greatly influenced him. During this time he traveled through much of the country, meeting many of its prominent leaders and artists. Oviedo met Leonardo da Vinci and the Neapolitan poet Jacob Sannazaro...

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