Art and Politics / Politics and Art

Variations on a Theme by Andrea Mantegna

71 Variations on a Theme by Andrea Mantegna I. PA L L AS E X PEL L I NG T H E V ICES FROM T H E GA R DEN OF V IRT U E1 In a garden (not Eve’s, not Adam’s, but like theirs, unmarred by history), marked by eleven arches, four focusing a low lattice fence that retains rose bushes escaping to climb and cluster at the top between the curves, a stone wall on the right defies time, which enters vigorously from the left: Pallas Athena, one hand clasping the shaft of a broken spear; the other raising her shield against a swarm of armed cupids. Helmeted, splendid in red, gold, white, and blue, she bursts through the arch. Clothed and unclothed figures scatter. Some flee on land; others through stagnant waters of a swamp moat. Avarice, a lean woman with spear-like breasts, leads the flight of Vices through the swamp. She and Ingratitude carry the fat, crowned figure of Ignorance. Behind them a satyr clasps an infant and a bearskin. In the foreground, a monkeylike hermaphrodite, Immortal Hatred, Fraud, and Malice, looks back fearfully at Athena as he clutches 1. A painting (1499–1502) by Andrea Mantegna (1431–1506), from the Musée du Louvre, Paris, shown in an exhibition of his work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, May 7–July 12, 1992. 72 his four seedbags of evil. Idleness, armless, naked, is pulled along with a rope by tatterdemalion Sloth. Venus, off-center, her scant green scarf billowing about her, stands on the back of a centaur, while ahead, Cupid raises his torches of love. Two women in green and blue, who carry a bow (Diana?) and an extinguished torch (of Chastity?) lead the approach to Venus. Tall as an arch, transforming into a tree with upraised branches, a greenish figure cries to the turbulent sky: “Come, divine companions of the virtues, who are returning to us from Heaven, banish these foul monsters of vice from our seats.” In a fleecy mandorla of clouds hover Temperance, who waters down her wine, Justice, with her scales and sword, and Fortitude, who holds a column and club and wears Hercules’ lion skin. Below, immured in the garden wall, Prudence releases a little banderola, urging, in Latin, “And you, oh gods, succor me, the mother of virtues.” I I. CH R ISTOPH ER COLU M BUS And somewhere in Mantegna’s time, Cristoforo Colombo, a virtuous gentleman of Genoa, was going ashore in San Salvador, in the Bahamas, to take possession of Arawak land for Castile. 73 “To win their friendship, and realizing that here was a people to be converted to our Holy Faith by love and friendship and not by force, I gave some of them red caps, glass beads, and many other little things. These pleased them very much and they became very friendly. They later swam out to the ship’s boats in which we were seated, and brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears. . . . They willingly traded everything they owned. But they seemed to me a poor people . . . naked. . . . Both men and women cried, ‘Come and see the men who have come from heaven, and bring them food and water.’ . . . Should your Majesties command it, all the inhabitants could be taken away to Castile, or made slaves on the island.” And when the Santa Maria foundered on a reef off Haiti, Guacanagari, the local chief or cacique, who had already met Columbus and sent him presents, including a gold mask, hearing of the misfortune, wept, “and sent me various of his relatives to implore me not to grieve, for he would give me everything he had.”2 The Santa Maria ran aground on Christmas. Wrenched, from its wounded timbers honoring Jesus’ mother: Fort Navidad. Arawaks, newly enslaved, lifted hosannas of pain into its walls. Columbus planted his sailors like flags claiming the land for the rulers of Spain. 2. Hans Koning, Columbus: His Enterprise; Exploding the Myth (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1991), 51–53, 57. The information in section II draws chiefly from this book. Quotations here are from Columbus’s log, as they are taken from Friar (later Bishop) Bartolomé de las Casas, History of the Indies. 74 On the Niña, Columbus gathered the rest of his crew. He rounded up the sample Arawak slaves and fired...