visualizing devotion in early modern seville: velázquez's "chirst in the house of martha...

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Visualizing Devotion in Early Modern Seville: Velázquez's "Chirst in the House of Martha andMary" Author(s): Tanya J. Tiffany Source: The Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 36, No. 2 (Summer, 2005), pp. 433-453Published by: The Sixteenth Century JournalStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20477363Accessed: 17-03-2015 11:20 UTC

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Sixteenth CenturyJournal

XXXVI/2 (2005)

Visualizing Devotion in Early Modern Seville: Velazquez's Christ in the House of

Martha and Mary TanyaJ. Tiffany

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

This essay offers a new reading of Diego Velazquez's Christ in the House of Martha and Mary (1618) by relating it to religious discourse in the artist's native Seville.Through an analysis of previously unstudied Sevillian writings, this article argues that the paint ing's compositional structure entreats the beholder to use the corporeal register of the foreground as a means of entry into the spiritual register of the background scene. A consideration of contemporary discussions concerning the interrelation between the art of memory and devotion elucidates the function of Velazquez's picture-within-a picture as a mnemonic device that reminds the viewer to heed his or her duties to Christ, even amid life's toils. Establishing the nexus between text and image, these writings are treated not simply as sources forVelazquez's work, but as tools for recon structing the religious milieu to which the artist contributed.

THE CHRIST IN THE HOUSE OF MARTHA AND MARY (1618) is among the most enig

matic of DiegoVelazquez's Sevillian paintings (fig. 1). In the foreground, the artist has represented a genre scene depicting two rustic women, apparently painted from life. The young woman labors with a mortar and pestle, her weary expression sug gesting the tedium of her toil. On the table next to her appear fish, eggs, garlic, and a pepper, the makings of a simple Lenten meal. Both figures' contemporary dress relates them directly to the seventeenth-century beholder, an engagement rein forced through the young woman's outward gaze. In the right-hand corner of the painting,Velazquez has depicted Christ's visit to Martha and Mary within a framed scene. He has distinguished the biblical image from the somber kitchen in the fore ground by rendering it with vivid tones, painterly brushstrokes, and a separate viewpoint.

The interpretation of the Christ in the House of Martha and Mary has long eluded scholars. Although its date of 1618 situates the painting within Velazquez's early career in Seville, its provenance before the nineteenth century remains

Research for this article was supported by a Fulbright grant and a subvention from the Program for Cultural Cooperation between Spain's Ministry of Education and Culture and United States' Universities. An earlier version of this paper, entitled "El Cristo en casa y Marta y Manra de Velazquez: Una nueva lectura," was presented at the Symposium InternacionalVel'azquez (Seville, 1999).

433



434 Sixteenth CenturyJournal XXXVI/2 (2005)

Figure 1. Diego Velizquez, Christ in the House of Martha and Mary, 1618.

By permission of the National Gallery, London.

unknown. 1 The work is not mentioned in the two principal sources on Velaizquez's life and oeuvre, the Arte de la Pintura (1649) by the artist's master, Francisco

Pacheco, and the Museo Picto6rico (1 715-24) by the artist and theorist Antonio Palo nno2In the painting itself,Vel'zquez's equivocal depiction of space provides few

clues regarding the relationship between the secular foreground and the sacred epi sode in the background. Art historians have therefore continually debated the iden

tity of the foreground figures and their connection to the biblical personages.They have similarly disputed the nature of the framed religious scene, which has been

identified alternatively as a painting, a window, or a mirror reflection.

JThe date was revealed when the painting was cleaned in 1964. See Neil MacLaren, 77ie Spanish School, 2nd ed., revised by Allan Braham (London: National Gallery, 1970), 121. Jonathan Brown and

Richard L. Kagan,"The Duke of Alcal?: His Collection and Its Evolution," ,4 rf Bulletin 69, no. 2 (1987): 238, discuss a "lienco Peque?o de un [51V] cocina donde esta majando unos ajos una muger" by

Velazquez, listed in Alcal?'s 1632-36 inventory (ibid., 248-55). As they argue, the painting was probably not the Christ in the House of Martha and Mary, for no religious scene was mentioned. J. Miguel Moran

and Fernando Checa, El coleccionismo en Espa?a, Ensayos Arte C?tedra (Madrid: C?tedra, 1985), 302, note that a 1692 inventory from Madrid alludes to a bodeg?n representing Christ with Martha and Mary

by the hand of a certain "Vquez," whom they consider to be Diego Velazquez. Having consulted the

original document (Madrid, Archivo Hist?rico de Protocolos, protocolo 9887, a?o 1692), I agree with

Enriqueta Harris, who argues that the abbreviation "Vquez" probably refers to an artist named V?zquez, such as Alonso V?zquez. See Enriqueta Harris, exh. review of Spanish Still Life in the Golden Age, Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Burlington Magazine 127, no. 990 (1985): 644.The inventory explicitly men

tions a portrait by "Velazquez" on, for example, fol. 537v. 2Francisco Pacheco, Arte de la Pintura (1649), ed. Bonaventura Bassegoda i Hugas (Madrid: C?te

dra, 1990); Antonio Palomino, El Museo Pict?rico y escala ?ptica (1115-24), prologue by Juan A. Ce?n

Berm?dez (Madrid: Aguilar, 1947).The third volume of Palominos treatise?biographies of artists? was published as Antonio Palomino, Vidas, ed. Nina Ayala Mallory, Alianza Forma (Madrid: Alianza,

1986).



Tiffany / Velazquez's "Christ in the House of Martha and Mary" 435

The Christ in the House of Martha and Mary has yet to be fully examined within its religious framework. Scholars have long discussed the image in terms of the active life of Martha and the contemplative life of Mary, but have not focused equally on the painting's relation to interpretations of the biblical story and religious practice in Seville. John Moffitt and others have noted the similarity between Velazquez's use of the picture-within-a-picture and the compositional schemes in the illustrations to the Adnotationes et meditationes in Evangelia (1595) by the Spanish Jesuit Jeronimo Nadal.3Yet art historians have not extensively explored the ways in whichVel'azquez adapted his visual and textual sources toward his own pictorial aims.

This essay offers a new reading of the Christ in the House of Martha and Mary by relating it to contemporary Sevillian exegesis and devotion. This interpretation

entails a close analysis of writings byVelazquez's master, Pacheco, and members of his Sevillian circle.Velazquez formed part of Pacheco's studio and household from 1610 until 1617 and married his master's daughter in 1618, the year he painted the Christ in the House of Martha and Mary.4 Groundbreaking work byJonathan Brown

and others has highlighted the central role played by Pacheco in Seville's erudite

circles, and a glance at the references to local theologians, poets, and painters in the Arte de la Pintura suggests the vibrant exchange of ideas that occurred among Sevillian artists and men of letters. 5 Although scholars have acknowledged that Velazquez's training in this milieu provided him with a strong intellectual foundation, the extent of his participation in Sevillian artistic and religious discourse remains to be understood.6

Through an analysis of previously unstudied writings by members of Pacheco's circle, this article will argue that the compositional structure of the Christ in the House of Martha and Mary entreats the beholder to use the corporeal register of the foreground as a means of entry into the spiritual register of the background scene. A consideration of contemporary discussions concerning the interrelation between the art of memory and devotion elucidates the function of Velazquez's picture

within-a-picture as a mnemonic device that reminds the viewer to heed his or her

3Jer?nimo Nadal, Adnotationes et meditationes in Evangelia quae in sacrosancto Missae sacrificio toto anno

leguntur (Antwerp: Martinus Nutius, 1595). See also John F. Moffitt, "Francisco Pacheco and Jerome Nadal: New Light on the Flemish Sources of the Spanish'Picture-within-the-Picture,'"^4ri Bulletin 72, no. 4 (1990): 631-38;Thomas L. Glen, "Velazquez's Kitchen Scene with Christ in the House of Martha and

Mary: An Image Both 'Reflected' and to Be Reflected Upon," Gazette des Beaux-Arts 136, no. 1578/79

(2000): 21-30, esp. 27.

4Vel?zquez's apprenticeship contract states that he entered Pachecos studio in December 1610, but the contract was only signed in September 1611. For the contract, see Corpus velazque?o: Documentos

y textos (Madrid: Ministerio de Educaci?n, Cultura y Deporte, Direcci?n General de Bellas Artes y Bienes Culturales, 2000), 1:28-29.

5See Jonathan Brown, "Theory and Art in the Academy of Francisco Pacheco," in Images and Ideas in Seventeenth-Century Spanish Painting (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), 21-83. See also

Bassegoda i Hugas, introduction to Arte, by Pacheco, esp. 20-32.

6Vel?zquez's role in this SeviUian milieu is the subject of Tanya J. Tiffany, "Interpreting Velazquez: Artistic Innovation and Painted Devotion in Seventeenth-Century SeviUe" (Ph.D. dissertation, Johns Hopkins University, 2003), and of the book I am writing on Velazquez's SeviUian works.



436 Sixteenth Century Journal XXXVI/2 (2005)

duties to Christ, even amid life's toils. Establishing the nexus between text and image, these writings will be treated not simply as sources forVelazquez's work, but as tools for reconstructing the Sevillian religious discourse to which he gave visual form.

VELAZQUEZ'S CHRIST IN THE HOUSE OF MARTHA AND AIMARY:

FIGURING ACTION AND CONTEMPLATION As scholars have long recognized,Velazquez's Christ in the House of Martha and Mary reflects his engagement with "inverted" religious compositions popularized by six teenth-century Netherlandish painters. Pieter Aertsen, his student Joachim Beuck elaer, and other northern artists often placed contemporary images, replete with still-life elements, in the foregrounds of their paintings, while relegating the reli gious scenes to small spaces viewed through portals in the backgrounds. These images, such as Aertsen's Supper at Emmaus, would have been familiar to Velazquez through the popular prints by Jacob Matham.7 Aertsen himself painted three ver sions of the Christ in the House of Martha and Mary; in one of these, the foreground displays copious still-life elements and contemporary and religious figures, while a columned gateway in the background reveals the Gospel scene (1553; fig. 2).8

Scholars have shown that the biblical episode in the background of Velazquez's Christ in the House of Martha and Mary depicts a passage from the Gospel of Luke, in which Christ stops to rest at the house of Lazarus's two sisters (Luke 10: 38-42).9

During Christ's stay, Martha assiduously prepares his meal, while Mary listens enraptured to his ministry. Irritated by her sister's apparent idleness, Martha begs Christ to admonish Mary to help with the housework. Christ responds that Martha has misunderstood her sister's conduct: "Martha, Martha, thou art careful, and art troubled about many things: But one thing is necessary. Mary hath chosen the best part, which shall not be taken away from her."10 Mary's contemplation of his preaching, he explains, is superior to Martha's attendance to his corporeal needs.

7August L. Mayer, "Velazquez und die Niederl?ndischen K?chenst?cke," Kunstchronik und Kunst markt 30 (3 January 1919): 236-37, first related Velazquez's Christ in the House of Martha and Mary and

Supper at Emmaus (ca. 1617, Dublin, National GaUery of Ireland) to Netherlandish precedents. See also

Jonathan Brown, Velazquez: Painter and Courtier (New Haven:Yale University Press, 1986), 16-21; Odile

Delenda, Velazquez: Peintre religieux, introduction by Jeannine Baticle (Geneva: Cerf/Tricorne, 1993), 28-31; David Davies and Enriqueta Harris, cat. no. 21 in Velazquez in SeviUe, ed. Michael Clarke, exh.

cat., National GaUery of Scotland, Edinburgh, 1996, 132. Matham's Supper at Emmaus is reproduced in Walter L. Strauss, Netherlandish Artists: Matham, Saenredam, M?ller, The Illustrated Bartsch (New York: Abaris Books, 1980), 4:150 (formerly vol. 3, pt. 2).

8On foreground and background in this work, see esp. M. A. Meadow, "Aertsen's Christ in the House of Martha and Mary, Serlio's Architecture and the Meaning of Location," in Rhetoric-Rh?toriqueurs Rederijkers: Proceedings of the Colloquium, Amsterdam, 10-13 November 1993, ed.Jelle Koopmans et al.

(Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1995), 175-96. On SeviUian artists' imitation of these works, see Peter

Cherry, Arte y Naturaleza: El Bodeg?n Espa?ol en el Siglo de Oro, trans. Ivars Barzdevics (Madrid: Doce

CaUes, 1999), 121-25.

9See, for example, Brown, Velazquez, 16; Delenda, Velazquez, 27-28; Davies and Harris, cat. no. 21 in Velazquez in Seville, 132.

10Luke 10:41-42 (DouayVersion).



Tiffany / Vela'zquezs "Chlrist in the House of Martha and Mary" 437

Figure 2. Pieter Aertsen, Christ in the House of Martha and Mary, 1553. By perniission of the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam.

Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century artists emphasized the traditional association of Martha and Mary with the active and contemplative lives. In Aertsen's Christ in thie House of Martha and Mary in Rotterdam, as in other northern depictions of the theme, the artist compares the active and contemplative lives of the respective sisters by representing Mary at Christ's feet, heeding his ministry,

while Martha stands above the Lord, reprimanding her sister.1 I Aertsen further figures the active life in the foreground by crowding the kitchen scene with both biblical and contemporary personages, who are surrounded by an array of fruits, game, and other foods.

In his Christ in the Hotuse of Martha and Mary,Velazquez similarly distinguishes between the action and contemplation of the two sisters. His background image depicts Mary seated, her head raised toward Christ in captivated attention.12 Velazquez has followed the tradition of conflating Mary with the Magdalen by rep resenting her with flowing blond hair. Martha, in turn, stands behind her sister and holds out her hand in supplication to the Lord. To the left, Christ gazes at Martha and silences her with his hand gesture, illustrating the final moment of the biblical episode. Because Velizquez, in this background scene, has followed Netherlandish models in depicting Christ's privileging of Mary's attentiveness over Martha's labor,

"See esp. Meadow, "Aertsen's Christ in the House of Martha and Mary" 175-95. 12As argued in Leo Steinberg, review of Velazquez: A Catalogue Raisonn? of His Oeuvre, with an

Introductory Study, by Jos? L?pez-Rey,/lrf Bulletin 47, no. 2 (1965): 289, Mary's pose is modeled on the

figure in D?rers Melancholia I.




the entire painting has been interpreted as a valorization of Mary's contemplation at the expense of Martha's action.13

A careful analysis of Velazquez's composition and style nonetheless demands a more complex reading. In the Christ in the House of Martha and Mary,Velazquez has literally foregrounded the kitchen scene, emphasizing the domain of the active life by placing it almost within the viewer's space. While northern paintings such as Aertsen's Christ in the House of Martha and Mary call the viewer's attention away from the background by depicting a profusion of still-life elements,Velazquez has accomplished this with only a few objects and two figures, rendered with striking realism. He has lavished his technical virtuosity on the still-life elements, using a dark palette and heavily laden brushstrokes that impart an almost material quality to the objects. Thick layers of gray paint dabbed with touches of white read as shiny, scaly fish, while impasted strokes of ocher create the illusion of a matte surface on the lower half of the jug. This materiality stands in stark contrast to the background scene, in which the biblical figures are rendered with loose, painterly strokes and strident colors. 14YetVelazquez has also encouraged the viewer to relate the ostensibly secular kitchen scene to the religious episode by placing the fish, a familiar symbol of Christ, directly beneath the figure of the Lord.15

AlthoughVelazquez's foreground figures do not depict Martha and Mary, as is sometimes argued, they emphasize the type of work epitomized by Martha.16 The young woman toiling with the mortar and pestle is the most prominent figure in the painting, and her activity is emphasized through the old woman's pointing ges ture.17Velazquez has further related the contemporary and biblical scenes by creat ing visual analogues between the foreground and background figures. The old

woman's white veil and her young companion's ocher doublet find echoes in Mar tha's white headdress and brown tunic. Similarly, the bent arms and raised hands of

13See Brown, Velazquez, 21; Delenda, Velazquez, 28; Manuela B. Mena Marqu?s, cat. no. 83 in

Velazquez y Sevilla, Cat?logo, ed. Alfredo J. Morales, exh. cat., Santa Mar?a de las Cuevas, Salas del Centro Andaluz de Arte Contempor?neo, Seville, 1999, 180. On similar interpretive problems regarding Aertsen's "inverted" versions of the Christ in the House of Martha and Mary, see Meadow, "Aertsen's Christ in the House of Martha and Mary" 175-96; Cherry, Arte y Naturaleza, 121-24.

14Norman Bryson, Looking at the Overlooked: Four Essays on Still Life Painting (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), 155, stresses the difference between the "loose, free brushstrokes" of the biblical scene and the "solid, tangible matter" depicted in the foreground of Velazquez's Supper at Emmaus. In works such as the Christ in the House of Martha and Mary in Rotterdam, Aertsen used color to distinguish between the foreground and background scenes. On Velazquez's appropriation of the sty listic qualities of northern "inverted" paintings, see Cherry, Arte y naturaleza, 122.

15John F. Moffitt,'"Terebat in mortario': Symbolism in Velasquez's Christ in the House of Martha and Mary" Arte cristiana 72, no. 700 (1984): 16, notes that the fish represent Christ.

16For attempts to equate one or both of the foreground women with the biblical personages, see, for example, Moffitt, "Francisco Pacheco," 634; Juli?n Gallego, Velazquez en Sevilla, 2nd ed. (Seville: Excma. Diputaci?n Provincial, 1994), 136. Marta Cacho Casal, "The Old Woman in Velazquez's Kitchen Scene with Christ's Visit to Martha and Mary" Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 63 (2000): 295 302, argues that the old woman is Martha's maid.

17On the old woman's emphatic gesture, see MacLaren, Spanish School, 122; Leslie Anne Nelson, "Velazquez's 'Bodegones a lo divino' and the Spanish Theatre of the Golden Age" (Ph.D. dissertation, Bryn Mawr College, 1996), 96.



Tiffany / Velaczquezs "Christ in the House of Martha and Mary" 439

both foreground figures mirror Martha's gesture of complaint.18 By establishing these visual parallels,Velazquez has entreated the viewer to consider the correlation

between the contemporary and biblical personages, connecting foreground and background, quotidian present and biblical history. Only a careful examination of the work reveals thatVelazquez has differentiated the two sets of figures and estab lished a deliberately equivocal relationship between the foreground and back ground scenes.

THE PLACE OF MARTHA IN SEVILLE

Velazquez's emphasis on the act of cooking provides a pictorial counterpart to exe getical praise of Martha, who was extolled for her place as the Lord's servant. In Seville, the importance of Martha's attendance to Christ was reflected in the activ ities of the Hospital de Santa Marta, the principal function of which was feeding the poor. Founded in the fourteenth century and administered by the cathedral, the hospital was considered sufficiently important to survive the massive reduction of hospitals in the city in the late sixteenth century.19 In the years around 1618, whenVelazquez painted the Christ in the House of Martha and Mary, the Hospital de Santa Marta paid two women to feed impoverished men, mostly retired and ailing clerics, who came daily to receive a ration.20 The hospital's inventories have not been discovered, making it impossible to ascertain whetherVelazquez's painting may have been directly linked to the institution.This emphasis on Martha as a saint praised for her hospitality toward Christ nonetheless helps to establish the Sevillian context of Velazquez's Christ in the House of Martha and Mary, which emphasizes the toils of the kitchen.

A sermon by the Augustinian friar Pedro deValderrama (1550-1611) glorifies both Martha and Mary, thus elucidating the symbolic importance of both sisters in Velazquez's mnilieu.Valderrama is especially significant for this discussion because he was one of Seville's most renowned preachers and formed an integral part of Pacheco's intellectual circle, as explained by the artist himself in the Libro de Retratos (Book of portraits), the most important source on the Augustinian's life.21 In a

18Victor I. Stoichita, The Self-Aware Image: An Insight into Early Modern Meta-Painting, trans. Anne Marie Glasheen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 10-16, suggests that the figures' ges tures help to bind foreground and background.

19On the hospital, see Francisco Collantes de Ter?n y Delorme, Los establecimientos de caridad de Sevilla (1884 and 1886; repr. of both eds., SeviUe: Colegio Oficial de Aparejadores y Arquitectos T?c

nicos, 1980), 197-236 in repr. of 1886 ed.; Juan Ignacio Carmona Garc?a, El sistema de hospitalidad p?blica en la Sevilla del Antiguo R?gimen (SeviUe: Excma. Diputaci?n Provincial, 1979), passim.

20See the hospital's expenditure records from 1617 until 1619 in Archivo de la Catedral de SeviUa, secci?n V, libros 138-40. The hospital displayed at least one work of art, as described in a late seven

teenth-century text: Joseph Arias de S. Pedro, "Pintura, de un caso Memorable, Que est? en el ArquiUo de S. Marta," in Los establecimientos de caridad, 218-20.

21Francisco Pacheco, Libro de descripci?n de verdaderos retratos de ilustres y memorables varones, ed. Pedro M. Pinero Ram?rez and Rogelio Reyes Cano (SeviUe: Excma. Diputaci?n Provincial, 1985), 111-14. Pacheco's treatise is undated and remained unpublished until the nineteenth century; ibid., 15-49.The other important source on Valderrama is Francisco de Luque Faxardo, Razonamiento Grave y Devoto, Que hizo el Padre M. F Pedro de Valderrama...: Con mas un breve Elogio de su vida y predicaci?n (SeviUe: Luis




sermon dedicated to Saint Bruno, Valderrama uses the story of Martha and Mary to demonstrate that Bruno and the Carthusian order he founded embody the per fect union of action and contemplation.22 Praising the saint's dedication to helping the poor,Valderrama compares the Carthusians' activities to Martha's hospitality to Christ, reflecting the post-Tridentine emphasis on the importance of good works.23 "Let the life of Martha shine," he exclaims, while extolling the order's commitment to the "charity with which they house such a multitude of guests."24 Although others ignore Martha's "good example," Bruno's order carries on her tra dition by attending to those in need.25 Of course,Valderrama explains that Bruno and the Carthusians exemplify not only the "active life," but also the "contempla tive life" as demonstrated through their practice of cloistered meditation.26 Valder rama lauds the order for upholding the founder's mission by continually joining the two lives: "Mary's life, which is to sit at Christ's feet, and Martha's life, which is to be anxious and concerned about the sustenance and alms of the poor. And that both these lives shine eminently in this holy Religion, one sees very clearly...."27 Valderrama then declares that God rewards the Carthusians for uniting action and contemplation and exhorts his readers to follow their lofty example.

The religious significance of Velazquez's Christ in the House of Martha and Mary is further illuminated by a little-known Tratado de las tres vidas, activa, contemplativa y

mixta (Treatise on the three lives, active, contemplative, and mixed), which characterizes Martha's labor as a means of approaching Mary's contemplation.28

Estupi?an, 1612). See also Andr?s Soria, "La predicaci?n de Pedro de Valderrama," Revista de literatura 46, no. 92 (1984): 19?55; Hilary Dansey Smith, Preaching in the Spanish Golden Age: A Study of Some Preachers of the Reign of Philip III (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), esp. 56-58, 65-66,132-34.

22Pedro de Valderrama, Sermon en la Fiesta del glorioso Patriarca san Bruno: Fundador de la Orden de la

Cartuja, in Teatro de las Religiones (Seville: Convento de San Agust?n, 1612), 524?46. Valderrama explic itly refers to Bruno as "san Bruno," although he was never officially canonized. Bruno's cult was sanc tioned for the Carthusians in 1514 and for the church as a whole in 1623.

23Manuel P?rez Lozano, "Fuentes y significado del cuadro 'Cristo en casa de Marta' de Diego Velazquez," Cuadernos de Arte e Iconograf?a 3 (1990): 55?64; idem, "Velazquez, en el entorno de Pacheco: Las primeras obras," Ars Longa 2 (1991): 89-102, esp. 95-100, also argues that Velazquez's Christ in the House of Martha and Mary emphasizes both the active and contemplative lives. Glen, "Velazquez's Kitchen

Scene," 21-30, further discusses the painting in terms of the importance of the active life and good works as promoted in Seville. According to Xanthe Brooke and Peter Cherry, Murillo: Scenes of Childhood, exh.

cat., Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, 2001), 80, a lecture presented in 1999 by Terence O'Reilly similarly related Velazquez's painting to Jesuit texts on the union of mundane labor and religious contemplation.

24Valderrama, Sermon, 545: "Pues que resplandezca ... la vida de Marta"; "caridad con que ospedafn] tanta multitud de guespedes."Translations are mine unless otherwise indicated. Spanish quo tations are faithful to the orthography used in the works cited.

25Valderrama, Sermon, 546: "buen exemplo." 26Valderrama, Serm?n, 544: "vida activa"; "vida contemplativa." 27Valderrama, Serm?n, 544.The passage reads: "Y bien se echa de ver en lo que dex? en su sagrada

Religiofn], en la qual se guardan estas dos vidas con suma puntualidad: la vida de Maria, que es estar sentada a los pies de Christo, y la vida de Marta, que es andar solicita y cuydosa del sustento y limosna del pobre. Y que estas dos vidas resplandezcan con eminencia en esta sagrada Religion, vese muy clara mente_"

28Antonio Cordeses, Tratado de las tres vidas, activa, contemplativa y mixta, in Obras espirituales: Gu?a

te?rico-pr?ctica de la perfecci?n cristiana, ed. with a prologue by A.Yanguas (Madrid: Consejo Superior de



Tiffany / Velazquezs "Christ in the House of Martha and Mary" 441

The treatise was written by the Jesuit Antonio Cordeses (1518-1601), who during

the last ten years of his life served as provost in Seville's Casa Profesa, where he doubtless became acquainted with Pacheco's friends in the Society of Jesus.29 In the Tratado, Cordeses uses the ascent from the active life of Martha to the

contemplative life of Mary as a metaphor for Saint Ignatius's concept of the soul's journey toward union with God. Cordeses explains that the active life, linked to the sensory world of "extrinsic material," is the lowest of the three lives discussed in the tract.30Yet "the active life, if exercised with perfection, is of great excellence, and thus it was represented in Scripture by the holy woman Martha, who hosted Christ."31 The active life, occupied with good works pertaining to the material world, is therefore important and "is necessary for the provision and preparation for the contemplative life."32 Indeed, there is a direct relationship between the toil of the active life and the success achieved in the contemplative life, for "the more a

man has walked in Martha's life, the more he will be prepared for Mary's path; because of this the saints have said that the active life must precede the

contemplative."33 With regard to Velazquez's painting, it is significant that Cordeses favors the

vida mixta, combining action and contemplation, over the purely contemplative life. The vida mixta is "very noble" (nobilissima) and serves as the culmination of Cordeses's tract, encompassing the perfections of both Martha and Mary. In

keeping with the Jesuit missionary vocation, Cordeses argues that the vida mixta is necessary to all those who wish to imitate the apostles in spreading the word of God. Not surprisingly, Cordeses argues that whoever aspires to the vida mixta need

always remember that the contemplative life is the superior aspect of this combined way of living, for it is described by Christ as the "best part."34Yet he who seeks the

Investigaciones Cient?ficas, Instituto "Francisco Su?rez," 1953), 1?43.The two manuscript versions of the treatise are London, Brit. Mus. Add. MS 20915, fols. 206-15; BCC (Biblioteca Capitular y Colom

bina, SeviUe) MS 84-2-8, fols. 1-50.The manuscripts are written in distinct hands and their texts differ. For this article, I have usedYanguas's edition, which is a publication of the London manuscript. On the Tratado and its date (before 1573), see Yanguas, prologue to Cordeses, Tratado, v-xxxvi. See also Paul

Dudon,"Les id?es du P.Antonio Cordeses sur l'Oraison, I," Revue d'asc?tique et de mystique 12 (1931): 97-115; idem,"Les id?es du P.Antonio Cordeses sur l'Oraison, II," Revue d'asc?tique et de mystique 13

(1932): 17-33. Delenda, Velazquez, 28, mentions the Tratado in the context ofVel?zquez's Christ in the House of Martha and Mary, but does not develop her argument.

29On Pachecos connections to the Jesuits, see Alfonso Rodriguez G. de CebaUos, introduction to

Im?genes de la historia evang?lica, by Jer?nimo Nadal (Barcelona: Ediciones El Albir, 1975), 7-15; Bona ventura Bassegoda i Hugas, "Observaciones sobre El Arte de la Pintura de Francisco Pacheco como tratado de Iconograf?a," Cuadernos de Arte e Iconograf?a 3 (1989): 185-96, esp. 191-94.

30Cordeses, Tratado, 3: "materia extr?nseca."

31Cordeses, Tratado, 1: "La vida activa, si es exercitada con perfecci?n, es de grande exceUentia, y ass? fue figurada en la Scriptura por la santa mujer Martha, que hosped? a Cristo."

32Cordeses, Tratado, 13: "es necessaria para disposition y aparejo de la vida contemplativa." Cor

deses cites Gregory the Great as an authority on using the active life to lead to the contemplative life.

33Cordeses, Tratado, 31: "tanto estar? el hombre m?s aparexado para la v?a de Mar?a, quanto m?s camino huviere andado en la vida de Martha, ca por esto han dicho los Santos que la vida activa ha de

preceder a la contemplativa." 34Cordeses, Tratado, 37,38,41.




vida mixta must always adhere to his duties pertaining to the active life, "without abandoning ... the obligation of his status or institution ... and without notably neglecting charity to others."35

BothValderrama's glorification of Martha's role as Christ's servant and Cordeses's notion of using the active life in order to achieve the contemplative life help to elucidate the exegetical context of Velazquez's Christ in the House of Martha and Mary. Like Valderrama, Velazquez valorizes the active life through the prominent kitchen scene in the foreground. With the illustration of the biblical episode in which Christ assures Martha that Mary "hath chosen the best part," the artist nonetheless suggests that the active life is only one aspect of the ideal Christian. The presence of the Lenten still life in the foreground scene also emphasizes the need to join the sacred and the secular by reminding the viewer to honor Christ by heeding the spiritual life even while nourishing the body.36 In the Christ in the House of Martha and Mary,Velazquez has furthermore thematized Cordeses's exhortation to use Martha's life as a stage in the pursuit of Mary's. He has made the religious scene accessible only by means of the image of the active life in the foreground, entreating the viewer to take in the contemporary scene and its still-life elements before reaching the small biblical episode in the right-hand corner. When considered in concert with Cordeses's text, this compositional structure seems to suggest that the toils of the melancholy cook in the painting's foreground will lead to a higher spiritual reward.

THE CHRIST IN THE HOUSE OF MARTHA AND MARY AND THE ART OF MEMORY

The vividness of Velazquez's framed religious scene and its function as a reminder to join action and contemplation relate to contemporary mnemonic techniques,

which encouraged practitioners to remember concepts and objects by placing striking mental images in the settings of places such as streets, buildings, or individ ual rooms. Using this art of memory to create mental pictures was central to Cath olic devotional methods. For example, in Saint Ignatius's Spiritual Exercises (1548), the composition of place involves employing the memory (which is equated with the imagination) to conjure up vivid images of our past sins and the example of Christ's life.This technique was based on the mnemonics outlined in classical rhe torical manuals such as the anonymous Ad Herennium, which advocated memoriz ing series of objects through the formation and arrangement of striking mental

35Cordeses, Tra?do, 38: "sin derogar ... a la obligaci?n de su estado o instituto ... y sin faltar nota blemente a la charidad del pr?ximo."

36Cherry,y4r?e y Naturaleza, 123, has stated that the meal being prepared is "una comida de absti

nencia, adecuada para la escena religiosa." Mart?n Soria used a passage from the writings of St. Teresa to elucidate the ways in which Velazquez's painting emphasizes the close relationship between the mun

dane and the spiritual: "Cuando ... empleadas en cosas exteriores, entended, que si es en la cocina entre los pucheros anda el Se?or, ayud?ndoos en lo interior y exterior." Teresa of Avila, Libro de Fundaciones,

chap. 5, v. 7; quoted (without further reference) in Mart?n S. Soria, "An Unknown Early Painting by Velazquez," Burlington Magazine 91, no. 554 (1949): 127.




pictures.37 In part because of its relevance to devotion, the Ad Herennium was widely read in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and became one of the prin cipal rhetorical manuals used inJesuit schools.38

The importance of these mnemonic techniques inVelazquez's circle is sug gested through an analysis of the "Tratado de la memoria artificiosa" (Treatise on artificial memory), a manuscript in Seville that, to my knowledge, has never been discussed by scholars.39 The "Tratado" is an abbreviated translation of the discus sion of memory in the Ad Herennium, reflecting contemporaries' particular interest in that section of the text.As indicated in the manuscript, the treatise was translated by Juan Bautista Su'arez de Salazar (d. 1644), a cathedral canon of the Andalusian city of Cadiz, who had close connections to the Jesuits and maintained a friendship and correspondence with Velazquez's early patron, the Sevillian Juan de Fonseca y Figueroa.40 The "Tratado" is thus particularly relevant to our discussion of Velazquez's painting, and Su6arez de Salazar's translation may reflect the ways in which the young artist's associates understood the classical text.

Without suggesting thatVelazquez used the "Tratado" as a direct source, I would like to examine how the text sheds light on his engagement with the art of memory. The "Tratado" advocates creating mental arrangements of "places" and "images," and in so doing keys into the mnemonic role of pictures-within

37For a general discussion of the Ad Herennium (ca. 86-82 bce), see Henry Caplan, introduction to Ad Herennium, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), vii-xl.The section on memory appears in Ad Herennium 3.16.28-24.40. On the memory section and its subsequent influence, see Frances A. Yates, The Art of Memory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), esp. 1?

26, 86-91; Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 122-55 and passim; idem, The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images, 400-1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), esp. 9-10, 36-37, 81, 99, 236-37; Lina Bolzoni, The Gallery of Memory: Literary and Iconographie Models in the Age of the

Printing Press, trans.Jeremy Parzen (Toronto: University ofToronto Press, 2001), passim. 38On the importance of the Ad Herennium for Ignatius and other Spanish Jesuits, see Fernando R.

de la Flor, Teatro de la memoria: Siete ensayos sobre mnemotecnia espa?ola de los siglos XVII y XVIII, 2nd ed.

(Salamanca: Junta de CastiUa y Le?n, 1996), 83-85, 120-22; Jos? Rico Verd?, La ret?rica espa?ola de los

siglos XVI y XVII (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cient?ficas, 1973), 59-60. For concise discussions of Jesuit education, see John O'Malley, "The Schools," chap. 6 in The First Jesuits (Cam bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 200-242; Francesco C. Ces?reo, "The Collegium Ger manicum and the Ignatian Vision of Education," Sixteenth Century Journal 24 (1993): 829?41.

39Juan Bautista Su?rez de Salazar, "Tratado de la memoria artificiosa," BCC MS 57-3-24 (sig. anti

gua 83-3-19), fols. 363r-66r. The treatise is undated. Nicol?s Mar?a Cambiaso y Verdes, Memorias para la biograf?a y para la bibliograf?a de la isla de C?diz, rev. ed., ed. Ram?n Corzo S?nchez and Margarita Tos cana San Gil (Cadiz: Caja de Ahorros, 1986), 194, lists the "Tratado" in an inventory of Su?rez de Salazar's works, but does not discuss the treatise or its contents.

40Su?rez de Salazar's testament reveals that upon his death he bequeathed aU, or most of, his per sonal library to Cadiz's Jesuit school. See Cambiaso y Verdes, Memorias, 193; Pablo Ant?n Sol?, "Biblio tecas y bibli?filos gaditanos," Archivo Hispalense 57, no. 176 (1974): 46-47. Su?rez de Salazar's best known work is the Grandezas y antig?edades de la isla y ciudad de C?diz (Cadiz: Clemente Hidalgo, 1610). Fragments of the correspondence between Su?rez de Salazar and Fonseca y Figueroa survive in the

manuscript volume that contains the "Tratado." On Fonseca y Figueroa's relationship to Velazquez, see

Jos? L?pez Navio, "Velazquez tasa los cuadros de su protector D. Juan de Fonseca," Archivo Espa?ol de Arte 34 (1961): 53-84.




pictures.41 The places are the backgrounds against which the images to be recalled are stored; they are "like the paper" used for writing, while "the images" function like "the letters" that fill the page.42 In contrast to the Latin text of the Ad Herennium, the "Tratado" stresses the importance of populating these pictures with

familiar faces that "we could easily remember."43 Elaborating on the classical author's precepts, Su'arez de Salazar uses common names as a mechanism for remembering a murder by poison. He thus exhorts the reader to imagine that "Pedro would say that Francisco was killed with poison by Antonio, who did it in order to win his inheritance."44 Although Suarez de Salazar follows the Latin text in stating that the images should not represent ordinary events (for they are more difficult to recall), by giving each of the personages a familiar name he emphasizes the relative facility of remembering subjects related to people we see every day.

In the Christ in the House of Martha and Mary,Velazquez has created a kitchen scene that functions as a place for a memory image.45 The framed biblical episode located within that place thus becomes an image the viewer is exhorted to remem

ber.Velazquez's depiction of ordinary, humble models in the foreground provides an analogue to Su'arez de Salazar's recommendation to use people we know to aid the memory, and both figures seem to be individuals-like Pedro, Francisco, or

Antonio-whom we could encounter in seventeenth-century Seville. In fact, the

elderly woman surely was a contemporary Sevillian, for she also served as the model forVelazquez's Old Woman Cooking.46 In the Christ in the House of Martha and Mary,Velaizquez's representation of a common kitchen scene departs from the trea tise's admonition to avoid picturing everyday occurrences, but the image located

within that place corresponds to the text by inciting the beholder to remember the extraordinary event of Christ's visit to Martha and Mary. By constructing the Christ in the House of Martha and Mary as a memory picture,Velazquez has beautifully illus trated the significance of the passage from the Gospel of Luke, in which Christ's teachings miraculously transfix Mary, even within the ordinary surroundings of the sisters' household.

41Su?rez de Salazar, "Tratado," fol. 363v: "Consta pues la memoria artificiosa de lugares y de

imagines." 42Su?rez de Salazar, "Tratado," fol. 363v: "los lugares son semejantes al papel, las imagines a las

letras,y la disposici?n y aciento de las imagines al discurso de la escriptura...." 43Su?rez de Salazar, "Tratado," fol. 364v. The author exhorts the reader to imagine "una persona

de la qual facilm[en]te nos podr?amos acordar."

44Su?rez de Salazar, "Tratado," fol. 364v. Su?rez de Salazar encourages the reader to conjure up "unas imagines del mismo negocio como si P[edr]o dijere q[ue] Fran[cis]co fue muerto con veneno de

Ant[oni]o que lo hiso por eredalle."

45Nelson, "Velazquez's 'Bodegones a lo divino,'" esp. 106-26, associates Velazquez's use of pic

tures-within-pictures with mnemonics and emphasizes the interconnectedness of the art of memory and Jesuit devotion. My description of the painting as a memory image depends on Nelson's work.

46OWWoman Cooking (1618, National Gallery of Scotland) .Velazquez's use of the same model for the Christ in the House of Martha and Mary and the Old Woman Cooking has been noted, for example, by

Brown, Velazquez, 17. On Velazquez's practice of working from life, see Pacheco, Arte, 443.




MEMORY AND DEVOTION

The use of vivid images as mnemonics to devotion is exemplified in the Adnotationes et meditationes in Evangelia (Annotations and meditations on the Gospels; 1595) by the Jesuit Jeronimo Nadal, a work that provided an important model for Vel'azquez's representation of a biblical scene as a memory painting.47 Published at Ignatius's request, the Adnotationes et meditationes gives pictorial form to his imagined composition of place.The treatise combines Nadal's text and lavish Flemish engravings, which were executed mainly by the Wierix shop in Antwerp after designs by Bernardo Passeri. Using pictures-within-pictures to represent various moments in each of the Gospel episodes depicted, the engravings function in concert with the text to aid the reader in meditation. For example, the Magdalen

Anoints Christ's Feet (fig. 3) comprises a large foreground scene that depicts the Magdalen washing and anointing Christ's feet at the Pharisee's feast, while the background contains related episodes, and a framed roundel illustrates the parable of the two debtors, which Christ explains to the figures in the foreground scene. At the bottom of the page, letters corresponding to each episode are followed by inscriptions that succinctly describe the events depicted and guide the beholder's study of the image.

The Adnotationes et meditationes provides a compelling devotional model for Velazquez's Christ in the House of Martha and Mary. As scholarship has shown, the engravings were appropriated by artists throughout Catholic Europe as ideal and decorous sources for religious paintings.48 Pacheco continually cites Nadal in the Arte de la Pintura, and explicitly recommends the engravings as pictorial sources for sacred images including the Visitation, Nativity, and Adoration of the Magi.49 John

Moffitt has demonstrated that the compositional technique of the picture-within a-picture used in many of the images also provided a source for Pacheco's Saint Sebastian Attended by Saint Irene (1616; fig. 4), painted two years before Velazquez's Christ in the House of Martha and Mary.50

A careful examination of Pacheco's Saint Sebastian Attended by Saint Irene in conjunction withVelazquez's Christ in the House of Martha and Mary reveals the dif ferent ways in which master and former pupil engaged with the engravings of the

47As translated in Jer?nimo Nadal, Annotations and Meditations on the Gospels, vol. 1, The Infancy Narratives, trans. Frederick A. Homann, with an introduction by Walter S. Melion (Philadelphia: Saint

Joseph's University Press, 2003). 48In addition to the works on Nadal cited elsewhere in this article, see in particular: Thomas

Buser, "Jerome Nadal and Early Jesuit Art in R.ome," Art Bulletin 58, no. 3 (1976): 424-33; David Freed

berg,"A Source for Rubens's Modello of the Assumption and Coronation of the Virgin: A Case Study in the

Response to Images," Burlington Magazine 120, no. 904 (1978): 432-41; idem, The Power of Images: Stud ies in the History and Theory of Response (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 181-83; Marc

Fumaroli, L'?ge de l'?loquence: Rh?torique et "res literaria" de la Renaissance au seuil de l'?poque classique (Geneva: Droz, 1980), 258-60; Walter S. Melion, "Pictorial Artifice and Catholic Devotion in Abraham

Bloemaert's Virgin of Sorrows with the Holy Face of c. 1615," in The Holy Face and the Paradox of Represen tation: Papers from a Colloquium Held at the Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rome and the Villa Spelman, Florence, 1996, ed. Herbert L. Kessler and Gerhard Wolf (Bologna: Nuova Alfa, 1998), esp. 333-40.

49On these three subjects, see Pacheco, Arte, 596-99, 602-8, 612-17, respectively. 50Moffitt, "Francisco Pacheco," 631-38.




FERIA V POST. DOM. PASSIOI%IS | qit pedes S V2a,Ja1na 34

Luc. v.j .imo xxxI

A. GA t,' 1,4 w r cfam E. 1%ruaalr Iwe w- "uxefn B. Ro tfrxus, iwvx, It. manixa F. Re(wxJt ?-mne (i Izsvs,prp

rD. 4L .

iydlakna rjqat jFd IsVIacVtmvrn mfrat teuiylt n~4r#t, vtjqt v ueno H. In C Iiyar n CTa " r r. |

Figure 3. Anton Wierix, Magdalen Anoints Christ's Feet, in Jer6nimo Nadal, Adnotationes et Meditationes (1595), p1. 34. Photo: Milton S. Eisenhower Library,

Johns Hopkins University, by permission.




Figure 4. Francisco Pacheco, Saint Sebastian Attended by Saint Irene, 1616, destroyed,

formerly Alcala' de Guadaira. Photo: Institut Amatiler d'Art Hispanic, by permnission.



448 Sixteenth Century Journal XXXVI/2 (2005)

Adnotationes et meditationes.This comparison is especially apt becauseVelazquez was still an apprentice in Pacheco's studio when the Saint Sebastian was painted, and the seventeen-year-old artist may even have collaborated on aspects of the work.51

Whether or not Velazquez had a hand in Pacheco's painting, the compositional scheme of the Saint Sebastian provided an important and immediate source for the picture-within-a-picture in the Christ in the House of Martha and Mary. By depicting framed images, both works appropriate the kinds of pictures-within-pictures used in the Adnotationes et meditationes, in which frames as well as the lettered captions incite the beholder to meditate separately on each scene illustrated.52 This repre sents a departure from the precedents of Aertsen and his followers, in which the background episodes are usually continuous with the foreground action.53

Like the kitchen in the Christ in the House of Martha and Mary, the foreground of the Saint Sebastian resembles a seventeenth-century domestic interior.The scene, in fact, depicts Saint Irene nursing Saint Sebastian to health, while a window in the background reveals Diocletian's soldiers shooting the martyr with arrows. In the Arte de la Pintura, Pacheco provides a detailed description of the work:

In the middle of the picture, in a bed, was painted Saint Sebastian at about forty years old, seated with a bowl and a spoonful of rose syrup, and stand ing, attending to him, that holy widow Irene, who cured him from his

wounds. At the far end, a table with a small glass of balsam and some ban dages on a plate, which a maid brings.... Next to the bed several arrows, tied with the saint's bloodied cloths.... On the wall, a window, through

which the saint is seen in the field, tied to a tree, where arrows are being shot at him....54

Pacheco then writes that he painted the Saint Sebastian for the Hospital de San Sebastian in the town ofAlcal6a de Guadaira, just outside Seville. The theme of the work therefore alludes to the function of the space for which it was created. He explains that he executed the painting in close consultation with the humanist

51Prisc?la E. Muller, "Francisco Pacheco as a Painter," Marsyas 10 (1960-61): 40, emphasized the

painterly quality of the picture-within-a-picture itself and therefore suggested that Velazquez may have had a hand in the work. Juli?n G?Uego, El cuadro dentro del cuadro, 3rd ed. (Madrid: C?tedra, 1991), 159?

61, provides a description of Pacheco's Saint Sebastian and relates its compositional technique to

Velazquez's Christ in the House of Martha and Mary. On the Saint Sebastian, see also Lubomir Konecny, "Una ojeada en la c?rcel dorada del maestro Pacheco," Bolet?n del Museo e Instituto Cam?n Aznar 27

(1987): 17-25. 52In the Adnotationes et meditationes, not aU of the pictures-within-pictures are framed. It is none

theless important to emphasize the differentiation between the various scenes in each engraving. The scenes are further distinguished from each other by the letters and corresponding captions.

53Bryson, Looking at the Overlooked, 153.

54Pacheco,^4fte, 681: "Pint?se en el medio del cuadro, en una cama, a San Sebasti?n como de cua renta a?os, sentado, con una escudiUa y cuchara de lamedor rosado, y aqueUa Santa viuda Irene que le cur? de las heridas que, en pie, le asiste. Una mesa a la cabecera, con un vasico de b?lsamo y algunas hilas en un plato, que trae una criada.. ..Junto a la cama algunas saetas, atadas con pa?os ensangrentados del Santo.... En la pared, una ventana, por donde se ve el Santo en el campo, atado a un ?rbol, donde le est?n asaetando...."




Francisco de Medina, providing a valuable glimpse of the interaction between art ists and scholars that characterized his circle in Seville. Indeed, Pacheco establishes

Medina's collaboration as the reason for his extended discussion of the painting, stating, "Because it was the thought [pensamiento] of such an illustrious man ... I will explain it to those who are interested."55 Pacheco's statement indicates that he considered his painting to illustrate an elevated concept.

In the Saint Sebastian Attended by Saint Irene, the device of the picture-within a-picture functions analogously to the framed scenes in Wierix shop engravings such as the Magdalen Anoints Christ's Feet (fig. 3). Pacheco's description of the paint ing in the Arte de la Pintura similarly invites the kind of sustained contemplation encouraged by the Adnotationes et meditationes by guiding the reader from the depic tion of Sebastian and Irene in the foreground to the picture-within-a-picture in the background. His enumeration of the significance of the still-life elements recalls the method of beholding fostered by engravings such as the Magdalen Anoints Christ's Feet, in which the inscriptions accompanying each scene denote particular biblical events and remind the reader-beholder of the interrelation among the var ious Gospel episodes. In this way, each of the elements in Pacheco's composition refers to an episode from Saint Sebastian's passion. As he explains, the clothes rest ing on the chair in the foreground represent those worn by Sebastian in his "second

martyrdom," while the arrows wrapped in bloodied cloth depict those shot by Diocletian's soldiers, and the olive branch with which Irene "brushes away the flies" alludes to mercy and peace, the meaning of the name Irene.56 The cross in the left-hand corner, with the inscription "DEFENSOR ECCLESIAE," is a common device in seventeenth-century Spanish painting and encourages the beholder to remember that Sebastian died as a church martyr. The various components of

Pacheco's painting, like those in the engraving of the Magdalen Anoints Christ's Feet, are to be meditated upon individually and to encourage the viewer to consider over time the different stages of Saint Sebastian's life and passion.

Aspects of the Saint Sebastian seem to replicate the mnemonics outlined in Su'arez de Salazar's "Tratado de la memoria artificiosa." As in Velazquez's Christ in the House of Martha and Mary, Pacheco's depiction of Sebastian, Irene, and the maid in contemporary dress corresponds to Suarez de Salazar's suggestion to use people

we know to fill our images. Pacheco's representation of Sebastian in bed, holding a bowl, and attended by two women recalls the exhortation in the "Tratado" to remember a poisoning by picturing "that Francisco, or someone we could easily remember, is sick in bed," while "the culprit was there, bound, next to the bed, on one side, the poisonous drink, and on the other, the testament and the many

55Pacheco,/4r?e, 681:"por ser pensamiento de tan insigne var?n ... lo manifestar? a los curiosos." Pacheco also tells us that he studied various representations of St. Sebastian. Leo Steinberg, introduction to Art about Art, ed. Jean Lipman and Richard Marshall, exh. cat., Whitney Museum of American Art,

New York, 1978,22-23, demonstrated that the source for the picture-within-a-picture of St. Sebastian's

martyrdom was an engraving by Jan Harmensz Muller after a painting by Hans von Aachen. The

engraving is reproduced in Strauss, Netherlandish Artists, 463.

56Pacheco,y4r?e, 681: "segundo martirio"; "aparta las moxcas."




neighbors who were there."57 The artist's depiction of the saint "tied to a tree"

further echoes this image of the culprit "bound, next to the bed." Perhaps most important, his inclusion of the arrows wrapped in bloodied cloth evokes the

passage in the "Tratado" which admonishes the reader to create distinct and memorable mental images. As stated in the text, "the images must be of such quality that we can retain them in the memory for a long time, just as if we wish to remember something despised and miserable, let us pretend to see it bloodied, with poor clothing, and covered in mud, for the more effective the image, the better we shall remember."58

Pacheco and Medina doubtless considered these elements in the Saint Sebastian to carry a mnemonic function analogous to that explained in the "Tratado." In Pacheco's painting, the representation of the bloodied arrows, the saint bound to a tree, and the saint in bed holding a bowl serve to imprint images of Sebastian's pas sion on the beholder's memory, encouraging the viewer to examine these elements individually and repeatedly. The artist's creation of a painting to be considered over a prolonged period is crucial to our understanding of his engagement with the art of memory, for as stated in the "Tratado," we must preserve the images we create "in the memory for a long time." Pacheco and Medina may well have seen the imagery of a scene of Saint Sebastian and Saint Irene as appropriate to the devo tional techniques related to the art of memory precisely because these elements of Sebastian's passion so closely resemble the particulars of the famous example in the Ad Herennium.

VELAIZQUEZ, PACHECO, AND NADAL

The Christ in the House of Martha and Mary demonstrates the complexity of Velazquez's engagement with the models provided by Pacheco's Saint Sebastian Attended by Saint Irene, the engravings of the Adnotationes et meditationes, and the "inverted" religious paintings by Aertsen and his followers.Velazquez's use of a hor izontal composition to depict a foreground kitchen scene and background biblical episode represents a departure from Pacheco's painting and the engravings in Nadal's treatise, and instead reflects his engagement with Aertsen's works.Yet in the context of the devotional methods expounded in the Adnotationes et meditationes,Velazquez's representation of a picture-within-a-picture takes on a new significance. By placing

57Su?rez de Salazar, "Tratado," fol. 364v. The text reads: "Imaginaremos q[ue] Fran[cis]co esta enfermo en la cama o una persona de la qual fac?m[en]te nos podr?amos acordar. Y q[ue] el reo estaba aUi junto a la cama apricionado, de una p[ar]te el bebediso de otra el testam[en]to y muchos vecinos

q[ue] alli asist?an. De esta suerte facilm[en]te nos acordaremos de los testigos, herencia, veneno y muerto."

58Su?rez de Salazar, "Tratado," fol. 365r: "Las imagines an de ser de tal calidad que las podamos por largo tiempo retener en la memoria como si nos queremos acordar de una cosa menospreciada y

miserable,^m?ijmo5 verla ensangrentada con vestiduras pobres y cubierta de sieno porq[ue] quanto mas eficas fuere la imagen tanto mejor nos acordaremos" (emphasis added). Leslie Korrick, "On the Meaning of

Style: Nicol? Circignani in Counter-Reformation Rome," Word and Image 15, no. 2 (1999): 175, relates the corresponding passage in the Ad Herennium to the depictions of martyrdom commissioned in 1581 for the Roman Jesuit church of Santo Stefano Rotondo.




the framed biblical scene within the setting of a larger, contemporary kitchen, Velazquez, like the engravers, has responded to Ignatius's exhortation to use the sen

sory world as an aid to visualizing episodes from the Gospels. Velazquez emphasized the distinction between the worldly and spiritual realms

through the contrast of the materiality of the paint in the contemporary scene and the loose brushstrokes constituting the biblical episode. He juxtaposed his realist style with the painterly representation of background figures in only one additional work: his other religious picture-within-a-picture, the Supper at Emmaus (c. 1617, Blessington, Beit Collection). In the Supper at Emmaus,Velazquez similarly combined a humble kitchen scene with a framed biblical image and contrasted the naturalism of the foreground with the fluid strokes of the background.59 As in the Christ in the House of Martha and Mary, this stark separation between foreground and background emphasizes the mnemonic function of the biblical episode, which seemingly reminds the beholder that Christ's revelation to his disciples is significant even to the African woman-probably one of Seville's many slaves-in the kitchen. The virtuosic brushwork in both paintings may have contributed to their devotional efficacy. As argued in Diego Jimenez's prologue to the Adnotationes et meditationes, masterly pictorial technique inspires the lengthy contemplation of images. Jimenez explains that the treatise's engravings have been wrought with great "elegance and beauty of workmanship together with the greatest sanctity and excellence of theme" in order to "urge all to study and reflection by means of assiduous meditation."60

In the Christ in the House of Martha and Mary,Velazquez guides our reading of the painting by depicting the old woman pointing toward her young companion, encouraging us to pause and meditate on the action of the woman whose kitchen

work so closely resembles Martha's attendance to the Lord. As Victor Stoichita has argued, her pointed finger functions as an exhortatio that introduces Velazquez's painting to the beholder.61 This gesture also functions in relation to the mnemonics of religion, exhorting the viewer to remember the active life of the foreground scene before reaching the contemplative life exemplified in the biblical episode. As in Cordeses's Tratado de las tres vidas, the "inverted" composition in the Christ in the

House of Martha and Mary reminds the beholder that action is a step toward contemplation.

59For a general discussion ofVel?zquez's Supper at Emmaus, see Rosemarie Mulcahy, Spanish Paint

ings in the National Gallery of Ireland (Dublin: National Gallery of Ireland, 1988), 79-82.

60Nadal, Adnotationes et meditationes, fol. 2v; quoted and trans, in Walter S. Melion, "Artifice,

Memory, and Reformatio in Hieronymus Natalis's Adnotationes et meditationes in Evangelia," Renaissance and

Reformation 22, no. 3 (1998): 7:"sed potius ut opificij elegantia ac pulchritudo, simul cum maxima ipsius argumenti sanctitate atque excellentia, operisque pietate coniuncta, omnes ad illud evoluendum, assi

duaque meditatione versandum invitaret."

61Stoichita, Self-Aware Image, 11, asserts that the old woman's finger-pointing is an "'exhortatio,

introducing the painting," but argues that she is scolding her companion.




WINDOWS, PAINTINGS, AND MIRRORS

The equivocal visual qualities of Velazquez's picture-within-a-picture provide further keys to the artist's interpretation of the scene. His creation of an

ambiguous framed image represents an important departure from Pacheco's painting, in which the window shutter makes it clear that the saint's martyrdom is seen through an opening in the wall.62 In the Christ in the House of Martha and

Mary,Velazquez avoided providing clues-a shutter, the shadow cast by a picture frame, or streaks of light on a mirror surface-that would clarify the nature of the biblical episode.63 On the contrary, he used his studies of linear perspective and optics to heighten the indeterminate nature of the framed scene.64 If the picture within-a-picture were read as a window and the lines in its corners as orthogonals, the foreground and background scenes would appear to have vanishing points on opposite sides of the composition.65 Similarly, if the framed scene were a painting, it would need to be submerged in shadow like the rest of the back wall.66

AlthoughVelazquez played with the notion of mirror reversals through Christ's unusual left-handed gesture and Martha's repetition of the foreground figures' poses, the picture-within-a-picture is not a mirror reflection, for the illumination emerges from opposite sides in the foreground and biblical scenes.67

The cryptic framed scene thus entices the beholder to question its identity and engage in a close analysis of the painting. Velazquez's representation of a framed image that resembles a window, a painting, and a mirror is also significant in that it

indicates his early experimentation with the kinds of optical ambiguities he would

62As quoted above, Pacheco s text explicitly states that the episode is viewed through "a window."

Velazquez apparently followed Pachecos model in his own Supper at Emmaus;most scholars believe that the light brown patch of paint on the right-hand side of the framed scene represents a window shutter.

See, for example, Brown, Velazquez, 21. 63For various identifications of Velazquez's picture-within-a-picture see, for example, William B.

Jordan, Spanish Still Life in the Golden Age, exh. cat., Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, 1985, 85; Brown, Velazquez, 16?17; P?rez Lozano, "Velazquez en el entorno de Pacheco," 96; Delenda, Velazquez, 27; William B.Jordan and Peter Cherry, Spanish Still Life from Velazquez to Goya, exh. cat., National Gal

lery, London, 1995, 39; Harris and Davies, cat. no. 21 in Velazquez in Seville, 132; Jonathan Miller, On

Reflection, exh. cat., National Gallery, London, 1998,124.

64Palomino, Vidas, 157, discusses the young Velazquez's study of perspective. For recent critical assessments of the artist's interest in optics and perspective, see Martin Kemp, The Science of Art: Optical Themes in Western Art from Brunelleschi to Seurat (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), esp. 99-108; Fernando Mar?as, "El g?nero de Las meninas: Los servicios de la familia," in Otras meninas, ed. Fernando

Mar?as (Madrid: Ediciones Siruela, 1995), esp. 265-67; Eileen Reeves, "1614-1621: The Buen Pintor of

Seville," chap. 5 in Painting the Heavens: Art and Science in the Age of Galileo (Princeton: Princeton Uni

versity Press, 1997), 184-225; Agust?n Bustamante and Fernando Mar?as, "Entre pr?ctica y teor?a: La formaci?n de Velazquez en Sevilla," in Velazquez y Sevilla, Estudios, 141-57.

65Peter Cherry, "Los bodegones de Vel?zquez y la verdadera imitaci?n del natural," in Velazquez y Sevilla, Estudios, 88, notes that the foreground and background scenes appear to have separate vanishing points. He nevertheless argues that the framed scene is a window.

66Bartolom? Mestre Fiol, "El 'espejo referencial' en la pintura de Vel?zquez: Jes?s en la casa de Marta y Mar?a," Traza y Baza 2 (1973): 22.

67Jos? L?pez-Rey, Vel?zquez: A Catalogue Raisonn? of His Oeuvre with an Introductory Study (Lon don: Faber & Faber, 1963), 32 n. 3, pointed out Christ's left-handed gesture. In his Christ in the House

of Martha and Mary in Rotterdam, Aertsen also represented Christ raising his left hand.




favor throughout his career, culminating in the brilliantly enigmatic pictures within-pictures of Las Hilanderas (ca. 1657/58, Madrid, Museo del Prado) and Las Meninas (1656, Madrid, Museo del Prado).68 As in these late works, the indetermi nate nature of the background scene challenges the viewer to examine the compo sition at length in order to resolve the visual puzzle posed by the artist.

In the Christ in the House of Martha and Mary, however, the enigmatic quality of the framed scene relates to its function as a religious image.The impossibility of securely identifying the nature of the biblical episode means that Velazquez's composition cannot be understood as a narrative in which the religious scene is either a history painting hanging on a seventeenth-century kitchen wall or an event occurring contemporaneously in an adjacent room. Defying straightforward readings, the Christ in the House of Martha and Mary encourages the viewer to consider the symbolic relationship between the active life figured in the foreground and the contemplative life represented in the religious episode. The ambiguity of the picture-within-a-picture furthermore heightens its distinction from the rest of the work and thereby reinforces its function as an individual site of meditation

within the larger setting of the composition. Emphatically differentiated from the kitchen scene, the framed image urges the beholder to focus on Christ's lesson to

Martha and Mary, even as the painting's foreground elements encourage the viewer to consider the significance of kitchen work. As a whole, the compositional structure of the Christ in the House of Martha and Mary invites the beholder to mediate between the kitchen scene and the framed mnemonic image, reflecting on the importance of the everyday toils of the active life while bearing in mind "the best part" embodied by the contemplative life.

68See Juli?n Gallego, Vision et symboles dans la peinture espagnole du si?cle d'or (Paris: Klincksieck, 1968), esp. 252-53; Stoichita, Self-Aware Image, 13; Bryson, Looking at the Overlooked, 152. On the date of Las Hilanderas, see Brown, Velazquez, 252 n. 32. For an exemplary discussion of the use of the mirror in Las Meninas as a puzzle to delight Philip IV, see Mar?as,"El g?nero de Las meninas" esp. 263-78.



visualizing devotion in early modern seville: velázquez's "chirst in the house of martha...

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