DISABILITY IN BAROQUE PORTRAITURE: VELAZQUEZ´S JESTERS
Already known in Antiquity, buffoons and jesters were part of the Banquets and courts during the Middle Age.. A source of entertainment, they were also called “men of amusement” they were also called for in banquets and in whichever occasion a loosening of the strictures of court life was needed. Supposed to have a” little conscience and no shame they often managed to make[i] a handsome profit out of their supposed irresponsibility”[ii]. Buffoons and jester appear profusely in the Royal court chronicles from the 11th to the 13th century, but they did not reach the spotlight of court life until the 15th -16th century, in the historical twilight amidst the end of middle Ages and the brim of modernity. Virtually every European country had famous Jesters as Klaus Narr in Germany or XXX YY in England, but perhaps in no other place their place like in the Spanish Court of the Habsburgs. According José Moreno Villa “The Austrians had one dwarf per year of Dynasty reign”[iii] Being main empire of its time, Spanish court of the Austrians had plenty of buffoons[iv], as the royal correspondence revealed. However, from all the kings of his dynasty Philip Iv was the most fond on them. Philip the IV, at once “moody and frivolous”[v] was one of these men, “ of whom Erasmus tells us in his Praise of Folly that without their fools they can neither eat nor drink nor while away a single hour These fools are inseparable from him appearing in the theatre at festivities and public audiences by his side and having free access everywhere” [vi].
Philip IV was not only fond of buffoonery, but also a dedicated protector of the arts, who had the good fortune of getting his prime minister recruit for him one of the most talented court painters ever, Diego da Silva Velázquez, that make the most of his friendship and patronage.
The series of Court jesters comprises a whole set of eight portraits executed in little more than a decade starting from his first visit to Italy, from 1629 to 1630 to 1645, in a period that has been called as the middle period, being the first one the portrait of Juan Calabazas with a windmill . Is the purpose of this paper to analyze how Velazquez’s representational skills evolve from conventions of Royal portraiture all embedded in the realist style school of Sevilla, whose major representants were his masters Francisco Pacheco and Pantoja to an style of his own, in line with the conventions of the baroque art. In this article we will use Velazquez series of jesters to probe how the way he portrayed the jesters evolved from being just an adorn of a Royal portrait, as in The portrait of Baltasar Carlos with a dwarf, to a complete impugnation of the social order of the Ancient Regime in “Las Meninas” as it was explored by Foucault in the first chapter of The order of Things.
Melania Moscoso, 2009 ©
[i]
[ii] Welsford, The Fool; His Social and Literary History., p.3
[iii]
[iv] Moreno Villa, J Locos, enanos, negros y niños palaciegos; Gente de placer que tuvieron los Austrias en la corte española desde 1563 a 1700. Editorial Presencia, Mexico.p.37
[v] Justi, Carl. 2006. Velázquez and his times. New York: Parkstone International. p.436
[vi] Ibid.
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