Averardo de’ Medici, the ambassador from Tuscany, was also a pain, thought Fonseca. The ambassador had advised the grand duke to be careful how he treated this spagnolo basso, this lowly Spaniard, with his pretensions to grandeur. It was true that Velázquez was the portraitist of the king of Spain—and therefore worthy of some consideration, but still, he was merely an artisan. Fortunately for Pacheco, the ambassador’s amanuensis was easy to bribe. He gave the chaplain a full account of his missive for just a few maravedíes. A bargain, thought Fonseca. The intelligence from Tuscany was useful. It prompted the chaplain to pull a few strings and make a few contacts, so that even if the reception in Florence was chilly, elsewhere it would be at least tepid.
Still, one great obstacle remained: Doña Juana. She had lived apart from her husband during his first months at Court, and she was disinclined to let him out of her sight again. The poor child was insanely, absurdly jealous.
“It comes of being ugly,” said Fonseca to himself. “She knows those Italian women are bombshells, and they fling off their clothes at the drop of a hat. After all, who poses for all those Venuses and Dianas?”
The truth was that when Velázquez had first brought up the possibility of a trip to Italy, Juana had carried on like a madwoman. She had cried and stomped and threatened to throw his bed linen out onto the street unless he took her with him. And now that Pacheco had gone back to Seville, she was more desperate than ever. She had no intention of staying alone with her daughter and servants in the big house on Calle de Convalescientes.
“The best thing about the priesthood,” said Fonseca to himself, “is that you don’t have to put up with women.”
Something would have to be done about Juana—any tension would surely provoke the king to withdraw his support, and indeed, if she couldn’t be brought around, Velázquez himself might balk, too. The young man, Fonseca thought, simply couldn’t let his feelings for his family get in the way of his professional promise. She had, of course, been through a lot: being separated from her husband, being uprooted from Seville, losing her second child, and now the departure of her father for home. Even though Velázquez had managed to get Pacheco appointed Court painter, the old man longed for the sunlight of Andalusia. His departure, thought Fonseca, complicated the situation. Juana had grown melancholy, and Fonseca had to save Velázquez from his own sense of familial obligation. Of late, the boy had become more compassionate, noted Fonseca. Some might even say soft.
Juana was familiar with Court protocol, but she spent hours practicing her curtsey anyway. It had to be just right: low enough but not too low. Left hand on skirt, right hand on breast, eyes down. One wrong move could get you thrown out of the chamber.
On the day of the interview, Juana rose early. Arabela helped her dress, and Juana sat in front of the mirror for the maid to comb her hair. Arabela massaged her head with a light pomade and combed it through, while Juana scrutinized herself in the mirror. Her hair was a pretty, textured, soft brown color, but it was thin. All the dyes in the chemist’s shop couldn’t change that, and in fact, treating it had dried it out a bit. She was twenty-eight years old, and the flush of youth was fading from her cheeks. Her skin was still smooth and unfurrowed, but it had lost some of its tautness. Cosmetics helped, but couldn’t give her a new complexion, after all. A terrible thought came to her: the queen is a beautiful woman, La Calderona is a beautiful woman, even Lidia is a beautiful woman, but I’m plain. In spite of the creams and makeup, I’m homely.
The wind went out of her. Suddenly, she didn’t want to go to Court, and didn’t want to see the queen. A thickness rose in her throat. The container of solimán on her vanity table grew blurry and watery-looking. Her chin trembled almost imperceptibly, but Arabela was quick-sighted.
“Don’t be nervous, señora. They say the queen is cheerful and warm. I’m sure you’ll find her charming.” Arabela knew where Juana was off to that day, but didn’t know why.
“It’s not that. It’s …”
A shriek, a giggle, and Paquita came flying into the room. Nearly ten years old, she was a terror, not at all the decorous señorita that moralists described in their conduct books.
“Let me fix your curls,” ordered Arabela matter-of-factly, “just as soon as I finish with your mother’s hair.”
“I can’t stay. Mazo is teaching me to draw!” She was still the apple of Pacheco’s eye, and before he left Madrid, he had asked Velázquez’s assistant, Juan Bautista Martínez del Mazo, to give her drawing lessons. “Mazo says that girls can learn, too. Just look at the great Italian painter, Artemisia Gentileschi. The king himself admires her work.”
“Get me that pin, Doña Paca. No, not that one, the one with the pearls. I’m going to put it in Doña Juana’s hair, right here. What do you think?”
“Oh, Mamá, you look beautiful!”
“Do you think so, Paquita?” Juana scrutinized her image in the mirror. Not beautiful, she thought—after all, can you take seriously the opinion of a child about her own mother?—but maybe not as awful as she felt.
“Oh, yes, Mamá! Absolutely beautiful! You know what, Mamá? Abuelo told me that someday I’m going to paint lovely pictures, and he’ll hang them on the wall!” She let out another little shriek and disappeared out the door.
“I’ve tried to teach her to be ladylike, Doña Juana,” said Arabela indifferently.
Why bother? thought Juana. It’s not the ladies who satisfy the men.
What they said about the queen was true: she was a highly intelligent woman, far more intelligent than her husband. Three years Juana’s junior, she had been engaged to Felipe IV in a strange diplomatic maneuver. Felipe III had attempted to secure peace with France by proposing double nuptials: his son would wed Princess Isabel, daughter of the French monarchs, while his daughter, Ana de Austria, would wed the dauphin. And so, in 1615 the Spanish princess made her way north, while the French princess traveled south. They met at the border, and then each went on to become a queen.
Doña Isabel turned out to be an excellent choice. She loved all things Spanish and cheered enthusiastically at bullfights. More important, she was a clever administrator, capable of carrying out government business while her husband was off hunting—or prowling. She was so efficient, in fact, that the king used to say that his favorite minister was not Olivares, but the queen.
When at last she found herself before Doña Isabel, Juana found her different from what she’d expected. She was as beautiful as they said, of course, and noticeably pregnant, but she was neither imperious nor condescending. Surrounded by ladies-in-waiting, she listened to Juana’s statement with attention, remaining silent until she was certain the petitioner had finished. “Doña Juana, what evidence do you have that your husband is bedding this housemaid, this Lidia?”
“Your Highness, I have no hard evidence, but now that she’s at Court, I fear the worst. She has been trying to seduce him for years, and the atmosphere here …”
“Yes, you’re right. The atmosphere here is conducive to debauchery. Especially when influential older men contaminate younger men with their sordid habits.” Juana knew she was referring to the count-duke.
“But still,” continued Doña Isabel, “this girl is just a lowly washerwoman or something like that. I doubt Don Diego ever comes into contact with her at Court.”
“I know he sees her. I saw her face in his painting, The Expulsion of the Moriscos.” The minute she said it, Juana felt herself shrink into a tiny, squirmy worm. She didn’t realize how preposterous her argument was until she had actually articulated it.
The queen laughed out loud. “What does that prove? Doña Constanza’s face is in that painting, too.”
Juana turned to look at the lovely young lady-in-waiting in mauve seated on a cushion at the queen’s feet. She had seen the girl before, but had never known her name. Constanza stared back at her with wide, mocking eyes.
“If I were you,” the queen went on, “I’d be warier of Doña Constanza than of some
serving girl.” Her tone wasn’t scornful, but kindly and concerned—even sisterly. “Doña Juana, your husband is a painter, a portraitist. You can’t be jealous of every woman he paints.”
Juana pursed her lips and looked down. She prayed for the plush carpet beneath her feet to split in two, and for the floor beneath it to swallow her up.
“Are you jealous of me, Doña Juana?”
Juana looked at the queen. “Your Highness, of course not!”
“I’ve been posing for your husband every day for weeks. An equestrian.”
Of course Juana knew that painters don’t necessarily jump in the sack with every model who poses for them. Even when they paint a delicately erotic image, like the one I posed for, the body becomes nothing more than an object, with its own textures and shadows. I remember that Velázquez was absolutely clinical when painting. If he touched me during a session, it was to adjust the angle of my head or twist my torso to better capture the light on my skin.
“An equestrian,” the queen was saying, but Juana was too humiliated to respond.
Doña Isabel sensed her pain. She closed her eyes, as though thinking, giving Juana time to regain her bearings.
“I’m sorry, Your Highness,” whispered Juana finally. “I’m sorry to have taken up your time. I know Your Highness can’t be concerned with my petty jealousies. It was ridiculous of me …” She backed away, head bowed, too mortified to say another word.
“Doña Juana,” said the queen softly, “I cannot go searching for your former housemaid or her carpenter’s apprentice husband. If I knew where she was, I would gladly send her off to some sitio real to get her out of the way, but in this gargantuan palace, there’s no way for me to find her.”
“Yes, Your Highness, I understand.”
“But even so, I can promise you that she will soon be very far away from your husband. You won’t need to worry about her at all.”
“Thank you, Your Highness.” Juana wasn’t sure what the queen meant, but for the moment it didn’t matter. All she wanted was to get out of that room, to leave the queen and her ladies-in-waiting—especially that Constanza, with her contemptuous sneer.
“But remember this, Doña Juana: Men are like bees. They buzz around and suck the honey from many flowers, but they always come back to their queen. And you are the queen of your own household.”
A month later, Fonseca called for Juana and informed her that Velázquez would soon be leaving for Italy. The queen had advised him that she had already spoken with Don Diego’s wife about the pending separation, and that she would have no objection. Fonseca was confused about the circumstances under which such a conversation had taken place, but Doña Isabel was such a kind soul, he thought, perhaps she had called for Juana in order to break the news to her gently. Fonseca knew better than to ask too many questions. The important thing, after all, was that Juana had agreed to let Velázquez go without a fuss. He asked her if she had anything to say.
“No, Don Juan,” she answered calmly. “I understand that it is imperative for my husband to travel.”
On August 10, 1629, Velázquez sailed from Barcelona with the famous Genoese general Ambrogio Spinola, who was to command the Spanish troops fighting in the Mantuan war. Juana would not see her husband again until January, 1631, and in the meantime, Lidia slipped out of her consciousness. The last Juana heard, the girl’s carpenter husband had been sent off to work at the king’s sitio real in Aranjuez. Good riddance, she thought. Out of sight, out of mind.
PART TWO
10
ADVENTURES AND ADVENTURERS
1629
YOU SEE THEM IN THE PLAZA MAYOR. SOLDIERS HOME FROM the wars. Some are missing a hand, a leg, an eye. Some are missing a sense of who they are, where they were, why they were there, why they are here. All are missing a livelihood. There are no jobs for these men, so they lie on the steps of San Felipe in the Puerta del Sol and moan. Or sleep. Or drink themselves into a stupor. Occasionally one will pull himself up long enough to swagger around, brimming with bravado.
“Dutch bastards!” they cry. “We kicked their asses!”
“I shot a heretic right in the balls!”
“We routed those sons of bitches. Sent them right down to hell, where they belong.”
“Fucking Protestants!”
Perhaps they’re remembering the triumphant siege of Breda. It was around then that Olivares declared, “God is Spanish. He fights for Spain!”
When he said it, it seemed true enough. They called 1625 the annus mirabilis because everything seemed to be going our way. Not only did the Spaniards capture Breda, a key Dutch city, they drove the Dutch out of Brazil and chased France and Savoy out of the republic of Genoa, an important Spanish ally. And when the English tried to attack the port of Cádiz, our men clobbered them. The House of Austria, which had once been our rival, was now our firm ally, and in Central Europe, the Austrians won one victory after the other.
But then things began to go wrong. I can imagine the count-duke in his map room, bent over battle lines and strategy notes, trying to figure out the next move. In spite of all the pretty parades and rousing speeches, the show could not go on. The Crown was insolvent, and nobody had money to lend the government. Spain desperately needed a few years of peace to get its bearings and replenish its coffers. The Austrians had secured a shaky calm in Central Europe—they called it the pax austriaca—and it had to hold, thought Olivares, in order for Catholicism to survive and Europe to remain stable. I’m sure that Olivares and the king still found time for an occasional night at Cintia’s, but more and more, they were concerned with statecraft, battling piranhas in the sea of international politics.
In those days, everyone was a piranha. England tried to gulp up Cádiz. The Republic of Venice nibbled at the sides of the Habsburg Empire. Pope Urban VIII, a truly ravenous piranha, devoured the duchy of Urbino and the fiefdom of the duke of Parma. Then, in 1627, when the duke of Mantua died without an heir, the toothy pope favored a Protestant over a Catholic to succeed him in order to increase his own political leverage in the area. And how would Olivares handle the Dutch, the largest piranha of all? They wanted independence, and they wanted their own religion. We had been fighting for decades to maintain Spanish rule and suppress Protestantism in the Low Countries. The war had sucked up every blanca in the royal coffers, as well as huge amounts of manpower. Now it was clear that we would lose the northern Low Countries, but Olivares hoped we could at least hold onto Flanders.
I can imagine Olivares pacing the room, puffing on his pipe, scratching his head. I see him plopping down on a chair, his fat belly quivering like jelly, his chest heaving in exhaustion. He calls for a servant, orders a brandy. He wishes that he could go to the theater, but he knows that he must stay and strategize. He gets up and once again pores over his maps. Finally, he comes up with an idea: He will try to compel Emperor Ferdinand of Austria to accept a formal alliance with Spain, to help in the war against the Dutch. But this won’t be easy because nobody trusts Spain—not even its allies. To make the pill go down more smoothly, he will suggest that the emperor’s son, Ferdinand of Hungary, marry the Infanta María Ana—the same María Ana who rejected Charles Stuart. So you see, we woman are good for more than a roll in the hay. We can also be used as political pawns if we’re princesses or infantas.
Olivares did in fact propose an alliance between Spain and the princes of the Empire, Protestant as well as Catholic. If the Lutherans would side with Spain, Spain would side with them against the Calvinists. But even though the marriage between the infanta and her cousin took place, the plan unraveled. In Italy, where we had a strong presence, we suddenly lost face when a Protestant Frenchman took over Mantua, and with the pope’s endorsement, at that. Olivares sent an army to Milan, but it was immediately obliterated, and everyone, including the pope, blamed the count-duke for the Catholic defeat. The war in Italy left us so poor that we couldn’t support the troops in Flanders, which is what can happen when you try to fight two
wars at the same time. Wallenstein, the Habsburg commander, was routed from the territories he’d occupied. Then the Dutch intercepted a boatload of Spanish silver, giving them the funds to take the offensive against our army in the Low Countries.
At home, everyone turned against Olivares. Prices were high and getting higher. Harvests were poor because of a drought. Exorbitant taxes were crippling business. And there was no work at all—not for returning soldiers, not for anyone. Without the expelled Morisco artisans, Spain had nothing to export. The towns were getting restless and threatening to revolt. Which explains why soldiers were lying around the Puerta del Sol. These were veterans of the wars in Flanders, Mantua, Cádiz. Hearing rumors of the desolation at home, some Spanish soldiers went to Rome, where they tried to pass themselves off as noblemen, even though they stank of sweat and urine. Velázquez saw them, and later told me how shameful he felt watching his countrymen behaving like common swindlers. These hucksters would find a wellborn lady to Court, and then, once in her good graces, steal her money and jewelry and disappear into the night.
People scurrying across the plaza don’t stop to look at the soldiers, although these are the men who fought for the faith, for the glory of Spain. They’re in a hurry, these people. The women carry straw baskets. They’re going shopping. Maids and runners scamper behind them carrying packages. The men clutch portfolios—they have important business to attend to. And absolutely no one has time to talk to the soldiers, who spit out expletives, then sink back into melancholy. Some of these men were wounded by bullets, others were felled by disease. Typhus, scurvy, dysentery. In both the Low Countries and in Mantua they faced not only the Dutch, the French, and gangs of mercenaries, but also the bubonic plague. Some of them drool. Others cry, snot running out of their noses. They’re disgusting, these men. That must be why no one stops to talk to them.
I am Venus Page 12