I am Venus

by Barbara Mujica

  Cardinal Barberini is a great patron of the arts and has many friends among artists. Through him I have met the Frenchmen Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin. The former is quite young, but has already made a reputation for himself as a landscape artist. The latter is especially popular here among connoisseurs who appreciate the clarity of his lines and the drama of his images. I also met the great Gianlorenzo Bernini, an astonishing artist who excels at all three plastic arts: painting, architecture, and sculpture. This man is a genius, Don Francisco. He combines the precision, symmetry, and elegance of classical sculpture with the dramatic natural realism of the baroque, creating limbs out of cold marble that seem to quiver and pulse. Truly, they take your breath away. This is what I came for, my dear father-in-law, to be surrounded by brilliance, old and new. To learn and observe, and to take it all back to Spain with me.

  I devoted my first months in Rome to the frescoes. I would have to be a poet to describe them, and God knows, I am not so very adept at painting pictures with words. The Sistine Chapel is a marvel, especially Michelangelo’s ceiling. Standing beneath the images, you feel as though you could actually stretch up and touch them. In “The Creation of Adam,” God reaches out to touch the first man, who is so beautiful and vibrant that he really seems at that very moment to receive the breath of life from his Creator. They say Michelangelo painted this masterpiece in a single day, just as God created man in a single day. It is indeed a marvel.

  But there is much more than that in this hall. “The Last Judgment,” on the sanctuary wall, also by Michelangelo, left me gaping. The paintings by Botticelli and Perugino are magnificent, as are the tapestries by Raphael. Now I see clearly what Barberini meant when he complained that my painting wasn’t dynamic enough.

  I spent weeks copying the frescoes, and for the first time I truly understood the power of the human figure to convey an idea. The body, my dear Pacheco, is one of God’s most exquisite creations. We must not fear it or shun it, as our rabid moralists do in Spain. Here figure painting is highly regarded and models are easy to find through the guilds. Even female models. Through the body, painters express every emotion—lust, surely in some cases, but also devotion, spiritual yearning, and the love of beauty. These paintings shock no one. Surely not Barberini, and he is a prince of the Church.

  At the end of spring I changed abode, for the vernal heat was getting to be too much for me. With the help of the Spanish ambassador, the Count of Monterrey, I was able to move to the Villa Medici, where I spent two pleasant months copying Italian statues. However, at the beginning of September I fell ill with a fever. The Count had me moved to a house near his residence so his physician could care for me. I have been here for a fortnight. At first, I was terrified I had been stricken with the plague and would die far from you, my wife and daughter, and especially my beloved country, but now I am beginning to recover and no longer fear the worst.

  Dear Pacheco, please make sure Doña Juana is properly cared for. Write to little Francisca and tell her Papá sends her a kiss.

  Your unworthy servant and devoted son-in-law,

  Don Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez

  If Doña Juana had read this letter at the time it was received, she would have noticed two things: that her husband was painting nude female models and that his country was more “beloved” to him than she and Francisca.

  12

  VENUS INTERRUPTA

  1660; 1630–1632

  THERE WAS A TIME, NOT THAT LONG AGO, WHEN I LOVED nothing more than sitting in the convent garden and sketching roses. The rose! A symbol of beauty and perfection—its multilayered, overlapping petals enfolding the divine center, the treasure, the jewel. We have a magnificent bush that in summer throbs with bloodred roses. The Prioress, Mother Augustina, calls it “a symbol of Our Lord Jesus Christ and His love for humanity.” I know to keep my mouth shut. I don’t mention that the red rose is also a symbol of sex.

  I hardly sketch anymore. My sight is going. It’s as though I’m seeing everything through milky glass. From time to time, little black cobwebs float over my field of vision. Venturo Almedina (not the old midwife—he’s long dead—but his son) came to see me the other day. He says there’s nothing I can do about my eyes. It’s just old age, he says. Young Venturo is a doctor, too. He lives and works here in Madrid, and he comes to see me a couple of times a month, always bringing candy or ices. He’s a good man—kind and attentive—just like his father. Old Almedina looked like a prune, with a brownish-red face all wrinkled and squishy. He even smelled like a prune! Very old people have a kind of putrid-sweet odor about them, the odor of rotting flesh. I hope that I don’t smell like that, but perhaps I do. I can’t be sure.

  I used to sit for hours by the roses, sketching and sketching. Velázquez himself had taught me, though I don’t recall him ever complimenting me on my work, except once. But no matter what he said—or didn’t say—I think that some of my roses were quite real-looking, with delicate, silky petals and sharp, threatening thorns. I am Venus, the rose, and now I “lie hidden / in sad, dark shadows that prevent me / from seeing the glorious face of the sun …” I see the world from behind a hazy shield that grows denser by the day.

  Velázquez started back to Spain in August, 1630, stopping in Naples to paint a portrait of King Felipe’s sister, María Ana, who was making the trek north to meet her new husband, Ferdinand III of Hungary. Everyone who saw the portrait loved it. It was a refined work, people said, warm and rich with color—russets, gray-greens, golden browns. The new queen’s face looked firm and astute, her gaze direct and engaging. To render the clothing, Velázquez used a looser technique—one he had been developing in Italy—that combined strokes of different lengths and uneven layers of paint. He was now a mature painter, as accomplished as any in Europe. The trip to Italy had been a success. “Money well spent,” the king must have told himself.

  Velázquez reached Madrid in January. count-duke Olivares received him like a prince and gave an elaborate reception in his honor. I was there, of course, and I saw how they fawned over him.

  “His Majesty allowed no one to paint either him or the prince while I was gone,” he told me proudly. Clearly, the flattery was going to his head.

  He hadn’t forgotten his wife and daughter during his travels, even though he hadn’t found time to write. For Juana he brought a lovely necklace of Murano beads, a cameo brooch, an elaborate Italian petticoat, and a porcelain vase, and for Paquita he brought a porcelain crucifix to hang on her wall. There were gifts for the servants, too—a delicate silver rosary from Rome for Arabela and a silk coif for Julia. He kissed Juana tenderly when she thanked him for the gifts, but shared few details about his trip. Maybe he thought that she wouldn’t understand the intricacies of the new techniques he had mastered or maybe he thought she wouldn’t be interested. But Juana was disappointed.

  Before long Velázquez had painted a delicate painting of Prince Baltasar Carlos that made old ladies coo and sigh and grown men puff out their chests with Spanish pride. It was different from anything Velázquez had ever done before. In the painting, the royal toddler wears a black and gold dress with a frilly collar and a red sash. He stands next to a dwarf child, one of his tiny playmates. The diminutive prince wears a sword and carries a dagger with a gold, bejeweled hilt. His companion appears to be sneaking out of the room with the royal rattle and an apple, but the future king doesn’t look perturbed at all. He gazes out at us with an air of tranquility—perhaps because he doesn’t need toys any more. The Cortes—that is, the national assembly—has just sworn fealty to him, and his future seems certain. Toddler and dwarf are framed by richly textured burgundy curtains; beneath their feet, a carpet of crimsons and oranges. The prince sparkles like a diamond among so many heavy textiles, his forehead and lace catching the light and marking the peak of a triangle formed by his face, the dwarf’s white apron, and a hat plume lying on the floor.

  This was a new Velázquez, buzzed the Court, one who offered something
fresh and vibrant instead of the usual stiff, drab royal portraits. This was a virtuoso! He had learned from the Italians, but didn’t imitate them. His technique and thoughtfulness placed him apart, and Olivares and Fonseca were thrilled.

  The paint had barely dried on his portrait of the prince when Velázquez turned his attention back to the little boy’s father. Within weeks, the protégé had produced a new portrait of the king in a brown suit adorned in silver brocade. It was as if the needlework had come alive. Velázquez had managed to capture the light dancing off the threads through a radically innovative technique: sketch-like strokes of thickly applied paint that made the brocade appear to float above the brown base of Don Felipe’s outfit, making the silver seem to glitter. The first time I saw it, I could hardly believe it was made of pigments on canvas. I was so awed by his vision—and by how much progress he’d made—that if he had asked me to pose at that moment, I would have abandoned all decency and thrown off my clothes in a heartbeat!

  What I couldn’t have known at the time was that Venus was already taking shape in his mind. Some aristocrat—to this day, I’m not quite sure who he was, although I have my suspicions—had offered him an extraordinary amount of money for a female nude. Did Velázquez hesitate? I doubt it. It was rumored at Court that he had painted nudes in Italy, and this would be a chance to bring his new aesthetic to Spain. His new style was already causing a frenzy, so why not introduce new subject matter as well? He wanted to paint as freely in Madrid as he had in Rome. And now a noble had offered him money to do it.

  And besides, you know what they say about forbidden fruit. Moralists continued to rant about the vulgarity seeping out of Rome and Florence and disintegrating morals here at home. With this painting, Velázquez could thumb his nose at those tiresome old men and also earn some points with the king, whose appetites hadn’t diminished at all with the birth of his heir.

  I know now that he already had someone in mind to model: a delicate twenty-two-year-old with porcelain skin and flirtatious eyes, soft brown hair, and a neck as smooth as alabaster. A sassy girl, even brazen. She’d married a few years before and already had three children, but her waist was still as slender as a twig. I’m speaking, of course, of Doña Constanza Enríquez y Castro. When they had first met and she asked if Velázquez would paint her, he had turned her down. He had wanted to, though, and since then he had managed to paint her several times. She was a face in the crowd of The Expulsion of the Moriscos and a lady-in-waiting in a Court scene. He had done other paintings of Constanza, too—anonymous formal portraits, that sort of thing—but never a nude.

  When he approached her, she giggled. He coaxed. She demurred. He insisted. Finally, she agreed. They would meet at the home of an unidentified patron. He would need her services for less than two weeks.

  “That long?” she asked.

  He explained that he would be working on other assignments at the same time.

  “But everyone will recognize me. What about my husband’s honor?”

  This could be a problem, of course. Her husband, Don Basilio de Valdepeña y Fajardo, was a dimwit, and yet like all Spanish men, he was obsessed with honor. If someone whispered to him that his wife was stretching out on a divan in the buff for an artist, he would feel obligated to do something about it. The rules were clear. If your wife was cheating, or even appeared to be cheating, you got rid of her. This was no joke. A few years back, a certain Don Gutierre got it into his head that his wife was sleeping with a high-placed courtier. She was innocent, but no matter. The mere suspicion was enough to push Gutierre over the edge: he claimed she was sick and called a surgeon, then paid him to open her veins and bleed her to death. Velázquez had to be careful. He would paint her from the back, he said, and no one would be the wiser. He would call her Venus, which would confer an air of mystery and anonymity on her. He didn’t say anything about the mirror—perhaps it hadn’t even occurred to him yet to put a mirror in her hand.

  “And what about the Inquisition?” Constanza wanted to know. What about the strictures against painting nudes? She wasn’t afraid to do whatever he asked, she insisted. Indeed, she was looking forward to posing. But she didn’t want to get herself killed in the process.

  Velázquez smiled indulgently. He had thought through all of these possibilities, he explained. His client had promised that the canvas would be kept in a private vault. No one would see it but a select group of friends—sophisticated men who appreciated this kind of art. The identity of both the painter and the model would remain secret.

  They fixed a date. He described the location of the patron’s house—a large mansion of the type they call a palacio. He told her to dress plainly to attract as little attention as possible and to come in through the servants’ entrance. The door would be open, and no one would be there to receive her. She was to walk through the servants’ hallway, turn right at the first door, go up the stairs, and enter the large room straight ahead. He would be waiting for her.

  But mere days before the artist was due to begin, the project was delayed. Two people were to blame. The first was the count-duke of Olivares, whose reputation was deteriorating precipitously. The government was losing prestige both abroad and at home. Things were going from bad to worse, and the nation blamed Olivares. Spain was oozing blood and treasure all over the continent. Taxes were high, inflation was soaring, unemployment was rampant, and the national debt was enormous. Revolts were brewing in Catalonia and Portugal, and uprisings had started in the Basque country. On top of everything, the war in Mantua had ended with a treaty favorable to the French and so devastating for us that everyone said it was worse than surrender. People in high places were losing patience. Queen Isabel of Bourbon was a smart woman who knew about affairs of state, and she was convinced that Olivares was making a mess of things. Furthermore, Doña Isabel was still reeling from the scandal over La Calderona, for which she held Olivares responsible.

  But the count-duke had an idea—one that he was sure would restore glory to both him and the king. The Crown’s reputation, he knew, depended on Spain’s economic prosperity. From the Austrian emperor to the poorest dirt farmer, nobody respected a monarchy that appeared destitute. If you weren’t rich, at least you had to appear rich. To Olivares, appearances were just as good as reality, or perhaps they were the same thing. Many years before, Felipe II had built a delightful park near the Alcázar called El Retiro, with ponds and fountains and lovely tree-lined avenues. But now when Olivares looked at the park, he envisioned something far grander—great halls, ballrooms, galleries, chapels, theaters, courtyards, orchards, riding paths, woods for hunting, exotic gardens, a zoo, an aviary, and even an artificial lake for mock naval battles and aquatic exercises—a true pleasure palace, where the king could take his recreation without leaving Madrid. It would surely make Don Felipe the envy of every monarch in Europe, and Olivares a hero. He had to change the Crown’s image before it was too late.

  But it was too late. When Madrileños witnessed the hordes of carpenters and masons (whom the Crown had no money to pay) streaming onto the grounds, they were furious. In the midst of so much poverty and deprivation, thousands of men were building … a royal aviary? Should housing exotic birds really be the priority of a monarch whose realm was on the verge of ruin? Within days, the aviary, nicknamed El Gallinero, the Henhouse, became a symbol of Olivares’s whole harebrained project and the distorted values that prevailed at Court.

  Olivares was in such a rush to get the new pleasure palace done that everything was assembled in a slipshod way. The king’s fabulous aviary was held together with chicken wire. The great Olivares, chief administrator of a country drowning in debt, put together a fantasy of glitter and glamour with chicken wire! Spain became the laughingstock of Europe. What had appeared to be a great nation was now exposed as a crumbling facade. Richelieu threatened to send all of France’s chicken coop builders across the Pyrenees to help Olivares fill Madrid with strands of metal. At home, broadsheets depicting Don Gaspar in a
decrepit cage fondling hens appeared on every wall.

  In an effort to change public opinion Olivares named the place the Royal House of the Buen Retiro, which was supposed to suggest a religious retreat as well as a place of withdrawal from the cares of the world. Meditating mystics. Contemplative courtiers. That sort of thing. But it didn’t catch on, at least not in Olivares’s lifetime. Through it all, Velázquez painted. He painted portraits and more portraits, and occasionally a religious allegory. What he didn’t paint was Venus because there was no time. Olivares’s crowning achievement was to be the salón del Buen Retiro, a fabulous hall, the most significant in the palace, which would eventually serve as a throne room where the king presided over Court ceremonies. It would be known as the Hall of Realms, and it would be decorated with twelve large battle paintings commissioned from Court artists, as well as five royal equestrian portraits painted by Velázquez—a project so demanding it would keep the king’s favorite painter busy for months.

  But as I mentioned, Olivares wasn’t the only one to blame for the delay. Pesky rumors had started to surface shortly after his return from Italy—a sideward glance, a raised eyebrow—but at first, Velázquez didn’t pay much attention. One day, after he had finished the equestrians and was putting the final touches on a monumental painting of Saint Anthony, Constanza tiptoed into the studio. She wasn’t supposed to be there, but he didn’t bother throwing her out. He had work to finish, and he didn’t want a row.