Francisco Pacheco and Jerome Nadal: New Light on the Flemish Sources of the Spanish "Picture-within-the-Picture"

Abstract

The role of Netherlandish prints in providing compositional prototypes for Spanish artists of Siglo de Oro is increasingly being considered significant, since matter was first surveyed in a fairly comprehensive fashion in 1948 by late Martin Soria.1 More recently, Netherlandish prints (particularly in form of illustrations in emblem books) have been shown to have formed a point of departure for many Spanish artists.2 The geographical extension of such practices is striking. For instance, some studies have documented indispensability of these well-traveled graphic materials for artists working in Latin America,3 and Northern engravings can even be credited with having spawned certain characteristic motifs seen in Baroque architectural designs in New World.4 As such findings reveal, a densely detailed Netherlandish print was for Spaniards more often than not preferred iconographic source. The focus of this essay is a single compositional device, in effect a narrative format, that was to become a characteristic staple of Spanish Baroque painting, so-called dentro del cuadro, or the picturewithin-the-picture.'S The first instance of what was to become typically Iberian treatment of this device dates to 1616, appearing in Saint Irene Healing Wounds of Saint Sebastian (Fig. 1) painted by Francisco Pacheco (1564-1654).6 According to Priscilla E. Muller, Pacheco's painting contains those generalized Flemish characteristics of immobility, compositional symmetry, . . . dichotomy of perspective (separate vanishing-points in earthly and celestial areas), [and] similarity of pose and gesture in figures. As she concludes, the traits of Hispano-Flemish painting of earlier sixteenth-century (correctness, reticence and exactitude) remained [Pacheco's] heritage.7 What is especially noteworthy in composition of canvas is Pacheco's inclusion of an enframed scene, illustrating martyrdom of Saint Sebastian. As has been recently demonstrated, model for Pacheco's dentro del cuadro was a Flemish print of same title, by Jan Harmensz. Muller (Fig. 2).8 Regardless of its particular graphic source, it is even more significant that Pacheco employed motif for a specific purpose: to illustrate an episode that had transpired before moment represented in scene in foreground of painting, showing obviously later moment of healing of arrow wounds. The result is what we may call temporal displacement. Even though Pacheco's painting no longer exists (it was destroyed in 1936 during first months of Spanish Civil War), artist

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