A NOTE ON MONTAÑÉS'S LOST "BUST OF PHILIP IV"Author(s): Steven N. OrsoSource: Source: Notes in the History of Art, Vol. 8, No. 2 (Winter 1989), pp. 21-24Published by: Ars Brevis Foundation, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23202532 .

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A NOTE ON MONTANES'S LOST BUST OF PHILIP IV

Steven N. Orso

Among the many enterprises undertaken m

the mid-1630s for the decoration of the newly constructed Palace of the Buen Retiro at

Madrid, one of the most prolonged was the effort to create a bronze equestrian statue of

Philip IV of Spain for one of the palace courtyards.1 Philip's chief minister, the count duke of Olivares, set the project in motion in 1634 when he requested the grand duke of

Tuscany to present the king with such a work, which was to be based upon some portraits of the king by Peter Paul Rubens. (The specific works by Rubens have not been identified.) In Florence, the commission to make the work was accepted by Pietro Tacca, who pre pared a model showing the king astride a

walking horse, only to learn that Olivares wanted the king to be depicted on a rearing mount. Tacca eventually solved the technical

problems inherent in balancing a monumen

tal work in such a pose—possibly with advice from Galileo—and completed the casting of the horse by March 1639.

Tacca next turned his attention to the fig

ure of the king. In addition to the aforemen tioned portraits by Rubens, he had long since

been provided with a bust of the king exe cuted by sculptor Juan Martinez Montanes,

who had been summoned to Madrid from

Seville in June 1635 in order to make the

piece. On September 22, 1635, the Florentine

ambassador to Spain, responding to a letter

of August 30 from Florence, had written that

a portrait of the king needed by Tacca was

not yet ready but would soon be completed. That was probably Montanes's Bust of Philip IV, which has not survived. Montanes is gen

erally assumed to have left Madrid for Seville in February 1636, the month in which he was

paid for his work. As Tacca undertook the royal figure in

1639, he required for some reason yet an

other likeness of the king, in spite of having been provided with Montanes's bust. To that

end, the Florentine ambassador at Madrid

obtained a portrait of Philip in January 1640, most likely from the painter Diego de Ve

lazquez or a member of his shop. The com

pleted equestrian statue was dispatched from Florence on September 26, 1640, and arrived in Cartagena the following March. Owing to various delays, including the need to rework the king's features (a task that Tacca's son Ferdinando carried out in Madrid), it was not until October 29, 1642, that the Equestrian Portrait of Philip IV was installed in the

Queen's Garden of the Buen Retiro. Today it stands in the Plaza de Oriente in front of the

Royal Palace of Madrid. Montanes's commission to make his Bust

of Philip IV is commemorated by Velazquez in the painter's well-known portrait of the

sculptor, which depicts Montanes as a well dressed gentleman pausing in his work, as if

reflecting on how to shape the bust with the

modeling tool that he holds in his right hand

(Fig. 1). The picture is unfinished: Although Montanes is fully rendered, the bust is noth

ing more than a quick sketch in brown on a

gray ground. One's regret that Velazquez left

posterity with no more than a tantalizing

glimpse of the lost bust becomes even keener

upon reading the praise that a contemporary poet, Gabriel Bocangel y Unzueta, lavished

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Diego de Velazquez, Juan Martinez Montanes. Museo del Prado, Madrid. (Photo: Prado)

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23

upon it. In the course of a poem dedicated to

the king's brother, the Cardinal-Infante Fer

dinand, Bocangel inserts a sonnet praising Montanes's work:

fices to ensure eternal renown for this work

of clay.

RETRATO DE SV MAGESTAD por Martinez Montanes, esculpido en barro.

Epigrama

Ya el poluo no es ruyna, sino aliento,

Ya lo inmortal de lo mortal se fia,

Aqui paro en acierto la porfia, Y esculpio sus ideas el intento:

Prouido elige el barro el instrumento,

Buscando proporcion a su ossadia,

Que como a darle espiritu atendia

Atribuyo lo humano a su elemento. Ya pues, que le inspiro lo eterno al bulto,

Donde buelue a nacer el Sol de Iberia, Le fia al barro el Andaluz Lisipo.

Que el bronce, y marmol, presumieran culto

De los anos, por solida materia, Y para eterno, bastase Filipo.

Bocangel's meaning emerges from a paradox. Dust (polvo) is the common substance into which mortal men and their earthly posses sions are doomed to crumble. But here the

poet refers to dust that, far from being some

ruin, is a means to an immortal end. This

dust turns out to be another base mate

rial—the clay (barro) that Bocangel identifies three times as the medium in which Mon tanes modeled the bust. Inspired by the merit

of his royal sitter, the "Andalusian Lysippus" has created a finished piece that is worthy of

eternal fame. In it, "the Sun of Iberia rises

again"—that is, it constitutes a second Philip IV identical to the first.4 In his final lines, the

poet shifts his praise from the artist to the

sitter. Traditionally, the more noble sculp tural materials of bronze and marble pre

sume to depict that which is eternally famous;

however, Philip's greatness is such that it suf

Following Bocangel's lead, several scholars

have asserted that the lost bust was modeled

from clay. In fact, Bocangel indulges in poetic license, for a hitherto unpublished document establishes that the bust was made not of

clay, but of wax. Among the accounts of the

royal paymaster Marcos de Encinillas that have been preserved in the Archivo General de Simancas is the following entry recording a payment to an official of the Royal Works:

A martin ferer aparexadores [«c] de las dhas obras quarenta reales que balen mil

y trezientos y sesenta mrs que huuo de

de [j/c] Hauer los diez y ocho reales por Una caja que yzo en que se auia de

poner Una caueza de zera Retrato de Su

magd para lleuarla a florencia la qual era enlazada encolada y bien labrada Por de dentro y fuera. Y los Ueinte y dos Rs restantes por aforar la dha caxa que es

taua aforada de Jerga y encima de lienzo

y toda la caueza jenida de papel bianco y maciga de cortaduras y se le libraron con orden del marques de tores Superynten

dente de las dhas obras y Por libranza

del dho Ueedor y maestro mor. Su fecha

a diez y nueue de nobiembre del dho aho de mil y seiscientos y treinta y cinco. Y

los dhos quarenta Reales los reciuio en el dho martin ferer de que dio carta de

Pago firmada de su mano en Ueinte y

dos de nouiembre del dho aho. Y se

pagaron con [crossed out: orden] yn teruencion del dho Ueedor.5

(To Martin Ferrer, manager in the said

Works, 40 reales, which are equivalent to

1,360 tnaravedi's, that were due him: 18 reales for a box that he made in which a wax head, a portrait of His Majesty, was to be put in order to transport it to Flo rence—the which [box] was joined, glued,

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24

and well wrought within and without.

And the remaining 22 reales for lining the said box, which was lined with straw, and above with cloth; and the entire head

[was] surrounded with white paper and

packed [macizada] with shreds [of cloth or paper]. They were paid to him by or der of the Marquis of Torres, superin tendent of the said Works, and by autho rization of the said overseer and master

in-chief, their date [being] 19 November 1635. And the said 40 reales were re ceived by the said Martin Ferrer, who

gave a receipt signed by his hand on 22 November of the said year. And they were paid by the [crossed out: order] in tervention of the said overseer.)

have completed the bust to a little more than

eight weeks: between September 22, 1635, when the Florentine ambassador wrote that the portrait was nearing completion, and November 19, 1635, when officers of the

Royal Works issued the paperwork necessary for Ferrer to be paid for packing the bust for

shipment.

Although the paymaster's entry does not

specify that the sculpture was the work of

Montanes, the coincidence of such a royal portrait being sent to Florence at that time is too great for the piece to have been another artist's work. Thus, the document narrows the

range of dates within which Montanes must

In preparing this article, I have benefited from the

helpful advice of Narciso G. Menocal.

1. The following account of the project draws upon J. Brown and J. H. Elliott, A Palace for a King: The Buen Retiro and the Court of Philip TV (New Haven

London: 1980), pp. 111-114, and B. G. Proske, Juan

Martinez Montanes, Sevillian Sculptor (New York:

1967), pp. 121-123, both with references to additional

literature.

2. For this picture, see J. Brown, Velazquez: Painter

and Courtier (New Haven-London: 1986), pp. 146-148, and F. J. Sanchez Canton, "Sobre el 'Martinez Mon

tanes' de Velazquez," Archivo Espaiiol de Arte 34

(1961):25-30.

NOTES

The revelation that the bust was made of wax and the care with which it was shipped suggest a possible explanation for Tacca's cu rious need for the additional portrait that the Florentine envoy obtained in 1640. Because wax is a fragile medium, the bust might have been damaged before Tacca completed the statue. The matter is open to speculation: Was the bust destroyed in an unsuccessful

attempt to make a mold from which to cast the head for the statue? Did a clumsy studio assistant accidentally drop it? There are

many possibilities, but none is a certainty. Barring the discovery of further documenta

tion, whatever happened in Florence to Montanes's Bust of Philip IV may never be determined.

3. G. Bocangel y Unzueta, Al invicto y serenis

sehor don Fernando de Avstria . . . dedica la lira de las

mvsas, de hvmanas, y sagradas vozes (Madrid: [1637]),

prelim. 1.10, as transcribed in Proske, p. 166, n. 372.

4. For the use of the sun as a symbol of Philip IV, see S. N. Orso, Art and Death at the Spanish Habsburg Court: The Royal Exequies for Philip IV (Columbia, Mo.: forthcoming), ch. 8.

5. Archivo General de Simancas, Contaduria Mayor, 3a epoca, legajo 3162(1), Pagador Marcos de Encinil

las, "Datta de mrs pagados a diferentes personas ex

traordinarias que se ofrecieron en las obras y bosques Rs desde primero de mayo de 1635 hasta 3 de julio de

1637," fols. 5-5v.

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