The black andromeda.pdf - camberwellmastudents

6 ELIZABETH McGRATH
Now we see this story, explained most learnedly, goes contrary to the common practice of
painting, which makes Andromeda pure white and most beautiful, although she was a native
of Ethiopia. Still, the lies that painters multiply need not cause great wonder, even if they
show their lack of knowledge; where they cannot be tolerated is in the stories and mysteries
of our faith... [he then goes on to a religious example] .21
Pacheco did not paint many mythological scenes, so we cannot attach too much
significance to the fact that we have no picture by him of Perseus and Andromeda.22
It seems quite likely, however, that after reading his learned friend's discourse23 he
would have felt disinclined to paint Andromeda at all: he now knew too much to
depict her as white, but even if he may not quite have echoed Vellutello's 'tutta
brutta e negra',24 Pacheco's final comments make it clear that he felt that real
beauty was incompatible with dark skin. Pacheco, who would moralize on virtually
anything, could readily have found in mythological handbooks a suitable allegory
for a white Andromeda: Juan Perez de Moya's Philosophia secreta, for instance, characterized
her as an innocent penalized for a parent's sin,25 while Vitoria's Teatro de
los dioses referred to Pontanus's down-to-earth interpretation that she represents the
material reward needed to spur on virtue (i.e. Perseus).26 It was, however, evidently
Andromeda's blackness that suggested the gloomy lesson he draws in his Sonnet
about the sinful and ungrateful soul.
Pacheco's moralization belongs within a venerable tradition of biblical exegesis
involving Ethiopians and nigritude, encompassing characters as diverse as Moses's
Ethiopian wife, the Ethiopian Eunuch baptized by the Apostle Philip, the Queen of
Sheba and of course the Song of Solomon's black and beautiful Bride. 27 'Black and
beautiful' (tikatva Eipt mi was in fact how the
ccy0 K(ak)
Septuagint had it, before
the significant 'but' of the Vulgate was introduced: 'nigra sum sed formosa'. Yet
with his translation St Jerome only made explicit an existing implication, for
although most early commentators had duly rendered this Greek
ia't as the Latin et,
they often took it that the conjunction of epithets attached to the Bride was
something of a contradiction.28 Like the Queen of Sheba the Black Bride was often
21 F. Pacheco, Arte de la pintura, ed. F. J. Sanchez
Canton, Madrid 1956, i, pp. 265-68. For the Spanish
text see Appendix below. See also F. Pacheco, Arte de la
pintura, ed. B. Bassegoda i Hugas, Madrid 1990, pp.
285-86. Here, however, there is a misprint in the transcription
of Ovid, and, more importantly, the words
'tut[t]a bruta' are omitted from the commentary of
Vellutello. The passage on Andromeda is also mentioned
in R. L6pez Torrijos, La mitologia en la pintura
espaiiola del Siglo de Oro, Madrid 1985, p. 64. We know
that by 'porci6n mejor' Pacheco means 'soul', because
in another version of the sonnet, reproduced by
Sanchez Canton (as above, pp. 267-68) he talks here of
'parte immortal'.
22 A detail of a picture by him on the ceiling of the
Casa de Pilatos in Seville, although often called Perseus
(e.g. Brown, as in n. 19, pp. 77-80; cf. fig. 20; L6pez
Torrijos, as in n. 21, pp. 129-37 and fig. 18) may rather
be Bellerophon on Pegasus.
23 On the important role of Francisco de Rioja as
Pacheco's 'learned adviser' see Brown (as in n. 19), esp.
pp. 59-61.
24 For Vellutello's commentary see also below, n. 57.
25 J. P6rez de Moya, Philosophia secreta, Madrid 1585,
fols 213v-14'.
26 See B. de Vitoria, Teatro de los dioses de la gentilidad
(Salamanca 1620), edn Madrid 1737-38, i, pp. 261-62.
Pontanus's allegory appears in his commentary to
Aeneid, vii, 410: see J. Pontanus, Symbolarum libri XVII...,
Augsburg 1599, col. 1627: 'Docemur itaque per hanc
fabulam sine emolumenti, & praemiorum ope, quantumvis
clara ingenia iacere, ac delitescere.' For Calder6n's
later moralization of Andromeda as human nature
and Perseus as Christ (in an auto sacramental of 1686)
see L6pez Torrijos (as in n. 21), p. 240.
27 Song of Songs, 1.4 (Authorised Version, 1.5). See, in
general, Snowden 1970 (as in n. 11), pp. 196-205;J. M.
Courte s in The Image of the Black in Western Art. II, Lausanne
1979, pp. 9-32;J. Devisse, ibid., pp. 57-62.
28 See Courtes (as in n. 27), esp. p. 31; Devisse (as
in n. 27), p. 58; also Thompson (as in n. 1), p. 134.
Snowden 1970 (as in n. 11), p. 331, n. 17, gives variant
forms of the text in Jerome, Augustine, Origen and
others: sometimes fusca for nigra, speciosa or pulchra for