The Gentleman, the Virtuoso, the Inquirer - Cambridge Scholars ...

More documents

Recommendations

Info

2 Chapter One recent detective work on Lastanosa, and the connection of Lastanosa to the history of science and ideas elsewhere in Europe. Celia Fonatana Calvo, Francisco Páez de la Cadena, and especially Carlos Garcés Manau scoured the archives and collections of material culture for anything connected to Lastanosa, and compared maps and drawings from his time to what remains in surviving buildings and on the ground today. With the generous support of the local cultural foundation, Miguel López and Mar Rey Bueno were also able to bring together the experts on Lastanosa and Huesca with two other groups of historians who have studied the period in which Lastanosa lived, those who work on the culture of Spain and on the history of science and related subjects. All were sent the same group of documents from or about Lastanosa, and asked to read them and to think about their implications. For many of the participants in the conference, then, Lastanosa was well-known as an important local figure of the 17th century, while for others of us he was hardly known until we were asked to consider him for the occasion. The result was quite unique: because we all had a common set of documents to think about, but were approaching them from many different points of view, we had not only multiple perspectives but many questions in common. Those of us who were just introduced to Lastanosa wondered about him and about Huesca and Aragon during his time, while those who knew much about his local circumstances had questions about his possible relationships to other people and places. Consequently, over the course of the days of the conference, not only when presenting papers and discussing them but when touring the city and even eating together, we had sometimes very intense debates. Who was Lastanosa, really? What was he trying to do? And what does his example tell us about intellectual life in 17th century Aragon, and Iberian Spain more generally? Perhaps one can begin with the physical evidence. Several of the authors address questions such as: What did his house look like? How was his garden laid out? Where was his library located? What were the books in his library? The recent research presented in this volume has communicated a great deal about such matters, which has been very helpful in giving us a sense of who Lastanosa was. All of those who have examined the physical evidence have also indicated that there is much more to discover. Partly this is because documentation is incomplete, but partly because the documentation cannot be taken at face value, either when it is in the form of an image or in the form of lists in the archives. We know that some things were left out of the record, and others have not yet been searched for. Moreover, if we start thinking of the missing items, we must begin to consider matters like the relationship of his house and
Lastanosa as an Example of His Time: Natural History and Medicine garden to other ones in Huesca, including the Jesuit school across the road from his front door. And what was in the other libraries and gardens of the city compared to Lastanosa’s? Or compared to others in Aragon, or in northern Spain more generally? There are even puzzles about the sources of his wealth, which made his estate and collections possible. Such considerations also lead one to wonder how he treated his family, servants, and employees. Questions about these aspects of his personal life lead one to ask what his views on the political and religious controversies of his day might have been, and who were his friends, who his enemies? Such questions may seem to be far from the focus of understanding his investigations into the natural world, but comparisons might help us to understand something more about Lastanosa’s motivations and his achievements, giving them due proportion. My own impression from what has been found is that given the size of his house and garden, and its placement at the edge of the city--and given the character of the Lastanosa tomb and the two chapels he paid for--the Lastanosa family was indeed a very important one in Huesca, but perhaps not the most powerful or influential one. Were his activities a form of display that were intended to edge him a little further up the social ladder? Or were they intended to demonstrate his associations with a particular group, or party, in Aragon, or in Spain more generally? His military service in the war against Catalonia, at a time when the Aragonese had resentments of their own against Castile, might have been something into which he put his heart, or it might have been something he did because he hads little choice. Does his cultural activity help to place him on the side of the Jesuits and the court in Madrid, or suggest that he advocated cosmopolitanism? What would the other alternatives have been in his city in the middle of the 17th century? Lastanosa appears to have spent his money on his art and science, rather than intending to make money at it, as an apothecary might. It caused him briefly to achieve fame, and even to make Huesca better known to the larger world: almost four centuries later, his name still brings visitors and scholars to his home town. But only further investigations into Huesca’s history will enable us to compare properly his life in general to others of his day, and so to more fully assess the personal, religious, and political aims of his projects. Yet in the context of the main subject of the conference, Lastanosa’s relationship to “art and science in the Baroque”, another set of questions has provided more illumination. Except for some comments on Lastanosa’ garden designs and the paper by Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, few authors considered the importance to Lastanosa of what most people today think of when using the word “art”: fine art. But at the beginning of the 3
Page 1: The Gentleman, the Virtuoso, the In
Page 4 and 5: The Gentleman, the Virtuoso, the In
Page 6 and 7: vi Table of Contents Chapter Eight.
Page 8 and 9: viii Introduction face. Six months
Page 10 and 11: x Introduction Coster article "Une
Page 13: CHAPTER ONE LASTANOSA AS AN EXAMPLE
Page 17 and 18: Lastanosa as an Example of His Time
Page 27 and 28: CHAPTER TWO THE SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY
Page 29 and 30: The Seventeenth-Century Spanish Sci

The Gentleman, the Virtuoso, the Inquirer - Cambridge Scholars ...

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?