Cervantes, Raphael and the Classics. (Reviews).

Frederick A. de Armas, Cervantes, Raphael and the Classics

Cambridge Studies in Latin American and Iberian Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. 241 pp. + xiii; 12 illustrations. $59.95. ISBN: 0-521-59302-6.

Cervantes' La Numancia belongs to a genre of tragedy that was eclipsed by the nueva comedia of Lope de Vega, and yet its representation of fierce Iberian resistance to Roman conquest offers a key to Cervantes' complex relationship to the classics. As Frederick de Armas demonstrates, Numancia "questions the past, turning archaeology from an enterprise of praise to an examination of power and empire" (12-13). Raphael's paintings in the Vatican are key to this analysis of Cervantes' play; de Armas' study exemplifies a renewed interest in iconography in early modern literary studies.

De Armas has produced highly perceptive readings of cultural encodings of myth, allegory, and visual symbol and demonstrated their importance for interpretation of early modern Spanish literary texts. While his narrative of the transformative influence specific frescoes that Cervantes is likely to have seen during sojourn in Rome circa 1569-70 in the service of Cardinal Acquaviva is largely hypothetical, much of the valuable interpretation and contextualization in this study is not dependent upon speculation. De Armas argues that, like other educated visitors at the time, Cervantes would have seen the allegorical and historical frescoes of Raphael and Giulio Romano, and that he would have been familiar with Vasari's accounts of these paintings. His thesis inscribes Cervantes in a rich context of humanistic conceptualizations of history, political power, and artistic imitation.

A detailed inter-artistic and intertextual argument is woven between the initial chapter on the politics of imitation and the penultimate chapter on contaminatio, which de Armas defines as "blending," either of two or three key texts or one central text with "a sprinkling of subsidiary ones" (14) rather than Thomas Greene's "eclectic or exploitative imitation." Three chapters connect Numancia with the painting of Raphael and Giulio Romano, and five address the classical models central to Cervantes' hybrid project embracing epic and theatre: Aeschylus, Homer, Virgil, Lucan, Cicero, and Macrobius. The first chapter on Raphael explains the quaternary patterns of elements, figures, and virtues in the Stanze della Segnatura and those of Cervantes' play. De Armas' argument here, as elsewhere in his studies of Lope de Vega and Calderon, presupposes that at least a portion of the audience was adept at "reading" neoplatonic symbolism encoded in the visual spectacle on the Baroque stage, and was acquainted with the Ren aissance rhetorical art of memory. Chapter three moves on to Raphael's paintings in the Stanza d'Eliodoro to discuss Numancia's allusions to historical conflicts: Rome against the Numantian "barbarians," the emperor against the pope (in the Sack of Rome by Habsburg troops), and Catholics against Lutherans. The depiction of figures ranging in age and social role in Numantia, and the self-sacrifice of the heroic child Bariato in particular, is perceptively discussed in light of Raphael's The Fire in the Borgo. Chapter four posits The Apparition of Constantine as a possible model for the initial scene of Cervantes' play, in which Scipio addresses his troops.

Two key aspects of the play's complexity, the respectful treatment of the Roman conquerors of Spain and the prophecies of a phoenix-like rebirth of Christian Spain from the ashes of the Roman empire, are addressed in de Armas' reading of Numancia as tragedy in his chapter on Aeschylus. He demonstrates Numancids difference from Don Quixote in its relationship to classical epic in the chapters on the besieged city's ambivalent relationship to burning Troy and Imperial Rome. Since much of Cervantes' knowledge of the classics was through secondary sources, a strength of de Armas' reading is his sensitivity to the "translations" and interpretations of the classics in the versions available and probably familiar to Cervantes. De Armas' chapter on Lucan and "necromantic" imitation is one of the strongest, reflecting upon the scene of pagan necromancy in which the besieged Numantians receive an enigmatic prediction of their impending self-destruction. De Armas integrates the heroism of the Numantian women into his la rger discussion of Neoplatonic theories of concordance of opposites, in this case of Mars and Venus. The final chapter on Fame, prophecy and dreams brings together ruins and rebirth, history and poetry, and the glory and decadence of Philip II's reign, all viewed through Cervantes' critical and ironic ambivalence. Weaving a rich tapestry of interartistic scholarship, de Armas moves deftly in this volume among Cervantine, classical, and Renaissance texts.