Over the last two decades much important research has been done on Spanish portraiture of the early modern period and court portraiture in particular. A feature of this research has been its interdisciplinary approach, such as Juan Miguel Serrera’s seminal essay on the uses of portraiture (“Alonso Sánchez Coello y la mecánica del retrato de corte,” in Alonso Sánchez Coello, exh. cat., Madrid: Museo Nacional del Prado, 1990, 38–63) and Javier Portús Pérez’s groundbreaking publications on the representation of art and artists in the literature of the Golden Age (see, for example, Pintura y pensamiento en la España de Lope de Vega, Hondarribia: Nerea, 1999, and El retrato español del Greco a Picasso, exh. cat., Madrid: Museo Nacional del Prado, 2004).

Laura Bass’s delightful and informative book explores the interplay between writers and painters, particularly in relation to portraiture. The well-known Horatian precept, “Ut pictura poesis” (As is painting, so is poetry), was pervasive in the artistic imagination of the time. For instance, the court painter Vicente Carducho wrote in praise of the descriptive powers of his friend, the playwright Lope de Vega as follows: “Take notice, observe, how well he paints, how well he imitates, with what feeling and strength his painting moves the souls of those who hear.” References to artists in Spanish baroque literature also abound, as artists and writers mixed in the same social circles. In Calderón de la Barca’s much-quoted Memorial defending the nobility of painting, the playwright describes portraiture as the paradigm of all representative art.

Bass approaches her subject not as an art historian but as a specialist in Golden Age theater. Her focus on portraiture was determined by the realization that, “the drama of the portrait re-enacted again and again on the seventeenth-century Spanish stage comprises one of its richest chapters” (2). She sets out to show that in seventeenth-century Spain portraits were objects of courtly play with substantial, sometimes deadly consequences. This is a serious claim indeed, and Bass is both eloquent and learned in supporting it.

A comprehensive introduction sets the scene with a discussion of theater in Madrid in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Bass introduces the reader to the playwrights and their plays, the theaters and their audiences, including members of the court, the clergy, the educated elite, merchants, and skilled artisans. Of particular interest is the extent to which Bass shows that theatrical performances mirrored contemporary society, historical events, and the customs, morals, and follies of the time. Moreover, influences went both ways, as the theater influenced audiences’ perceptions of themselves, how they viewed artworks, and, specifically, how they viewed portraiture. These issues are explored in the central chapters of the book. Bass draws interesting parallels between portraiture and the Spanish economy of the 1630s, when the continuous fluctuation in the value of coinage coincided with a deflation in the value of portraiture as a symbolic currency. Writers on the economy, such as the political theorist Juan de Mariana, even lamented the slippage between the face value and the intrinsic value of coins. In his treatise on painting, Vicente Carducho complained of the regrettable trend among merchants to have themselves portrayed with the trappings of royalty. Throughout her discussion of the taste for painting, in terms of the discriminating eye, or the lack of it, and the predominance of the “natural” as an aesthetic category, Bass enlivens her analysis with amusing contemporary anecdotes.

Chapter 1 focuses on two comedies set in contemporary Madrid: Lope de Vega’s La Dama Boba (Lady Simpleton, 1613) and El mayorazgo figura (The Pretend Heir, 1637) by Alonso de Castillo Solórzano. In the first, the lady (la boba) dismisses a suitor when she sees his half-length portrait, believing that he has no legs; in the second, the woman mistakenly appraises the worth of her former lover as if he were a painting for sale. In chapter 2, Bass explores the complex issue of the layering of different levels of representation. By examining the text of Tirso de Molina’s El vergonzoso en palacio (The Bashful Man at Court, before 1621), in which a woman falls in love with her own cross-dressed likeness, which had been secretly painted while she was rehearsing for a play-within-a-play, Bass lays bare the shifting nature of identity, especially in relation to the role of women, and illustrates the importance of costume in establishing and maintaining identity. One is reminded of Oscar Wilde’s quip that only the most superficial of people do not judge by appearances. As with portraiture, the theater was a locus for fashion and display. And yet, Bass highlights the underlying unease about capturing a human likeness—and perhaps losing part of one’s soul—as dramatically staged in Calderón’s wife-murder drama, El pintor de su deshonra (The Painter of His Dishonour, 1640s). In the character of the painter-husband, who cannot capture his wife’s likeness, Calderón explores the destructive failure of such an elusive desire. Notably, chapters 2–4 of the book focus on dramas of women’s portraits: Calderón’s Darlo todo y no dar nada (To Give All and to Give Nothing, 1651) and El mayor monstruo del mundo (The World’s Greatest Monster, 1637 and 1667/72), along with María de Zayas’s novella, El prevenido engañado (Forewarned but Not Forearmed, 1637).

Another theme Bass touches upon is the representation of the king as central to government and control in Habsburg Spain and its territories. For instance, she relates an interesting account of the 1622 proclamation ceremony for the new monarch, Philip IV, in the Plaza Mayor of Lima, where a full-length portrait of the king was “seated” under a canopy and his subjects passed before this “Theatre of Our Lord” to show their loyalty. Bass cites multiple examples of the use and significance of royal portraits in the plays, which art historians will find of particular interest. One of the best known is in Lope de Vega’s El Brasil restituido (Brazil Restored, 1625), wherein the commander of the victorious Spanish troops at Bahía unveils a portrait of Philip IV to the defeated Dutch and addresses it in a plea for clemency. Juan Bautista Maino painted a version of the scene in The Recapture of Bahía in 1625 (1634–35) for the Hall of Realms in the Buen Retiro. The picture within a picture is a device used by playwrights and painters alike. Hence, the theater may well provide a glimpse of court ceremonial in the concealing and revealing of portraits to enhance their power. For instance, a curtain is used to dramatic effect to conceal a life-size portrait of Herod’s wife in El mayor monstruo del mundo, and there are many other examples.

One of the most interesting theatrical genres for the knowledge of popular culture in the Golden Age is the entremés, a short piece performed between acts of a play that was usually light-hearted and involved characters from all levels of society. In Spain, from the second third of the seventeenth century, the entremés became associated with Juan Rana (John Frog), a celebrated comic actor, of “amphibious” sexuality, for whom about fifty pieces were written. In Agustín Moreto’s El retrato vivo (The Living Portrait, 1650s), Juan Rana appears standing in a frame, believing he is a portrait. The piece is a hilarious demonstration of how portraiture captures the subject. Sebastián de Villaviciosa’s El retrato de Juan Rana (The Portrait of Juan Rana, 1657), written for the festivities celebrating the birth of Felipe Próspero, is a burlesque about having a portrait painted. Bass’s highly entertaining chapter 5 shows that dwarfs and buffoons were at the center of court life, and not only had the ability to entertain but also to lay bare the fictions and conventions of the time. The plays provide a context for viewing Velázquez’s unforgettable portraits of these “loonies, dwarfs, and men of pleasure” (to quote the important study by Fernando Bouza, Locos, enanos y hombres de placer, Madrid: Temas de Hoy, 1996). In her analysis of Alonso Sánchez Coello’s painting The Infanta Isabel Clara Eugenia and Magdalena Ruiz (1585–88), Bass rightly underlines the dynastic function of the portrait and interprets the infanta’s gesture—placing her hand on the heard of the dwarf—as at once commanding and affectionate. But to see the monkeys held by Magdalena as part of “this microcosmic great chain of being . . . and the monkey itself a figure associated with mimetic reflection” (108) would seem to impose an unintended meaning. Exotic animals and birds were imported from the Americas, and monkeys were very popular pets. The ones portrayed by Sánchez Coello are Cottontop Tamarin monkeys, which were once widespread through Latin America, and now, sadly, on the verge of extinction. Their small size (weighing less than one pound) and characteristic mop of white hair (not a “wig”) would have made them especially desirable.

Given the scope of material it surveys, Bass’s book is an ambitious undertaking, and she succeeds admirably in creating an interesting and highly readable narrative. Through her examination of plays, she enhances our understanding of the role of portraits and shows the irrepressible power of the image. The provision of extracts from the plays in both English and the original Spanish, the many high-quality illustrations, and the scholarly apparatus make this handsomely produced book a must for all who are interested in the culture of Golden Age Spain. Like the finest theater, Bass’s impressive piece of work informs and entertains.