Philip II of Spain and the Architecture of Empire by Laura Fernndez-Gonzlez;

Author:Laura Fernndez-Gonzlez;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pennsylvania State University Press

FIGURE 70 | Colcha with Triumphal Arch, Bengal, seventeenth century. Courtesy of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston.

Early modern textile production in both the Portuguese and the Spanish empires provides an excellent window onto pan-Iberian imagery in general and images related to the monarchy in particular. These colchas showcase the ways in which imagery traveled, and they reveal how local artists blended ingrained traditional techniques and local decorative motifs with pan-Iberian trends. As seen thus far, the Bengali colchas, the manuscripts, and the other images that emerged in the peninsula, Europe, and beyond showcased imagery that echoed Philip’s Lisbon fete of 1581. Considered collectively, these images are a forceful reminder of the wide geographical impact of this political event, and above all that the image of the king reverberated throughout disparate regions of his empire and beyond.

Philip’s role in the pageant, and the enormous efforts of the festival organizers to craft an ideal classical cosmos in which to celebrate his triumph, emerges most clearly in the triumphal path erected in the Terreiro do Paço to connect the façade of the Arch of the German Merchants to the city and the Portas da Ribeira (fig. 69). An analysis of one of San Pedro’s drawings, Trivmpho Primero Imperial (first imperial triumph), and its sequence of statues and columns over pedestals shines some light on Philip’s expected performance at the pageant.98 In this drawing, an armored Philip II rides a horse (fig. 71). Philip is presented as the miles Christi, or soldier of Christ, as in Albuquerque’s statue. San Pedro’s drawing shows the triumphal paraphernalia traditionally employed in festivals, such as the canopy and accompanying cohort. The most prominent text in the image takes the form of a Latin rhyme and praises the victories of Philip’s ancestors against barbarians and the seizing of the Portuguese empire under Philip’s rule, which allowed him to propagate the Catholic faith. Texts are found on the king’s canopy and in the standards carried by the damsels and the indigenous peoples in the drawing. One of these standards represents Iberia, the united Hispania, on which the Portuguese arms are arranged in the center, flanked by the arms of Castile and Aragon (the standard is carried by the damsel on the right).99 This imagery was also present in the triumphal path. People from Africa, America, and Asia are also depicted in San Pedro’s image, carrying the royal standards of Ethiopia and the West and East Indies (“India Occidentalis” and “India Orientalis”). These depictions emphasize the global imperial dominions in Africa, America, and Southeast Asia under the monarch’s rule.

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