By Janis E. Carpenter, Reed College
Download: Calderon and Gadamer.[1]
Monument to Calderon de la Barca, Madrid
Of the several ways in which Pedro Calderon de la Barca portrays painting in The Painter of his Dishonour,[2] one of the most intriguing is his depiction of Don Juan Roca’s failed attempt to paint a portrait of his wife, Seraphine.[3] Don Juan’s failure sets the keystone in the arch of this 17th century Spanish honor play by suggesting the nature of his relationship to the woman he eventually will murder. Still Calderon intensifies the scene further through his design of its context and structure, specifically in his use of illusory allusions, comic critique, dramatic irony, and metatheatrical role-play.[4] These extensions seem to exemplify the kind of theatrical strategies Hans-Georg Gadamer envisioned in developing his particular concept of a work of art as a work of “play” that engages and absorbs the spectator in an interactive experience.[5] In this sense, the ideas of the 20th century German philosopher help explain how the realm of a 17th century Spanish play opens toward spectators and readers beyond the time and place of its origin.
The failed-painter scene[6] resides in one of several “honor” plays written by the prolific Calderon.[7] As an honor play, The Painter of his Dishonour centers on a husband who kills his wife and her alleged lover.[8] Some modern scholars find fertile ground in the play for a study of 17th century Spanish culture: its social codes, gender roles, artistic theory, artistic practice, and theater.[9] They have noted the manner in which the extensive ambiguity and linguistic subtlety of the operatic horror story highlight the tensions within a society struggling with its traditional code of honor. One Hispanicist calls the play “an audacious dramatic experiment . . . located in the frontier area that lies between comedy and tragedy.”[10] Others have recognized its vivid depiction of the female lead and the multiple ways in which it makes painting a literal and metaphorical subject.[11]
Equally compelling, however, is the way this play as a whole, and the failed-painter scene in particular, resonate beyond its place in the history of Spanish culture, meriting more than the attention one ordinarily might give to artifacts of long-gone cultures and amounting to far more than a quaint scene in a twisted play about social strangleholds in a dead world. In this scene in particular, Calderon has tapped a vein of truth and uncertainty that extends beneath and beyond the specific time, place, and culture of its origin. The source of this broader power resides both in the nature of the situation Calderon creates and in the particular techniques by which he absorbs his audience in that situation.
In terms of situation, in unveiling the failed painter Calderon exposes the human desire to penetrate another, to perceive another, especially the beloved, and to capture that person within the frame of one’s own perspective. He displays as well the inability to so penetrate, perceive, and capture. Since few of us see with the eyes of Leonardo, our endeavors to seize the person before us, visually or otherwise, fail or fall short in ways sometimes funny and pathetic but frequently sad, frustrating, infuriating, and even violently enraging. The gulf between possibility and ability often lies wide and deep. This is the comic but ultimately heart-wrenching situation Calderon presents in Don Juan’s aborted attempt to paint Seraphine.
Yet we must attend as well to the techniques Calderon uses in this depiction if we are to fully realize the richness of the scene. Here the ideas of the 20th century German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer illuminate the reverberating vigor of the scene created by the 17th century Spanish playwright. In his examination of the nature and interpretation of the work of art,[12] Gadamer regards a work of art as a work of play in that it stimulates a “to-and-fro” movement between the art and the spectator, with both acting as players set upon a “playing field.”[13] In the case of a dramatic performance, “the play world of the work of art” takes place “in between” the drama and the audience on the playing field of the theater.[14] While a dramatic performance on a stage within a theater may seem to represent a world “wholly enclosed within itself,” Gadamer notes how it may simultaneously “open toward the spectator, in whom it achieves its whole significance” so that “the play itself is the whole, comprising players and spectators.”[15] As such, to Gadamer, a work of art—including a dramatic work—is more than an object for study, for historical and biographical placement, theoretical analyses, or application of interpretive rules. He views a work of art—whether visual, musical, literary, or dramatic—-as a dynamic movement that sweeps the observer, listener, and reader into an interactive experience. As a result, the members of a theatrical audience join the playwright and the theatrical company as co-creators and fellow seekers of the truth in the drama. So if we apply the ideas of Gadamer to the art of Calderon, we see how the material and the design of the failed-painter scene may evoke just that kind of fluid interaction.
To pull spectators into the field of the scene, Calderon draws from a magician’s sack of tricks: illusory allusions, comic jabs, dramatic irony, and metatheatrics. Yet these tricks amount to more than a virtuoso’s display of fireworks. Rather, Calderon’s plethora of contextual questions and clues involve the audience in a subterranean dialogue about possible meanings of the scene, the play as a whole, and the limits of human capacity to perceive others, even those deeply revered.
In the brief scene in the second act of the play, the young wife Seraphine sits while her older husband, Don Juan Roca, anxiously tries to paint her portrait. He expresses appreciation that she has agreed to pose for him, but feels “o’erthrown” by his task. (81). Calderon thereby releases a flurry of mysteries: Why does Don Juan abandon his easel and declare “defeat” (83)? Has he truly failed? If so, does his so-called defeat reflect some gap in the painter himself, in his painterly skills or materials, in the theories and rules he applies to his painting, in Seraphine as the object he attempts to portray, or in something else? Is he the problem? Is she? Does the disability suggest some larger malady?
No one in the play provides definitive answers. But Calderon opens the scene to the spectator by employing three major strategies—-offering three sets of clues—to turn spectators into sleuths. He exposes Don Juan’s reflections on his painting and his wife; he provides context for the painting episode in earlier scenes illuminating Don Juan as well as Seraphine, and he adds jibes thrown by Bunion, the servant-buffoon who arrives near the end of the scene to cast aspersions on his boss. Each of these devices serves as a separate lens through which spectators may view Don Juan’s dilemma. In the terms of Gadamer, they open the theatrical playing field to active participation and wide speculation by the spectator.
In the foreground of the scene, the confused Don Juan tries to connect his painterly efforts to major ideas in art theory and practice as well as metaphysics: the imitation of nature, the canon of proportions, the harmony of parts in a whole, the tension between the real and the ideal, the challenge of the perfect and the beautiful, the dependence of the world on the equilibrium of its primary elements, and more.[16] He claims the “perfection” of the “symmetries” of Seraphine’s face exceeds the scope of his imagination and the skill of his paintbrush (81, 83). So, despite prevailing art theory and practice at the time, Don Juan emphasizes what he considers to be the ideal perfection of Seraphine, overlooking the actual and pragmatic aspects of person and painting.[17] He laments further that “fire, light, air, and sun” cannot be painted and therefore he cannot paint a beauty formed entirely of “sun, air, light, and fire” (83). In the chiasmus, Calderon reveals Don Juan’s circular reasoning in words that curve back on themselves. His allusions to the elements similarly expose gaps in his mental processing for he multiplies air and fire while leaving out water and earth.[18] His omission of those two elements suggests something seriously amiss in its view of Seraphine for in his insistence on her light-filled perfection, he fails to see a worldly woman of the flesh. While Don Juan seems otherwise to be a competent painter,[19] the gaps in his vision of Seraphine open spectator eyes to misshapen perception, a malformation of the perspective as central to the painting of a portrait as it is to understanding a loved one. So his apparently astute discourse, when viewed in broader context, turns comic and sad in its illusions and distortions.
Moreover, those distortions amplify Don Juan’s observations of Seraphine earlier in the play. After long resisting marriage, he first “felt an inclination” toward a “miniature,” a tiny portrait of Seraphine and surrendered his heart after “setting eyes” on her (25, 202 note). He then magnifies his bride in outsized descriptions of her divine beauty and unique intelligence, comparing her to a nymph, a goddess, and even Venus (25, 202 note). His high-flown words are perhaps understandable in the early stage of their relationship, but his continued description of unearthly beauty, well after their arranged marriage has taken place, gives pause. What sort of marriage is this? Still angelic? Perhaps unconsummated? To Don Juan, the painter, Seraphine continues to be composed of the ephemeral, of light air and fiery sun, with no water flowing or earth grounding the vision. The holes suggest voids in painting and perception. So within scene and context, Calderon shows two central aspects of Don Juan’s love for Seraphine. First, his heart follows his eyes; his love is visual, fixed more on artistic depiction than on the woman herself . Second, that view is hyperbolic, too exaggerated to capture his earth-born beloved on canvas or otherwise.[20]
As he throws away his brushes and admits defeat, Don Juan bewails the way his knowledge of painting has failed him in this one particular effort (85). He ends his tirade against his own inadequacies by declaring to his wife that “the culprit is your beauty, Seraphine” (85).
Soon after, the comic servant Bunion takes center stage. A sort of antidotal irritant and bawdy Greek chorus, Bunion tells the story of a “stone-deaf chap” who thinks everyone around him is mumbling and “could not bring himself to recognize/the failing was his own” (85).[21] Bunion bluntly turns the story on Don Juan, boldly announcing:
You likewise claim
that you yourself are free of blame;
and tho’ it hurts, the blame applies
to you, and you refuse to take it on,
for deaf to sense you play the fool
and cannot grasp what’s plain and simply beautiful,
. . . to absolutely everyone (85).
Calderon here adds a touch of humor in the form of an uppity servant, but also pushes spectators to probe further into Don Juan’s abrupt quitting of his project since Bunion’s seemingly clever remark makes little sense; instead it creates another set of riddles for the audience to ponder. Perhaps the real joke is that Bunion himself is deaf. Did he not hear Don Juan speak of Seraphine as beautiful? Did he not hear Don Juan say her beauty is “no excuse” for his incapacity (83)? Did he not hear Don Juan say that painting such beauty “lies beyond me” (83)? Did he hear only the word “culprit”?
From another angle, though, Calderon may be using Bunion as well to exhibit a common lack of appreciation for the art of making art, by making him say, in effect “What’s the fuss? She’s beautiful. Everybody knows that. The problem is you, in trying to reproduce her beauty, which is, after all, right in front of us to see in the original.” [22] Yet as spectators, we can turn the words again and notice that Bunion does not use the words “painting” or “art” at all. Instead he says Don Juan is “deaf to sense,” that he “play[s] the fool,” and “cannot grasp” that which is “simply beautiful . . . to absolutely everyone.” Perhaps he speaks of Don Juan as a fool not in his painting, but rather as lacking in common sense: he cannot grasp that which is plain to see. Truly Don Juan does not see Seraphine as “plain and simply” beautiful. He sees majestic perfection where Bunion and “absolutely everybody” sees plain and simple beauty. By juxtaposing Bunion’s perspective and Don Juan’s view, Calderon gives spectators a binocular vision that deepens perception and leads to more questions about truth in the play.
Yet who and what is this woman, plain and simple to Bunion, who so blinds and disables Don Juan? In this scene, she appears an agreeable wife, modestly deflecting claims of her perfection and dutifully attempting to protect her husband against agitation (83, 85). However, Calderon again provides spectators with a larger perspective on Seraphine, one that shows her as a multi-dimensional woman; in Gadamer’s terms, he opens entry into her “hidden and withdrawn” aspects.[23] In the lengthy depiction of Seraphine well before she enters the room to sit for her portrait, Calderon creates context that sets up the dramatic irony in both Don Juan’s description of Seraphine’s “singular perfection” and in his casting of her beauty as “the culprit” (81, 85). He thereby assumes spectators will pull together the multiplicities of Seraphines that the painter finds impossible to grasp. A textured understanding of the import of the situation of the failed painter depends, in fact, on audience perception of the discrepancy between Seraphine as a speaker and actor in the first act and Seraphine as an object of painting and commentary in the second.
Calderon provides spectators with a wealth of material on Seraphine in social and private situations in the first act, where she appears as a woman well-aware of how to choose the social costumes required for the various roles she plays. In her first appearance, when the friendly hosts Don Luis and Portia flood her with words of welcome and praise, Seraphine recognizes that she must reply to each, “matching speech by speech,” and therefore adroitly declares she will reply to neither “lest/by doing so I offend you both” (35). Already we see her as not only socially graceful, but alert to possibly conflicting social roles. Her initially light-hearted banter shifts though into a lower key when she later confides privately to Portia that despite her status as a married woman, she still sheds “tears from the past” (39). To secure secrecy, Seraphine five times insists on privacy and then proceeds to perform “fun’ral obsequies/for a now departed hope” for marriage to Don Alvaro, believed to be dead at sea (41). Yet her memories are so vivid and her tale of Don Alvaro’s courtship so long that Calderon leads spectators into questions about the depth of her marriage to Don Juan. He shows as well the secrets piled on secrets as Seraphine tells Portia in secret of the love lived in secret; clearly she is a woman practiced in the art of secrecy.
Seraphine is practiced too, in the art of courtship, as she further reveals to Portia. Don Alvaro, she says, visited her often and she felt some fondness, but at first responded with “a certain caution” and “a touch of coolness” (43). Keenly aware of the impact and import of her role-playing, she even offers a lesson for a lover who thinks he has been rebuffed by his lady:
If a lover weeps
at having been rejected,
let him scrutinize his lady’s pique,
and in it he will see reflected,
despite her spirited rebuff,
in glints and in the background plane,
favours moving in disguise,
muffled in the shadows of disdain (43).
This might be a lesson as well for Don Juan if he truly wishes to capture the subtle and complex Seraphine in his painting: Look for glints of light, look in the background, look for movement in disguise, see what is muffled in the shadows. Such a perspective, Seraphine tells her friend, is “a view I’m qualified to hold,” unveiling again her awareness of her own practice in wearing disguises (43). As she further unwinds her long tale to Portia, she continues to elaborate on herself as an actor, one able to accede to her father’s marriage contract to unite her with Don Juan while secretly planning to “turn aside” her father’s plan and marry Alvaro instead when he returns from his sea-journey (45, 47). Thus she confides that she was simultaneously in love with and informally committed to one while formally affianced to another, yet socially honorable, physically chaste, and internally conscious of her layered role-playing. In the conversation with Portia, she reveals that she lives a layered existence still: duty-bound to Don Juan by marriage, sorrow-bound to Alvaro by memory. Calderon constructs the scene so that the spectators hear and see all of this, but Don Juan, of course, does not. We are the ones who connect the layered performance to the painter’s subsequent difficulty in capturing this woman on canvas.
When Don Alvaro returns unharmed, Seraphine plays yet another role: the honorable wife resisting amorous advances from a former lover and defending herself against his adamant claims that she has been unfaithful to him. Capable performer that she is, Seraphine seems to slip easily into the terms of her new assignment, telling Don Alvaro, “It was as your widow that I married” (51). Yet she senses the paradox, telling him also that “even my one reason to rejoice/no longer holds; be you alive or dead, I lose you” (53). When Alvaro returns for another intense encounter, Seraphine once again examines her role, that which she calls her “new identity” as wife to Roca: “I could, secure in my new identity, / mourn you dead; but mourn you alive, / that would be insanity . . . .” (73). Pressed further by Alvaro, she reminds him once more that she married only when her hopes for his return had died. Highly conscious of her status as a married woman, she proclaims, “I am now who I am” (75). Yet the spectators may not put away her past so readily for her position still appears shaky. When Alvaro claims Seraphine is weeping and she denies it, he remains doubtful, fixing on her mastery in slipping out of one role and into another:
You have this skill
a product of your self-control,
to weep or not, as suits your will
while triumphing at my defeat?
The tears, perhaps, are so well trained,
they carry out their orders? ( 77).
So their sparring goes, with Seraphine hinting at regret that she belongs to another, but also warning Alvaro to draw no conclusions and make no plans for she will remain “inviolate” and “sworn to another” (77, 79).
Seraphine’s movement among roles fits well within Jonathan Thacker’s view of role-playing and metatheatre in 17th century Spanish drama and society.[24] Her consciousness of her shifting roles suggests a form of metatheatricality that Thacker says was “central to social life” during the period.[25] From her verbalized awareness of her role-playing, an audience could see that she at least has a sense of possibilities beyond her “expected social role”[26] for Calderon sets her up as a “knowing character who consciously plays,” in contrast to Don Juan, in the position of what Thacker calls a relatively ignorant character who “takes his role to be himself.”[27] In Thacker’s terms, Seraphine’s sense that a social role or position “can be picked up and dropped”[28] actively undermines her position that she is wedded to her role as wife. These are the kind of metatheatrical elements that, according to Thacker, break the “dramatic frame” and promote interaction with the audience.[29] Yet once the “constructed nature”[30] of Seraphine has been revealed, how are spectators to see her? Moreover, how is Don Juan to perceive her complex nature and represent it on his canvas?
Don Juan calls Seraphine’s beauty the “culprit” that steals his capacity to paint, and in an ironic sense it is, for her rich being, and consciousness of being, make hers a subtle beauty that does indeed thwart him. He cannot see her as she is; he cannot see that a person, or object, can exist in nature as something other than beautiful or ugly, as something more complicated than “perfect” or “flawed” (81, 83). He cannot see the glints and shadows of which she is so aware. Calderon instead invites the spectator to pull together these views of Seraphine and see the discrepancies in this richly-faceted woman. He leaves it to the spectator to catch the dramatic irony, ponder the true nature of this rare woman, and glimpse the depth of the dilemma facing Don Juan in his inability to pierce her layers.
Gadamer says a dramatic work of art realizes its significance in the play between the theater company and its spectators, that in opening the drama toward the spectators, it achieves its whole significance. In this scene from The Painter of his Dishonour, Calderon opens a multiplicity of possibilities to spectators. Doing so, he uncovers the reality of a young woman sharply aware of her fragmented existence and a painter with neither reliable principles nor a steady image to guide his paintbrush.
Calderon’s painting of disequilibrium intensifies through the remainder of the drama, ultimately erupting in the blood of violence and leaving spectators to seek the thick meaning that has evaded the players. We pause to look at an unfinished painting, the bullet-ridden woman, her pursuer, and her husband. Within the capacious realm of Calderon’s art, we sprout wings, cross continents, and span centuries. Seeing the blanks on Don Juan’s canvas, we fill in some of them and thereby grow more aware of the blanks in our own sight, the gaps in our perception and perspective, the holes in those capacities as essential to loving as they are to painting. Gadamer would say the art in the scene of the failed painter is Calderon’s, and our own.
Endnotes.
[1] This essay originated as a paper written for “Early Modern Spain,” a master’s course taught in 2009 by Ariadna Garcia-Bryce, Professor of Spanish and Humanities at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. Ms. Carpenter presented an abridged version of the essay at the conference of the Association of Graduate and Liberal Studies Programs hosted by Reed College in June 2010.
[2] The reference here and in all in-text citations is to A.K.G. Paterson’s translation (Oxford, U.K.: Oxbow Books, 2007). This work is the comedia entitled The Painter of His Dishonour, probably written and first performed in the 1640’s, not Calderon’s later religious play—an auto sacramental—of the same name. See Paterson at 1; Don W. Cruickshank, Don Pedro Calderon (Oxford, U.K.: Oxbow Books, 2009) at 273, 285; Phyllis Mitchell, “Painting as Metaphor: Calderon’s El Pintor de su Deshonra, Comedia and Auto” in Romance Languages Annual VIII (1997) at 582 and note 7. Mitchell offers an extended analysis of the relationship between the comedia and the auto at 582-88.
[3] In addition to the title of the play, painting is part of the drama in its first act in Don Juan Roca’s statement that he was first attracted to Seraphine’s picture in a “miniature” version and implicitly in Seraphine’s description of a lover’s disguise; in the second act’s scene, the main subject of this essay; and in the third act in Prince Orsino’s observation of commissioned painters at work, Don Juan’s disguise as a poorly-dressed painter, Don Juan’s delivery and discussion of his Hercules painting, Don Juan’s preparation for his secret painting of Seraphine under commission to Orsino, and in his blood-painting of Seraphine and Don Alvaro when he kills them near the end of the play. See Mitchell at 582-88 (on the varied metaphorical uses of painting in the play). See also Ellen C. Frye, “Secret Portraits of Serafina: Portraiture in the Golden Age Comedia of Spain,” in Romance Studies 21 (March 2003) at 3-10 (on the use of portraits as dramatic devices).
[4] In addition, A.K.G. Paterson assumes that frequent changes in the prosody of the play “regulated the seventeenth-century audience’s reception to the performance.” Paterson, “Preface” at v.
[5] Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2nd rev. ed., trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (London: Continuum, 2006), at 105, 109, 112, 114.
[6] Ernst Robert Curtius refers to the scene as presenting “the dilemma of the portrait.” Curtius, “Calderon’s Theory of Art and Arts Liberales,” in European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. Willard R. Trask (Princeton, N.J.: Bollingen Foundation, 1973), 565.
[7] For a recent discussion of Calderon’s life and listing of his works, see Cruickshank, supra. Calderon’s best-known play in English translation is his Life is a Dream, recently transformed into an opera performed in a highly-praised production by the Santa Fe Opera Company. Santa Fe Opera website with video and interviews. NY Times REVIEW.
[8] Because Don Juan avenges an apparent assault on his honor as a husband, even the fathers of the dead ones declare he “does not offend” (199). Yet several elements of the play, including Don Juan’s critique of the “demand of honour” (167, 169), show that Calderon goes considerably beyond a simple reiteration of the so-called code of honor. For discussion, see Paterson at 11-13.
[9] See, e.g., Cruickshank at 286; Paterson at 4-7, 8-10, 15, 17.
[10] Paterson at v.
[11] See, e.g., Paterson at 7-10; Frye and Mitchell, supra.
[12] Gadamer, “The Ontology of the Work of Art and Its Hermeneutic Significance,” 102-171 in Truth and Method, supra.
[13] Gadamer at 102-105.
[14] Gadamer at 105, 109.
[15] Gadamer at 106.
[16] See, e.g., Curtius at 559-570; Frye, at 3-10; Mitchell, at 582-588; Paterson at 9; Javier Portus, “The Holy Depicting the Holy: Social and Aesthetic Issues,” in Ronda Kasl, ed., Sacred Spain: Art and Belief in the Spanish World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), at 49.
[17] In his study of art theory and practice during this period, Jonathan Brown finds an emphasis on the pragmatic, even in the most academic expressions of the principles of making art. Various experts, for example, noted that complete and perfect beauty is never found in a single body, so a painter must assemble the “’praised parts’” from various bodies. Jonathan Brown, “Theory and Practice in the Academy of Francisco Pacheco,” in Images and Ideas in Seventeenth-Century Spanish Painting (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1978), at 46, 53-54.
[18] Don Juan here refers to the belief—ancient, medieval, and contemporary—that the stability of the world depends on the equilibrium of the four elements, that “their equilibrium alone . . . differentiated the established world from chaos,” a concept to which Calderon often referred in his writing, sometimes deliberately confused, and at times associated with motion and violence, according to Edward M. Wilson. See Wilson, “The Four Elements in the Imagery of Calderon,” in Spanish and English Literature of the 16th and 17th Centuries: Studies in Discretion, Illusion and Mutability (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1980) at 1, 2, 7, 13-14. See also Paterson, “Commentary on the Play” at 211. Thus Don Juan’s omission here of earth and water may point to disequilibrium not only in the painter himself but also in the world of the play.
[19] In Act One, Don Pedro describes Don Juan’s “finesse” in painting (23). In this scene from Act Two,
Seraphine refers to his excellence as a painter (81). In Act Three, the Prince of Orsino, a connoisseur of fine art, compliments Don Juan’s paintings and commissions another (159, 161, 175, 177).
[20] Mitchell reasons along these lines as well, at 584, 586, as does Frye at 9.
[21] In a similarly irreverent tone, Bunion earlier in the play tells a story alluding to the possibility of Don Juan’s sexual inability to penetrate his young wife (31, 33, note 202-203).
[22] This in turn could reflect the historical diminishment of painting as an art, an issue Calderon addressed later in a 1677 treatise in support of painters in Madrid who argued that, as artists, they should be exempt from municipal taxation, like other artists. See Curtius at 559-562.
[23] Gadamer at 112.
[24] Jonathan Thacker, “Role-Theory, Metatheatre, and the Reception of Drama,” in Role-Play and the World as a Stage in the Comedia (Liverpool, U.K.: Liverpool University Press, 2002) at 2 note 7, 3.
[25] Thacker at 13.
[26] Thacker at 16.
[27] Thacker at 16.
[28] Thacker at 17.
[29] Thacker at 3 and note 9.
[30] Thacker at 17.
Bibliography
Brown, Jonathan. “Theory and Practice in the Academy of Francisco Pacheco.” In Images and Ideas in Seventeenth-Century Spanish Painting. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1978.
Calderón de la Barca, Pedro. The Painter of his Dishonour: El pintor de su deshonra, trans. A.K.G. Paterson. Oxford, U.K.: Oxbow Books, 2007.
Cruickshank, Don W. Don Pedro Calderon. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Curtius, Ernst Robert. “Calderon’s Theory of Art and the Arts Liberales.” In European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. Willard R. Trask. Princeton, N.J.: Bollingen Foundation, 1973.
Frye, Ellen C. “Secret Portraits of Serafina: Portraiture in the Golden Age Comedia of Spain.” In 21 Romance Studies 3-10 (March 2003).
Gadamer, Hans-Georg. “The Ontology of the Work of Art and Its Hermeneutic Significance.” In Truth and Method, 2nd rev. ed., trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall. London: Continuum, 2006.
Mitchell, Phyllis. “Painting as Metaphor: Calderon’s El Pintor de su Deshonra, Comedia and Auto. In Romance Languages Annual VIII, 582-588 (1997).
Paterson, A.K.G. “Preface,”“Introduction,” and “Commentary on the Play.” In Pedro Calderón de la Barca, The Painter of his Dishonour: El pintor de su deshonra, trans. A.K.G. Paterson. Oxford, U.K.: Oxbow Books, 2007.
Portus, Javier. “The Holy Depicting the Holy: Social and Aesthetic Issues.” In Ronda Kasl, ed. Sacred Spain: Art and Belief in the Spanish World. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009.
Thacker, Jonathan. “Role-Theory, Metatheatre, and the Reception of Drama.” In Role-Play and the World as a Stage in the Comedia. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2002.
Wilson, Edward M. “The four elements in the imagery of Calderon.” In Spanish and English Literature of the 16th and 17th Centuries: Studies in Discretion, Illusion and Mutability. Cambridge U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1980.
