Cervantes’s Portuguese Painter

Abstract

In Los Trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda, his last novel, Cervantes makes its protagonists order a painting that retells their story in pictures and is meant to be carried with them, and brought up to date, during the rest of their journey. He thus establishes a rich and curious reflection on the powers of image-making in, and with, narrative. Is there any particular meaning to the fact that he conceived of this painter as a Portuguese in Lisbon? This question is approached in this article from the point of view of what Portuguese writers were doing with the relationship between words and pictures in narrative around the time Cervantes himself lived in Lisbon. The conclusions point to a conjoined series of occurrences, both in artistic theory and in narrative practice, that seems to validate the idea that Cervantes derived from Portuguese narrative works certain notions about the desired collaboration between the arts of poetry and painting. Resumen En Los Trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda, su ultima novela, Cervantes hace que los protagonistas encarguen una pintura que vuelva a contar su historia en imagenes y cuyo destino sera llevarla con ellos, e ir actualizandola, durante el resto de su viaje. Establece asi una reflexion rica y curiosa sobre los poderes de la creacion de imagenes en y con la narrativa. ?Tiene algun significado especifico el hecho de que concibiera al pintor como un portugues en Lisboa? Esta es la cuestion que se aborda en el articulo desde el punto de vista de que estaban haciendo los escritores portugueses con la relacion entre palabras e imagenes en la narrativa, en el tiempo en que Cervantes vivio en Lisboa. Las conclusiones apuntan a una serie de ocurrencias conjuntas, tanto en la teoria artistica como en la practica narrativa, que parecen validar la idea de que Cervantes desarrollo, a partir de obras narrativas portuguesas, ciertas nociones sobre la deseada colaboracion entre ambas artes: poesia y pintura.