Figure 1. Portrait of Lady María Luisa de Toledo and anonymous native companion. Attributed to Antonio Rodríguez Beltrán, Viceroyalty of New Spain, c.1670. Oil on canvas, 209 × 128 cm (courtesy of Museo de América (MAM 2016.06.01), on loan from the Museo Nacional del Prado; photo by J. Otero).
Recently recovered from the storerooms of the Prado Museum and exhibited at the Museum of America in Madrid, this intriguing baroque portrait reflects, on the one hand, the courtesan intimacy of two women, the one a noble Hispanic infanta who has just come of age as a lady, and the other a native Chichimec enana or dwarf from the northern frontier region of New Spain. At the same time, the physical attributes of the two women distance them by means of a series of codes that announce their identities and likely biographies. The disquieting gazes and finer details of the painting further awaken the curiosity of the spectator, inviting her to intuit the messages it guards.
Behind this painting lies a fascinating story linked not only to the biography of the primary protagonist, recently identified as Lady María Luisa de Toledo y Carreto, marquis of Melgar de Fernamental, but also to that of the enana or native Chichimec woman, about whom much less is known. Although presented on a secondary plane, her figure nevertheless steals a good measure of the show from the marquis. We cannot turn our eyes away without asking who she was, or indeed why she was included in the lady’s portrait.
Despite its fascinating features, in Madrid this portrait has attracted little or no interest until now. A childless widow, María Luisa took her portrait with her when, in the early 18th century, she entered the Convent of Constantinople in Madrid as a nun of the velo negro y coro, a position in which she was not responsible for domestic tasks in the convent. There she passed her last days surrounded by her memories and personal objects, among these a notable inmaculada painted by Francisco de Herrera el Mozo, which had presided over the altar of the principal oratory of the residence. Upon the disentailment of church property in 1835, both paintings were transferred to the collection of the Museo de la Trinidad. Once there, the portrait was not only ignored, it was catalogued as ‘disposable’ and probably offered for sale, as occurred with Herrera’s painting and indeed many others. Years later, the museum was merged with the Museo Real de Pinturas, the forerunner of today’s Prado Museum. At the Prado the painting passed once again into storeroom oblivion, where it was considered a minor work of the Spanish school. The lineage of terse titles assigned to the painting are part of this museal story of oblivion and misrecognition. When the confiscated painting came into the museum, it was described as ‘a painting and portrait of a well-dressed young woman with gloves in one hand’.1 Shortly thereafter, the painting appeared in the museum’s inventory with the number 959 and the title Portrait of a Lady in a White Embroidered Dress, with the Left Hand Resting on the Head of a Dwarf. Life-size and full-length. When in the Prado Museum, our painting was identified with the number P3608 and described first simply as Portrait of a Lady and finally as Portrait of Infanta with Dwarf.
The unhelpful titles or descriptions obviously did not foreworn us of what we would find when we examined the painting. It was precisely the tattooed native woman, described simply as a ‘dwarf’ in the Prado’s latest inventory, that sparked our interest. The link to the Convent of Constantinople in Madrid allowed us to identify the anonymous lady in the picture as Lady María Luisa de Toledo. We were unable to ascertain the name or condition (servant or slave) of the native woman represented in the picture, however, and as a result we do not doubt that the title we have given the painting may be modified in the future: Portrait of Lady María Luisa de Toledo with Her Native Companion (Retrato de Dª María Luisa de Toledo con su acompañante indígena). Recovering to the extent possible its context and history, our research has led us to reconsider the painting as a rare example of feminine portraiture in 17th-century Mexico.
Lady María Luisa de Toledo was the only daughter of the marquis of Mancera, Don Antonio Sebastián de Toledo, and Doña Leonor Carreto. She was born in Madrid on 13 September 1656. Before reaching the age of eight she moved with her parents to Mexico City. Her father had just been named viceroy and captain-general of New Spain (1664–73). The portrait, which was made around 1670, and thus when she was at the age of 14 or 15, appears to have been painted precisely to announce her new status as a lady. During this period the concept of adolescence did not exist, and as a result one passed abruptly from childhood to adult status. When she symbolically left behind her ‘infancy’, negotiations immediately began to find a suitable spouse. Her wedding by proxy with Don Joseph de Silva, the third son of the duke of Pastrana e Infantado, took place in the Mexico City Cathedral in 1673, when the viceroy’s daughter was only 16. At the time, marriage was the destiny of most elite Hispanic women. The only alternative was to become a nun in a convent. This was the path followed, for example, by Juana de Asbaje, better known as Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, the great poet and polymath of the Mexican baroque (Figure 2). Juana had been summoned to join the viceregal court of Leonor de Carreto as a menina. Rather than contract matrimony she entered a convent so that she might continue to dedicate herself fully to intellectual pursuits.
It is quite probable that this double portrait is related to a crucial moment in the life of the lady, that is, her ritual passage to maturity. It is the moment of her presentation to society as a marriageable young woman and, as such, the painting is made with the intention of making visible her qualities as a woman. Perhaps for this reason she is presented adorned only with pearls, symbols of purity, virginity and fecundity. In this regard, the native woman companion is the scenic counterpoint that serves to highlight the lady’s qualities: her beauty and the whiteness of her skin, which denote Spanish origins, contrasted with the tattooed face and proportions of the native woman; or her slim waist and height, accentuated by posing alongside her dwarf companion. On the other hand, it is evident that the sumptuous dress, swollen with heavy fabrics and opulent lace, deforms the true anatomy of the young woman. It takes some effort to divine where the silhouette of her arms is lost in the bombastic sleeves, or what the true proportions are of her body, which is undoubtedly extended by chapines – those high platform shoes that hid the feet from indiscreet glances and raised the status of the lady.
Figure 2. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Andrés de Islas, Viceroyalty of New Spain, 1772. Oil on canvas, 105 × 84 cm (courtesy of Museo de América, MAM 00022; photo by J. Otero).
How shall we interpret the gesture of María Luisa, resting her hand on the head of her dwarf companion? Possibly, it could form part of the exhibition of virtues of the young woman as a future spouse. Her firm hand and delicate gesture suggest both dominance and tenderness, control and sweetness, simultaneous qualities desired in the care of children and the treatment of servants. And what of the glove? What is the meaning of the strange manner by which it is held? Its use is fundamentally symbolic, a highlight of the condition of the lady. These very fine gloves, most likely of frangipane or amber, cling to the hand like a second skin. The gloved extremity may be distinguished from the glove only by the difference of colouration between the two. The delicate manner by which, with only the middle finger, she suspends the glove she has taken off her left hand is clearly significant. It is possible that this gesture also transmits those desired qualities in a young woman linked to equilibrium, affection, love and goodness, all traits precisely associated with the middle finger, the central axis of the hand.
The other element of the portrait is the native Chichimec woman who accompanies the Lady María Luisa de Toledo. As we have noted, she appears to play a notable roll in the pictorial scene as contrast for the lady. But the presence of a tattooed native woman dwarf and the perceptible complicity that the two women share also incarnates the power and prestige of the family, its relations with America, its calm dominion over an exotic world. The marks on her face exhibit her ethnic origin, while her costume signals the courtly context of acculturation into which she had been inserted. Born among some Chichimec group in the northern region of New Spain, possibly Nuevo León, this woman was likely captured as a slave in one of the frequent raids by soldiers and then handed over ‘in deposit’ to a likely patron, a not infrequent variety of temporary slavery before obligatory acculturation as a servant. In this intermediate station before arriving at the court of the viceroy, she would have learned to wear and indeed weave the huipil or embroidered blouse and to adopt the language, religion and customs of her patrons. We do not yet know the details of how she came to be in deposit as part of the ‘family’ of the viceroy, but it is likely that she is the same Chichimec woman that Doña Leonor de Carreto describes at the Convent of San Jerónimo in Mexico City, where Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz professed.
It was surely the body of this Chichimec woman that precipitated her entrance into the viceroy’s court. As in many other aspects of fashion, the viceroy’s court followed the Madrid court’s fancy for sabandijas or diminutive companions endowed with unusual physiognomies. The painting suggests that this Chichimec woman suffered from achondroplasia, a congenital disease that provokes the shortening of the limbs and pronounced macrocephaly. Similar traits may be found in other portraits of the period, for example the case of Mari Bárbola in the celebrated Las Meninas or Sebastián de Morra in El bufón el Primo, both by Philip IV’s court painter Diego Velázquez and both on permanent exhibit in the Prado. Selected precisely for their bodies, these persons performed symbolic roles as ‘deforming mirrors’ (espejos deformantes) that reinforced the qualities of the nobles, princes and kings with whom they cohabited. Some of these persons could become confidants and advisors, particularly for children. On occasion, they were portrayed together with the infantas they served, as in the case of Velázquez’s Las Meninas or La Infanta Isabel Clara Eugenia y Magdalena Ruiz by Alonso Sánchez Coello, where the daughter of Philip II extends her hand over the head of her companion in much the same gesture observed in our portrait of the Lady María Luisa de Toledo.
The painter, who may have been Antonio Rodríguez Beltrán, has represented in rather realistic fashion the features of the woman’s face, forehead and prominent mandible, the characteristically depressed nasal bridge and even the precise form of the ‘trident sign’ or separation of the middle and ring fingers, one of the symptoms of achondroplasia.
The portrait was among the personal possessions that accompanied our lady until her death in 1707 in the Convent of Constantinople in Madrid. Her trousseau included hundreds of objects from the two Indies, East and West. Objects from the East Indies or Asia, shipped by the Manila galleon to New Spain or Mexico, included porcelains, Japanese and Chinese furniture and folding panels, silk and cotton fabrics, and lacquers. From the West Indies or Americas, her collection included furniture from Oaxaca; ceramics from Guadalajara, Panama and Chile; silverwork from Cuba and Nicaragua; and of course paintings made in Mexico. It is, then, thanks to our lady’s cloistered collection, for centuries mishandled and neglected by Madrid’s art museums, that we now know something about this rare portrait.
Figure 3. Detail with ‘trident sign’ or separation of the middle and ring fingers.
FURTHER READING
Álvarez Lopera, J. (2009) El Museo de la Trinidad: historia, obras y documentos, 1838–1872 (Madrid: Museo Nacional del Prado).
Bouza, F. (1993) Locos, enanos y hombres de placer en la corte de los Austrias (Madrid: Ediciones Temas de Hoy).
de D’Aulnoy, D. (1998) Relación que hizo de su Viaje por España la Condesa D’Aulnoy [1679] (Madrid: Tipografía Franco-Española).
Gutiérrez Usillos, A. (ed.) (2018) La hija del Virrey: el mundo femenino en el siglo XVII (Madrid: Ministerio de Cultura y Deporte).
Mena, M. (1986) Monstruos, enanos y bufones en la Corte de los Austrias (Madrid: Amigos del Museo del Prado).
Moreno Villa, J. (1939) Locos, enanos, negros y niños palaciegos: gente de placer que tuvieron los Austrias en la Corte española desde 1563 a 1700 (Mexico: La Casa de España en México).
1 J. Gálvez et al., Libro de inventario del Museo de la Trinidad (1856), registro no. 959.