When Francisco de los Cobos (1477-1547) arrived in Italy for the first time in 1529, accompanying Charles V to attend the solemn imperial coronation in Bologna, he came into contact with a society in which art and its makers enjoyed a prestige and consideration that transcended the strictly artistic sphere. From the end of the 15th century, art had become part of diplomatic relations, not as a mere record of the appearance of marriageable princes, as had been customary until then, but as a valuable commodity with which to entertain foreign dignitaries. The imperial court was presented with numerous artistic objects during its stay in Italy in 1529-1530, mainly from Alfonso d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, and Federico Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, and as the emperor's all-powerful secretary, Cobos was one of the main beneficiaries of these gifts.
The Pietà was in fact a diplomatic gift, in this case from Ferrante Gonzaga, Federico's brother, the genesis of which can be traced in the correspondence between Ferrante and his agent in Rome, Niccolò Sernini. It extends from June 1533 to the end of 1539, and reveals the desperation of Ferrante and Sernini in the face of Sebastiano's (1585-1547) lack of diligence, which led them to consider replacing the Pietà with a work by Raphael or Michelangelo. If they did not do so, it was because Cobos himself had seen the painting in Rome during Holy Week 1536 and showed an interest in it. A year earlier he had obtained a bull from Paul III authorising the erection of a church-pantheon in Úbeda (San Salvador), and he must have thought of the Pietà for his funeral chapel. In Sebastiano's defence, it is worth noting his lack of interest in the commission, to the point of suggesting that it should be entrusted to Titian, an option that Ferrante rejected. Two circumstances made Sebastiano the ideal painter for this commission: his experience with Hispanic patrons, to which I will return later, and above all, his wish to have the work painted on slate, a hitherto unknown material whose use as an artistic support is attributed to Sebastiano around 1530.
The use of slate was intended to make painting durable in order to refute the criticism, common since the 15th century, that it was the most ephemeral of the arts (it was the only one of antiquity to have disappeared without trace), and as such inferior to sculpture, architecture or writing. At the same time, this timeless claim freed painting from historical contingencies and assimilated it to the much-loved Byzantine mosaic icons. The desire for perpetuity and the novelty of the material itself were essential for Ferrante and explain why Sebastiano was chosen, although slate soon aroused suspicion precisely because of its fragility, and in a letter of April 1537, Sernini commented that copper was ultimately "cosa piu sicura et durabile" than slate or wood. The extremely delicate state of conservation of the Pietà confirms those who expressed doubts at the time about the ability of slate to ensure the painting's eternal life. Even so, slate enjoyed a certain popularity as a support for devotional works in the middle decades of the 16th century, especially among the Hispanic clientele, and in imitation of Sebastiano, Titian painted for Charles V a Ecce-Homo in this material (Madrid, Museo del Prado).
After overcoming Sebastiano's initial reluctance, in June 1533 Sernini informed Ferrante Gonzaga in Rome of his willingness to paint a work for Cobos for the very high sum of 500 scudi. Sebastiano suggested two possible subjects: a beautiful Madonna and Child with Saint John the Baptist (probably because he had in mind his last work for a Spaniard, the splendid Holy Family with Angels commissioned by Gonzalo Díaz de Lerma for Burgos cathedral), or "ana nostra donna ch'avesse il figliol'morto in braccio a guisa di quella dela febre, il che li spagnoli per parer buon cristiani et divoti sogliono amare questi (sic) cose pietose". The last part of Sebastiano's commentary is very interesting, for he does not claim that the Spaniards were pious, but that they pretended to be so, surreptitiously accusing them of a religious imposture which, for many Europeans, concealed a clear inferiority complex due to their prolonged contact with Jews and Muslims. Ferrante opted for the Pietà and Sebastiano was able to accommodate the extreme religious sensibility demanded by the Hispanic patrons, although this was not to the detriment of his artistic quality.
The Pietà, deeply rooted in the tradition of the Ecce-Homo, is a work of devotion that invites empathy with Mary's sorrow at the death of her Son, as a copy attributed to Martín Gómez el Viejo (Madrid, Ministry of Justice) urges us to do, in whose original frame we read: "heed and consider if there is pain like mine"(Lamentations of Jeremiah 12). Sebastiano has dispensed with any distracting elements, prioritising the iconic character of the image to the detriment of its original narrative nature. The vast "paese tenebroso" that Giorgio Vasari admired so much in the Pietà that Sebastiano painted for Viterbo in 1512-1515 has disappeared, leaving the figures constrained in an impossible space bathed in a cold nocturnal light that also contributes to extrapolating the scene from precise physical coordinates. Christ, derived from a design by Michelangelo The figure in the foreground is very effective in dramatic terms. His inert body is of more morbid beauty and softer modelling than that of the Michelangelo model, and is scarcely marred by the traces of the Passion. The Virgin Mary, the great intercessor of humanity, rests before the tomb behind which emerges, projecting towards the viewer, her outstretched arm swinging the diagonal formed by the body of Christ. She is flanked by two saints: Mary Magdalene and probably Saint John the Evangelist, and she holds in her hands, or rather displays, the cloth of Veronica and the nails of the cross. The unusual prominence given to these relics, no doubt at the behest of Cobos, who owned among many others the heads of Saints Martha, Benedicta, Egidia and Pauline given to him by Charles V, a fragment of the Lignum Crucis and a tusk of Saint Francis of Assisi which he had acquired in Rome in 1536, obliged the painter to make profound modifications to his initial idea, the model of which he confessed was Michelangelo's Pietà, now in the Vatican : "...".a guisa di quella dela febre".
Unlike in the Michelangelo's Pieta, there is no physical contact between mother and son in this one. The Virgin extends her arms not to embrace Jesus, but to emphatically display the symbols of the Passion, the true recipients of both her meditations (Veronica's cloth) and those of the Magdalene (the nails of the cross). It is particularly significant that Mary does not look at her Son, but at the image of him on Veronica, thus assimilating one to the other, in what is an explicit testimony to the value of relics, very relevant for a funerary setting. The exaltation of the mediating role of the Virgin and the saints and the salvific nature of the relics make the Pietà a resounding manifesto of Catholic orthodoxy that corresponds to what we know of Cobos's religiosity, which is far removed from the Erasmianism of other collaborators of Charles V. An avid collector of relics and indulgences and a devotee of the Rosary, the most interesting testimony to his religiosity is provided by Pedro de Navarra in his Diálogos de la preparación de la muerte (1565), in which the character of Basilio, a transcript of the now deceased Cobos, is only interested in accumulating wealth for his funeral chapel.
The Pietà enjoyed great popularity in Spain on account of its numerous copies in various media, including sculpture. They are more or less faithful copies of varying quality which, like other devotional works by Piombo for Spanish patrons, such as the splendid Christ Portacroce that he painted at the same time for Fernando de Silva, 4th Count of Cifuentes and Spanish ambassador in Rome between 1533 and 1536 (Saint Petersburg, Hermitage), adapt the original to the local religious sensibility. Although the Pietà and the aforementioned Christ Portacroce exhibit an extreme pathos by Italian standards (Sernini said of the Christ of Cifuentes that "... the Christ of Cifuentes is a figure of the Virgin of Cifuentes"), they were painted in the same style as the original.non solamente (non) piaceva, ma offendeva vederlo"), it gives the impression that the latter was still scarce for a certain Hispanic public. Copies of the Pietà, such as the one mentioned above by Martín Gómez el Viejo, or the one erroneously attributed to the circle of Vicente Macip in the Museum of Fine Arts in Bucharest, surpass the original in pathos, emphasising the suffering endured by Christ with twitching grimaces of pain on his face and abundant blood flowing from the wounds.
Miguel Falomir Faus, May 2009
