This is one of my favorite Spanish Renaissance portraits, by Juan Pantoja de la Cruz and entitled Portrait of Diego de Villamayor. However, for the life of me, I cannot find any information at all on Diego de Villamayor. I can find no record whatsoever of who he was, what he did, or why he was notable enough to have such a grand portrait painting. The only results for searching his name are for that specific painting.
Does anyone have any idea? Nava? Any other Spanish people here?
Well, Luis del Mármol Carvajal’s Historia del [sic] rebelión y castigo de los moriscos del Reino de Granada mentions a Franciscan by that name who was killed in 1568. I would think that’s a generation too early and the wrong costume, but it’s one to beat in any case. Perusing the genealogy sites, there are a lot of “Diego García de Villamayor” and “Diego Fernández de Villamayor”-types out there. I wonder if the portrait’s name hasn’t been truncated at some point for non-Spaniards.
No idea. But I note that painting is also titled ‘Don Diego de Valmayor’ ( c. 1605 )and Valmayor and Villamayor are not synonyms for the same place. De la Cruz was a court painter, so I assume that this was the knighted son of some high nobleman who had been given a unique honorific ( maybe he was born in Villamayor, maybe he was given a stretch of land along the Valmayor river - who knows ). Good look tracking him down.
Meanwhile I have to say that the ubiquity of that black and gilded armored pose is slightly ridiculous. Sure it looked cool in the original ( I assume Titian’s Charles V ). But at a distance you’d be hard-pressed to tell Philip Manuel of Savoy from the Duke of Lerma from Don Diego there ;). It’s like a bunch of rich guys deciding they all want the same red Ferrari, so they could look as a cool as the first guy who got one. Wankers :p.
The painting is dated 1609; Pantoja died in 1608. What gives?
I agree; this, at least, shows some originality.
They probably kept a bunch of armor paintings in stock, and just filled in the head.
