Timanthes' Painting in the Cervantine Circle: Pedro de Padilla, Lobo Lasso de la Vega, and Don Quijote

Abstract

Most paintings from Antiquity, especially Greek ones, have disappeared. Nevertheless, we have descriptions of many of them, mostly in book 35 of Pliny the Elder’s Natural History. This article studies how two paintings by Timanthes described by Pliny appeared as ekphrases in Golden Age poetry. Although there are ekphrases of Timanthes in Garcilaso and Boscán, this article focuses on two poets of the circle of Cervantes: Pedro de Padilla and Lobo Lasso de la Vega. While Padilla includes an ekphrasis of Timanthes’ The Sacrifice of Iphigenia in his eclogues, Lobo Lasso de la Vega penned three poems on Greek painting, including works by Apelles, Parrhasius and Timanthes. Of the latter, he focuses on a lesser-known painting, instead of on The Sacrifice of Iphigenia: The Sleeping Cyclops. After examining these two poets, our article analyses the presence of Timanthes in Cervantes’ Don Quixote. All these texts help us gather the importance of Timanthes and the literary connections his painting created in Golden Age literature.