The Story of Don John of Austria by Luis Coloma (macos ebook reader .txt) 📕
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- Author: Luis Coloma
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Portrait of the same by Gulliermo Key (1520-68)
Painted in Flanders when the Duke was sixty-one.
There is an improbable legend about this picture that it cost the artist his life, from the shock of hearing the Duke let drop in Spanish that the two Counts, Horn and Egmont, were sentenced to death.
Don John of Austria
From a picture attributed to Sir Antonio More in the possession of Don Fernande Fernandez de Velasco.
Cardinal de Granvelle
Born 1517. Died 1586.
Antoine Perrenot. Bishop of Arras. Primate of the Netherlands.
A well-known statesman during the reigns of Charles V and Philip II. Chief Councillor to the Duchess of Parma when Governess of the Netherlands. He became so unpopular that in 1564 Philip II was compelled to advise him to retire to his estates in Burgundy. The Cardinal left vowing that he would not cut his beard until he returned to Brussels. Three years later he went to Rome, where he assisted in the negotiations of the Holy League. He subsequently became Viceroy of Naples.
From his picture by Scipione Pulzone called Gaetano in Municipal Museum, Besançon.
Sebastian Veniero. Doge of Venice
Died 1578.
Son of Moise Venier.
Married Cecilia di Nadalin Contarini.
After being constantly employed in many important posts at home and abroad, including that of Procuratore di San Marco, he became General del Mar, and commanded the left wing at the battle of Lepanto, where he was wounded in the knee by an arrow. Padre Coloma says that he was seventy at this time, which would place his birth in 1501. He was elected Doge June 11, 1577, and died eight months later.
Portrait by Titian in the Prado Gallery, Madrid.
Dispatch announcing the Victory of Lepanto, dated Petala, October 9, 1571. Postscript in Don John's Writing
There are several known copies of the dispatch, the postscripts varying from one to two lines, according to the importance of the person addressed. This one was almost certainly sent to the President of the Council of Castille, Cardinal Espinosa, though, from the outer sheet being torn, the address is wanting.
It is in three lines:
"Doy a V.M. el parabien desta vitoria que Nrõ Señor ha sido servido darnos, como a quien holgara de tan felice nueva lo es justo."
"I congratulate Your Grace on the victory that Our Lord has been pleased to give us, as is due to one who will rejoice over such happy news."
From the collection of the Conde de Valencia de D. Juan. Photographed specially for this book.
Postscript in D. John of Austria's writing from the collection of the Conde de Valencia de D. Juan.
Philip II and his son, Don Fernando
Sir William Stirling Maxwell says that tradition has connected this picture with Lepanto. Philip II is represented holding up to Heaven his short-lived son, by Anne of Austria, Don Fernando, who was born December 4, 1571, shortly after the news of the victory reached Spain. It is stated that the picture was painted by Titian (1477-1576) "at the age of ninety-four at least."
It is in the Prado Gallery, Madrid.
Statue of Don John of Austria at Messina
This statue by Andrea Calamech is still in existence (June, 1912). Sir William Stirling Maxwell is "disposed to consider it the most interesting and important" portrait which has come down to us. He says, "The head, which was considered an excellent likeness, is very noble and graceful." "Although the gilding with which it once shone resplendent has disappeared it is still one of the most effective monuments of sixteenth-century art."
"The statue stood in the small Piazza between the Palace and the Church of Our Lady of the Pillar until 1853 when it was removed to the Piazza of the Annunziata."
Don John of Austria
From a print sent by Colonel Coloma.
Antonio Pérez
Died 1611.
Illegitimate son of Gonzalo Pérez.
Married Doña Juana de Coello Bozmediano. Secretary and favourite of Philip II. Fell into disgrace and was tried and tortured in 1582. Contrived to escape, first to Aragon, afterwards to France and England, but was sent back to Portugal and died in Paris.
In his exile he wrote his "Memorial" to prove his own innocence and his master's guilt. Major Martin Hume thinks that "the moral portrait of the King (Philip II), still current in foreign countries, owes much to the literary talent with which Antonio Pérez presented his subtle sophistries."
(Españoles é ingleses en el siglo XVI.)
The picture by Sir Antonio More is in Paris.
Autograph of Barbara Blombergh
Mother of Don John of Austria by the Emperor Charles V.
Afterwards married to Jerome Kegel.
Died 1598.
From the collection of the Conde de Valencia de D. Juan.
Photographed specially for this book.
Princesa de Évoli
Born 1540.
Daughter of the Count de Melito. Married in 1553 Ruy Gomez de Silva, afterwards Prince of Évoli, who died 1573.
She was a great heiress, and her family accused Antonio Pérez of squandering her fortune. There now seems little doubt that anger at the discovery of her intrigue with him was the chief reason of the assassination of the Secretary Escovedo.
Philip II caused her to be arrested suddenly in 1579, and imprisoned first in the tower of Pinto, and then exiled to her own house at Pastrana for the rest of her life.
The picture from which the print used is taken is by Sanchez Coello, in the possession of her descendant, the Duque de Pastrana.
Philip II as an Old Man
"This picture is well worthy of note, as it shows how the crowned monk of the Escorial looked when on the brink of the grave. In Pantoja's worn, sickly, sour old man, with lack-lustre, restless eyes, protruding under-lip and
wearing a rusty sugar-loaf hat and holding in his hand a common brown rosary, we see the last stage of the sumptuous Prince whose youthful bearing has been made immortal by the pencil of Titian."
By Juan Pantoja de la Cruz in the Prado Gallery, Madrid.
Don John of Austria's Place of Burial
View of the Escorial and surrounding country. Present day.
To quote Señor Baros, "The victory of St. Quentin was gained on the Feast of St. Laurence and Don Philip wished to raise an edifice in honour of the saint which should be a convent, a royal mausoleum and a palace. When the Emperor took leave of his son he had charged him to erect a worthy sepulchre for his own remains and those of the Empress. The King caused the Spanish architect Juan Bautista de Toledo to come from Naples, who designed the Escorial in the shape of a gridiron. The first stone was laid in 1563. This superb monument was finished by Juan de Herrera, 1584."
These short notes are mostly culled from the works of Sir William Stirling Maxwell, Major Martin Hume and Señor Baros. Those on the Duque de Alba are taken from the catalogue made for the present Duke by Don Angel de Barcia, of which a portion was specially reprinted for this book.
Like a flock of frightened sparrows the children of Leganés arrived that afternoon at Ana de Medina's door, just as the bells were ringing for vespers. Ana's son Jeromín was the first to get there, with his big blue eyes staring and his beautiful golden hair thrown back. But there was good cause for all this, and twenty shrill voices hastened to explain it to Ana, who, startled, came to the door distaff in hand, and a scolding on her lips.
There was no school in Getafe that afternoon; the sun had stricken down Sancha Apelza, the master's wife, while working on the farm of the Comunero, and she was to receive the last sacraments that night. The children from Leganés were coming back to the village, playing as usual by the way at Moors and Christians. Jeromín always insisted on this, and never would play at Comuneros, or at being Padilla, Adelentado or Bishop Acuña, all recent and popular heroes. He said it was enough for him to be Jeromín and to pretend to cut off the heads of Moors. He entrenched himself in the Canon's well as if it were a castle on a rock, and Pedro Verde defended the orchard of Maricuernos opposite, declaring it to be the Vega of Granada. Jeromín gave the word "Santiago," and from both sides, like bullets from an arquebus, came lumps of soft earth. At this inopportune moment, while the battle was raging along the road from Madrid bordering the orchard of Maricuernos, four mules appeared, harnessed in pairs with long traces to what seemed to be a little wooden house, with two tiny windows and four big wheels. A man was riding the foremost mule on the off side, and another was seated on the roof of the house, guiding the mules with a long stick. Through one of the windows a very fat man with grey moustaches and a pointed beard, could be seen, sitting inside. Four well-armed horsemen and two baggage-mules escorted the unwieldy vehicle. The children were frightened at the sight of this extraordinary machine, such as they had never seen before, but curiosity overcame their fear and they all grouped themselves, very silent, in the orchard of Maricuernos to see it pass closer. The boys' terror increased when they realised that the heavy machine was halting in front of them, and the fat gentleman, putting his head out of window, was asking them very politely whether the Emperor's former guitar-player, Francis Massy, who had married Ana de Medina, a native of the village, still lived there.
The boys began to giggle and look at each other, not daring to answer, stir or even take off their caps as a mark of respect. The fat man repeated the question two or three times very politely and kindly, till at last Pedro Verde, who was eleven years old, and had been twice to Pinto, and had seen the cavalcade of Ruy Gómez de Silva from afar, made up his mind to answer, his mouth dry with fear and keeping his cap on, that the musician Francisquin, as they called him, had died some years previously, but that his widow Ana de Medina still lived there and that her son Jeromín, was one of those present. This Pedro demonstrated by seizing Jeromín by the neck of his doublet and pulling him forward. For the fat man to hear this, look at Jeromín and stretch his arms out of the window as if to seize him and drag him into the coach was only the work of a second. But it took the children, terrified at the old man's behaviour, even less time to scamper up the hill towards the village as if they had legions of devils at their heels. The gentleman called to them to stop. The escort also called out. But the children, spurred on by fright, ran harder and harder up the hill like hunted hares, until they stopped at the threshold of Ana de Medina where we met them.
The widow's face fell when she heard all this, and she drew Jeromín towards her as if she wished to hide him in her woollen skirt. She asked the boys several questions, but they all answered together, and all she could make out was that a fat gentleman had wished to carry off Jeromín in a little house on wheels.
Ana, worried, went back into her house and sent a message by Pedro Verde to ask the priest to come and see her, the cleric Bautista Vela, who served the parish for D. Alonso de Rojas, chaplain to His Majesty in the Royal Chapel at Granada at that time. Bautista Vela tarried too long; by the time he arrived at Ana's house he could no longer be there alone. Round the corner of the street came the
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