Acceso usuarios
Kevin Ingram
Juan Bautista Maíno’s La recuperación de Bahía de Todos los Santos (Recovery of Bahia) was one of twelve paintings commissioned by Philip IV’s valido, the Count-Duke of Olivares, for the inauguration of the Buen Retiro palace in 1635 (Figure 1). As Jonathan Brown and John Elliott have pointed out, these works were created to celebrate Spain’s military achievements and promote the need for a Union of Arms, through which all members of the Spanish empire would contribute to its common defence.Footnote1 However, there is more to Maíno’s painting than a call for military unity. Executed against a background of growing antisemitism, much of it directed towards a Portuguese converso merchant community, the Recovery of Bahia is a call for prudence and magnanimity towards both the enemy (the Dutch) and the perceived enemy within (the conversos). To gain a clearer understanding of the work’s significance, I would suggest that we view it as a pendant to Diego Velázquez’s La expulsión de los moriscos, painted eight years earlier, in which Olivares employed his favourite artist subtly to rebuke a previous political regime for rejecting compassion and leniency in favour of recrimination and revenge. Olivares wished to use the Recovery of Bahia as a means of promoting his regime’s probity and magnanimity, extended to all subjects, including conversos. However, in championing the conversos as equal subjects, the valido inevitably exposed himself to accusations of philosemitism from a society conditioned to see the New Christians as an affront to Old Christian purity and honour. This tense standoff between Olivares and the Spanish public is manifest in Maíno’s famous canvas, in which the fate of a group of Portuguese conversos is left in perpetual limbo between condemnation and reprieve.
