Hortensio Félix Paravicino

Hortensio Félix Paravicino y Arteaga (12 October 1580 – 12 December 1633) was a Spanish preacher and Culteranismo Baroque poet from the noble house of Pallavicini.

Portrait of Fray Hortensio Félix Paravacino by El Greco circa 1609.

Life

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He was born in Madrid and was educated at the Jesuit college in Ocaña, and on April 18, 1600 joined the Trinitarian Order. A sermon pronounced before Philip III at Salamanca in 1605 brought Paravicino into notice; he rose to high posts in his order, was entrusted with important foreign missions, became royal preacher in 1616, and on the death of Philip III in 1621 delivered a famous funeral oration which was the subject of acute controversy.[1]

His Oraciones evangélicas (1638-1641) makes use of extravagant tropes and metaphors. His Obras posthumas, divinas y humanas (1641) include his devout and secular poems, as well as a play entitled Gridonia;[1] his verse, like his prose, shows the influence of Gongora, and were highly regarded in his lifetime. He was a great connoisseur of painting, but argued for the destruction of all paintings of nudes: "the finest paintings are the greatest threat: burn the best of them". However these views were too extreme for even 17th century Spain, where the King and leading courtiers kept galleries of such works in relatively private rooms, and his piece on the subject was not published in the pamphlet for which it was written.[2]

In film

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Fernando Fernández de Córdoba played Paravicino in the 1947 historic drama Lady in Ermine.[3]

References

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  1. ^ a b   One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domainChisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Paravicino y Arteaga, Hortensio Felix". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 20 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 799.
  2. ^ Javier Portús, p.63, in: Carr, Dawson W. Velázquez. Ed. Dawson W. Carr; also Xavier Bray, Javier Portús and others. National Gallery London, 2006. ISBN 1-85709-303-8
  3. ^ de Mingo Lorente, Adolfo. "La procesión del Corpus Christi de Toledo en el cine" [The Procession of Corpus Christi of Toledo in film] (PDF) (in European Spanish). Toledo: Ayuntamiento de Toledo. p. 2. Retrieved 13 July 2021. A excepción de este -quien, como Samuel, se ha formado en Italia- y del padre fray Hortensio Félix Paravicino (Fernando Fernández de Córdoba), el resto de la sociedad toledana parece dar la espalda al orfebre. [But for this -who, like Samuel, learned in Italy- and Father Friar Hortensio Félix Paravicino (Fernando Fernández de Córdoba), the rest of Toledan society seems to give a cold shoulder to the silversmith.]