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Updated: May 22, 2025
The two Valencian knights did not delay to challenge Quiñones, since he had remained uninjured; and, as they had the right to demand horses and arms, they chose those which Quiñones had used in the last joust. The chronicler adds: "It seems to me that they did not ask it so much for their honor as for the safety of their skins."
The spiritual languor, the melancholy sentiment, the mystical tendency, the curiosity and interest in the unseen which are important characteristics of the Florentine who read his Dante to such good purpose do not appear in the work of this frank and lusty Valencian, but where else in modern painting do we find the gracile forms, the supple muscles, the buoyancy of carriage, the light impetuosity of movement, and the draperies blown into the shapes of wings and sails, which meet us here as in the pagan compositions of Botticelli?
We at once gave the renegade five hundred crowns to buy the vessel, and with eight hundred I ransomed myself, giving the money to a Valencian merchant who happened to be in Algiers at the time, and who had me released on his word, pledging it that on the arrival of the first ship from Valencia he would pay my ransom; for if he had given the money at once it would have made the king suspect that my ransom money had been for a long time in Algiers, and that the merchant had for his own advantage kept it secret.
Their induments were what the Valencian populace refers to as its "war trappings," short skirts or kilts, much mottled with spangles, trimmings and lace fringes, like the tunic of the Apaches; helmets topped off with huge cock plumes, arms and legs "armored" with a rude fabric of cotton tufts to give a distant suggestion of mail.
It is one of the artist's few pictures in which he feels the Weltschmerz. His is a nature bubbling over with health and happiness. He is a Valencian, was born in 1863 of poor parents, and by reason of his native genius and stubborn will power he became what he is the painter of vibrating sunshine without equal. Let there be no mincing of comparisons in this assertion.
The populations which acknowledged him as their chief either knew nothing of each other, or regarded each other with positive aversion. The Biscayan was in no sense the countryman of the Valencian, nor the Lombard of the Biscayan, nor the Fleeting of the Lombard, nor the Sicilian of the Fleeting. The Arragonese had never ceased to pine for their lost independence.
Early in the morning, at a fixed hour, he issued from his house in one of the small alleys, staff in hand, and with a curious kind of horn or whistle. This he blew as he walked along, from time to time, without turning his head, in that strange trance of passivity which distinguishes the Valencian peasant.
Fortunately he had confined himself to local literature, and his inspiration would not admit any other drapery than that of Valencian verse. Next to Valencia and its past glories, Greece claimed his admiration. Once a year Ulysses beheld him arrayed in his frock coat, his chest starred with decorations and in his lapel the golden cicada, badge of the poets of Provence.
The winds were contrary, and it was not till the 11th that they anchored in Altea Bay, at the mouth of the Guadalaviar, on the Valencian coast. On the other side of the roadstead stood the castle and village of Denia. The expedition was received with good will by the people, who hated the ascendency of France at Madrid and were bitterly jealous of Castile.
In order to perpetuate this event, Santa Barbara was depicted on the canvas as a lady dressed in a full skirt and slashed sleeves, and at her feet was the basilisa in the dress of a Valencian peasant arrayed in great jewels. In vain Don Esteban affirmed that this picture had been painted centuries after the death of the Empress. The child's imagination vaulted disdainfully over such difficulties.
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