Bocangel's "Portrait of His Majesty, by Martinez Montanes, Sculpted in Clay"

This article analizes Gabriel Bocangel y Unzueta's sonnet "Retrato de Su Majestad por Martinez Montanes, esculpido en barro" in light of the interplays between poetry and painting in Golden Age Spain. The sonnet's relation to both Velazquez's Portrait of Juan Martinez Montanes and the poetry of Juan de Jauregui as well as to Spanish seventeenth-century theoretical writings on visual arts is discussed. Bocangel uses the trope of the competition between the arts in order to theorize how poetry, conceptualized as breath, addresses the challenges of portraying Philip IV.