The Enlightened Cándido María Trigueros and «Modernity» in Art and Literature. Revisiting the «Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns»: Regarding a Poem about Murillo

Abstract

Although a somewhat heterodox man, Cándido María Trigueros was a prestigious figure among the intellectuals of the Enlightment, especially among those from his native Seville. This city played an important role in the advancement of the ideas of the Enlightment; at the same time, it became the main focus of recovery of Murillo’s work. In one of his lesser-known poems, Trigueros offers an interesting perspective by proposing the painter as a model opposed to the imitation of the Greco-Roman classics. The textual variants of a little-known manuscript make possible to analyse the differences between the public and private dimensions of the text, and to observe how the poem is redirected, in the printed version, towards its main purpose: to present Murillo not only as a canonical painter, but also as a «modern» artist. Trigueros himself offers samples of renovation in his work and, particularly in this text, shows and innovative and unprecedented reading of Cervantes.