Don José de Valdivielso, one of the chaplains of the gay Cardinal Infant
Ferdinand of Austria, relates the following legend in his paper on the
Tax on Pictures, appended to Carducho's Dialogos de la Pintura. A
certain young friar was famous amongst his order, for his skill in
painting; and he took peculiar delight in drawing the Virgin and the
Devil. To heighten the divine beauty of the one, and to devise new and
extravagant forms of ugliness for the other, were the chief recreations
for his leisure hours. Vexed at last by the variety and vigor of his
sketches, Beelzebub, to be revenged, assumed the form of a lovely
maiden, and crossed under this guise the path of the friar, who being of
an amorous disposition, fell at once into the trap. The seeming damsel
smiled on her shaven wooer, but though nothing loth to be won, would not
surrender her charms at a less price than certain reliquaries and jewels
in the convent treasury--a price which the friar in an evil hour
consented to pay. He admitted her at midnight within the convent walls,
and leading her to the sacristy, took from its antique cabinet the
things for which she had asked. Then came the moment of vengeance.
Passing in their return through the moonlit cloister as the friar stole
along, embracing the booty with one arm, and his false Duessa with the
other, the demon-lady suddenly cried out "Thieves!" with diabolical
energy, and instantly vanished. The snoring monks rushed disordered from
their cells and detected their unlucky brother making off with their
plate. Excuse being impossible, they tied the culprit to a column, and
leaving him till matins, when his punishment was to be determined, went
back to their slumbers. When all was quiet, the Devil reappeared, but
this time in his most hideous shape. Half dead with cold and terror, the
discomfited caricaturist stood shivering at his column, while his
tormentor made unmercifully merry with him; twitting him with his
amorous overtures, mocking his stammered prayers, and irreverently
suggesting an appeal for aid to the beauty he so loved to delineate. The
penitent wretch at last took the advice thus jeeringly given--when lo!
the Virgin descended, radiant in heavenly loveliness, loosened his
cords, and bade him bind the Evil One to the column in his place--an
order which he obeyed through her strength, with no less alacrity than
astonishment. She further ordered him to appear among the other monks at
table, and charged herself with the task of restoring the stolen plate
to its place. Thus the tables were suddenly turned. The friar presented
himself among his brethren in the morning, to their no small
astonishment, and voted with much contrition for his own condemnation--a
sentence which was reversed when they came to examine the contents of
the sacristy, and found everything correct. As to the Devil, who
remained fast bound to the pillar, he was soundly flogged, and so fell
into the pit which he had digged for another. His dupe, on the other
hand, gathered new strength from his fall, and became not only a wiser
and a better man, but also an abler artist; for the experience of that
terrible night had supplied all that was wanting to complete the ideal
of his favorite subjects. Thenceforth, he followed no more after
enticing damsels, but remained in his cloister, painting the Madonna
more serenely beautiful, and the Arch Enemy more curiously appalling
than ever.