Tauromaquia
The Tauromaquia (full title: Tauromaquia o arte torear á caballo y á pie ) is a script that for the first time laid down the rules according to which the Spanish bullfight is essentially carried out to this day. The text soon developed into a popular guide and textbook for all toreros .
Contents of the Tauromaquia
The matador José Delgado y Galvez, called Pepe Illo (1754-1801), described in 1796 the rules by which he practiced his profession. He propagated a form of confrontation with the bull (corrida), which was still new at the time and which gradually gained acceptance and is still practiced today as the “fiesta nacional”. This replaced three older manifestations with different cultural and social backgrounds: noblemen fought the bull on horseback with a lance - this could be seen as a symbol of the power of man over untamed nature; Random bull runs took place in the villages, which were also interpreted as a bond between the farmers and their cattle; and in the city slaughterhouses the professional butchers (matadors) who worked there celebrated bull slaughter festivals together with the poor population of the suburbs.
Echoes of these three variants were reflected in the new set of rules that arose in the course of the Enlightenment and was disseminated by Pepe Illo and others. The often dangerous disorder of previous events has been replaced by a disciplined, choreographed sequence of individual actions.
In 1804 the second edition of the Tauromaquia was published , revised by an anonymous bullfighting enthusiast (aficionado) and supplemented by 30 formally quite undemanding etchings , some of which were also colored afterwards . They describe the normal course of a corrida step by step , in which six bulls are usually killed - in sections of around 20 minutes each. The picadores lance the bull from armored horses in the neck. The bandilleros who walk on foot stab two short skewers three times in his back. The matador kills the animal with a sword blow between the shoulder blades; an assistant shortens the agony with a blow with a dagger. The three main phases are reminiscent of the bullfights of the nobility, the rural bull festivals and the slaughter festivals in the suburbs.
The Tauromaquia at Goya and Picasso
Both artists, Francisco de Goya and Pablo Picasso , created graphic bullfighting cycles that had Delgado's text as a starting point, but did not exactly follow it. Goya's 33 etchings were created between 1814 and 1816, and he advertised them in a daily newspaper: "The series gives an idea of the beginnings, the progress and the current state of these festivals in Spain." But he also uses the bullfight as a patriotic metaphor : The The bull stood for the defeated French occupiers of Spain, the matador for the victorious fighting people. Picasso, a passionate fan of bullfighting and an admirer of Goya, created a series of etchings entitled Minotauromachy in 1935 and was later commissioned by a publisher from Barcelona to illustrate a new edition of the Tauromaquia . In 1957 he allegedly completed 26 etchings on the subject in just three hours. He too did not adhere strictly to the text, but chose his motifs largely freely.
gallery
Illustrations from the second edition of the Tauromaquia , 1804.
Plate 2: "The first phase: the lancing".
Plate 10: "The first gait with the cape (capa) in steerable bulls".
Plate 13: "The fourth course with timid bulls".
Plate 29: "The way to drag the dead bull from the square".
literature
- Raúl Galindo: El toreo, el teoría. Análisisde tauromaquia fundamental . Bellaterra, Barcelona 2014, ISBN 978-84-7290-645-7 .
- Antonio J. Pradel Rico: El gesto justo. Ensayo para una estética desde la tauromaquia . Bellaterra, Barcelona 2014, ISBN 978-84-7290-677-8 .
