COUNT DE

See also:

• COUNT DE VILLAMEDIANA (1582-1622)

VILLAMEDIANA (1582-1622)  , Spanish poet, was born at Lisbon towards the end of 1582 . His father, a distinguished diplomatist, upon whom the dignity of count was conferred in 1603, entrusted the education of the brilliant boy (Juan de Tassis y Peralta) to Luis Tribaldos de Toledo,73 the future editor of Mendoza's Guerras de Granada, and to Bartolome Jimenez Pat6n, who subsequently dedicated Mercurius Trismegistus to his pupil . On leaving Salamanca the youth married in 16o1, and succeeded to the title on the death of his father in 1607; he was prominent in the dissipated life of the capital, acquired a bad reputation as a gambler, was forbidden to attend court, and resided in Italy from 1611 to 1617 . On his return to Spain, he soon proved himself a fearless, pungent satirist . Such public men as Lerma, Rodrigo Calder6n and Jorge de Tobar writhed beneath his murderous invective; the foibles of humbler private persons were exposed to public ridicule in verses furtively passed from hand to hand . So great was the resentment caused by these envenomed attacks that Villamediana was once more ordered to withdraw from court in 1618 . He returned on the death of Philip III. and was appointed gentleman in waiting to Philip IV.'s young wife, Isabel de Bourbon, daughter of Henri IV . Secure in his position, he scattered his scathing epigrams in profusion; but his ostentatious attentions to the queen supplied his countless foes with a weapon which was destined to destroy him . A fire broke out while his masque, La Gloria de Niguea, was being acted before the court on the 15th of May 1622, and Villamediana carried the queen to a place of safety . Suspicion deepened; Villamediana neglected a significant warning that his life was in peril, and on the 21st of August 1622 he was murdered as he stepped out of his coach . The responsibility for his death was divided between Philip IV. and Olivares; the actual assassin was either Alonso Mateo or Ignacio Mendez; and naturally the crime remained unpunished . Villamediana's works, first published at Saragossa in 1629, contain not only the nervous, blighting verses which made him widely feared and hated, but a number of more serious poems embodying the most exaggerated conceits of gongorism .

But, even when adopting the perverse conventions of the

hour, he remains a poet of high distinction, and his satirical verses, more perfect in form, are instinct with a cold, concentrated scorn which has never been surpassed . (J .