Italian Renaissance art is exhibited throughout Lope de Vega's plays, creating a museum of words where Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian, Federico Zuccaro, Jacopo Bassano and many others enhance the works with their designs, and design new meanings with their art. Simonides of Ceos refers to poetry as speaking pictures — and Lope unleashes verses that recreate art through allusions to art and through ekphrasis. While Lope's references to Michelangelo are few and often puzzling, allusions and ekphrases of Titian's canvases abound in his texts. In spite of the wealth of material, almost nothing has been written on the subject except for a few essays that have turned to discrete problems in the relationship between Titian and Lope, including questions of empire, mythology, melancholy, Orientalism, and the portrayal of women.

This essay seeks to provide an introduction to the uses of ekphrasis in Lope’s plays by singling out one of his works and studying its pictorial aspects in detail. In La quinta de Florencia, an ekphrastic passage that seems to refer to a painting by Titian is attributed to Michelangelo. But before turning to this puzzle, another question must be resolved which impinges upon it: why does Lope de Vega resort to ekphraseis in his plays, a classical device that is virtually absent from Italian Renaissance theatre and even from French neo-classical drama? And, what are his models in this rhetorical move?

At the inception of La quinta de Florencia, we find that César, the Duke’s secretary, has constructed a pleasure villa outside Florence, surrounded by fountains and gardens. The wealth of its interior is described in terms of works of art:

The description of César's collection would not only recall collections of art in Italy and Spain, but would also foreground the erotic quality of these ‘museums’.