Antonio Pimentel de Prado

Don Antonio Pimentel de Prado (1604-1671/72)[1]
Sébastien Bourdon, Christina of Sweden, 1653, Museo del Prado.[2]

Antonio Pimentel de Prado y lo Bianco (Palermo, 1604 - Antwerp (c. 1671-72) was a Spanish officer, a governor of Nieuwpoort (1646–1651), ambassador in Stockholm (1652–1654), Knight of the Order of Santiago (1658),[3] representative in Paris (1659), governor of Cadiz (1660–1670), and at the end of his life counsel and chief of the army in Antwerp (1670–1672).

Life

About his youth is not much known. His father Lorenzo Pimentel Prado served at the court of the Duke of Bivona in Palermo and had three sons: Juan, Antonio and Gregorio. His nephew Bernardino de Rebolledo appointed Antonio Pimentel del Prado as the Spanish ambassador in Sweden. This was the first Spanish mission to Sweden since the reign of John III of Sweden.

Christina, Queen of Sweden, began in 1651 negotiations with Philip IV of Spain and had the Swedish diplomat Matthias Palbitzki sent to the Spanish court. Philip IV who was looking for good relations had ordered the Spanish diplomat to promote Swedish interests anywhere in Europe. The aim of the embassy in Stockholm was officially to investigate the military power of Sweden, but the main task was to find out whether the queen had no wedding plans, because the balance of power in Europe would be severely affected if Christina married someone hostile to the power of Spain.

Don Antonio Pimentel arrived in Dalarö on August 12, 1652, along with his wife, children and an entourage of 50 people, to appear in Stockholm on 16 August. Already on August 19 he was received by the queen. The gallant Pimentel quickly became her confidant. He tried to obtain support for her proposal to abdicate. Christina and Pimentel began secret negotiations, often conducted in her library which gave rise to rumors. She gave him an insight into her plans for the future after abdication.[4]

Departure

Pimentel departed after asking for a large portrait of the Queen as a gift to the King of Spain. This painting by Sebastien Bourdon was finished in June 1653 and now hangs in the Prado. The Queen appointed him in early August before his departure a knight of the Amaranthen Order. All members had to promise never to marry again or not at all;[5] (the order was dissolved in 1654).When he left Gothenburg, his ship leaked and he was forced to return. Pimentel went with the queen to Östergötland and followed her to Stockholm. Until June 1654, when there was nothing to stand in the way of her conversion Christina abdicated. She left her country for the Spanish Netherlands to embrace the Catholic faith. Christina continued her friendship with Pimentel, partly because Christina wanted to mediate, between France and Spain who were involved in the Franco-Spanish War (1635-1659).

Pimentel and Christina met again in Brussels in 1655, and he was present when she converted on Christmas Eve of that year. Then he was part of her entourage to Innsbruck and Rome. He left her in 1656 when she made overtures to France. Pimentel later served as a diplomat in Paris and, on behalf of Spain, prepared the Peace of the Pyrenees (October 1659).

Movie portrayal in Queen Christina

In the highly fictionalized 1933 movie Queen Christina, starring Greta Garbo, Pimental (usually called Antonio or simply "the Spanish envoy") was played by John Gilbert, at the insistence of Garbo, Gilbert's real-life ex-lover. In the movie the queen is slumming anonymously around the countryside on horseback and teases Antonio and small retinue (not including his family or other women and children) for running his coach into a snowy ditch. She is taken for a young man and given a 1-thaler tip for providing a solution to the Spaniards' dilemma. She rides on and takes the finest room at the inn she'd recommended to him. Antonio later arrives and insists on the finest room for himself. They work out a bed-sharing compromise, since Christina is still mistaken for a man. Partial disrobing eventually reveals her secret, and Antonio becomes her first truly "soul-freeing" lover. She doesn't let on about being the Christina but only promises to see him later in Stockholm.

When Pimental arrives at the Swedish court there as Spanish envoy, he is astonished to behold Christina as queen. Their professions of love continue in private. Christina is grateful for being shown what true love and a somewhat normal life could be like in the future, without dealing with the true queen's conflicted religiosity, nor mentioning Pimental's family. Right after Christina's 1654 abdication, the movie has Antonio felled in a sword duel and dying in her arms. In actuality Pimental had dealings with the ex-queen for a couple more years, and he continued to serve Spain until the early 1670s.

References

  1. ↑ ANTONIO PIMENTEL DE PRADO Y LO BIANCO, CABALLERO DE SANTIAGO Archived March 20, 2012, at the Wayback Machine.
  2. ↑ Konsthistorisk tidskrift/ Journal of Art History Volume 58, Issue 3, 1989
  3. ↑ Vargas, Diego de; John L. Kessell (ed.) Remote beyond Compare: letters of don Diego de Vargas to his family from New ...
  4. ↑ Kristina of Sweden
  5. ↑ Henry Woodhead Memoirs of Christina, Queen of Sweden. In 2 volumes
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