Text and Image:
Visual Adaptations
Parallel to the history of translation of Don Quixote, the novel has inspired a variety of visual interpretations, which have been produced most commonly in France, Spain, and England. From Pablo Picasso’s iconic sketch of Don Quixote and Sancho to the surrealist paintings by Octavio Ocampo, each artist has demonstrated an individual reading of the novel and introduced his or her own version of the story to the world. But, in the context of translation, the most fascinating images are the illustrations that have appeared in print alongside the text and imposed subjective interpretations on the text. A translator may color a text with his or her interpretation, a fact that only becomes more visible when images appear alongside translations.
Of the many series of Don Quixote illustrations, the most notable example is likely the 18th-century collection of 28 paintings by French artist and playwright Charles-Antoine Coypel, which were created as designs for a series of tapestries by the Gobelins Manufactory. Coypel was the First Painter to the King under the rule of Louis XV and the director of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture in Paris; his illustrations were later adapted into engravings that appeared in French, English, and Dutch translations of Don Quixote.
Meanwhile, some of the best remembered illustrations of Don Quixote produced in England are Francis Hayman’s drawings, which have appeared in several editions but were originally designed for the 1755 translation by Tobias Smollett. Hayman also illustrated a number of other classic texts, including several of Shakespeare’s plays and Milton’s Paradise Lost, and went on to become one of the founders of the Royal Academy of Art in London.
The vast majority of these images, when they draw inspiration from Part II, Chapter LXII of Don Quixote, only portray the icon episode of the Enchanted Head and omit the final scene at the printing-house. One of the only depictions of this metafictional episode comes from the 1797 Spanish edition published by Gabriel de Sancha, which included illustrations by a number of Spanish painters rather than a collection by a single artist; one of these artists, Luis Paret y Alcázar, chose to capture a moment of dialogue between Don Quixote and one of the editors working at the printing-house.
Yet most illustrated versions of Don Quixote, even when the artists shift their attention away from the episode of the Enchanted Head, are limited in scope and only provide one or two images to accompany Part II, Chapter LXII. A notable exception is the series by French artist Gustave Doré, an extremely prolific illustrator who also worked on editions of Dante, Shakespeare, Perrault, Balzac, Poe, Hugo, Milton, Coleridge, Tennyson, and Ariosto. Doré completed an incredible 370 plates for the 1863 French translation by Louis Viardot, which were later used in English editions including the translation by John Ormsby.
