Las hijas del Cid
The painting refers to an episode taken from the “The Song of my Cid” (El Cantar de Mio Cid), the oldest known Spanish epic, a legendary account of Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, a Castilian nobleman and warlord of medieval Spain. The Moors called him El Cid (“The Cid” or “My Cid” from the Arabic Sid-y = My Lord). The song tells El Cid exploits and takes place during the reconquest of Spain from the Moors, It was written around 1140 AD.
The painting refers to the “Affront of Corpes.” (Cantar, verses 2278-3730) At the request of the King of Castile, El Cid consent to the marriage of his two daughters, Doña Elvira y Doña Sol, to two noblemen from the neighbouring Kingdom of Lion, the “Infantes de Carrión,” los Condes Diego y Fernando de Carrión. The Infantes de Carrión were put to shame by El Cid after being scared of a lion roaming in the court, and running away from a campaign to fight the Moors. In revenge, the Infants rape and abuse their wives, tying them to trees by a roadside in Corpes:
Both brothers attacked and whipped away
yelling, competing who could whip better
until the girls were barely conscious and the Carrions tired.
They left them for dead in the forest floor (verse 187)
Leaving their wives lying half naked
for mountain birds and forest beasts
to eat as they pleased (verse 189)
Painting the “Affront of Corpes” become popular in Spain in the 19th Century as a good theme to depict nudes.
In 1961, the epic was made into a movie with Charlton Heston as El Cid and Sophia Loren as his wife.
The movie makes no mention of the “Affront of Corpes.” At the time Heston was working his way through the big directors: after Cecil B. DeMille and William Wyler, he worked for Anthony Mann that had directed big macho Westerns, befitting Heston’s masculinity. The result was awful. El Cid did not, as in the film, ever took Valencia by giving bread to its people: instead he ransacked the surrounding villages, starved the city, took it by assault, and seized all its riches. And El Cid did not offer Valencia's crown to Alfonso, but ruled there himself. Different to Heston, El Cid did not die from an arrow wound while defending the city, but dropped dead in 1099 during peacetime from unknown causes. Also, Yusuf ibn Tashufin was not defeated. He led the Almoravids to victory at Valencia in 1102, when he was a youngish 96 years old. In the movies all the Spaniards look distinctly Aryan and only Sophia Loren looks Mediterranean. Heston is so grandiose that he could have been replaced by a marble marionette. At the beginning of filming, Heston found out that Loren was earning a $1m paycheque – substantially larger than his. He was so angry that he refused even to look at her in most of their scenes, resulting in a rather amusing El Cid.
It would have much better if the enacted the “Affront of Corpes”, perhaps with a good flogging of Sophia tied naked to a whipping pole...