One look can say it all. And that of Marta de Nevares, better known as Amarilis, became a bible for Lope de Vega (1562-1635). When the Madrid poet and playwright saw her emerald eyes for the first time at a poetry contest, he was captivated. She was 25 years old and married; He was 54 and was a chaplain. But none of this prevented the passion from unleashing.
Those green eyes also caught the attention of Pablo Díaz Couchoud. This Barcelona ophthalmologist approached Lope’s last love after learning that, a few years after they met, she lost her sight and died as a result of this blindness. As a professional and expert in the field of vision, there were several questions that arose. What illness did he suffer from? What remedies were provided to you? Would he have a cure today? These and other questions, such as the story of those years of love, are collected by the doctor in the book Marta’s Eyes.
“There is no great biography of Lope de Vega written and, about Marta’s end, little is known, other than that she became blind. It has been suggested that the cause could be syphilis, since, in her youth, Lope had been a very womanizer although, in principle, he had not been unfaithful to her. Syphilis can cause blindness, especially at that time, when medicine was what it was. But the letters that the playwright exchanges with the Duke of Sessa, his patron and greatest confessor, provide a series of details that allow us to think that it could be something else.
Díaz insists that the diagnosis “cannot be definitive”, since “it would be necessary to be able to visit the patient” and have even more data than those found in the correspondence, but he believes that it could be a pituitary adenoma, a tumor of slow growth that evolved until it caused death.
“Three or four years after the first symptoms appeared, he began to experience outbursts of anger and phases of absences and, shortly before death, he had a complete alteration of consciousness, so it can be deduced that we are facing a process cerebral”.
Another important fact is that “Lope always describes her eyes, even in Marta’s last days, as looking completely normal and without any external alteration that explains the blindness,” says Díaz, who adds that, today, “this type of tumors have treatment, but in the 17th century, which were left to their free evolution, they did not. But that does not mean that they did not try, although ophthalmology at the time treated only some conditions that were visible externally and this was not the case.”
There were several remedies that the young De Nevares tried, in the hope that her vision would return. “Potions, poultices, caustics and ointments of all kinds. They even prescribed five ounces of cow or ox dung made in the summer, so that she could put it on her eyes. It sounds comical, but that was the medicine of the time.”
Far from distancing them, “the disease unites them. “Lope takes care of her and worries about her, more than any of the previous women with whom he shared life.” But, although hope remained until almost the end, trying all kinds of nostrums, even from English healers, the day came when, “aware of the futility of treatments, they requested divine intervention. Religion always accompanied them, but it was not enough.” In April 1632, Marta de Nevares died, much to the regret of Lope, who did not forget her either in his thoughts or in his verses. Eternal Amaryllis.