Lope de Aguirre

Lope de Aguirre , c.1510-1561, Spanish rebel and adventurer in colonial South America. He was often involved in violence and sedition before joining (1560) the expedition of Pedro de Ursúa down the Marañón and the Amazon. He was one of the men who overthrew and killed Ursúa, then he killed Ursúa's successor, Fernando de Guzmán, and took command himself. He and his men reached the Atlantic—probably by the Orinoco River—and on the way wantonly laid waste to indigenous villages. In 1561 he seized Margarita Island and held it in a grip of terror. He then crossed to the mainland in an attempt to take Panama, openly proclaiming rebellion against the Spanish crown. Surrounded at Barquisimeto, Venezuela, Aguirre in desperation crowned his infamous life by the murder of his own daughter. He surrendered and was shot.

Bibliography: See W. Lowry, Lope Aguirre, the Wanderer (1952); A. F. Bandelier, The Gilded Man (1893, repr. 1962); S. Minta, Aguirre (1994).

Rueda, Lope de (c.1505–65), Spain's first actor-manager and popular dramatist, whose plays were performed by his own company in squares and courtyards throughout the country, as well as in palaces and great houses. He was much admired by Cervantes, particularly for his playing of comic rascals and fools, and his reputation led the great commedia dell'arte actor Ganassa to visit Spain with his troupe in 1574. Rueda's dialogue, mainly in prose, is natural, easy, and idiomatic, with a strong sense of the ridiculous and a happy satirizing of the manners of his day. He was the originator of the paso, or comic interlude, of which the best is Las aceitunas (The Olives). Two of his plays are based on Italian originals which were also used by Shakespeare—Eufemia, like Cymbeline, deriving from Boccaccio, and Los engañados, like Twelfth Night, from the anonymous Gl'ingannti (1531).

Lopes, Gregório (b Lisbon, c.1490; d Lisbon, c.1550). Portuguese painter, court painter successively to Manuel I and John III. Among Portuguese painters of his period he was the most directly inspired by Renaissance influence. Most of his surviving works (mainly altarpieces) are in the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon.