What the Painters Lack
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Outros muitos verias, que os pintores Aqui também por certo pintariam; Mas falta-lhe pincel, faltam-lhe cores, Honra, prémio, favor, que as artes criam: Culpa dos viciosos sucessores, Que degeneram, certo, e se desviam Do lustre e do valor dos seus passados, Em gostos e vaidades atolados.
Many others you would see, whom the painters here would surely paint as well; but the brush is wanting, the colors are wanting — honor, reward, favor, which are what the arts create: the fault of their vicious successors, who degenerate, for certain, and turn away from the luster and the valor of their forebears, mired in soft pleasures and vanities.
Aboard ship, Paulo da Gama has been showing the Catual painted banners of Portugal's heroes. Here he admits many worthy men go unpainted, and turns the gap into a complaint about his own degenerate age.
Paulo da Gama has been narrating the painted banners of Portuguese heroes to the Catual, and here he waves at everyone the pictures leave out. The move is a rhetorical shrug: there were many more men worth painting, but the painters could not do it. The tone shifts from display to apology, and the apology quietly becomes an accusation.
The trick a first reader misses is the pun on the painter's tools. The "brush" and "colors" that are missing are not paint at all — Camões names them immediately as honra, prémio, favor, the honor and patronage that make great art possible. So the arts fail not for want of talent but because the degenerate heirs no longer reward it, having sunk into ease and vanity. Beneath the epic scene, this is Camões himself, a neglected poet, indicting his own age for letting greatness go unpainted.
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