The Prado and National Library display the valuable illuminated manuscripts cherished by the Castilian nobleman, along with paintings from his collection not exhibited in Spain. “In the fifteenth century, owning some books would be equivalent to owning a yacht or a Ferrari Testarossa today,” says curator Joan Molina.
«In the fifteenth century owning some books would be equivalent to owning a yacht or a Ferrari Testarossa today». So says Joan Molina Figueras, head of the Spanish Gothic painting department of the Prado Museum and curator of the exhibition that the art gallery, together with the National Library (BNE), dedicates to the Marquis of Santillana and his exceptional bibliographic and pictorial legacy. It is a tribute and a vindication of one of the great patrons of Spanish culture, a true pioneer in this field, a cultural promoter spanning the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and a bibliophile, between the sword and the poetry that has a very valuable collection of illuminated manuscripts and some of the most remarkable paintings of its time.
Entitled ‘The Marquis of Santillana. Images and letters’ can be seen in both institutions until January 8, 2023. “It will allow us to better understand and get to know one of the most relevant personalities of 15th-century Castile,” said Molina.
The Prado exhibition is built around a stellar piece, the ‘Altarpiece of the Delights of Santa María’, on loan from the House of Mendoza and the Duke of Infantado, which has been exhibited for more than a decade in Room 57 A of the Villanueva building. Designed for a church in Buitrago de Lozoya, it contains the well-known portrait of the Marquis and the gloss on his bibliographic jewels.
It is now on display together with the painting ‘Saint George and the Dragon’, also the work of Jorge Inglés, which is on display in Spain for the first time since its acquisition by the Leiden Collection in New York, and three other pieces in private hands and hitherto not exhibited by this artist, protégé of the Marquis, responsible for embellishing his manuscripts and contributor of Flemish art to Castile
The exhibition highlights the fame of this nobleman “as an innovative artistic promoter” and is complemented by the unique manuscripts of the BNE displayed in the María Moliner reading room, selected by Isabel Ruiz de Elvira, director of the incunabula and rare of the BNW. It focuses on the aristocrat’s personal library and displays “representative pieces of the Spanish tradition under the Middle Ages, the links of Italian humanism, and other literary works written by the Marquis,” says the curator.
Íñigo López de Mendoza, Marqués de Santillana (Carrión de los Condes, Palencia, 1398 – Guadalajara, 1458) was a cultured and powerful nobleman. He was an outstanding poet and literary historian, he collected an exceptional library and actively carried out artistic promotion. His two great passions were weapons and letters, as he himself wrote in his Proverbs: «The sçiençia does not dull the iron of the spear, nor loose the sword in the knight’s hand».
Like other greats of his time -Enrique de Villena, Count of Haro, Count of Benavente and King Juan II himself- he surrounded himself with good and beautiful books, all manuscripts, since he died before the first printing achievements. Involved in the complex politics of the first half of the changing fifteenth century, he took part in many battles that earned him the recognition of King Juan II of Castile, who bestowed upon him the Marquis of Santillana in 1445, among many other manors. But his active political and military life did not stop him from “devoting himself to reading and writing with great profit,” the commissioners said.
“He was related to a plethora of writers and scholars who prescribed the works to be purchased,” says Ruiz de Elvira. Notable writers such as Enrique de Villena, Juan de Mena, his uncle Fernán Pérez de Guzmán, or his cousin Gómez Manrique.
He maintained close contact with Castilian personalities who, because of their stay in Italy, treated prominent humanists: the bishop of Burgos Alonso de Cartagena, the Cordova patron and bibliophile Nuño de Guzmán or his relative and friend Íñigo (or Enyego) López Dávalos, chamberlain of the Duke of Milan and Alfonso the Magnanimous.
In addition to acquiring existing copies and ordering others from the Florentine bookseller and humanist Vespasiano da Bisticci, the Marquis wanted to have his own ‘scriptorium’ in which he translated, copied and illuminated the works that most interested him. A task in which several lawyers associated with his home participated, including many Jewish converts.
They are works such as those of the Jewish-Spanish scholar Maimonides, the ‘Grande e General Estoria’ by Alfonso X el Sabio, the ‘Historia Gothica’ by Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada ‘El Toledano’, the third part of the ‘Crónica de España’ ‘ commissioned by the Aragonese Fernández de Heredia, or the ‘Natura angelica’ by the Catalan Franciscan Eiximenis, which almost became a ‘bestseller’ of the time. Also on display is Honoré Bovet’s ‘Arbre des batailles’, a French work that is also widespread in Southern Europe. Of humanism and Italian art, three precious Florentine codices stand out: two works by Petrarch and Boccaccio, and the Tuscan translation of the works of Cicero.
The ‘Altarpiece of the Delights of Santa María’ is the masterpiece of Jorge Inglés. Deposited in the museum in 2011 by Íñigo de Artega y Martín, 19th Duke of Infantado, it links up in an exceptional way with the other four works by the same author «which testify to the leading role of the Marquis of Santillana in the assimilation of new pictorial formulas of Flemish inspiration in Castile» such as the aforementioned ‘Saint George and the Dragon’ and the three panels that were part of the altarpiece of the Virgin of Villasandino in Burgos.
Joan Molina emphasizes “the cosmopolitanism and aesthetic pluralism” of a pivotal figure for his time. Also the value of the books that were exhibited as a “highly coveted and very expensive” medium of exchange and used in their day as a “highly prized possession for the exercise of diplomacy”. They are lavishly illuminated manuscripts from the fifteenth century, a century of change and crisis, that reveal the innovative aesthetic taste of Íñigo López de Mendoza, «which range from the acceptance of the proposals of Flemish realism to the innovative decorations developed in Italy’s Renaissance Along with them, a relief depicting Alfonso V the Magnanimous and two Pisanello medals are also exhibited.
Source: La Verdad
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