Volume 11, Issue 1 (Winter 2019) Juan de Flandes and His Financial Success in Castile Jessica Weiss
[email protected] Recommended Citation: Jessica Weiss, “Juan de Flandes and His Financial Success in Castile,” Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art 11:1 (Winter 2019) DOI: 10.5092/jhna.2019.11.1.2 Available at https://jhna.org/articles/juan-de-flandes-and-his-financial-success-in-castile/ Published by Historians of Netherlandish Art: https://hnanews.org/ Republication Guidelines: https://jhna.org/republication-guidelines/ Notes: This PDF is provided for reference purposes only and may not contain all the functionality or features of the original, online publication. This PDF provides paragraph numbers as well as page numbers for citation purposes. ISSN: 1949-9833 Juan de Flandes and His Financial Success in Castile Jessica Weiss During the late fifteenth century, the Netherlandish painter Juan de Flandes traveled to the court of Isabel, queen of Castile and León. He remained in her service until her death and subsequently secured multiple commissions for contributions to large-scale altarpiece projects. The financial documents associated with his career and his works reveal a high level of economic success in comparison to other artists active in Castile, including his fellow court painter Michel Sittow. This investigation into the fiscal opportunities available to a Netherlandish émigré demonstrates the economic power of locally produced Flemish art in sixteenth-century Iberia.. 1 The Netherlandish painter Juan de Flandes (active 1496–1519) had a lucrative career on the Iberian Peninsula, and his professional history serves as an important case study on the economic motivations for immigrant artists.1 He first appears in 1496 in the court documents of Isabel, queen of Castile and León (1451–1504), and he used his northern European artistic training to satisfy the queen’s demand for Netherlandish-style panel paintings.