The Role Of Religion, Politics And Gender In The Visitation By The Master Of The Retablo Of The Catholic Kings Item Type text; Electronic Thesis Authors O'Bert, Andrea Elena Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 27/09/2021 23:37:51 Item License http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/632685 THE ROLE OF RELIGION, POLITICS AND GENDER IN THE VISITATION BY THE MASTER OF THE RETABLO OF THE CATHOLIC KINGS By ANDREA ELENA O’BERT ____________________ A Thesis Submitted to The Honors College In Partial Fulfillment of the Bachelors Degree With Honors in Art History THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA M A Y 2 0 1 9 Approved by: ____________________________ Dr. Pia Cuneo Department of Art History O’Bert !1 ABSTRACT The Visitation and the other seven panels in the altarpiece by the Master of the Catholic Kings are still a mystery in many ways. However, analyzing them in their political, religious and gender contexts suggests that they serve as a powerful example of political propaganda produced in favor of the Catholic monarchs. The altarpiece allows for the veneration of the saints and in the Master’s altarpiece in particular, the key saint being depicted is the Virgin Mary. It is currently believed that the Master’s altarpiece was commissioned by Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand. Their daughter, Juana of Castile, was perceived by the public as being mentally unwell and thus not fit for leadership. In an effort to improve her image before she married Philip of Hapsburg and assumed the throne, they had this altarpiece created with Mary made in the image of Juana. Throughout the scenes of Mary’s life that are depicted, she embodies many characteristics of the ideal woman: pious, maternal and obedient. In supporting that Juana embodies these traits, the King and Queen hope to counter the public’s concern about Juana’s mental illness and to provide an alternate image of her as the perfect queen to lead Spain. O’Bert !2 The Master of the Retablo of the Catholic King’s Visitation panel is housed in the University of Arizona Art Museum and throughout my years at the university, it had always been a work that draws my attention. There is something about the complimentary colors of the two figures and the intricate detail of the architecture that has always caught my eye. When looking at artworks to research for my honors thesis, I wanted to study something local and have the opportunity to be physically in the presence of the of the painting that I would be spending so much time looking at. As I looked through the local museums for the painting that would be the perfect fit for my project, I kept coming back to this panel and wanted to learn more about it. As I learned more about the work, I came to realize that it embodied all of my studies at the university perfectly. During my last summer of college, I studied Spanish Renaissance history in the city of Alcalá de Henares, a city just two hours south of Valladolid, the original home of the altarpiece. As I grew to understand the artwork as an important element in the political, historical and religious context of the time and the region, I realized that there was no better work to research to bring to a close my undergraduate studies at the University of Arizona. I. PROVENANCE The Visitation and five other panels from the Master’s altarpiece became part of the Samuel Kress collection in 1951 and were first exhibited in the United States at the National Gallery in Washington D.C. as a part of the Art Treasures for America show that opened in 1961. Alongside over one hundred other paintings and decorative works, the Master’s panels were exhibited for two months before they and the other artworks were gifted to twenty-one museums O’Bert !3 and collections across the country1. Aside from The Visitation, the other known panels in the Master’s altarpiece are: Christ Among the Doctors, The Marriage at Cana, The Adoration of the Magi, The Annunciation, The Nativity, The Presentation in the Temple and The Circumcision. Christ Among the Doctors and The Marriage at Cana can both currently be found at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, while The Adoration of the Magi is located at the Denver Art Museum and The Annunciation and The Nativity are in the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco. All six of these panels were gifts from the Kress Foundation. Outside of this collection, The Presentation in the Temple is located at the Harvard Art Museum and The Circumcision is located in a private gallery in England. An important question posed by the altarpiece regards the identity of its artist. While the artist who is thought to have created all of the panels in the altarpiece is known as the Master of the Retablo of the Catholic Kings, there is little known about him, including his name, nationality or biography. Some of the first research that explored the artist’s identity was undertaken by the historian Martin Conway in 1922, who asserted that the paintings were created by an artist in Brussels or Louvain around 1490 and were transported to Valladolid after their creation2. However, this assertion was challenged by Albert Van der Put shortly afterwards, who spent more time studying the connections between the figures in the artwork and the Spanish royalty and instead theorized that the artist was actually active in Valladolid practicing the Hispano-flemish style and was commissioned by the royal family, King Ferdinand and Queen 1 Charles Seymour, Art Treasures for America: An Anthology of Paintings and Sculpture in the Samuel Kress Collection (Phaidon, 1961) 2 Jonathan Brown and Richard G. Mann, Spanish Paintings of the Fifteenth through Nineteenth Centuries (Washington DC: National Gallery of Art, 1990) 92. O’Bert !4 Isabella, to create this altarpiece. This new theory has been upheld by researchers since Van der Put; however historians continue to speculate on exactly who the Master was3. In 1966, Josep Gudiol sought to identify the Master of the Retablo of the Catholic Kings and made the assertion that he was actually Diego de la Cruz, a Hispano-flemish painter from the same era who is responsible for the work Man of Sorrows with the Virgin and Saint John the Evangelist. This attribution was made based on a stylistic analysis of of two works, looking specifically at the elongated noses and hairlines as a means to connect the two artworks4. However, Gudiol does not provide sufficient evidence in his research to link de la Cruz’s work with the Master’s altarpiece and art historians in recent years have challenged Gudiol’s approached and looked at the Master as an independent artist in Valladolid. Historians in the mid-twentieth century including Chandler Post and Charles D. Cuttler have used their research to place the Master of the Retablo of the Catholic Kings as an independent Spanish artist in the Hispano-flemish style5. The associations made by Post and Cuttler to the Castilian royalty, Ferdinand and Isabella, draw attention to the visual similarities between the Master’s depictions of Mary and the soon-to-be queen of Spain, Juana of Castile (1479-1555). Subsequent scholars analyzing the panels have maintained that the altarpiece was likely commissioned by the king and queen to celebrate the marriage of their daughter, Juana to Philip the Handsome (1478-1506) and to present Juana in the image of Mary, a pure, maternal figure that would come to exemplify 3 Brown, Spanish Paintings, 92 4 Josep Gudiol, El Pintor Diego De La Cruz (Madrid: Goya, 1966), 208-217 5 Chandler Post, The Pacully Master (GBA, 1943), 328 O’Bert !5 everything that Juana should be in her role as queen6. This thesis argues that the panel by the Master of the Catholic Kings, and the altarpiece as a whole, presents the life of Mary as a role model for Queen Juana of Castile. More specifically, by pairing Juana with Mary, a visual and political statement is made that, despite serious doubts about her mental health, Juana is the appropriate future queen of Spain. 6 Brown, Spanish Paintings, 94 O’Bert !6 II. VISUAL ANALYSIS The Visitation is a rather large panel, measuring approximately 60 by 37 inches and as part of a larger altarpiece that is eight times that size, the audience is forced to view this work from afar, often from the pews across the church. While the scenes depicted in the panels are intricately detailed, this faraway viewing still allows the audience to identify the primary figures in the panel as Mary and Elizabeth, though the audience can learn more and more about what the work depicts as they get closer to it. In the UAMA panel of the Visitation, the figures of Mary and Elizabeth are compositionally, the most prominent in the work, with Mary commanding the most attention with her upright position and garments’ colors. The composition of the painting emphasizes the verticality of the objects. The figures themselves occupy a prominent vertical space in the foreground and the same shapes are echoed in the buildings and the secondary figures, which extend similarly upwards through the space.