Hernando de Talavera and Isabelline Imagery

Chiyo Ishikawa

The Retablo de Isabel la Católica is one of the best-known works of art produced in Castile during the late fifteenth century, notable not only for its exquisite artistic quality but for its reflection of the Castilian landscape, architecture, and multiethnic population as well. The placement of distant biblical narratives within a contemporary Spanish setting is evidence of Queen Isabel's strong identification with the religious models of Christ and the Virgin Mary, which played an undeniable role in her public policy. In this paper, I shall suggest that the paintings' visual relation to contemporary Spanish life goes beyond the popular devotional notion that Christ's living presence is everywhere around us to something much more topical and controversial, a religious issue, specifically, the status of conversos, or New Christians, in fifteenth-century Castile. In this essay, I propose that Hernando de Talavera, the Queen's close religious adviser, was responsible for the choice of visual imagery in two unusual paintings from the altarpiece.

It is well known that of all the ecclesiastical leaders who helped to shape royal priorities during the reign of the Catholic Monarchs, Hernando de Talavera (1428?-1507) had the closest relationship with the Queen. Talavera met Isabel when he was prior of the Monastery of Santa María del Prado near Valladolid, and he became her confessor about the time she assumed the Castilian throne in 1474. In 1485 he became bishop of Ávila and seven years later was named the first archbishop of the newly conquered Granada. After this appointment, his physical distance from the court lessened regular contact but did not diminish his influence on the Queen, as the surviving correspondence between them demonstrates (Weissberger, 1998). Talavera was an active crusader against the persistence of Judaic beliefs in Spain; in 1481, at Isabel's request, he wrote Católica impugnación, a tract against the practice of Judaizing. He had also been a prominent opponent of the institution of the Inquisition, however, and sought to limit its powers in Saragossa and Ávila in 1485 and 1491, respectively (Márquez Villanueva, 1960: 129). This opposition was one of the charges against Talavera when after the Queen's death he himself was brought before the tribunal and accused of Judaizing practices, a charge of which he was cleared shortly before he died in 1507 (129).

A substantial amount of contemporary documentation about Talavera survives, as well as several of his treatises and sermons that contain instruction relative to Church rites and daily behavior (Márquez Villanueva, 1960; Superbiola Martínez n.d.),¹ A key aspect of his writing is its emphasis on the authority of the Church as the earthly surrogate for divine authority and an emphasis on discipline and restriction. For example, as Elizabeth Lehfeldt has described (2000: 46), Talavera urged the redesign of convent architecture to prevent glimpses of the outside world from tempting the nuns inside. He saw possibilities for corruption everywhere. In De cómo han de vivir las monjas de San Bernardo, en sus monasterios de Ávila (ca. 1485-92) (see González Hernández, 1960: 149-74), for example, he urged the nuns of Santa Ana in Ávila to repress the five senses, which are «unas ventanas por las cuales, si no son bien cerradas, entra muy ligeramente todo aire corrompido y pestilencial que mata la alma» [windows through which, if they are not properly shut, corrupt and pestilential air will easily enter and kill the soul] (González Hernández, 1960: 152). In his manual on proper dress and behavior for secular life, De vestir y de calzar (see Mir, 1911: 57-70), dedicated to the powerful María Pacheco, Countess of Benavente, he urged unquestioning obedience to a higher authority: «[C]omo ovejas é como corderos quiso Jesucristo que fuésemos y que obedesciésemos á nuestros pastores así simplemente» [Jesus Christ wanted us to be like sheep and lambs, and obey our shepherds as simply as they do] (quoted in Weissberger, 1998: 154). His influence was likely behind the passage of many sumptuary laws passed during Isabel's reign.

As Barbara Weissberger has suggested, this severe, restrictive message, so characteristic of Talavera's communications with women, is in marked contrast to the conciliatory tone of his interaction with the Muslims of Granada, whom as archbishop he undertook to convert in the gentlest way, incorporating their music into the Mass, having parts of the Christian canon translated into Arabic, and attempting himself to learn the language.² Tala-vera's concessions to the Muslims of Granada, along with his outspokenness against the Inquisition and his steadfast defense of conversos late in his career, contradict the initial impression of severity and alert us to the danger of dismissing him as a one-dimensional character. Like Isabel herself, Talavera was a complex personality who resolutely embraced seemingly contradictory positions. This is important to acknowledge because of his obvious influence on Isabel in matters of state and public image, as well as her personal behavior. In discussing the Queen's altarpiece, I hope to demonstrate the same pattern of conservative treatment of scripture offset by a surprising deviation -the inclusion of two unsanctioned scenes which can only be explained by the intervention of someone as respected and highly placed as Talavera.

The call for restriction and control that we find in Talavera's writings exemplifies religious thinking during Isabel's reign. Her belief that the best use of her power was to combat harmful outside influences by restricting access to them was at the heart of all of her public policy and attests to the influence of the archbishop. For Talavera, the life of Christ was the ultimate authority. It was the model he held up to the nuns at the convent of San Bernardo in Ávila -«trayan siempre su pensamiento hincado en la vida de Jesucristo Nuestro Señor y de su bendita Madre» [always keep your thoughts firmly set on the life of Jesus Christ our Lord and (the life) of his blessed Mother] (González Hernández, 1960: 172). Talavera would have encouraged the resurgence of the life of Christ as a literary and artistic subject worthy of royal endorsement. Indeed, when he introduced printing to Granada in 1496, the first book he had published was a Castilian translation of part of a Vita Christi by the fourteenth-century Catalan Francesc Eiximenis. The choice reflects the primacy of the life of Christ as the foundation for conversion. It was also the theme of important Castilian devotional works concurrently published within or near Isabel's court, as well as of the Retablo, my subject here.³ In both forms of expression, the literary and the visual, there is an effort to carefully direct and contain the experience of the recipient. While this general tendency is evident in contemporary Isabelline literature, I will assert that Talavera's involvement in the altarpiece involved the staging of specific scenes.

It should not be surprising that Talavera took a leading role in promoting a certain type of imagery. He was acutely aware of the strategic importance of visual messages and had been instrumental in establishing parameters for Isabel's royal persona. His letters to Isabel and his published writings reveal an acute visual sense, an awareness of the importance of public image as a reflection of character, including some of the only contemporary references to paintings. In his treatise addressed to the nuns of Ávila, for example, he recommended the use of devotional images (González Hernández, 1960: 167), and in Breve y muy provechosa doctrina delo que deve saber todo christiano con otros tractados muy provechosos... (Mir, 1911: 1-103), he advocated a simple representation of Jesus Christ that avoided the depiction of expensive garments for the sole purpose of adorning the painting (fol. d2v-3r). Talavera himself owned devotional paintings that were copied by Michel Sittow, one of the painters of the altarpiece commissioned by Isabel (Tablas de deuoçio q pinto mychel por las del Arçobispo de Granada; Sánchez Cantón, 1930: 115).

The Queen's altarpiece, dating from approximately 1496 to 1504, was a collaboration between two court painters, Juan de Flandes (ca. 1465-1519) and Michel Sittow (1469-1525), both of whom had come from Flanders to work for Isabel. The altarpiece consisted of an unusually large number of paintings -the exact number planned is unknown because the Queen died before the project was completed. But the inventory made after her death recorded forty-seven images and makes it apparent that it was intended to depict the entire life of Christ from Nativity to Ascension, along with selected scenes from the life of the Virgin. The project is notable for the small size of the individual paintings -only 21x15 cm each- presumably to make the altarpiece more portable and probably also to best display the exquisite artistic technique of the artists at a time when Flemish manuscript illumination was especially prized throughout Europe.

I believe that Isabel's altarpiece would have followed the sequential narrative format of other Castilian retablos and that, as in those cases, the uniformity of scale and the reductive treatment of individual episodes would have assured that no single image would be designed for iconic isolation. Judging from the inventory and the surviving paintings, the altarpiece featured the typical Infancy and Passion scenes. It also contained an unusual number of miracles and illustrations of Christ teaching, emphasizing his authority and personal example. In addition, owing no doubt to the female patron, a notable number of scenes featured female figures, all found in New Testament stories of the life of Christ. Modest beauties, they are shown in exemplary attitudes of supplication, humility, and serene faith.

Each episode represented, even the Crucifixion, was placed within the context of Christ's larger biography and occupied an important but brief moment in a well-ordered plan. This helps to explain the psychological restraint that is one of the strongest characteristics of Isabel's commission. In each surviving painting, only enough visual information is provided to identify a specific episode. In La Cena en el Castillo de Emaus by Juan de Flandes, for example, the miracle of the pilgrims' recognition of the identity of the resurrected Christ is registered with the mildest wonder and a notable absence of dramatic incident (see Ishikawa, 2004: fig. 85). In Las Bodas de Cana, Juan de Flandes manages the narrative of Christ's first miracle with such understated simplicity and gravity that the scene in which Christ raises his hand to bless the bread on the table is more suggestive of the ritual of the Eucharist than of a nuptial feast (see Ishikawa, 2004: fig. 44). As I have discussed elsewhere (2004: 25-26), this austerity is all the more pronounced when compared with the lively underdrawing of the artist's first conception, more characteristic of northern European feast scenes. The artist's decision to eliminate the familiar distracting details may have been in part an aesthetic choice, but it is hard to ignore the relation between the painter's reductive approach and the Isabelline taste for directness and simplicity, developed in part under the guidance of Hernando de Talavera, who associated simplicity with honesty and truth.

As mentioned above, two paintings deviate from the general character of the altarpiece and its conservative, scripturally-based narrative. They both employ imagery unorthodox enough to be handled only tentatively by most Castilian commentators, and I will suggest that Talavera was responsible for their inclusion in the royal altarpiece. The scene is La Aparición de Cristo Resucitado a su Madre, an episode that is found not in the Bible, but rather in the popular Meditations on the Life of Christ by Pseudo-Bonaventure, the influential Franciscan writer of the thirteenth century (see Ragusa and Green, 1961). In the first painting of this episode, Christ and his mother are alone in the early morning (fig. 1), and in the second, Christ is accompanied by the souls he has rescued from limbo (fig. 2).

Figure 1. Juan de Flandes, Christ Appearing to His Mother, ca. 1499, oil on wood panel, 21.6 x 16 cm, Bildarchiv Staatliche Museum Preussischer Kulturbesitz/Art Resource, NY

The first image, by Juan de Flandes, portrays the Virgin kneeling at a priedieu early on Easter morning and turning to greet her son, who approaches from behind. An inscription recording Christ's greeting to his mother («RESVREXI ADVC TECVM SVM ALLELVYA» [I have risen and I am with you. Alleluia]) is taken from Pseudo-Bonaventure's account, but certain other unusual elements independent of his narrative have been added. Christ is dressed not in white but in crimson, the color denoting the Passion, and is attended by angels hovering above Mary's house. Two celestial aureoles float higher still. God the Father peers down from the highest aureole, ringed by adoring angels; the dove of the Holy Spirit appears in the second aureole. The figure of the resurrected Christ thus completes a manifestation of the Holy Trinity, an association that is not mentioned by Pseudo-Bonaventure and to my knowledge is not found in any other depiction of the scene.

The presence of such exalted heavenly witnesses denotes a singular honor paid to the Virgin, divine acknowledgment of her elevated status. Just as Gabriel had announced to Mary that she was chosen to bear the Messiah, this second annunciation, visually modeled on the first, brings the reincarnation of the son she had relinquished as the ultimate act of faith. The unprecedented appearance of the complete Trinity in this scene may be understood as proclaiming the mystery of God's earthly incarnation not only during Christ's lifetime but also after his mortal death. I believe that this unusual departure from convention was planned by Talavera.

Only someone as high ranking as Talavera would have had the access to the Queen and the authority to suggest a deviation from traditional imagery in her altarpiece. In the treatise Devoto tractado de lo que representan e nos dan a entender las cerimonias de la misa (see Mir, 1911: 79-93), written about 1480, Talavera relates Trinitarian symbolism to the Resurrection. He explains that the priest's gesture of making the sign of the Cross three times above the chalice signals the resurrection made on the third day, by virtue of the Holy Trinity (Mir, 1911: 1, 90). In this context, Talavera presents the Holy Trinity as responsible for the greatest Christian miracles, the Incarnation and Reincarnation of Jesus Christ, a figure at once divine and human.

Talavera's influence also explains the perplexing inclusion in the altarpiece of a second, closely related image by Juan de Flandes, La Aparición de Cristo a su Madre Acompañado por los Patriarcas (see fig. 2). Again, the scene is staged like an annunciation within the Virgin's quarters -a different architectural space from the one represented in the previous painting. Mary is seated at the foot of the bed and faces her resurrected son, who carries a golden cross and sits on a bench in the open doorway displaying his wounds. Behind him, spilling out into the vast landscape beyond, are a multitude of figures who have accompanied Christ from Limbo: Adam and Eve, John the Baptist, and the Virgin's parents occupy the first row. Scrolls inscribed with Gothic lettering issue from Christ, the Virgin, and from behind John the Baptist.

The unusual scene originated in Catalonia at the end of the fourteenth century, when Francesc Eiximenis described it in his Vita Christi instead of the more familiar version of Christ's appearance to his mother alone. The new version lived on as a popular tradition in Valencia where it was treated most elaborately by Sor Isabel de Villena (1430-90), abbess of the Franciscan Convent of the Santísima Trinidad, in a Vita Christi written to educate the nuns under her tutelage and published posthumously in 1497. Villena's Vita Christi is usually cited as the source for the painting by Juan de Flandes because she was personally related to both Isabel and Fernando, she dedicated the treatise to the Queen, and it was the most prominent contemporary rendering of the scene. In reality, however, the treatise and the painting have very little in common. Villena's version of the scene is far more extravagant and festive than the artist's. For Villena, the appearance is described in chapter upon chapter of singing and dancing, the culmination of a long association between the Virgin Mary and the souls in Limbo that preceded the Annunciation. No such merriment is suggested in Juan de Flandes's painting, whose sedate presentation of subdued joy tempers the more extravagant aspects of Villena's narrative.

Figure 2. Juan de Flandes, Christ Appearing to the Virgin with the Redeemed of the Old Testament, ca. 1499-1500, oil on oak panel, 21.4 x 16 cm, © National Gallery, London

I believe that the earlier Vita Christi by Eiximenis was the only source for the painting and that it was selected by Talavera. In 1496 Talavera published a Castilian translation of part of the Eiximenis treatise; it was in fact the first book published in Granada after he established a printing press there. Although he edited, corrected, and added information as he deemed necessary, Talavera left much questionable material contained therein unaltered in his translation -another surprising contradiction in this normally conservative individual.⁴ Thus, despite some questionable assertions, Eiximenis's account of Christ's appearing to his mother with the souls from Limbo is considerably less extravagant than that of Isabel de Villena, and is therefore the likelier source for the image by Juan de Flandes.

Talavera is also the likely source for the learned inscriptions included in the painting, which, besides the work shown in figure 1, is the only painting among the surviving panels to carry an inscription. Neither Catalan treatise was the source for the three painted texts included to lend authority and legitimacy to the unusual scene. As in the first painting, the source for Christ's greeting to the Virgin is Pseudo-Bonaventure. The other two texts could have been selected only by someone with a thorough knowledge of scriptural sources. The Virgin's quotation, adapted from the Old Testament book of Habbakuk 3:18, expresses pious rather than maternal joy: «Gaud(ete ga?) udebo et exultabo: in te deo. Et/Jh[es]u. meo:» [Rejoice, I will rejoice and exult in thee my God and Jesus] (Campbell, 1998: 260). The third scroll, though heavily abraded and difficult to read, appears to be from the First Epistle of Peter: «G . . . de:r . . . redempti . . . (preti?)oso s(an?)guin/ . . . / . . . (tui?):» [You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your fathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot] (260). This text is unusually rich in topical references. In Spain the subject of genetic inheritance and the reference to silver and gold would have been pointedly associated with the Jews.⁵ The rest of the inscription refers to Christian redemption, suggesting that Christian salvation bestows a rebirth that eliminates the «blemish» of one's non-Christian origins.⁶

These texts are significant, linking Talavera to the subject of La Aparición de Cristo a su Madre Acompañado por los Patriarcas not only through his promotion of Eiximenis's treatise but also through his support and defense of the conversos in Castile, a topic of the utmost controversy and urgency. Except for Adam and Eve, the souls in Limbo were all born into Judaism; according to Eiximenis, however, they had accepted Christ and patiently awaited salvation. The image of these exemplary souls admitted into the serene presence of Christ and the Virgin Mary can thus be interpreted as endorsing the unpopular contemporary concept that sincere conversion could overcome a person's natural origins. Many Christians in Castile regarded conversos with suspicion and contempt, attitudes that intensified when the Inquisition was established to test their sincere faith and adherence to Christian practices. Talavera, himself reputed to be a converso, was an early vocal opponent of the Holy Office, defending the authority of the church over that of an independent, politically appointed entity to deal with deviation from accepted Christian practice.⁷ Later, in Granada, he tried to convert the conquered Muslims through systematic education, efforts that were abruptly ended in 1499, when wholesale forced conversions were initiated by his superior, Francisco Ximénez de Cisneros, archbishop of Toledo.

In 1505, after Isabel's death and near the end of his own life, Talavera and his relatives were themselves indicted by the Inquisition for Judaizing practices, charges that were clearly politically motivated by his earlier denunciation of the tribunal and his constant assertion that conversion could overcome heredity. Eventually a papal Nuncio cleared the Archbishop and his family of any wrongdoing, but on the day that he died, May 14, 1507, Talavera wrote to Fernando of Aragon (who had refused to intervene on his behalf) and other officials imploring them to put an end to the excesses of the Inquisition in Cordoba. Redirecting the ugly language that the Inquisition had used against the conversos, Talavera charged that it had placed «una grand manzilla en la santa yglesia destos reygnos procurando que no obiese conversos» [a large stain on the holy church of these kingdoms (by) trying to eliminate conversos] (Márquez Villanueva, 1960: 412-13). He went on to declare, alluding to Romans 10: 12: «[E]s manifiesto contra la santa fee católica que quiere que no aya distençión de judío ni de griego, y que donde quiera que bivieren sea reçebidos y tratados commo un pueblo...» [It is clearly against the holy Catholic faith, which wants no distinction of the Jew and the Greek and that wherever they may live, they be received and treated as a single people] (413).

Within the context of the period and the imagery already discussed, this letter and the Juan de Flandes painting can be interpreted as an argument against the Inquisition's accusations based on lineage. It is easy to imagine that Talavera used the disputed episode of La Aparición de Cristo a su Madre Acompañado por los Patriarcas as an opportunity to reinforce the belief that Christ's sacrifice was made for all and that ethnic distinctions should be banished from the Christian community. Talavera argued that point for twenty years in his writings, in his advice to the queen, and in his practical efforts to assimilate converted Jews and Muslims into the larger Christian world. The incorporation of his beliefs into Isabel's personal altarpiece would have given them sanction from the highest authority in Spain.

Evidence of attention to ethnic diversity among Christians is one of the notable characteristics of the altarpiece in general. Figures of African descent are seen in La Entrada de Jesús en Jerusalem, La Resurección de Lázaro, and La Multiplicación de los Panes y Peces, in which the multitude includes men and women of varying ethnicities (Ishikawa, 2004: figs. 51, 100, 87). They surround not only Christ but also Isabel, who is shown among the crowd in La Multiplicación de los Panes y Peces -a visual reminder that she is queen of a vast and varied Christian populace. The anachronistic portrait is a sign not only of her devotion, in the tradition of donor portraits, or of her humility before God, but also of her quest to christianize the Peninsula and the harmonious results she envisioned.

In conclusion, Fray Hernando de Talavera has long been recognized as instrumental in shaping Isabel's personal piety and its public manifestation in her official policies. The examples above suggest that he very probably also helped direct the handling of imagery in the Retablo de Isabel la Católica, even using episodes from Christ's life to endorse his views on contemporary religious controversies.⁸ Talavera would have had ample opportunity to specify imagery and texts during the court's residency in Granada from 1499 to 1501, at a time when the issue of conversion was particularly sensitive. The rare scene of La Aparición de Cristo a su Madre Acompañado por los Patriarcas, an original image of reconciliation supported by inscriptions from biblical texts, is inconceivable without his intervention.