Object details
Accession number
S6e14
Primary Creator
Spanish, Salamanca
Full title
Tomb Figure of a Knight
Creation Date
about 1498-1500
Provenance
Purchased by Isabella Stewart Gardner (as an effigy for the tomb of Francisco Maldonado, the Communard of Castile) from the dealer Émile Parès, Madrid (with a processional cross, museum no. M27e12) for a total of 10,000 pesetas in July 1906.
Dimensions
43.2 x 63.5 x 194.3 cm (17 x 25 x 76 1/2 in.)
Display Media
Alabaster
Web Commentary
Noble tombs in Europe often contain figures that portray the deceased. Here, alabaster has been intricately carved to show the textile pattern on the pillow and the chain mail of the armor—all indicators that the deceased was an aristocratic knight.
After the opening of her museum, Isabella Gardner took up a new interest in Spanish art, partly because Italian Renaissance paintings had become too expensive. In 1906, she visited Madrid, where she bought this sculpture. In 1914, she rebuilt part of the museum as the Spanish Cloister (for Sargent’s El Jaleo) and the Spanish Chapel. Isabella Gardner left instructions that her body should lie in state just outside this chapel—in death she would enact the same pose as the stone knight.
Permanent Gallery Location
Spanish Chapel
Bibliography
Morris Carter. Isabella Stewart Gardner and Fenway Court (Boston, 1925; Reprint, Boston, 1972), p. 216.
Gilbert Wendel Longstreet and Morris Carter. General Catalogue (Boston, 1935), p. 48. (as Spanish, latter half of the 15th century)
Ronald Hilton. Handbook of Hispanic Source Materials and Research Organizations in the United States (Stanford, California, 1956), p. 194. (as Spanish, 2nd half of the 15th century)
Cornelius C. Vermeule III et al. Sculpture in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston, 1977), p. 146, no. 179. (as Spanish, about 1500)
Judith Sobré and Lynette M. F. Bosch. The Artistic Splendor of the Spanish Kingdoms: The Art of Fifteenth-Century Spain. Exh. cat. (Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 1996), pp. 49-50, cat. 11, fig. 11-1. (as by an anonymous Castillian master, active in Salamanca (?), about 1498-1500)
"Un caballero charro en Boston." La Gaceta de Salamanca (Salamanca, 3 Jan. 2013).
Richard L. Kagan. The Spanish Craze: America's Fascination with the Hispanic World, 1779-1939 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2019), p. 264.
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