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.