Title
Scenes from the Infancy and Passion of Christ
Typology
Stained glassesSchool
LovainaDate
1484Century
Last quarter of the XVth c.Support
GlassObservations
This cycle of stained-glass windows, commissioned for the Carthusian monastery of Miraflores under the patronage of Queen Isabella I of Castile, constitutes a major example of late fifteenth-century Netherlandish glass painting. Conceived as a Passion cycle, the ensemble comprises ten large windows illuminating the choir of the church, each depicting a key episode from the life and suffering of Christ.
Three of these windows—the Crucifixion, the Entombment, and the Pentecost—bear the signature of Nicolas Rombouts, one of the most renowned glass painters of the former Low Countries in the first quarter of the sixteenth century. A native of Leuven, where he is documented as a glass painter from the 1480s onward, Rombouts developed his career largely within the artistic milieu of the Brussels court.
The acquisition of the windows is recorded in the Libro Becerro: they were purchased on behalf of Queen Isabella by the Burgos merchant Martín de Soria, attesting to the international networks that facilitated the circulation of Netherlandish artworks into the Iberian Peninsula at the turn of the century.
Related links
Cartuja de MirafloresRestorations
2007, Vidrieras M3 (M. Vázquez / A. Gallo), León.
Restoration report
Bibliography
- R. Kasl (2014): The Making of Hispano-Flemish Style: Art, Commerce, and Politics in Fifteenth-Century Castile, Brepols, Turnhout, pp. 21-24.
- F. Cortés Pizano et al. (2007): La Cartuja de Miraflores. III Las vidrieras (Cuadernos de restauración de Iberdrola XIII), Fundación Iberdrola España, Madrid.
