The Last Tribute to Isabella of Bourbon at Salamanca

Abstract

The writer discusses the 17th-century funeral ceremonies for members of the Spanish royal family. The ceremonies with which Spanish cities marked the death of members of their royal family were among the most truly Baroque manifestations of 17th-century culture, combining a complex web of reference to diverse areas of knowledge and seeking to provoke particular reactions—in this case respect for the established order and a consciousness of that feeling. Hieroglyphs and allegorical poetry, composed especially for such occasions, and ephemeral constructions played their part in the evolution of artistic forms. Two cities were of particular importance for these celebrations: Madrid with its court and its artists, and Salamanca with its university, offering a unique architectural framework and a talented array of university scholars to devise symbolic programmes for the events. The writer goes on to outline in detail the preparation of the ceremony commemorating the death of Queen Isabella, which took place on 21 December 1644 in the cathedral of Salamanca.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 3 citations exist upstream.