Lament for a lost Queen: the sarcophagus of Doña Blanca in Nájera

Abstract

The death of a Queen in childbirth and the grief of her bereaved husband are represented on one of the most memorable tombs produced in Spain during the twelfth century: that of Dona Blanca of Navarre, wife of Sancho III, King of Castile. Blanca’s original burial was in a cave that formed the royal pantheon of the Navarrese kings adjoining the church of Santa Maria la Real, in Najera. Dona Blanca Garces was an infanta, or princess, of the kingdom of Navarre, a crucial link in the power structure of Christian Spain in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. There are a few earlier representations of obsequies and mourning on Hispanic tombs, one being that of Sancha in Jaca, and another, that of Blanca’s uncle Ramón Berenguer III. Sancho’s pose is reminiscent of that of a suffering or dying hero in both Christian and classical art.

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