Barbara Weissberger 
Queen Isabel I of Castile [PDF ebook] 
Power, Patronage, Persona

The Queen who shaped the music, literature, architecture, and painting of late medieval Spain.


This multidisciplinary volume was inspired by the quincentenary of the death of Queen Isabel I of Castile, early modern Europe’s first powerful queen regnant. Comprising work by distinguished art historians, musicologists, historians, and literary scholars from England, Spain, and the United States, it begins with a theoretical examination of medieval queenship itself that argues – against the grain of the volume – for its inseparability from kingship. Several essays examine the complex ways in which the Queen and her advisers shaped the music, literature, architecture, and painting of fifteenth-century Spain and how these in turn shaped the sovereign’s power and persona. Others analyze influences on Isabel’s reign from Aragón, Portugal, and northern Europe. A third group deals with issues of periodization, arguing from a variety of perspectives for the modernity of Isabelline culture. The evolving construction of Isabel’s image from the mid-fifteenth to the late-twentieth century is also studied.


BARBARA WEISSBERGER is Associate Professor Emerita of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Minnesota.

OTHER CONTRIBUTORS:Rafael Domínguez Casas, Theresa Earenfight, Michael Gerli, Chiyo Ishikawa, Tess Knighton, Kenneth Kreitner, Elizabeth A. Lehfeldt, Nancy F. Marino, William D. Phillips, Jr., Emilio Ros-Fábregas, Ronald E. Surtz

Spis treści

Introduction: Questioning the Queen, Now and Then

Two Bodies, One Spirit: Isabel and Fernando’s Construction of Monarchical Partnership – Theresa Earenfight

Isabel of Castile’s Portuguese Connections and the Opening of the Atlantic – William D. Phillips

Isabel of Castile and Her Music Books: Franco-Flemish Song in Fifteenth-Cen tury Spain – Tess Knighton

The Reciprocal Construction of Isabelline Book Patronage – Ronald E. Surtz

Hernando de Talavera and Isabelline Imagery – Chiyo Ishikawa

Melodies for Private Devotion at the Court of Queen Isabel – Emilio Ros Fábregas

The Queen at War: Shared Sovereignity and Gender in Representations of the Granada Campaign – Elizabeth Lehfeldt

The Artistic Patronage of Isabel the Catholic: Medieval or Modern? – Rafael Domínguez Casas

Conflictive Subjectivity and the Politics of Truth and Justice in
Cárcel de Amor – E. Michael Gerli

Juan de Anchieta and the Rest of the World – Kenneth Kreitner

Inventing the Catholic Queen: Images of Isabel I in History and Fiction – Nancy Marino

O autorze

TESS KNIGHTON is an ICREA Research Professor affiliated to the Institució Milà i Fontanals-CSIC in Barcelona and an Emeritus Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge.