58n3.pdf


Visualizing Imperium: The Virgin of the
Seafarers and Spain’s Self-Image in the

Early Sixteenth Century*

by C A R L A R A H N P H I L L I P S

The Virgin of the Seafarers (1531–36) by Alejo Fernández was designed as the central panel
of an altarpiece for the chapel in the House of Trade’s Hall of Audiences in Seville. Little
attention has been paid to the central panel and almost none to the four side panels, yet they are
crucial to our understanding of how the Spanish monarchy defined its mission overseas. The
iconography of the altarpiece as a whole made visible Spain’s self-image as the creator and
guarantor of a militant, evangelical Christian empire, dedicated to spreading the Gospel as well
as fomenting trade and colonization.

The year 2003 marked the five-hundredth anniversary of the foundingof the Casa de Contratación, or House of Trade, in Seville. Barely a
decade after Christopher Columbus (ca. 1451–1506) returned from his
first voyage across the Ocean Sea, and long before any European knew the
full extent of the lands that he and others were exploring for the Spanish
crown, Queen Isabel (1451–1504) and King Ferdinand (1452–1516)
moved to assert royal control over whatever those expeditions might find.
They gave the House of Trade jurisdiction over commerce, as the name
implied, and also over shipbuilding, navigation, map- and instrument-
making, and migration. In effect, the royal bureaucracy would govern the
new lands in the name of the crown, while the House of Trade would
oversee virtually every official contact between Europe and the embryonic
Spanish Empire.1

To commemorate the quincentenary, the Spanish government spon-
sored an exhibition in Seville from December 2003 to February 2004.

*I explored some of the ideas in this essay in a paper presented at the Sixteenth Century
Studies Conference held in San Francisco in October 1995, and in an informal lecture series
in the Department of Art History at the University of Minnesota in May 1996. Patricia J.
Kulishek, then a graduate student at the University of Minnesota, provided valuable assis-
tance in the early stages of my research. I am also grateful to the Minnesota Humanities
Commission for a “Work in Progress” grant that funded a research trip to Mad rid and
Seville in the summer of 2003, and to the John Carter Brown Library, where I was Andrew
W. Mellon Senior Fellow in the fall of 2003. The perceptive and expert comments of Judith
Berg Sobréand the anonymous RQ reader helped me greatly in the final revisions of the
text.

1For an overview of the activities of the House of Trade in its first decade of existence,
see Mena-García.

Renaissance Quarterly 58 (2005): 815–856 [ 815 ]



Installed in the handsome Casa de la Provincia, the exhibition included
maps and portraits, artifacts and ship models, samples of medicinal plants,
and the like — all evoking the exchanges overseen by the House of Trade.
For the cover of the exhibition’s catalogue, the organizers chose the paint-
ing now known as The Virgin of the Seafarers, although it did not appear
with the rest of the exhibition. Instead, it remained nearby in the Sala de
Audiencias (Hall of Audiences) for the House of Trade’s original quarters,
inside the Reales Alcázares (Royal Fortresses). Sometime before 1536, of-
ficials at the House of Trade commissioned the painting as the central
panel of an altarpiece that they installed in the Hall of Audiences, so that
the room could also serve as a chapel. Scholars date the painting to 1531–
36 and now attribute it to Alejo Fernández (ca.1470/75–1546). Flanking
the Virgin are panels depicting St. Sebastian, St. James the Great (called
Santiago in Spain), St. Elmo, and St. John the Evangelist. These panels are
thought to be the work of someone other than Alejo, perhaps a member of
his workshop or another known artist.2 When Josephe de Veitia Linaje
wrote his famous analysis of Spain’s Atlantic Fleet system in 1672, the
chapel of the House of Trade still “formed in effect a single body with the
place destined as the Hall of Audiences,” presumably with its altarpiece still
intact (fig. 1).3

Many functions of Spain’s Atlantic trade moved to Cádiz in 1717,
along with its merchants, leaving the sixteenth-century Casa Lonja de
Mercaderes (Merchants’ Exchange) near the Alcázares largely unused. From
1785 onward the Casa Lonja became the General Archive of the Indies,
housing the millions of documents produced by Spain’s imperial bureau-
cracy and the House of Trade.4 The altarpiece in the House of Trade’s
sixteenth-century chapel and Hall of Audiences did not make the move to
the Casa Lonja, and at some point it was disassembled. When Narciso
Sentenach y Cabañas wrote about the art and architecture of Seville in
1885, he mentioned only “some panels representing St. Sebastian and other
saints in the chapel of the Alcázar,” but he did not associate them with an
altarpiece, nor with the painting now known as The Virgin of the Seafarers.5

2For the various attributions, see Martín Cubero, 51, and the items referred to in the
bibliography, 59–66. This sixty-six-page pamphlet provides a useful listing of scholarship
about Alejo as of 1988, along with document transcriptions, a bibliography, and a catalogue
of his work. Since then, the authors of general surveys have adopted the standard consensus,
but nothing new has appeared.

3Veitia Linaje, 284. All translations, unless otherwise noted, are mine.
4For an overview of the history and holdings of the Archive of the Indies, see the

illustrated Archivo General de Indias.
5Sentenach, 33.

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Seven years after Sentenach wrote, Spain celebrated the four-hundredth
anniversary of Columbus’s first voyage across the Atlantic and the begin-
ning of the Spanish Empire, which by 1892 existed only as a few scattered
pieces of territory and a widespread cultural presence in its former domin-
ions.

After a brief war with the United States of America in 1898, Spain lost
the last remnants of its empire in America and Asia, prompting Spanish
intellectuals to make an anguished reexamination of Spain’s national iden-
tity and goals. Some analyses questioned the value of empire altogether and
blamed Spain’s imperial career for many of the national failings they per-
ceived in their own times. Other writers countered that criticism with a
defense of Spain’s imperial legacy, among them Manuel de la Puente y
Olea, who in 1900 published a lengthy study of the geographical works of
the House of Trade.6 Three years later Manuel Ruiz del Solar y Ozuriaga
wrote a brief but very important pamphlet for the four-hundredth anniversary

6Puente y Olea.

FIGURE 1. Alejo Fernández et al. Altarpiece of The Virgin of the Seafarers, 1531–
36. Seville, Reales Alcázares, Hall of Audiences. Copyright Patrimonio Nacional.

V I S U A L I Z I N G I M P E R I U M 817



of the House of Trade.7 In the pamphlet Ruiz del Solar relates how he had
come across mention of an altarpiece of the Virgin and four saints — St. John,
St. James the Great, St. Sebastian, and St. Elmo — in a 1536 inventory of the
House of Trade’s headquarters in the Alcázar.8 Recognizing that four paintings
still hanging in the Hall of Audiences depicted the four saints named in the
inventory, Ruiz del Solar located the central panel with The Virgin of the
Seafarers hanging elsewhere. When the director of the Archive of the Indies,
José Gestoso y Pérez, examined the panel, he wrote Ruiz del Solar that it
resembled images of the Virgin by several artists who worked in Seville, but
especially those by Alejo Fernández and Pedro Fernández de Guadalupe.9 The
art historian Jiménez Fernández attributed it to Alejo in 1922, and later
scholars have confirmed that judgment.10 Although modern scholars rarely
mention Ruiz del Solar, thanks to his discovery the scattered elements of the
altarpiece were eventually reunited and restored to their original place in the
Hall of Audiences. In that setting they are well placed for the visual enjoyment
of the millions of tourists who visit Seville every year, but they remain isolated
from their full context and from scholars trying to understand the evolution of
Spain’s empire in the Americas.11

To aid in that understanding, this essay will discuss the historical
context and meaning of the altarpiece commissioned by the House of
Trade in the early 1530s, when Spain was assimilating lessons from the first
generation of its overseas experience and situating that experience within its
self-image as the head of a global empire. The context of the altarpiece
includes several elements: the milieu of the artists who created it; the
audience to whom it was addressed; and the meaning and significance of
the composition and its iconography. In examining that context, the dis-
cussion that follows will rely upon several assumptions: 1) that each part of

7Ruiz del Solar y Ozuriaga.
8Ibid., provides the citation AGI, 40–6-1/2. The modern citation is AGI, Contratacion,

4879.
9Ibid., 6–8.
10Martín Cubero, 63, cites Jiménez Fernández, but the article could not be located for

this study.
11Generations of modern scholars working on colonial Spanish America, transatlantic

trade, and the competition for empire have relied heavily on the records at the Archive of
the Indies, climbing the magnificent rose-colored marble staircase to the archive’s reading
rooms. In 2003, as Spain celebrated the five-hundredth anniversary of the foundation of the
House of Trade, the Casa Lonja was undergoing another transformation to better serve
public needs. The reading rooms and many of the documents from the archive have been
moved across the street to another remodeled historic building (the Casa de la Cilla) that
provides better facilities for scholars.

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the altarpiece was meant to communicate ideas and aspirations that drew
from Spanish history and religious beliefs at both the local and national
levels; 2) that together, the five parts of the altarpiece defined in visual
terms what officials at the House of Trade understood and wished to
convey about the meaning and purpose of the empire; and 3) that they
commissioned the work with the expectation that those who viewed the
altarpiece would understand its meaning in the most direct and unambigu-
ous terms. The discussion will first examine the role that visual imagery
played in communicating substance and feelings in early sixteenth-century
Spain. Then it will examine the background and career of Alejo Fernández
in Seville, one of the most dynamic cities in Europe, the gateway to the
Spanish Empire. Finally, it will examine the five parts of the altarpiece: the
central panel of the Virgin, and the four saints who surround her.

As to the importance of visual communication, the gradual triumph of
literacy and of the written and printed word has become so intertwined
with the history of modernity that historians have often tended to disparage
verbal and visual communication in early modern times as the inferior tools
of uneducated and unsophisticated people. Recent historians are discover-
ing the error of that approach. Fernando Bouza, for example, has brilliantly
evoked the mental outlook of early modern Spain, reminding us that a
person’s voice and speech were considered true indications of their char-
acter, and that rhetorical skills, particularly those that seemed natural rather
than tutored, were highly valued among the social and political elite. In the
opinion of many Spaniards and Portuguese at the time, the primary value
of writing lay in its ability to recall the human voice or an absent loved one,
and as an aid to memory in general.12

Visual images also served as an aid to memory, useful for preparing the
mind for meditation and prayer. Michael Baxandall’s analysis of the reli-
gious function of visual images in fifteenth-century Italy is still one of the
best discussions of its kind, and is equally applicable to Spain.13 Even as
print culture spread in early modern Spain, visual imagery remained strong,
reinforced by the focus on interior prayer advocated by sixteenth-century
Spanish religious figures such as Teresa of Ávila (1515–82) and Ignatius
Loyola (1491–1556). Some Iberian writers, disparaging their own written
art, considered visual imagery the most authentic form of communication,
because it reached the viewer directly and was therefore a truer expression
of meaning than spoken or written words. Moreover, visual imagery could

12Bouza Alvarez, 2000, 24–31, 42–47; Bouza Alvarez, 2004, is the English translation.
13Baxandall, 1972, 40–71. For the power that images were believed to hold for good

or for evil, see also Scribner.

V I S U A L I Z I N G I M P E R I U M 819



reach anyone with eyes to see, whether or not they were literate or even
spoke the same language as the artist. This characteristic helps to explain
the importance of visual imagery for Catholic religious education in Europe
and in missionary efforts abroad.14

Evangelization held a prominent place among the goals of the mon-
archy from the earliest days of Spain’s overseas exploration, but the House
of Trade’s first quarters did not include space for a chapel. To remedy
that lack, the young Emperor Charles V (1500–58) issued an order in
November of 1526 that the officials create one. Although he issued the
order in Granada, he may have discussed the idea with officials in Seville
earlier in the year, during the several months he resided in the city for his
wedding.15 Typically, patrons set the theme for a commissioned work of
art, and the artist decided how best to portray it. How did officials at the
House of Trade decide on the images to be included in the altarpiece they
commissioned? What meaning did they want those images to convey?
Although there is no extant record of what they had in mind, we can be
sure that they gave the matter serious thought. Everything we know about
the relations between patrons and artists in the sixteenth century points in
this direction. There may have been disagreement among the body of
officials, so that the final commission represented a set of compromises
rather than a singular vision. Individuals may have been replaced or
changed their minds, so that the tenor of the discussion shifted. Presum-
ably Alejo and other artists would have been part of the discussions at some
point, and the officials at the House of Trade would have had to approve
the design before Alejo and his colleagues set about creating it. Presumably
also, the officials would have checked on the artists’ progress from time to
time, perhaps suggesting additions or changes as the altarpiece took shape.

The ability to maintain a constructive relationship with patrons was
one mark of a successful artist, and Alejo Fernández was one of the most
famous and successful artists of his generation. Beyond that, very little was
known about his life until recently. In the late nineteenth century, art
historians such as Narciso Sentenach y Cabañas usually assumed that he
was Spanish, judging from his name, his long career in Spain, and his use
of characteristic Spanish faces in his paintings. Far from being interested
only in things Spanish, however, Sentenach was the first to argue that
Northern European models had a great influence on Spanish Renaissance

14For example, see Buser, based upon the famous set of iconographic prescriptions by
Gerónimo Nadal (1507–80) known as the Evangelicae historiae imagines (Antwerp, 1595);
a modern Spanish edition is Imágenes de la historia evangélica.

15Ruiz del Solar, 15.

R E N A I S S A N C E Q U A R T E R L Y820



composition.16 He also credited Alejo with introducing elements from the
Italian Renaissance into the dominant Hispano-Flemish style of his time,
notably by the use of Italianate architectural forms and a greater naturalism
in face and gesture.17 Ironically, the triumph of Italian Renaissance style in
southern Spain would make The Virgin of the Seafarers appear somewhat
old-fashioned compared to the dominant style of the early 1530s, when it
was painted.

By the mid-twentieth century scholars had found documentary evi-
dence that altered many older views about Alejo.18 Diego Angulo Iñí guez
devoted his career to studying the Spanish Renaissance, particularly its debt
to Northern European artists and artistic styles.19 Angulo Iñí guez came to
agree with those who argued that Alejo Fernández, despite his name, was
of Northern European ancestry, a man who described himself in one
document as “Master Alexos, German painter.” It is not clear if Alejo’s
immigrant father Leonisio/Dionisio arrived in Spain as a widower with
Alejo in tow, or if the boy was born in Spain to Leonisio and his Spanish
wife, Juana Garrido. In any case, there is general agreement that he was
born ca. 1470–75. Alejo first appears in the records in Córdoba in 1496,
when he married María Fernández, the daughter of Pedro Fernández, a
prominent Cordoban painter. José Camón Aznar speculated that Pedro
Fernández was Alejo’s teacher as well as his father-in-law.20 That Alejo’s
brother, Jorge, also used the surname Fernández suggests that they were
both trained in Pedro Fernández’s workshop in Córdoba. Angulo and
others agree that Alejo adopted his wife’s surname, as his own father had
done when he married Juana Garrido.21 Such relationships and naming
practices would not have been unusual in late fifteenth-century Spain.

Whether or not Alejo ever visited Italy as part of his professional
training remains unclear. He could have adopted Italianate architectural
elements and other features of Renaissance style during a visit to Italy, or
he could have modeled his own work on engravings and paintings that he
saw in Spain or that were described to him. There is no doubt, however,

16Silva Maroto.
17Sentenach, 29–31.
18Martín Cubero, 15–33, includes the full texts of many of the documents.
19Angulo Iñí guez, 1925, is an important early work on this theme.
20Camón Aznar, 363.
21Angulo Iñí guez, 1954, 128–29; Angulo Iñí guez, 1946, 7, raises the possibility that

Alejo was German, though the author does not appear to be persuaded. Confusion about
Alejo’s ancestry remains, even in recent surveys of Spanish art history such as Avila et al.,
204, which has Alejo arriving with his widowed immigrant father, who first married María
Fernández and, later, Juana Garrido.

V I S U A L I Z I N G I M P E R I U M 821



that he fully understood the new style, and adopted its elements as he and
his patrons saw fit. Nor is there any doubt that by the first decade of the
sixteenth century Alejo had reached maturity as an artist, already well
known in Córdoba and elsewhere in Andalusia.

Alejo’s brother Jorge was a sculptor who worked on the Cathedral of
Seville as early as 1504–05. In 1508 both Jorge and Alejo moved to Seville
to add their talents to the massive retable for the main altar, which would
become one of the largest in Christendom. According to Jesús Miguel
Palomero Páramo, Alejo had responsibility for planning the layout for the
second major phase of work, which lasted from 1508 to 1512.22 The
German Pieter Dancart had designed the first phase, which commenced in
1480, and Alejo and Jorge may have been chosen for the work because their
Northern European background would help maintain stylistic continuity
in the design.23 Based on stylistic and documentary evidence about the
retable, modern scholars attribute most of the forty-four scenes in the
completed structure to Jorge and Alejo, the former sculpting and the latter
painting and gilding the figures and their framework.24 Near the beginning
of his residence in Seville, Alejo also produced a large Epiphany, one of the
four paintings that remain of the seven he completed for the cathedral
(fig. 2). The composition of the scene owed much to earlier models,
including the engravings of Martin Schongauer (which were well known
and admired in Spain), but Alejo’s magnificent portraits of the king kneel-
ing in the foreground and St. Joseph in the background give the painting
its distinctive character.25

One of the most intense phases of the construction and decoration
of the Cathedral occurred in 1525–26, as a large group of artists and
craftsmen worked to complete an expansion of the area around the main
altar in time for the wedding of King Charles I (Charles V of the Holy Roman
Empire) and Isabel of Portugal (1503–39).26 Although the expansion was
not quite finished in time for the wedding, the city of Seville exerted every
effort to create a lavish setting for their young emperor-king. Alejo, as well
as other prominent artists and craftsmen, worked on the seven triumphal
arches for the emperor’s official entry on 11 March 1526. As the royal

22Palomero Páramo, 94.
23Morón de Castro, 134.
24Palomero Páramo, 94–96.
25Angulo Iñí guez, 1946, 13–14. Alejo’s Epiphany currently hangs in the Sacristía Alta

attached to the Cathedral.
26Hernández Díaz, 49–50.

R E N A I S S A N C E Q U A R T E R L Y822



FIGURE 2. Alejo Fernández. Tabla de la Epiphanía, 1508–09. Seville, Cathedral.
Copyright Cabildo Catedral de Sevilla.

V I S U A L I Z I N G I M P E R I U M 823



chronicler Prudencio de Sandoval later described the scene, the arches were
located at intervals along the route from the Macarena Gate at the northern
end of the city to the Cathedral in the center and celebrated the qualities
that defined the perfect Christian prince. The first five arches — devoted
to Prudence, Fortitude, Clemency, Peace, and Justice — showed the em-
peror demonstrating the celebrated virtues, together with other sculptures,
allegorical emblems, and Latin verses. The three Christian virtues of Faith,
Hope, and Charity occupied the sixth arch by themselves, without a rep-
resentation of the emperor.27

The seventh arch, in front of the cathedral, represented Glory — the
presumed reward for exercising the qualities extolled in the first six. The
seventh arch was commissioned jointly by Pedro Pinelo, on behalf of the
Cathedral chapter, and the notary Pedro Coronado, on behalf of the
Ayuntamiento (city council), presumably indicating a vision shared by
Seville’s religious and secular leadership.28 In one part of the arch, Fame
heralded the arrival of Charles and Isabel, while Glory crowned each of
them. In another scene, Charles sat atop Fortune’s wheel, thrusting his
sword into the axle to hold it in place. Representatives of his various
domains — Spaniards, Italians, Germans, Flemings, and American Indians
(representing, by extension, all the peoples of the world) — also appeared
on the arch, urging him in a Latin caption to “Conquer, reign, and exercise
imperium” over them. In case spectators might miss the point, at the top
of the arch all the Virtues crowned Charles, who stood with a globe
beneath his feet, and the Latin inscription, “Here reigns Charles over all the
globe / And with reason he has subjected the world.”29 The image of
Charles and his consort holding dominion over all the world could not
have been clearer.

The triumphal arches projected an ideal vision rather than reality.
Charles was only twenty-six years old in 1526, largely untested, and his
power and the religious unity of his empire were both in doubt at the time.
Charles had presided over the Diet of Wörms in 1521 as the defender of
a unified Christian community against a challenge from Martin Luther
(1483–1546), and he would struggle through the 1520s and 1530s to hold
that community together. In the truism of the time, Charles and his
advisers held a vision of “peace among Christians and war against the
infidel,” the latter meaning the Ottoman Turks and their Muslim client
states along the North African littoral. The Islamic powers challenged the

27Sandoval, 81:163–65.
28Buendía and Sureda, 155.
29Sandoval, 81:166.

R E N A I S S A N C E Q U A R T E R L Y824



Habsburgs by land in Central Europe and by sea in the Mediterranean and
the Ocean Sea (Atlantic Ocean). Corsairs from North Africa regularly
launched raids on the Iberian coasts in both the Mediterranean and the
Atlantic, pillaging and kidnapping people to hold for ransom. The coasts
of Andalusia on both sides of the Strait of Gibraltar were particularly
vulnerable to raids from North Africa, which is one of the reasons that the
inland city of Seville remained the official gateway to trade with Spain’s
American empire in the sixteenth century.

Charles’s European rivals included Roman Catholic powers as well as
Protestant ones, which added to the pressures that the young emperor
faced. War with France and the Ottomans dominated his concerns through
the 1520s and 1530s, along with a series of religious conclaves designed to
heal the breach opened up by Martin Luther’s challenge in 1517. Although
Charles and his ministers were able to bring most of the Christian states
together to defend against Ottoman expansion in Eastern Europe, “peace
among Christians” remained an elusive ideal. Even worse, the “war against
the infidel” would suffer a major blow in 1535, when France signed an
alliance with the Ottomans that greatly enhanced their striking power in
the Western Mediterranean. This alliance — the scandal of Christendom
at the time — did not last long, but it undoubtedly added to the sense in
Spain that Catholic Christianity was under siege from all sides. This was
the Old World context in which Alejo Fernández would paint his altarpiece
for the House of Trade in the early 1530s.

The New World context provided a much more hopeful scenario, both
for the political power of the Iberian lands under Charles Habsburg, and
for the potential addition of untold numbers of souls to the Catholic
Christian fold. The first generation of Spanish expeditions across the
Atlantic — those led by Christopher Columbus and the dozen or so other
explorers authorized by the crown — often transported friars and priests as
well as soldiers, adventurers, and colonists. The next generation of expe-
ditions brought vast lands and their peoples under the aegis of Charles
Habsburg as the King of Castile. Hernán Cortés (ca. 1485–1547) con-
quered the Aztec Empire of Mexico in the early 1520s, and, although he is
remembered primarily as a military figure, he also took quite seriously his
responsibility for evangelizing New World peoples. Impressed by the piety
and dedication of the first twelve Franciscans to arrive in Mexico in 1524,
Cortés wrote the emperor asking for his help in getting papal approval for
Franciscans and Dominicans to set up missions and “administer the sac-
raments of ordination and confirmation.”30 In his judgment, the monastic

30Ricard, 21.

V I S U A L I Z I N G I M P E R I U M 825



orders would be far better spiritual guides for the Indians than secular
bishops and priests.

Expeditions launched southward from New Spain into Central and
South America, and westward into the Pacific Ocean, also included mis-
sionaries among their number. In fact, missionaries were the first
Europeans to explore a number of areas in the Americas during the 1520s
and 1530s. Although the conquest of the Inca Empire of Peru by the
Francisco Pizarro (ca. 1471–1541) and his followers can hardly be char-
acterized as a missionary effort, they were adept at portraying their actions
as part of the expansion of a militant Christianity. The inhabitants of
Seville were often the first to hear news about the various conquests in the
Americas, and officials at the House of Trade commissioned the altarpiece
for their chapel as they worked to establish control over the often confused,
unstable, and unpredictable process of empire building.

Although the situation in both Europe and the Americas in 1526
demonstrated that Charles Habsburg had not yet reached the peak of his
powers, Alejo Fernández clearly had. Scholars agree that he had formed his
own workshop by then and was carrying out commissions for works of art
all over Spain. Alejo dominated artistic production in Seville, despite the
presence of notable artists such as Cristóbal de Morales and Cristóbal de
Cárdenas, whose sister-in-law the recently widowed Alejo married in 1525.
At that point he had a considerable fortune in property, cash on hand as
earnest money for artistic commissions, and several black and “Indian”
slaves to help in his workshop — the latter presumably from Spain’s
American empire.31 One of the “Indian” slaves, Juan de Güejar or Guejar,
identified in the documents as a legal resident (vecino) of Seville, was
evidently a trusted assistant of Alejo’s. In August of 1523 Alejo gave him
full power of attorney to collect debts on his behalf all over Andalucía.32

When officials at the House of Trade commissioned an altarpiece for their
headquarters a few years later, Alejo Fernández was undoubtedly their city’s
best-known artist. They had every right to expect that he would fulfill their
collective vision, though it is arguable that an artist of his stature would not
expect to be supervised too closely.

We cannot know what passed through Alejo’s mind as he settled on a
set of themes and laid out his composition, but he would not have taken
his responsibility lightly. Art at the time — especially religious art — was
supposed to communicate a clear and unambiguous message to the viewer.
Its value as a medium of spirituality depended upon the skill of the artist

31Angulo Iñí guez, 1946, 8–9.
32Martín Cubero, 25.

R E N A I S S A N C E Q U A R T E R L Y826



in conveying that message. The modern notion that meaning is a personal
transaction between a work of art and each individual viewer would have
been an alien concept — even a dangerous one — in sixteenth-century
Seville, though Spain was not unique in demanding that art follow religious
orthodoxy. Ambiguity and personal definitions of the meaning of a work
of art could lead to misinterpretation and heresy of one confessional stripe
or another, endangering the soul of the viewer.

We can assume that Alejo and his potential audience shared a spiritual
and temporal milieu, even if the circumstances and reactions to that
milieu would differ from one individual to the next. We can also assume
that Alejo’s composition was based not only on the personal and profes-
sional experience that came from several decades of living and working in
Seville, but also on the prevailing norms for the presentation of religious
subjects. In trying to see The Virgin of the Seafarers through sixteenth-
century eyes, we can hope to recapture a sense of how Spanish officials
defined Spain’s colonial mission and how the premier artist in Seville
presented that vision to the men and women who visited the House of
Trade.

The only documentary notice we have about the altarpiece is a brief
item in the inventory first noted by Ruiz del Solar. On Sunday, 12
November 1536, an unnamed official made note of the “chambers, build-
ings, and objects that each chamber contains in the House of Trade of the
Indies of Their Majesties, which resides in this city of Seville.” His inven-
tory reads like a verbal tour, beginning with a description of his progress
through the principal gateway on the street, then past a massive iron chain
defining the space and into the large main patio of the building. Next on
the route was “the chapel of the House [of Trade] which is inside in the
salon where audiences are held, which is all painted, and in it an altarpiece
of Our Lady, and the sides of the altarpiece are painted with the images of
St. John and St. James, and St. Sebastian, and St. Elmo; and a grill of
painted wood in front of the chapel; and a large font of holy water
made of glazed clay; and a large cross and on it a painted [image of the]
Crucifixion.”33

33Archivo General de Indias (hereafter AGI), Contratación 4879 B, fols. 4–4v, first
noted by Ruiz del Solar, 2. The original text reads: “- yten la capilla de la casa questa dentro
en la sala donde se haze abdiencia, questa toda [p]intada, y en ella un retablo de Nra Señora;
a los lados estan pintados en el dho retablo [SanJua]n y Santiago y San Sebastian y San
Telmo, y una rrexa de palo delante de la capilla pintada; y una pila de agua bendicha de
barro vedriada; y una cruz grande y en ella un crucifixo pintado.” The material in brackets
represents text transcribed by Ruiz del Solar in 1900, but which is now deteriorated or
obscured by the binding.

V I S U A L I Z I N G I M P E R I U M 827



The official taking the inventory mentions the center of the altarpiece
first — the painting now called The Virgin of the Seafarers — and then her
flanking saints, in what was arguably their order of importance. In other
words, unconsciously and instinctively, his eyes followed the track that
modern cognitive science would predict for viewers of a work of art: from
the center to the periphery, and from the most important elements to the
least.34 It is not certain that the altarpiece was arranged in 1536 as it is
today. Nonetheless, using the current arrangement as a guide, the order in
which the official lists the various elements suggests that his eye moved
from the Virgin at the center to St. John the Evangelist at the lower right,
and then clockwise to St. James the Great at the lower left, St. Sebastian at
the upper left, and St. Elmo at the upper right. The discussion of the
altarpiece that follows will trace that same trajectory.

A very large figure of the Virgin, standing in heaven on a layer of
clouds, dominates the central panel (fig. 3). She wears an elegant gown of
cream and gold brocade, tightly fitted at the bodice and cinched by a red
belt with gold tassels. The gown’s broad funnel sleeves are lined in red and
drape over tight wrappings around her wrists and lower arms. Her cloak
billows out behind her like a black mainsail, providing a background for
the scene and bringing it all under her protection. She stands with her arms
open in benediction, the palm of her right hand upturned as if to receive
mercy from heaven, and the palm of her left hand upturned but extending
downward, as if to convey that mercy to the people gathered around her.
Her head inclines gently to her right, and her lowered gaze takes in both
the figures beneath her outstretched cloak and the maritime scene beneath
them all. Her face is broad and nearly flat, with very little definition to the
features and a sweet, bland expression. The image has sometimes been
called Our Lady, the Seafarers’ Refuge, to indicate her patronage of all who
sail the seas, but more commonly it is known as The Virgin of the Navigators
(Virgen de los Navegantes) or The Virgin of the Seafarers (Virgen de los
Mareantes), the title preferred here.35

Her pose resembles images of the Virgin of Mercy (Virgen de la
Misericordia in Spanish), a beloved medieval symbol of protection that
could be shown with or without the Christ child.36 Without the child, she
is often depicted as slim and young, not yet as the mother of Christ. In

34Solso, 133–50. I am grateful to Dr. James McIlwain for introducing me to the
literature on cognitive science. For a discussion of visual perception by an art historian, see
Baxandall, 1972, 29–40; Baxandall, 1985, 1–40.

35Ruiz del Solar, 4, uses the title Nuestra Señora, amparo de los navegantes.
36See the discussion in Shearman, 99–107.

R E N A I S S A N C E Q U A R T E R L Y828



FIGURE 3. Alejo Fernández. The Virgin of the Seafarers, 1531–36. Seville: Reales
Alcázares, Hall of Audiences. Copyright Patrimonio Nacional.

V I S U A L I Z I N G I M P E R I U M 829



German such an image is called a Schutzmantelmadonna (literally, a
“protective-cloak-Madonna”), signifying the iconographical importance of
the Virgin’s extended, protective cloak. Perhaps the best-known Spanish
antecedent to the Virgin in Alejo’s composition is a 1485 painting by
Diego de la Cruz, created for the influential monastery of Las Huelgas near
Burgos. Called The Virgin of Mercy with the Catholic Kings, the composition
shows the Virgin, three times the size of the other figures in the painting,
standing in the same plane alongside them. Her cloak shelters the abbess
and some nuns from Las Huelgas on the right side of the composition and
on the left the royal family — Queen Isabel of Castile, King Ferdinand of
Aragon, and three children — plus a cardinal. Whether or not Alejo knew
Diego de la Cruz’s painting, they both used the traditional iconography of
an extended cloak to depict the Virgin’s protective powers, which explains
why modern scholars generally interpret The Virgin of the Seafarers as a
manifestation of the Virgin of Mercy.

Yet Alejo’s rendition also suggests another image with particular reso-
nance in Seville: the sculpted image of the Virgin of the Kings, patroness
of the city. Legend has it that in 1248 King Ferdinand III (1198–1252)
carried an image of this Virgin into the battle against the Muslims that
regained Seville for the Christian side. In the words of Susan Verdi
Webster, the image served the citizens of Seville “as a visual symbol of their
liberation from the Moors and their devotion to Christianity and the
Virgin.”37 The Virgin of the Kings occupies the place of honor in the Royal
Chapel of the Cathedral of Seville, which contains the body of Ferdinand
III. As with many other late medieval sculptures, her face was “very flatly
modeled, and the features . . . primarily defined by polychromy.”38 Today,
seated with the Christ child on her lap and usually dressed in a cone-shaped
gown and standard head-covering, there is little to differentiate her from
many other images of the Virgin, despite her historical importance.

In the sixteenth century, by contrast, her distinctive appearance in
procession inspired a sense of wonder among the faithful, above all because
she moved. The Virgin of the Kings was one of the first religious images in
Spain designed as an articulated framework, with only the head, hands, and
feet sculpted and painted. The image of the Christ child, added later, was
similarly constructed. Beneath her gown, an array of joints, cables, and
pulleys made the image moveable. In the words of an early seventeenth-
century abbot, “from the chair she can be made to stand upright, because
the whole body is devised with an artifice such that [it seems] a human

37Webster, 77–78.
38Ibid., 79.

R E N A I S S A N C E Q U A R T E R L Y830



body stands before you, with all the parts controlled by clothing that is
tightly fitted to the body, so that they [the parts of the body] never come
out of adjustment.”39 Fully erect, she stood nearly six feet tall and could be
made to move her head, arms, and torso in ritual bows when the occasion
demanded — actions that struck her devotees with awe. Her image was
carried in procession on many important occasions, for example in August
of 1532, when virtually the whole municipal and religious establishment of
Seville took to the streets with the Virgin of the Kings to pray for a victory
of the forces of Charles V against the Ottoman Turks. In November of that
same year they repeated the ritual in thanks that the emperor’s forces had
broken the Turkish siege of Vienna.40

The tightly fitted bodice and inner sleeves of the Virgin’s costume in
Alejo’s painting, together with the character of her face and the attitude of
her head and hands, is consistent with the sixteenth-century appearance of
the standing Virgin of the Kings. Another similar detail is the hair. The
Virgin in Alejo’s painting has bright golden ringlets that stand out against
her black cloak. The hair for the Virgin of the Kings was originally made
of “fine cords formed from strands of twisted silk covered with golden
shafts and attached to the skull with very thin nails.”41 Although most of
the golden shafts have long since worn away, enough of the silken tresses
remain to suggest how they would once have appeared. A fitted bodice and
golden hair are not attributes unique to the Virgin of the Kings, but they
are unusual compared to most images of the Virgin associated with Seville.
Given Alejo’s long residence in the city and his close association with its
Cathedral, there is no question that he was familiar with the Virgin of the
Kings, her attributes, and her significance for the citizenry as a symbol of
victory against the infidel. This does not prove that Alejo consciously
borrowed attributes of this image for his Virgin of the Seafarers, but the
similarities are nonetheless striking and would have reinforced the relation-
ship between the city of Seville and the success of new crusades across the
ocean.

Most of the attention to Alejo’s painting has concentrated on the
figures gathered in two groups in the foreground beside the Virgin. Schol-
ars have assumed that the distinctive portraits represented famous persons
from the early decades of Spain’s overseas exploration, and there is no
reason to question that assumption. Alejo gained fame for his naturalistic
portraits, and he could have seen virtually everyone of importance in

39Ibid., 80, quoting Alonso Sánchez Gordillo (1561–1644).
40Carrero Rodríguez, 83–84.
41Ibid., 31.

V I S U A L I Z I N G I M P E R I U M 831



Spanish exploration — from royalty to explorers and bureaucrats — either
as they passed through Córdoba, where the painter lived until 1508, or in
Seville, where he lived from 1508 until his death early in 1546.42 Presum-
ably, many of the people who visited the chapel of the House of Trade in
the Hall of Audiences would also have recognized those faces, at least in the
early sixteenth century. With time, collective memory faded, and modern
scholars have had to speculate about the identity of each of the portraits,
mostly inferring from their resemblance to other known portraits or to
verbal descriptions.

One of the three men in the group at the right of the composition
kneels among the clouds wearing a short, light-colored costume with a
pleated skirt and a military air, reminiscent of a Roman soldier. With pale
skin and fair hair, he is generally thought to represent one of the Spanish
conquistadores in the Americas, but no one has made a persuasive case for
his identity. The most prominent figure, down on one knee, wears a black
costume and hat with light-colored leggings and a crimson cape. He has
been variously identified, but he seems to best resemble Hernán Cortés, the
conqueror of Mexico. Cortés returned to Spain for several years in the late
1520s and spent time at the emperor’s court. The German artist Christoph
Weiditz depicted him at court in 1529 wearing a short black costume
very like that in Alejo’s composition.43 The third portrait, visible only from
the chest up, is of a man presumably in his thirties, with a long straight
nose, bright red hair, and a short red beard; he wears a soft black cap or
beret. Scholars have often identified this figure as the Emperor-King
Charles I, because he bears a strong resemblance to the many known
portraits of Charles as a young man. Alejo had ample opportunity to
observe Charles in 1525–26, during the young emperor’s sojourn in Seville
for his wedding.

The group in the left foreground among the clouds includes seven men
and two young women, each with distinctive features. Few have com-
mented on the possible identities of the young women, though they may
represent members of the royal family; the one on the left resembles por-
traits of Isabel of Portugal, Charles’s bride. The figure with the cane and
long white beard is sometimes thought to be Amerigo Vespucci (1451–
1512), though Ruiz del Solar argued that it was Doctor Sancho de
Matienzo, who served as the first head of the House of Trade from 1503
until his death in 1521.44 Matienzo commissioned countless works of art,

42Angulo Iñí guez, 1954, 128–33.
43Weiditz, pl. iv.
44Ruiz del Solar, 12.

R E N A I S S A N C E Q U A R T E R L Y832



including a painting of the Virgin by Alejo for an altarpiece in Villasana de
Mena, Matienzo’s hometown near Burgos.45 Nonetheless, Diego Angulo
Iñí guez pointed out that the figure does not resemble a known likeness of
Matienzo.46 The much younger man in the red hat is usually thought to be
one of the Pinzón brothers (probably Martín Alonso), who made the first
transatlantic voyage with Columbus in 1492.

The most distinctive and controversial figure on the left is the white-
haired man outfitted in a sumptuous fur-trimmed robe of gold brocade,
kneeling in profile before the Virgin. His garb contrasts sharply with the
simple robes of all of his companions; not even the Virgin is as richly attired
as he. Who might the figure represent? The pose and the garb immediately
suggest the depiction of a royal personage in the role of a donor. Follow-
ing that logic, some have argued that the gold-robed figure must represent
a king, most logically King Ferdinand of Aragon, the co-sponsor (with his
wife Isabel of Castile) of Columbus’s first voyage.47 However, the figure
bears no resemblance whatsoever to the known portraits of Ferdinand
of Aragon, and the artist could easily have seen Ferdinand in Seville
during the king’s five-month sojourn there in 1511.48 Even more telling,
his wife, Queen Isabel of Castile, is nowhere to be seen. It would be
difficult to argue that she is one of the two demure ladies at the back of the
group, given that the conquests in the Indies pertained not to Aragon but
to Castile.

Many who reject King Ferdinand as the model for the regal portrait in
the gold robe argue that the figure represents Christopher Columbus.49

Those doubting this designation usually argue that the rich costume would
have been inappropriate for a mariner, however distinguished, especially if
we assume that the modestly-dressed red-haired figure on the right side of
the composition is the Emperor-King Charles. We shall return to the figure
in the gold robe later. For now, let us simply assume that — despite his
regal attire — the figure is neither King Ferdinand nor his grandson the
Emperor-King Charles.

In the background beneath the Virgin’s sheltering cloak stands a mul-
titude of dark-skinned men (on the left) and women (on the right), who are
generally taken to represent all the peoples to be brought under the pro-
tection of the Virgin as a result of Spanish exploration. Yet they are not

45Buendía and Sureda, 50.
46Angulo Iñí guez, 1946, 25.
47Ruiz del Solar, 6–8.
48Rumeu de Armas, 370–72.
49For example, Angulo Iñí guez, 1946, 25.

V I S U A L I Z I N G I M P E R I U M 833



dressed in costumes that would distinguish them as Caribbean islanders,
Aztecs (Mexica), Tlascaltecans, Incans, Pacific islanders, or Asians. Instead,
all of the men and women seem to be wearing simple white wraps or
loincloths. Why?

The reason does not seem to have been a lack of knowledge on the
part of the artist about how non-Europeans looked and dressed. Alejo
Fernández could have seen representatives of at least some of the various
societies incorporated into the Spanish Empire on the streets of Seville.
Guanches from the Canary Islands and African slaves had been brought to
Spain in the late fifteenth century, and Columbus brought back a group of
Tainos from the Caribbean islands in 1493. After the founding of the
House of Trade in 1503, the non-European population of Seville grew,
both from Africa and from the Americas. Hernán Cortés brought a group
of Mexica to Spain in the late 1520s, and they captured the public’s
imagination as they passed through Seville on their way to the court of
Charles V.50 Like Cortés, they were painted by Christoph Weiditz at
Charles’s court, wearing characteristic clothing. Moreover, Alejo reportedly
owned Indian as well as African slaves.51 As he presumably could have
painted the world’s peoples more distinctively, why did he depict them as
he did?

Some have assumed that he painted them as a generic multitude be-
cause he accorded them little importance in the drama of exploration,
evangelization, and empire.52 It makes better sense to argue that the figures
in the background were central to that drama, representing the untold
multitudes who would be evangelized and baptized once Spanish mission-
aries had spread the knowledge of Christ. Writing in 1900, Manuel Ruiz
del Solar observed that the painting was “evidently allegorical of the ac-
tivities of the House of Trade,” combining the Virgin with prominent
individuals from the early sixteenth century and with the figures of male
and female Indians, but that was the extent of his analysis.53 Had he
thought about the matter further, he might have recalled that simple cloth
wraps were the traditional garb for adult baptisms.

Ruiz del Solar noted that the 1536 inventory of the chapel included a
large glazed-pottery baptismal font of the type commonly sent to the
Indies. There were many fountains on the grounds and in the patios of the
Alcázar, but most of them were made of stone or marble. By contrast, the

50Weiditz, pls. xi-xxiii.
51Angulo Iñí guez, 1946, 8.
52For example, Honour, 26, argues that Indians were, “reduced to the role of ‘extras’

in the great drama of European expansion. . . .”
53Ruiz del Solar, 4.

R E N A I S S A N C E Q U A R T E R L Y834



font sharing the space defined as both a chapel and the Hall of Audiences
was the type sent to the Indies to baptize new converts, and it was present
along with the altarpiece in 1536. In other words, Alejo’s painting can be
seen as symbolically bringing converts to the baptismal font. Seen together,
Alejo’s central panel and the baptismal font sacralized the secular space of
the Hall of Audiences, emphasizing evangelization as a central element in
Spain’s colonizing mission.

At the base of the composition, seen through parted clouds, Alejo
included an assortment of vessels associated with the early decades of
overseas exploration: a large carrack, or nao, in the center beneath the
Virgin, two one-masted lateen caravels, one three-masted or full-rigged
caravel, and a galley and various other oared vessels and small boats. Alejo
could have seen all of these vessels in Seville simply by strolling down to the
banks of the Guadalquivir River a few hundred yards from the Cathedral.
In his painting, the ships anchor the base of the pyramid-shaped compo-
sition and bring the whole of the maritime world under the protective gaze
of the Virgin. Given that the House of Trade commissioned the painting,
the presence of so many representative ships seems natural and appropriate.
Nonetheless, the prominence and specificity of the ships are somewhat
unusual, almost distracting the eye from the central figure of the Virgin.
Alejo would not have found a model for such a composition in German
engravings or in Spanish depictions of the protective Virgin. What inspired
him?

One possible model resided in Italy: the final fresco in Bernardino
Pinturicchio’s cycle of the life of Pope Pius II (r. 1458–64), painted for the
Piccolomini Library in the Cathedral of Siena ca. 1500 (fig. 4). The late
fifteenth-century humanist and diplomat Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini
(1405–64), later elected Pope Pius II, devoted his pontificate to military
crusades against the growing power of the Ottoman Turks. Pinturicchio’s
final fresco shows the ailing Pius II in Ancona, where he had traveled to
bless ships leaving for the last crusade of his pontificate. The left back-
ground includes a number of ships in the harbor, representing the
long-awaited Venetian contingent that would carry the crusaders to the
Holy Land. In the center of the fresco Pinturicchio shows the pope seated
on his throne in full regalia, elevated above the figures gathered around
him. The most prominent figure kneels in profile in the left foreground,
wearing a rich gold-brocade robe trimmed with fur. Scholars generally
agree that his robe, white hair, and distinctive features identify him as the
Doge of Venice, Cristoforo Moro (r. 1462–76), who accompanied the
crusade. There is less agreement about the identity of the two turbaned

V I S U A L I Z I N G I M P E R I U M 835



figures near the doge, though by extension they represent the Islamic world
that the crusade hoped to conquer and perhaps convert.

Did Alejo Fernández find inspiration for the composition of The Virgin
of the Seafarers in Pinturicchio’s fresco of Pius II at Ancona? There is no

FIGURE 4. Bernardino Pinturicchio. Fresco of Pope Pius II at Ancona, ca. 1500.
Siena Cathedral, Piccolomini Library. Photo courtesy of Scala/Art Resource.

R E N A I S S A N C E Q U A R T E R L Y836



doubt he could have known about the work, as Pinturicchio had completed
the cycle of twelve frescoes by 1505–07.54 Moreover, Pinturicchio and the
Umbrian school that flourished in the late fifteenth century have long been
named as possible influences on Alejo, whether or not he ever visited
Italy.55 Besides including a maritime scene, both Pinturicchio’s fresco and
Alejo’s painting feature a pyramid-shaped composition dominated by a
large figure in the center. Alejo has long been credited with introducing
Italian compositional styles into Spanish painting, and Pinturicchio would
have been an apt model for him to follow.

The figures in gold-brocade robes kneeling in the left foreground are
also strikingly similar in both compositions. Did Alejo model the figure in
his painting on Pinturicchio’s doge? And if so, why? He can hardly have
expected ordinary Spaniards to recognize such a figure as a Venetian doge.
Nonetheless, the theme of a crusade against Islam in Pinturicchio’s fresco
may have inspired Alejo to evoke a similar theme in his altarpiece. Christian
crusading had special resonance in Spain, after centuries of warfare against
Muslim powers in Iberia and around the Mediterranean. Moreover, at the
time that Alejo was painting his altarpiece, Charles V and his allies forced
the Ottomans to end a siege of Vienna and launched a successful attack on
Tunis.56 In other words, a crusade against infidels and the defense and
extension of Christianity would have been appropriate notions to include
in the iconographical program of The Virgin of the Seafarers. But how could
Alejo evoke these complicated issues efficiently? The kneeling figure in gold
brocade in The Virgin of the Seafarers may provide an answer to that
question.

As indicated above, the gold-robed figure has sometimes been identi-
fied as Columbus, who — despite his fame — was probably not painted in
his lifetime.57 Nonetheless, several of his contemporaries left written de-
scriptions of the explorer’s physical appearance. The earliest is attributed to
Angelo Trivigiano (or Trevisan), secretary to the Venetian ambassador to
the court of Ferdinand and Isabel. When the court resided in Granada in
1501, Trevisan met Columbus and became well acquainted with him. He
described Columbus as “Genoese, a man of tall and imposing stature,

54Misciattelli, 32–36. The best-known fresco in the cycle shows the young Aeneas
Silvius Piccolomini on a diplomatic mission, wearing a bright blue cape and riding a white
horse.

55Angulo Iñí guez, 1954, 10–11.
56Lane, 246.
57For an extended discussion of the various Columbus portraits, see Phillips, 1992b; see

also Phillips, 1992a, a briefer version of 1992b.

V I S U A L I Z I N G I M P E R I U M 837



ruddy-complexioned, of great intelligence, and with a long face. . . .”58

Bartolomé de Las Casas (ca. 1474–1566), who was a teenager when
Columbus returned from his first voyage in 1493, saw him in Seville,
accompanied by a group of seven Indians and the exotic trappings that
caused a sensation among the citizenry. In the Historia de las Indias he
wrote decades later, Las Casas describes Columbus as “tall-bodied rather
than of middling height; the face long and authoritative; the nose aquiline;
the eyes gray-green; the complexion pale, with a tendency to turn burning
red; the beard and hair fair when he was a youth, but which soon turned
gray with his troubles.”59 In describing Columbus’s triumphal procession
to meet the king and queen in Barcelona, Las Casas said that the explorer
“had such a great and authoritative presence that he looked like a Roman
senator, his venerable face covered with a gray beard, and his modest smile
showing well the joy and honor with which he came.”60 Many other writers
followed the same lines as these early descriptions, including the bureaucrat
and historian Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, who published his multi-
volume general history of the Indies in 1535.61

At the same time, Alejo was finishing The Virgin of the Seafarers. He
may or may not have been aware of the written texts describing Columbus,
but he did not need them to know what the famed explorer looked like.
Columbus spent considerable time in Córdoba in the 1490s, when he was
in his late forties: Alejo might have seen him there. Columbus also stayed
in Seville from the fall of 1504 to the spring of 1505, the time in which
Alejo’s brother Jorge was working on the Cathedral of Seville. Jorge, at
least, might have seen Columbus then, and it is possible that Alejo spent
some time in the city as well. If by the 1530s Alejo needed reminding about
Columbus’s physical appearance, he could have consulted senior officials at

58Trivigiano, 3: “Christophoro Colombo Zenovese homo de alta & procera statura
rosso de grande ingegno & faza longa. Sequito molto tempo li serenissimi Re de Spagna in
q lung parte andauano. . . .” See also Hilton, 107–08.

59Las Casas, 1:29: “Lo que pertenecía a su exterior persona y corporal disposición, fué
de alto cuerpo, mas que mediano; el rostro luengo y autorizado; la nariz aguileña; los ojos
garzos; la color blanca, que tiraba a rojo encendido; la barba y cabellos, cuando era mozo,
rubios, puesto que muy presto con los trabajos se le tornaron canos. . . .” In 1493 Columbus
was in his early forties, so Las Casas’s description of the young Columbus must have come
from hearsay evidence.

60Ibid., 333: “tenía grande y autorizada persona, que parecía un senador del pueblo
romano, señalaba su cara veneranda, llena de canas y de modesta risa, mostrando bien el
gozo y gloria con que venía.”

61Fernández de Oviedo: the description of Columbus appears in bk. 2, chap. 2 (117:16
in the 1959 edition).

R E N A I S S A N C E Q U A R T E R L Y838



the House of Trade or Columbus’s son Ferdinand, who lived in Seville
from the late 1520s until his death in 1539.62 In short, although Alejo
presumably had no portraits to follow in depicting Columbus, he could
rely on his own experience or that of others in Seville who had known the
explorer well. Over time, however, the knowledge of Columbus’s physical
appearance faded, and few of the later so-called portraits of the explorer
agree with contemporary written descriptions.

How then do we link the written descriptions of Columbus with the
face of the kneeling figure in gold brocade? A portrait of Columbus by
Lorenzo Lotto provides the key (fig. 5).63 Signed and dated 1512, it shows
a man, in the words of Bernard Berenson, “Bare-headed, smooth-faced
with long grey hair parted in middle; wears ceremonial furs over a tunic
that leaves the throat bare; in his right hand a chart of the ‘Indies’ partly
unrolled, while the left touches an hour glass which rests on a volume of
Aristotle lying on a desk. . . . Said to have been painted for Domenico
Malipiero, Venetian senator and historian, at the instance of his correspon-
dent, Angelo Trevisan, secretary to the Venetian envoy at Granada. An
intellectual, rather supercilious face, showing great determination. There is
no reason for doubting that it was meant to be Columbus.”64 The Lotto

62Christopher Columbus Encyclopedia, 1:135–37.
63Reproduced from Bianconi, vol. 1, inserted between pls. 34–35.
64Berenson, 30. The current whereabouts of the portrait could not be ascertained.

Berenson authenticated it in 1956 on the basis of a photograph supplied to him by The
Knoedler Gallery in New York. The gallery could supply no information about the painting
as of 1991.

FIGURE 5. Lorenzo Lotto. Portrait of Christopher Columbus, 1512. Formerly
Chicago, J. W. Ellsworth Collection. Reproduced from Bianconi, vol. 1, between
pls. 34–35.

V I S U A L I Z I N G I M P E R I U M 839



portrait is one of the few that adhere closely to written descriptions of the
explorer. Moreover, its connection to Angelo Trevisan — the author of the
first published description of Columbus — adds support to the likely
accuracy of the depiction. Lotto’s Columbus can easily be seen as a younger
version of the gold-robed figure in Alejo’s Virgin of the Seafarers, and the
later history of the Lotto portrait reinforces that link. It was discovered and
authenticated a year before the fourth centenary of Columbus’s 1492 voy-
age and was officially recognized in Spain as the most authentic likeness of
the explorer. Despite the doubts of some scholars, it served as the model for
many medals, stamps, and other memorabilia during the quatracentenary.

The Spanish artist Joaquín Sorolla undoubtedly knew about the
Lotto portrait and its official recognition in 1892. He also assumed that
the gold-robed figure in The Virgin of the Seafarers depicted Columbus,
using it as one of the models for his own dramatic full-length portrait of
the explorer in 1910.65 Sorolla painted nine large oil studies for the por-
trait, as well as several dozen small sketches, all of which he donated
to The Hispanic Society of America in New York. One of the small
sketches — the only one in color — is a detailed copy of the head of the
gold-robed figure from The Virgin of the Seafarers. Sorolla labeled his pencil
sketch of the same head “Colón” — that is to say, Columbus.66

Assuming that the gold-robed figure was meant to be Columbus, a
man known for wearing a simple Franciscan robe in his later years, why
would Alejo Fernández depict him in a manner incongruous with Columbus’s
sartorial habits and unique among the prominent figures arrayed at the
Virgin’s feet? The contention here is that the artist presented Columbus in
a way that viewers would associate with the European magus-king in
countless versions of the Adoration of the Magi (also known as the
Epiphany), a central event in Christianity, and one that Alejo himself
painted several times in his career.67

The only biblical reference to the Epiphany occurs in a few brief
passages in the Gospel of Matthew, describing how “wise men from the
east” followed a brilliant star to pay homage to “he that is born King of the

65Departure of Columbus From the Port of Palos, Mariner’s Museum: Newport News,
Virginia. See Muller, 65.

66The author examined all of Sorolla’s studies for the Columbus portrait in the storage
collection at The Hispanic Society of America.

67Works of art depicting that event may be titled The Epiphany, The Adoration of the
Magi, or The Adoration of the Kings. For the purposes of this essay, the titles will be treated
as equivalents.

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Jews.”68 The Gospel mentions three items that the wise men brought with
them as gifts: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Gold honored Christ as king,
frankincense recognized him as God, and myrrh evoked his humanity and
death.69 In theological terms, the Epiphany marked the manifestation of
Christ to the gentiles in the persons of the magi, who represented by
extension all the peoples of the world. Some Christian texts suggested that

68Matthew 2:1–12: “Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of
Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, Saying, ‘Where
is he that is born king of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to
worship him. . . .’ When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy. And when
they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell
down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto
him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh.” See the discussion of the Epiphany in
Schiller, 95–114.

69Isaiah 60:6 also mentions gentiles coming to the Lord, bringing gifts of gold and
incense.

FIGURE 6. Luca di Tomme. Adoration of the Kings, 1360–65. Madrid, Thyssen-
Bornemisza Museum.

V I S U A L I Z I N G I M P E R I U M 841



the magi were kings as well as wise men; Spanish avoids the argument by
calling them Reyes Magos (magi-kings). As one of the transforming events
in the life of Christ, the Epiphany was frequently depicted in religious art,
as in the painting by Luca di Tomme from 1360–65 (fig. 6). Whether or
not the Christian faithful understood its full theological significance, they
would have had no difficulty associating depictions of the magi with the
religious feast of the Epiphany celebrated on 6 January.

In recent years, several excellent and exhaustive studies of the magi in
history and art have appeared.70 Judging from these and older studies, there
is little doubt that a standard composition for depicting the Epiphany
characterized Western European art by the early sixteenth century. The key
elements of that tradition for the argument presented here had emerged
much earlier: the magi-kings represented the three ages of man as well as
all the peoples of the earth; the eldest king represented Europe; and Europe
took precedence over the middle-aged king (who usually represented Asia)
and the youngest king (who usually represented Africa).

Hans Memling painted one of the most influential examples of
the emerging artistic consensus in a triptych traditionally dated 1464
(fig. 7) that paid homage to The Adoration of the Kings by his teacher Rogier
van der Weyden, who had died that year.71 In the central panel of his
triptych, Memling placed the old European king in the first position,
kneeling on both knees before the Virgin and Child, with his crowned hat
on the ground before them and his gift on a side table. The middle-aged
king occupies second position in the order of precedence: beginning to
kneel, holding his crowned hat in his left hand, and proffering his gift with
his extended right hand. The striking figure of a young black king occupies
the third position, just arriving at the right, holding his gift in his right
hand, and sweeping his crowned hat from his head with his left hand.
Together, the Adorations by van der Weyden and Memling are thought to
have influenced many subsequent depictions of the Epiphany, either di-
rectly or through the widespread dissemination of an engraving by Martin
Schongauer that borrowed several details from their works.72 As noted
above, Diego Angulo Iñí guez long ago established the influence of

70Kaplan; Merras; Trexler. The classic study of the Epiphany in literature and art before
1500 is Kehrer: Kehrer’s evidence is strong for Central Europe, less complete for other parts
of Europe, but all later studies rely on his work to some degree.

71Van der Weyden’s Adoration is in the Alte Pinakothek of the Bayerische
Staatsgemäldesammlungen in Munich; Memling’s 1464 Adoration is in the Prado Museum
in Madrid.

72Devisse, vol. 2, pt. 2, 131–33.

R E N A I S S A N C E Q U A R T E R L Y842



Schongauer’s engravings on artists working in Spain, including Alejo
Fernández.73

The late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries witnessed the high
point of artistic interest in the Epiphany. The stunning overseas discoveries
initiated by Columbus held the promise of fulfilling prophesies concerning
one of the most important mandates in Christianity: the need to bring the
Christian message to all peoples in preparation for the Second Coming of
Christ, the Last Judgment, and the Apocalypse. Columbus and subsequent
explorers encountered peoples previously unknown to Europeans, peoples
who did not know Christ or (in some interpretations) who had once
known Christ but had lost that knowledge. The figure of the aged
European magus-king of the Epiphany neatly summarized a thousand years
of Christian theology regarding the mandate to carry the Christian message
to the peoples living in darkness without it.

In nearly all depictions of the Epiphany in the early sixteenth century,
the magus-king representing Europe continued to be depicted as the first
among equals, the leader of the gentile nations, his advanced age connoting
Europe’s preeminence in accepting the Christian message and carrying it to
others. The Adoration of the Magi-Kings that Alejo Fernández painted for
the cathedral of Seville shortly after his arrival in 1508 included all the

73Angulo Iñí guez, 1925.

FIGURE 7. Hans Memling. Adoration of the Magi, 1464. Madrid, Prado Museum.

V I S U A L I Z I N G I M P E R I U M 843



typical elements (fig. 2). The old European king kneels in distinguished
profile wearing sumptuous robes of gold brocade, with his crown deposited
at the Virgin’s feet, while the Asian and African kings wait their turns to
approach the Holy Mother and Child. Alejo would also paint at least three
other Epiphanies in the course of his career in Spain; there is no indication
that he deviated from the standard iconography.74 Elsewhere in Europe,
many other artists also turned their hands to depictions of the Epiphany.
Despite minor variations in composition, they followed the established
conventions very closely, particularly the placement of the old king repre-
senting Europe kneeling as the first to honor the Virgin and Child. In more
than two hundred depictions of the Epiphany surveyed for this essay, the
spatial arrangement of the magi-kings nearly always accorded the preemi-
nent place to the old king and nearly always depicted him in a similar
fashion. Because of such consistent iconographical conventions, viewers
would have recognized the gold-robed figure in Alejo’s Virgin of the
Seafarers as the European magus-king, merely by his pose and his costume,
and most of them would have associated the figure with evangelization.

The Catholic monarchs Isabel and Ferdinand emphasized evangeliza-
tion as a goal for the lands claimed in their names. Columbus shared the
same vision, believing that he was destined to be a bearer of Christ, like his
namesake, St. Christopher.75 Many later explorers and conquerors spon-
sored by the Spanish crown, including Magellan and Cortés, also identified
evangelization as one of their primary duties. Under Charles V, a steady
flow of royal and ecclesiastical bureaucrats sailed across the ocean to ad-
minister the Spanish colonies and spread Christian beliefs and practices
among the local inhabitants. Officials at the House of Trade in Seville not
only handled the paperwork for their travels but also arranged for the
creation and delivery of religious art, baptismal fonts, and other supplies to
aid in communicating the Christian message. Among others, they com-
missioned Alejo Fernández to paint various sculpted images that were sent
to the West Indies in 1513.76

Missionary orders and priests adapted a range of European images
and texts to make Christianity comprehensible and appealing to peoples
elsewhere in the world: the Epiphany became one of the most useful and

74Cubero, 43–45, 53, lists but does not discuss their compositions; Angulo Iñí guez,
1946, 14, discusses only the Epiphany in the cathedral.

75See The “Libro de las Profecías of Christopher Columbus.” Columbus compiled this
collection of Holy Scriptures over a period of decades, in the belief that they provided a
guide to his destiny as a “visionary evangelist” (92).

76Ruiz del Solar, 15.

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popular of those images.77 Fray Toribio de Benavente, the early Franciscan
missionary known as Motolinía, noted that the Epiphany was “celebrated
by [the Indians of Mexico] with great rejoicing, for it seems to them that
it is their own feast, and on [Epiphany] they often reenact the play in which
the magi-kings offer their gifts to the child Jesus.”78 Although Motolinía’s
history was not published until 1546, it was based on his experiences in the
1520s and 1530s, and testifies to the early importance of the Epiphany in
Spanish missionary efforts.

When officials at the House of Trade commissioned an altarpiece for
their Hall of Audiences, an allusion to the Epiphany would have been an
appropriate element in the composition. It has been argued here that Alejo
Fernández chose to present Columbus in the pose and in the garb of the
European magus-king of the Epiphany because of the rich symbolism that
such an identification would convey. Columbus was the first to discover
the populous lands across the Ocean Sea as a representative of Europe to
the peoples awaiting the Christian message. In a lucky coincidence,
Columbus’s physical features agreed well with countless depictions of the
European magus-king, including Alejo’s own Epiphany from 1508, which
may well have inspired the painter to make the connection between
Columbus and the European magus-king.

The main problem with the connection suggested here is the absence
of the Christ-child from Alejo’s composition. The Epiphany is, of course,
centered on the child and his tripartite identity as king, God, and man.
The European magus-king traditionally presents him with gold in honor of
his sovereignty, and by the time Alejo painted the altarpiece the New
World had rendered impressive amounts of golden booty from the Aztec
conquest and the early days of the Inca conquest. It is arguable, however,
that the evangelical role of the magi-kings had less to do with bringing gifts
to the Christ-child than with bringing the gift of Christ to those who did
not yet know him. In other words, in the evangelical context Christ was the
gift, and the European magus-king was the Christ-bearer. The magi-kings
also connoted Christian crusading against the infidel, as a prelude to evan-
gelization and conversion. With that in mind, Pinturicchio’s fresco of
Pius II initiating the Fourth Crusade (fig. 4) merits another look. Might

77Ricard, 194–206, discusses the Epiphany theme among the “edifying plays” em-
ployed in evangelization, calling it the “most characteristic play” of the ones we know were
performed (201).

78Motolinía, 119. The English Dominican and later apostate Thomas Gage testified to
the continued importance of Epiphany celebrations in New Spain in the mid-seventeenth
century.

V I S U A L I Z I N G I M P E R I U M 845



this famous evocation of Christian crusading also contain a visual allusion
to the Epiphany, with the gold-robed Doge Cristoforo Moro as the pre-
eminent European magus-king and the two figures in Muslim garb as the
other two kings? At the current state of research, this can be no more than
an intriguing possibility.

In the altarpiece commissioned by the House of Trade in Seville, the
link between Christian crusading and evangelization strengthens as we pass
from The Virgin of the Seafarers to the side panels flanking the Virgin and
her entourage. Scholars have paid almost no attention to the four figures
that serve as the Virgin’s guard of honor. Even Diego Angulo Iñí guez, who
seems to have assumed that Alejo painted them, mentions only St. Elmo,
arguably the least important member of the quartet. Angulo sees all four as
a “simple frame for the image of the Virgin,” but they represent much more
than that.79 Together, they complete the visual analogy of the emerging
Spanish Empire as inspired by faith, established through conquest, and
extended through evangelization.

Whether or not Alejo painted the four saints flanking the Virgin, he
would have planned the altarpiece as a whole to reflect his patrons’ com-
mission, working with assistants or other artists to complete the work. One
model for the overall design may have been the altarpiece Alejo painted ca.
1520 for the founder’s chapel of the University of Seville. The lower half
of the chapel’s large altarpiece, generally called the Retablo de Maese
Rodrigo, features the Virgen de la Antigua from the Cathedral flanked by
the four fathers of the Western Church.80 As symbols of Christian learning,
they served as ideal companions for the Virgin in an academic setting. By
analogy, the four saints chosen to accompany The Virgin of the Seafarers
were appropriate to the religious mission of Spain overseas, which extended
the crusades against the infidel across the ocean in order to disseminate and
defend the Catholic faith. Each of the four figures had devoted followers
somewhere in the Kingdom of Castile, and each represented aspects of
Spain’s overseas enterprise.

St. John the Evangelist, the youngest of the apostles, was by tradition
one of the four gospel writers of the early Christian church. In his various
manifestations, St. John the Evangelist had a strong following all over
Castile, and artists depicted him in the several guises and stages of his long
life. In the lower right panel flanking The Virgin of the Seafarers he is shown
on the island of Patmos, where he was exiled for his faith (fig. 8). Although

79Angulo Iñí guez, 1946, 24.
80Angulo Iñí guez, 1954, 134. See the University of Seville’s Website for a long view of

the nave and altarpiece: http://www.personal.us.es/alporu/sedes/sede_1.htm.

R E N A I S S A N C E Q U A R T E R L Y846



the artist depicts him as a young man, perhaps modeled on Albrecht
Dürer’s painting of the evangelist, St. John would have been quite old by
the time of his exile on Patmos.81 Accompanied by his emblematic eagle,
writing in a book on his lap, and with various ships in the background, he
gazes upward toward a vision of the Virgin and Child in heaven and, in the
same line of sight, beyond them toward the face of the Virgin in the central
panel of the altarpiece.82

By tradition, on Patmos John wrote the Book of Revelation, also
known as the Book of the Apocalypse, which was famous in the Middle
Ages as a guide to the future. In medieval Spain, St. John’s apocalyptic
connotations remained vivid in the minds of faithful Christians, and the
commentary on the Apocalypse by the ninth-century author known as
Beatus of Liébana was copied many times, illustrated by stunning

81The classic Renaissance Spanish treatise about how to depict religious figures is
Pacheco. As a citizen of Seville, father-in-law of Diego Velázquez, and noted painter in his
own right, Pacheco’s treatise distilled prior traditions of Spanish iconography and had great
influence on future traditions. He discusses the life and proper iconography for St. John the
Evangelist in fols. 560–561.

82Ferrando Roig, 156.

FIGURE 8. Anon., School of Alejo Fernández. St John the Evangelist, 1531–36.
Altarpiece of The Virgin of the Seafarers. Seville, Reales Alcázares, Hall of Audi-
ences. Copyright Patrimonio Nacional.

V I S U A L I Z I N G I M P E R I U M 847



and terrifying manuscript paintings.83 Both Queen Isabel of Castile and
Christopher Columbus believed that St. John had prophesied Castile’s
discovery of new lands beyond the seas; the island of Puerto Rico and its
first town were named in his honor.84 Many Christians at the time also
believed that the discovery of new lands and peoples (and their subsequent
evangelization), would lead in due time to the fulfillment of prophecies in
the Book of Revelation, including the Apocalypse.85

St. James the Great, the apostle and patron saint of Spain known as
Santiago, had a close association with Galicia in the northwest, where
tradition held that his body had miraculously arrived after martyrdom by
King Herod. The town of Santiago de Compostela became the most im-
portant pilgrimage site for Christians in medieval times after Jerusalem and
Rome. Because of this association Santiago was often depicted in the guise
of a pilgrim, walking with his emblematic staff and water gourd, and
wearing a broad-brimmed hat adorned — and often pinned up in front —
with a scallop shell. During the medieval reconquest of Iberia from the
Muslims, Santiago was believed to appear on the field of battle to aid
Christian forces. In that guise he became known as Santiago the Warrior
or Santiago the Moor-Slayer. It is one of these representations of Santiago
that appears in the lower left panel flanking The Virgin of the Seafarers
(fig. 9). He rides a white horse with distinctive leather straps across its rump
and brandishes a sword in his upraised right hand, while with his left hand
he holds a battle flag. He wears body armor and a broad-brimmed hat with
a scallop shell affixed to its upturned brim. At his feet lie the weapons and
severed heads and body parts of his enemies. The panel as a whole strongly
resembles another depiction of Santiago from the same epoch by an un-
named painter of the “Castilian School.”86 In both versions, as in many
others, the iconography leaves no doubt of his identity as Santiago the
Moor-Slayer: militant defender of the Christian faith, implacable enemy of
heresy, quintessential Christian soldier.

Spanish soldiers invoked the aid of Santiago in their earliest battles of

83Wixom and Lawson: the issue in which this article appears is devoted to the “Cardeña
Beatus” manuscript at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

84The pertinent passage from St. John appears in Revelation 21:1: “And I saw a new
heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there
was no more sea.”

85Liss, 34–36, 119–24, 136–37, 154–58. For a broader examination of Christian
European beliefs and assumptions about the universe in the late fifteenth century, see Flint.

86Santiago en la Batalla de Clavijo (844), Anon. “Castilian School,” very early sixteenth
century. Madrid: Museo de Lázaro Galdiano.

R E N A I S S A N C E Q U A R T E R L Y848



conquest in the Americas and attributed their victories to his interven-
tion.87 Over time, hundreds of towns in the Americas were named for
Santiago, and countless devotions and reenactments of crucial battles oc-
curred, and still occur, in his honor. When portrayed as Santiago the
Indian Killer he symbolized the extirpation of idolatry and heresy as a
necessary adjunct to evangelization. His attributes also lent themselves to
amalgamation with powerful, violent, and capricious local gods, particu-
larly the storm-god Illapa in Peru, so that Santiago would come to
exemplify the complicated reception of Christianity in the Americas.88 For
Spain’s vision of its overseas mission, however, Santiago remained the
perfect Christian warrior.

St. Sebastian occupies the upper left panel flanking the Virgin and
represents the Christian as martyr as well as militant warrior (fig. 10).
Tradition holds that Sebastian was a member of the palace guard of the
Emperor Diocletian (ca. 243–316). Discovered to be a Christian, he was

87Heliodoro Valle, 8–13, lists places named for Santiago in Spanish America; ibid.,
19–37, chronicles the most important stories of his miraculous interventions. The book as
a whole discusses and illustrates the saint’s importance in local beliefs and rituals.

88Gisbert, 28–29, 195–200.

FIGURE 9. Anon., School of Alejo Fernández. Santiago the Moor-Slayer, 1531–36.
Altarpiece of The Virgin of the Seafarers. Seville, Reales Alcázares, Hall of Audi-
ences. Copyright Patrimonio Nacional.

V I S U A L I Z I N G I M P E R I U M 849



sentenced to be shot with arrows by his own comrades in arms. After
surviving that attack, he protested about the treatment of Christians to the
emperor himself and was then beaten to death and thrown into a Roman
sewer.89 Often venerated as one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers because of
his defense of other Christians, St. Sebastian served as an ideal intercessor
for victims of the plague in the late Middle Ages. By the early sixteenth
century most depictions emphasized his role as a victim of Roman perse-
cution during the first martyrdom. Typically, he is shown clad in no more
than a loincloth, tied to an architectural column or a tree, pierced by arrows
in various parts of his anatomy, and wearing a resigned expression. One
example is a painting by Perugino, a contemporary of Alejo, currently in
the Louvre, but there are countless others.90

Many representations of St. Sebastian in Spanish art followed the
standard iconography, but there was another tradition that recalled his full
history and his role as the patron saint of soldiers and sailors. St. Sebastian
was particularly venerated in the northern Basque country in Spain, where
the city of San Sebastián was named in his honor. Many of Spain’s finest
mariners came from the Basque country, including countless thousands of
men who sailed in fleets to the Indies, so it is no wonder that St. Sebastian
had a strong following in Seville, the gateway to the empire. The St.

89Ferrando Roig, 246.
90Saint Sebastian, Perugino, ca. 1490–1500. Paris: Louvre Museum.

FIGURE 10. Anon., School of Alejo Fernández. St. Sebastian, 1531–36. Altar-
piece of The Virgin of the Seafarers. Seville, Reales Alcázares, Hall of Audiences.
Copyright Patrimonio Nacional.

R E N A I S S A N C E Q U A R T E R L Y850



Sebastian flanking The Virgin of the Seafarers wears a military costume that
evokes his role as a soldier. The costume is very similar to that worn by
gentlemen soldiers in the early sixteenth century, including hose and a
short, apron-like tunic with a fitted waist over a long, full-sleeved shirt. He
stands holding a long cross and one end of his unflexed bow with his right
hand, and the guard of his sword with his left hand. The tips of both
weapons rest on the ground; in other words, they are displayed to indicate
that he is a soldier, but they are not brandished for combat. He wears a hat
and gazes downward, tilting his head at the same angle as the Virgin’s head
in the central panel. Only the short shaft of an arrow protruding from his
right breast reminds the viewer of his martyrdom.

A very similar depiction of St. Sebastian was painted around 1480 for
the church of San Benito de Calatrava in Seville, and would have been a
likely model for whomever painted St. Sebastian for The Virgin of the
Seafarers’ altarpiece.91 Another representation of St. Sebastian as a Roman
soldier was painted around 1486 in northern Castile or Aragón, with the
saint wearing a very similar costume but sitting rather than standing.92 Two
similar images exist in Barcelona, both wearing a more elaborate costume
than the examples from Seville and northern Spain.93 Unlike the represen-
tations showing St. Sebastian as a defenseless victim, the military
accoutrement in these depictions identifies him as a heroic convert, willing
to do battle and face martyrdom rather than renounce his new faith or his
coreligionists. Taken together as part of the honor guard of The Virgin of
the Seafarers, St. Sebastian and Santiago represent a militant, expansionist
Christianity, courting death through martyrdom or meting it out, all for
the sake of the true faith.

The final member of the quartet flanking the Virgin was St. Elmo —
San Telmo in Spain — a figure beloved among seafaring populations in
Spain, Portugal, and elsewhere in Europe, and enjoying particular devotion
in Seville (fig. 11). Sailors prayed to St. Elmo as their protector during
storms at sea, when they believed he made his presence known by strange
lights in the rigging called St. Elmo’s fire.94 He is usually identified in Iberia

91San Sebastián, Anon. artist in the circle of Juan Sánchez de Castro, ca. 1480. Seville:
Museo de Bellas Artes.

92San Sebastián, Juan de la Abadía the Elder, ca. 1480. Madrid: Museo Lázaro
Galdiano.

93Panel by P. Alemany, fifteenth century. Barcelona: Cathedral; Anon., fifteenth cen-
tury. Barcelona: Museo Diocesano.

94“St. Elmo’s fire” is the name given to electrical arcing generated by certain conditions
during storms: see Pérez-Mallaína, 243–44.

V I S U A L I Z I N G I M P E R I U M 851



as a thirteenth-century priest born in Fromista, Palencia, who died in 1246
as Bishop of Tuy on the border between Galicia and northern Portugal; but
other traditions differ from this story in nearly every respect.95 The various
legends associated with him agree only that he was a bishop and that his
attributes linked him with seafaring. In the Iberian tradition, local believers
in Spain and Portugal attributed many miracles to the pious Bishop of Tuy
and began to revere him as a saint shortly after his death, although he was
not officially canonized until 1741.96

In the altarpiece commissioned by the House of Trade, St. Elmo is
shown standing near the shore, his white robe and black cloak blown by a
storm. Despite the legend identifying him as a secular priest and bishop, he
appears to be wearing the tonsure and habit of the Dominicans, a medieval
monastic order founded by a Spaniard and long associated with missionary
efforts. That tradition continued in the New World, where Dominicans
arrived in the 1530s. In the altarpiece St. Elmo holds a very large model of
a ship in his right hand and gazes downward past that model toward a
nearly identical ship in the maritime scene below the Virgin in the central

95For example, Farmer, 159–60, identifies him either as a bishop in the Italian
Campagna, martyred ca. 300, or a Syrian bishop named Erasmus of Antioch.

96Alonso Romero, 66–67, notes that St. Elmo’s fire could have a rather more ominous
aura in Brittany, signifying the death of someone in a crewmember’s family.

FIGURE 11. Anon., School of Alejo Fernández. St. Elmo, 1531–36. Altarpiece of
The Virgin of the Seafarers. Seville, Reales Alcázares, Hall of Audiences. Copyright
Patrimonio Nacional.

R E N A I S S A N C E Q U A R T E R L Y852



panel of the altarpiece. He holds a large candle, evocative of St. Elmo’s fire,
in his raised left hand. Because of the popularity of St. Elmo in Seville, local
residents in the early sixteenth century would easily have identified the ship
and candle as his attributes. In contrast to the visions of warfare, martyr-
dom, and apocalypse symbolized by his companions, St. Elmo presents a
softer image, joining with the Virgin — whose cloak is very similar to his
own — to offer protection and solace to all who sailed the dangerous seas
linking Spain with its empire to spread the Christian message.

Overall, the altarpiece commissioned by the House of Trade and
painted in the early 1530s was designed to portray the official vision of
Spain’s creation of a Christian empire across the ocean. The central panel
portrays the Virgin providing divine protection to the enterprise as a whole.
Her entourage of kings, mariners, soldiers, ships, and peoples brought to
Christianity, together with the flanking saints, evokes diverse aspects of that
enterprise: courage and conquest, faith and fortitude, peril and protection,
and the promise of biblical prophesies fulfilled.

Most people visiting the House of Trade’s chapel in the early sixteenth
century would have recognized much of the imagery and understood at
least its more obvious aspects. An intelligent and educated observer would
have recognized and understood virtually all of it. The gold-robed figure
kneeling in the left foreground before the Virgin would have presented the
only mystery. His pose and rich garments would have suggested a royal
donor, but the head of Columbus on this figure would have seemed in-
congruous, particularly if the observer knew anything about Columbus
apart from his physical appearance. Upon further reflection, the intelligent
observer would have understood that the figure represented the first king of
the Epiphany and the thousand years of Christian tradition that the
Epiphany implied for the conversion of the world. In the guise of the
European magus-king, Columbus reinforced the notion that the Spanish
Empire represented the fulfillment of biblical prophecy to bring the
Christian message to all the peoples of the world. With The Virgin of the
Seafarers and the quartet of saints providing her guard of honor, the altar-
piece conveyed how the House of Trade — and the monarchy it
represented — defined the meaning and aims of Spain’s emerging empire.
Viewers who saw Alejo’s altarpiece as they entered the House of Trade were
presented with that collective vision and implicitly invited to share it.

U N I V E R S I T Y O F M I N N E S O T A , T W I N C I T I E S

V I S U A L I Z I N G I M P E R I U M 853



B i b l i o g r a p h y

Alonso Romero, Fernando. Crenzas e
tradicións dos pescadores galegos,
británicos e brétons. Santiago de Com-
postela, 1996.

Angulo Iñí guez, Diego. “Martin Schongauer
y algunos miniaturistas castellanos.”
Arte Español (1925): 173–80.

——— . Alejo Fernández. Seville, 1946.
——— . Pintura del Renacimiento. Historia

universal del arte hispánico. Vol. 12 of
Ars Hispaniae. Madrid, 1954.

Archivo General de Indias. Madrid, 1995.
A r c h i v o G e n e r a l d e I n d i a s ( A G I ) ,

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