Other names

Biography

The ‘Master of the Catholic Monarchs’ (usually mistakenly named in English the 'Master of the Catholic Kings') is an anonymous painter who presumably worked in Valladolid at the end of the 15th century. The name by which he is known was coined by Gudiol Ricart in 1955 on the basis of an ensemble of panels that are said to have come from a monastery in the city of Valladolid and which, on account of their heraldic emblems, suggest that the artist worked for the court of the Catholic Monarchs (these panels are now to be found in various American museums in Cambridge, Denver, San Francisco, Tucson, and Washington). On the basis of the features of his works, which reveal a debt to the art of Rogier van der Weyden, it is thought that he may be of Flemish origin. Gudiol Ricart assigned other works to him and in 1966 attempted to identify him with Diego de la Cruz, a painter active in Burgos, but Silva Maroto dismantled this proposed identification, so that he remains an anonymous artist. This artist should not be confused with the equally anonymous ‘Master of the Virgin of the Catholic Monarchs’, a painter who worked in Avila at the end of the 15th century and who painted the Virgin of the Catholic Monarchs kept in the Prado Museum.

Bibliography

• GUDIOL RICART, José (1955): Pintura Gótica. Ars Hispaniae. Historia Universal del Arte Hispánico, Plus Ultra, Madrid, pp. 360-362.
• GUDIOL, José (1966): "El pintor Diego de la Cruz", Goya, vol. 70, pp. 208-217.
• POST, Chandler Rathfon (1933): A History of Spanish Painting, vol. 4 (The Hispano-Flemish Style in North-Western Spain), nº 2, Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Massachusetts), pp. 418-428.
• SILVA MAROTO, María Pilar (1990): Pintura hispanoflamenca castellana: Burgos y Palencia. Obras en tabla y sarga, vol. II, Junta de Castilla y León, Valladolid, pp. 366-369.