Patrons mattered during the renaissance. Find out why.
Dr. Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank
a Flemish painter in the court of a Spanish queen
A miraculous appearance for a queen: Juan ...
Jesus changes water into wine in Renaissance Spain
A wedding and a miracle for the ...
Renaissance author Leon Battista Alberti's ideas about what makes for a good painting would have a lasting influence on the history of art.
Alberti’s revolution in painting
What a camel in New York reveals about medieval Spain.
Camel from San Baudelio de Berlanga
Find out more about why patrons commissioned artworks during the renaissance.
Why commission artwork during the renaissance?
The Spanish Michelangelo? Looking closely at a figure by Alonso Berruguete
Bringing the figure to life
This ivory sculpture of Jesus traveled between three continents, demonstrating the global flow of materials, objects, and Christianity in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Christ Crucified, a Hispano-Philippine ivory
Santiago became an important saint in New Spain, recast to convey Spanish dominance over the Indigenous population in the sixteenth century.
Saintly violence? Santiago on Horseback
If you suddenly found yourself the heir to a royal throne that your family members felt belonged to them, then what steps would you take to advertise that you are indeed the rightful inheritor?
Gil de Siloé, The Tomb of Juan ...
What do a cucumber, a fly, figures in turbans, and ancient reliefs tell us about the Madonna and Child?
Do you speak Renaissance? Carlo Crivelli, Madonna ...
In the late sixteenth century, European publications about the Americas had few illustrations, so printmakers felt free to invent imagery about the peoples and lands across the Atlantic.
Johannes Stradanus and Theodoor Galle, “The Discovery ...
The first book ever printed by an American author was Rhetorica Christiana by Diego de Valadés, who was born in Mexico to a Spanish conquistador father and an indigenous mother.
Engravings in Diego de Valadés’s Rhetorica Christiana
Christine de Pizan was an author and intellectual and wasn't afraid to show the strength of women in the early 15th century.
Christine de Pizan and a City of ...
Get to know fifteenth-century Aragonese painting, which draws on Italian and Northern Renaissance influences.
The Renaissance in Spain, The Morata Master
Roll over Bellini, and tell Tintoretto the news. The Renaissance in Spain.
St. Michael defeats the devil in Renaissance ...
Two years before the Spanish expel the Jews and begin their invasion of the Americas, an artist paints an image of redemption.
Bartolomé Bermejo, Piedad with Canon Lluís Desplà
Christine de Pizan was the first professional author and an important female role model from the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance.
Portraits of Christine de Pizan in The ...
What does the music of heaven sound like?
What does the music of heaven sound ...
The Northern Renaissance style comes to Spain and is gloriously transformed.