The Portrait of Isabella of Castille on CoinsAuthor(s): Helen RosenauReviewed work(s):Source: Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 3, No. 1/2 (Oct., 1939 - Jan.,1940), p. 155Published by: The Warburg InstituteStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/750204 .Accessed: 23/04/2012 03:31

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THE PORTRAIT OF ISABELLA OF CASTILLE ON COINS

he appearance of Isabella of Castille has been made familiar to posterity

by a number of portraits.2 In this respect she may be compared with personalities of the Italian Renaissance although the setting of her portraits generally remains mediaeval. Particularly striking is the one of Isabella on coins in the form of a bust confronted with that of her husband, Ferdinand of Aragon (P1. 3Ib). The style of these coins is late Gothic whereas the type represented is very rare in mediaeval tradition.3 Late antiquity had known this type which is for instance found in Rome for the Emperor Nero and his mother Agrippina, and for Septimius Severus and Julia Domna (P1. 3Ie, f). But the more usual type of representation was the bust of the man almost covering that of the woman. It was

2 A. Ballesteros, Historia de Espania, 1922, III, con- tains many of these portraits. See also A. Wittlin, Isabella, 1936, frontispiece.

I wish to express my thanks to the staff of the Department of Coins and Medals in the British Museum for their assistance in my studies. ' The coins of Emperor Frederick I and Beatrix and the coins introduced by Pope Eugenius IV showing Peter and Paul represent this type.

4 G. Hill, A Corpus of Italian Medals, 1930, pl. 28, no. 141. This type did not achieve popularity on Italian coins, but is frequent in medals. '

Cf. the famous picture in the Prado Museum in Madrid showing Ferdinand and Isabella kneeling, before the Virgin Mary. ' R. B. Merriman, The Rise of the Spanish Empire, 1918, II, p. 83. Cf. p. 81 f. ' This is even true of Moghul India; although her portrait was avoided, the name of the Empress Nur Jahan appeared on her coins, since she was the actual ruler. In modern times the Empress Maria Theresa of Austria and Queen Victoria of England, to give only two examples, being rulers in their own right,

typical for the Ptolemies (P1. 3 Id), and has become the common form in modern times.

The Renaissance in Italy brought new life to the antique type. The earliest example of the confronted busts may be found in a medal which is supposed to represent Ugo and Parisina d'Este4 (P1. 3Ig). But the coins of Isabella show a different artistic conception. Their style, as stated above, is late-Gothic, and the treatment of the faces is naturalistic and similar to the representations in Spanish paintings.5 It is therefore un- likely that these coins were executed under Italian influence. A political rather than an aesthetic consideration seems to have determined their form. Isabella, anxious not to lose any of her political liberties and rights through her marriage to Ferdinand, stipulated in the confirmation of her marriage treaty of 1469 her independence as a queen, and among other points she especially stated that the portraits of the king and queen should appear on coins so that equal prominence was given to both.6 Such coins were executed from 1497 onwards, symbolising the motto : Tanto monta, monta tanto, Isabel como Fernando.

Isabella's daughter, Joan the Insane, used the same type of coins in Aragon for portraits showing her with her son Charles V, and it is also found with Queen Mary and her husband, Philip II, in England (P1. 3Ic), but even so this type remained rare, and did not replace the more usual one of the two heads in profile. It was the direct outcome of the joint rule of the queen and king in perfect equality. This historical phenomenon is uncommon, and so is its correlated appearance in the history of art. The portraits of women on coins are an index to their social position and aspirations,' and should, therefore, not be neglected in a study of the social position of women, and the sociological aspects of art.

HELEN ROSENAU

MISCELLANEOUS NOTES 155 and his love for Beatrice; and it is possible that he may himself have based the idea that Dante possessed a recipe for a love potion on a vague, but more or less direct, know- ledge of Dante's works.1

C. S. GUTKIND

x Two entries which are worth noting from Piere Borel's alphabetical Bibliotheca Chimica, Paris 1654, p. 72, are :

Dantius, Chimicus est, ex Stolcio (sic) Danthes (sic) Philosophus Chimicus, ex Nasari

Borel was probably unaware that they both referred to Dante Alighieri.

Stolcius' Hortulus Hermeticus was reprinted in full at the end of Volume II of Jean Jacques Manget's Biblioteca Chemica Curiosa seu rerum ad Alchemiam perti- nentium Thesaurus (Geneva, i702) as Liber III, Sect. III, Subsect. X, p. 895 if. But the medallions are dis- connected from the distichs and are printed together in plates at the end of the work; and above each distich is a reference for finding the appropriate medallion (e.g., in Dante's case :--Vide Tab IX, fig. 7). Also the plates of medallions bear the name of the German engraver, Joh. Stridbeck (1665-1714; cf. Thieme- Becker, Kiinstler-Lexikon, XXXII, p. 185). Since these medallions are identical with those of the 1627 edition of Stolcius' work, where no engraver's name is given, it is obvious that Stridbeck only produced the reprints.

31

]P~Ld~~h1 14 !i ~ ii~iii~iiiiiii................ ........ D)ANTIVS N IVA I ENVS

h- Dante and Galen Medallions, from D. Stolcius, Hortulus Hermeticus, 1627 (p. 153)

a--R. G. Dardel, Symbolic Portrait of Descartes. Lon- don, Wallace Coll. (p. 156)

b-Ferdinand of Aragon c-Philip II and Queen and Isabella of Castille Mary

d- Ptolemaic Coin e-Nero and f-Septimius Severus g-Ugo and Parisina d'Este Agrippina and Julia Domna

Coins. British Museum (p. 155)

i-The Monarch's Crown. From Saavedra Fajardo, Symbola Christiano - Politica, 1659 (p. 158)