King and Saint in the ‘Golden Age’: Spanish Equestrian Portraits and/as Santiago ‘Matamoros’

This paper excavates an overlooked aspect of seventeenth-century Spanish equestrian portraiture: its connection to the topos of Santiago [Saint James the Greater] at Clavijo. According to legend, the mounted saint appeared at the eighth-century Battle of Clavijo and guided the Asturians to a spectacular triumph. Beginning in the Middle Ages, the Battle of Clavijo acquired mythic status as a key episode in the “reconquest,” the centuries-long, episodic struggle between Muslim and Christian polities on the Iberian Peninsula.

With the emergence of the exuberant style often described as the ‘High Baroque’, Spanish artists fully exploited the dramatic possibilities of the miraculous appearance of Spain’s patron saint as a Christian warrior, and began to link this iconography to kingship. In Francisco Rizi’s monumental portrayal (c. 1657), the apostle’s robes flutter to reveal ceremonial armor characteristic of Spanish royal portraits. Two hovering angels hold his helmet and shield, echoing another aspect royal equestrian portraiture.

The convergence of royal portraiture and Santiago also occurs in the opposite direction, as in a portrait of Charles II, painted by Giordano c. 1693. The mounted king, dressed in royal armor and in the flowing robes of Santiago, tramples Muslims underfoot, while two angels hover above, holding a chalice and a cross, attributes that underscore the confessional basis on the conquest. In imaging the Hapsburg monarch as a Christian warrior, this and other works rely on the potent iconography of Santiago at Clavijo to immortalize the Spanish monarchy at a time of significant political and economic decline.