Imágenes matrimoniales en la Alta Edad Media en España: la pareja real [The marriage portrait in Spain’s High Middle Ages: the royal couple]

Abstract

With the exception of the famous portraits of Justinian and Theodora as seen in the Byzantine mosaics of the sixth century church of San Vitale in Ravenna, the marriage portrait was not a genre much lavished during the high Middle Ages. One must wait to the Carolingian and Ottonian period to find portraits of marriages, usually of the imperial couple, in European art. In the Iberian peninsula the oldest examples are the portraits of King Sancho II Abarca and Queen Urraca of the kingdom of Pamplona. They appear in two famous manuscripts of the late tenth century which inaugurate the court portrait. This article focuses on these and other portraits of the royal couple as they appear in miniatures and...