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Methodology

The main objective of the project is focused on renewing and expanding the study method of Spanish Gothic painting through the combination of historical-artistic studies with new study instruments such as physical analysis (radiography and reflectography, mainly) and chemicals, providing scientific and viable results that allow an objective knowledge and in accordance with the social demands of increasing the scientific, technological and innovative culture of Spanish society and its dissemination in the network and open access. And, on the other hand, using these objective and analytical methods, an attempt will be made to understand the channels through which the Flemish style developed in the Peninsula, analyzing in a causal and reasoned way the development of late Gothic painting, through the networks of art market and circulation of works and masters.

After the historiographical review of Gothic art, a review -re-reading- is necessary in the light of historical-social and technical studies, with the new technologies of the 21st century of Hispanic painting of the 15th century, with a renewing vision that provides a point of reference. broad departure to intrinsic aspects such as the arrival of novelties, the role of patronage, the materiality of the works, and the suggestive relationships established between the intelligentsia and the promotion of works of art. Therefore, in the knowledge of late Gothic painting, special attention will be paid to:


Interdisciplinarity, Transversality and Culture

The heterogeneous formation of the members of the research team makes it possible to approach the artistic "artifact" with a holistic vision that affects both its iconic and rhetorical discourse and its execution and materiality in order to:

  • Bring the study of painting closer to society through objective and scientific criteria.
  • Encourage the scientific, technological and innovation culture of Castilian late Gothic painting.
  • Promote the creation of an environment conducive to scientific-technical research and innovation.

Narrativity and Authorship Levels

Signify in the integral study of the works the refined levels of performance codified in the late Gothic period:

  • Intellectual authorship linked to the principal who has become the owner, payer and, at the same time, the arbiter of the semantics of the project.
  • Creative authorship of the artists who, jointly with the principals, designed the work.
  • Material authorship: architects of different professional qualifications in whose workshops the requested commissions were carried out.

Memory and artistic Marketing

  • Use works of art as historical documents to understand the artistic exchange, market and trade networks, especially between the so-called "flamenco world" and the kingdom of Castile.
  • Address the different levels of this current of supply and demand.
  • Analysis of the practices used and demanded by prominent noble lineages, such as the Mendozas, using as a parallel the uses of the royal committee.

Rhetoric and Intellectuality

  • Analyze the phenomenon of copying works of art of recognized authorship, calibrate the quality of the variatio, signify them as a relevant quantitative phenomenon, externalize their prestige and their use as a collection mark.
  • Study of emblematic works by flamenco masters such as Roger van der Weyden's Madonna Durán and its copies kept at Casa Mendoza.

Transfer / Disseminate / Imply

  • Improve scientific communication and innovation of the instruments and means of study of Gothic painting, facilitating the transfer and management of knowledge between professionals, scholars and amateurs of art history.
  • Internationalize the knowledge and main masters of Castilian late Gothic painting, and their relationship with the Flemish masters.
  • Diffusion and transfer with the use of digital and computer tools

  • Video of the operation of VARIM 2.0 during the process of studying the altarpiece by Álvaro de Luna. The VARIM 2.0 system provides infrared reflectography images that allow studying the original underlying drawing made by the artists who designed the altarpiece.


Previous Projects


Lines of Investigation