Imagining the Passion in a Multiconfessional Castile

“This is an impressive book that will profoundly alter our understanding of late medieval culture and late medieval Iberia, charting the directions for future research in a range of areas. It is a groundbreaking work—or, more accurately, a frame-breaking work—for medievalists, Hispanists, art historians, students of religious devotion and mysticism, and, most generally, scholars interested in the complex mechanisms of cultural exchange.”

—James D’Emilio, University of South Florida

“Imagining the Passion in a Multiconfessional Castile is no doubt one of the most relevant contributions of the past two decades in the field of medieval Iberian art history. Building on an impressive number of unpublished primary sources and careful analysis of crucial examples where art was produced in a context of interreligious dialogue and/or confrontation, Cynthia Robinson argues for a new understanding of the specificity of late medieval Castilian visual culture in a European context. Highly interdisciplinary and refreshing, Imagining the Passion revisits old ideas of influence and artistic exchange with a new and provocative agenda. This book will be a must-read for anyone interested in the history of medieval and early modern Iberia.”

—Felipe Pereda, Johns Hopkins University

“Imagining the Passion in a Multiconfessional Castile contains a wealth of information, detail, and insight, as well as abundant and beautiful illustrations. Robinson brings to light countless unpublished and unknown texts and images and elucidates many understudied works. This volume not only alters our understanding of medieval Castilian devotional practices but also helps to bridge the gap between the Spanish Middle Ages and sixteenth-century mysticism, especially that of Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, and Luis de Leon. The way we look at early Spanish depictions of the Passion has undoubtedly changed forever.”

—Barbara Mujica Marginalia Review of Books

“The lack of documentation and often partial preservation of painted and sculpted religious works in the fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Kingdom of Castile has, in the past, limited most art historical treatment of this material to discussions of stylistic developments. Cynthia Robinson has approached the material in a new, interdisciplinary fashion. Her meticulously researched and densely written volume sheds new light on the iconographical emphases of the uniquely Castilian focus on the Virgin Mary with respect to Christ’s Passion at this period.”

—Judith Berg Sobré Renaissance Quarterly

“Imagining the Passion is a remarkable book not just for the encyclopedic collection of primary sources with which Robinson deals, or for the exhaustive and insightful analyses within it, but also for her candor in writing an ambitious and ultimately important study that rests comfortably on speculation, circumstantial evidence, and the occasional leap of faith.”

—David A. Wacks Revista Hispanica Moderna

“The achievement of Robinson’s book is that it raises [complex interdisciplinary questions] with resolute conviction, throwing down the gauntlet to Hispanists working in a range of disciplines.”

—Andrew M. Beresford La coronica

“A reminder to many of us who work on aspects of the devotional cultures of medieval Europe that we should never leave home without our magnifying glass lest we miss the tiles for the mosaic.”

—Salvador Ryan Irish Theological Quarterly