The following text is a resume of the Context, Iconography and Technique sections of the Identification Passport which goes with every masterwork.
CONTEXT
The famous Cantigas de Santa Maria, are an impressive illuminated collection of four hundred and twenty-six works of music. Completed in the second half of the thirteenth century, this remarkable work was written in Galician and is now attributed to King Alfonso X the Learned (1252 – 1284).
He owes his popularity not only to his achievements in the field of lyrical poetry but also to his outstanding contribution to the integration between the three religions on the territories of Castile and Leon, which he ruled.
Nowadays the celebrated codex Cantigas de Santa Maria is preserved in four transcripts that vary in their contents (textual and musical) and in the accompanying illuminations. Two of the copies are kept at San Lorenzo de El Escorial Monastery (Ms. B.I.2, Ms.T.I.1), the third in the National Library in Madrid (Ms. 1069), and the fourth in the National Library in Florence (Ms. B.R.20).
The miniatures from Cantigas de Santa Maria are valuable for their artistic and aesthetic dimension but also for their historical significance. They provide us with very important information about the rich fund of instruments that medieval musicians played particularly at the court of Alfonso X.
This Contemporary Antique Masterwork (24 x 12 cm. approx.) is of exceptional quality and is done with tempera on a primed wooden basis. Inspired by the miniature to cantiga 40 from Cantigas de Santa Maria, thirteenth century, it presents a troubadour, playing the Arab triangular rota.
José María Lamaña (1) classifies this instrument within the family of the resonation boxes without a neck, where the tone is extracted by pulling the strings with the fingers or with a quill (plectrum). Describing the instrument as a cythera with the form of an orthogonal triangle with seventeen strings, the author attributes its origin to the Latin triangular psaltry, known as a twelve stringer.
As early as 860 an instrument very much alike the present rota was illustrated in the famous Psalterio de Utrecht, and in the eleventh century depictions of it are often present in the Mosarab-Christian manuscripts.
The technique is understood as the accumulation of means and devices used by the author to realize his/her work. It could be specifically presented within the following major points.
1.- The work was done manually by the author without the implementation of any industrial procedures. The most adequate materials were used in order to arrive at an original master work with the looks and characteristics almost adequate to those of the original presented by the image of this page.
2.- The wooden basis on which the drawing was manually done was repeatedly treated with bone-glue solution. To the glue a specific proportion of chalk was added. The resultant homogeneous prime was used to level out the drawing surface.
3.- The next stage included the transfer of the author’s drawing which interpreted the respective miniature from Cantigas de Santa Maria and its further development with the help of red Armenian bolus (poliment).
4.- With the pictorial development of the work the colors were added from dark to light and finally the forms were emphasized with a black contour.
5.- The last stage included the laying of a protective and aging patina, which contains wax, turpentine asphalt (betun and raw linseed oil). After partial drying of this covering the surface of the work was polished with the help of a small woolen cloth. As a result certain pictorial effects were also achieved.
(1) LAMAÑA, José María (1989): Los instrumentos musicales en los Códices escurialenses. Cantigas de Santa María de Alfonso X El Sabio. Centro de Publicaciones del Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia. ISBN: 84-369-0737-X