Old letters for a new art: Scripture, memory and publicity in the sepulcher of Cardinal Juan de Cervantes in the Cathedral of Seville (1454-1458)

Abstract

At the Cathedral of Seville, its San Hermenegildo’s Chapel has the Cardinal Juan de Cer-vante’s tomb, which was carved by Lorenzo Mercadante from 1454 to 1458. This outstanding cardinal participated in the councils of Siena (Italy) and Basel (Switzerland). This paper aims to point out the epigraphic program that was designed to perpetuate the memory of this illustrious prelate from Seville. For this purpose, different documentary and bibliographical sources have been used to contextualize foundation of the Juan Cervante’s sepulchral chapel, besides possible connotations of its epigraphic message. As other fifteenth-century funerary monuments of Castile, cardinal Cervantes’s sepulcher was an important contribution to the necrological panorama. This monument concentrated, in the same space, both humanistic and gothic art perspectives. The sepulchral epitaph writing and its author's sub-scription are related to other contemporary monuments from Castile and Italy, which were demonstrat-ing examples of new aesthetic sensibilities linked to the writing, as this chapel shows.