Juan de Flandes

He is one of those painters known by where he came from rather than by his own name: Juan de Flandes, John of Flanders, a Netherlandish artist who made his career in Spain. He had trained around Ghent, in the world of Hugo van der Goes and the great Flemish panel painters, when he turned up at the Castilian court in 1496 and entered the service of Queen Isabella I, the same Isabella who, four years earlier, had sent Columbus across the Atlantic.

For the queen he painted small devotional panels, some no larger than a sheet of paper, worked with the fine oil detail of his homeland. A whole series of these tiny scenes from the life of Christ was made for her private use, and many survive in the Spanish royal collection today. When Isabella died in 1504 the court commissions dried up, and he moved on to Palencia in northern Castile, building large altarpieces for its churches and cathedral.

Panels from one dismantled Palencia altarpiece are now split between the Prado in Madrid and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, four in each.