The Last Moments of Ferdinand IV the Summoned

In 1312 Ferdinand IV of Castile had two brothers of the Carvajal family thrown from the cliff at Martos, near Jaén, for a killing they denied. Before they fell they summoned the king to answer for it before God within 30 days. On the 30th day, 7 September, he was found dead in his chamber at Jaén, with no one present, aged 26. The chronicle that tells this was written about 30 years after the fact, and the nickname stayed with him. Ferdinand the Summoned.

Casado del Alisal painted the scene in Rome in 1860, in the clear hard manner of the German painters working there, the Nazarenes. The two brothers stand in shrouds marked with a red cross, one pointing upward, the other holding an hourglass. The king's sword leans in its green scabbard at the foot of the bed, out of his reach.

Low on the right, in ochre, someone wrote T. 346, the number the canvas carried at the Museo de la Trinidad in Madrid, its first home. The Prado owns it today and it hangs in the Palacio del Senado.