Image from the Cantigas de Santa María, Códice rico. CLXXVIII, with text “The farmer took his son to the field, who did not know about death.”

“Illuminated manuscript: parchment, natural pigments, gold leaf and brushed gold.”

“The Cantigas de Santa María is a compilation of 400 songs dedicated to the Virgin made at the court of Alfonso X (1251-1284). The work combines European and Hispanic literary sources with newly created texts that narrate miraculous stories with the Virgin as the protagonist. The Codex Rico contains 195 cantigas (originally 200) and is the first of the four surviving manuscripts to combine text, music and image, illustrating the miracles in detail. As for the intellectual authorship of the work, we can affirm that it is a collective creation in which several court musicians and authors took part, including the monarch himself. Nor do we know the identity of its material creators, but copyists and illuminators in the service of the royal desk participated in a fully coordinated manner, creating one of the most outstanding works of medieval Hispanic art.”