Cartuja de Miraflores — Royal Burial and Late Gothic Craft
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Transcript
The Miraflores Charterhouse grew from a royal hunting palace donated to the Carthusian order. Queen Isabella I later commissioned major works connected with the burial of her parents, King John II of Castile and Isabella of Portugal.
The extraordinary alabaster tomb by Gil de Siloé and the high altarpiece turn dynastic memory into intricate late-Gothic sculpture. Yet the Carthusian setting matters: the order emphasized enclosure and contemplative life, creating a tension between monastic withdrawal and royal display.
Miraflores shows how rulers used religious institutions to shape memory while those institutions pursued their own spiritual discipline.