Saint James the Pilgrim
1496 - 1497.Room 051A
Saint James the Elder is depicted as a pilgrim, with his customary crozier or staff, although here it lacks the customary calabash for water. He wears a cape and a hat with the scallop shell that symbolizes the pilgrimage to Compostela, just as the Greek cross and palm did for pilgrims to Jerusalem and the double key and Speedwell for those headed to Rome. While the origin of the scallop shell remains unclear, a late tradition holds that a horseman who fell into the sea was saved by the apostle, who covered his body with shells. The pilgrimage to Compostela is so important that its attributes appear in the other two iconographic representations of Saint James the Elder—as apostle and as a knight—and that explains the presence here of the book, which symbolizes the doctrine of the Gospel.
Born and trained in Flanders, Juan de Flandes is known only through the works he made in Castile after arriving in 1496 to become a painter at the court of Isabella the Catholic. He held that post until her death, and decided to remain there afterwards. The loss of his annual salary forced him to enter the general art market, where clients demanded a type of painting quite different from his work for the queen, sometimes for altarpieces consisting of numerous panels.
