La "Virgen de la Cuchillada" en el Monasterio de las Descalzas Reales de Madrid

Abstract

The painting known as Virgen de la Cuchillada is a Flemish panel, preserved in the reliquary room of the Descalzas Reales monastery in Madrid. This study aims to analyze this artwork with two approaches. On the one hand, the formal analysis that allows to define the attribution, suggesting the style of this panel as a production from the half of the Sixteenth Century and linking it with the artists that have worked in Antwerp. On the other hand, this paper resumes documental sources that have mentioned the panel as a part of the monastery’s collection (including inventories and chronicles, and also inscriptions on the revers of the panel). The research of those different sources has understood the framework of this artwork, particularly in relation with the role that image desecration played within postconciliar Cristian Europe. In this context it is relevant to observe the activity of sor Margarita de la Cruz (1567-1633), one of the most influential nuns of Madrid, responsible of the adaptation of Virgen de la Cuchillada, among others adored images of the Descalzas Reales monastery.