A sculptural horizon in the spread of the Italian Renaissance during the 16 th Century. The case of Cordova, Spain, and its classicist imagery

Abstract

During the 16th Century, the city of Cordova, in Spain, became the most populated and prosperous city in the Andalusian region of southern Spain, with the exception of Seville, where the Casa de la Contratación de Indias was founded in 1503 by order of the Monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragón and Isabella I of Castile. The reasons for this enrichment in Cordova were due to its privileged geographical location, between a fertile countryside and a splendid mountain range in the south specialized in the artisanal textile industry. Without a doubt, this happy circumstance favored, starting in 1520, the reception and assimilation of the aesthetic ideas of the Renaissance that originated a century earlier in near-by Italy. In this work we will address the study of its main sculptural works, artists, typologies and commissions requested by the elites and main patrons of society in Cordova during the 16th Century.