Pictures for Praying

Isabella of Castile is best known to history as the lady who, with King Ferdinand, backed Columbus on his voyage that led to the discovery of the New World. But in her time, the Spanish Queen was equally renowned as a patroness of the arts. At her bidding, Juan de Flandes and Miguel Sithium painted 47 miniature panels between 1498 and 1504 portraying the lives of Christ and Mary for her private chapel. All but two were probably by Juan de Flandes, a Fleming whose sophisticated fusion of courtliness and naivete, and languid, doll-like figures were much prized in the Northern European Renaissance. Painter Albrecht Duerer, when he saw the panels in 1521, exclaimed: "I have never seen the like for precision and excellence."

Washington's National Gallery of Art now offers a double opportunity to see what Duerer was talking about. To a Sithium panel, acquired in 1964, depicting The Assumption of the Virgin, the gallery has now added a companion piece from Isabella's chapel, a Juan de Flandes panel illustrating The Temptation of Christ, bought at auction last June in London for $161,700. Beside the overly saccharine Sithium, the 8-in. by 6-in. miniature by De Flandes is indeed a gem of sprightly precision.

It depicts the devil, disguised as a monk but revealed for what he is by his horns and cloven foot, tempting Christ three times (the second two temptations are shown in mini-miniature in the background). The principal scene shows the devil in the wilderness offering Christ a rock and boldly challenging him to turn the stone into bread. Christ resists the temptation, and one can almost hear the famous words "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God." For a Queen, it was doubtless meant as a gentle reminder that if divinity resists temptation, then so must royalty.

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