Juan Gutiérrez de Escalante y la capilla de Santiago en la Catedral de Santander

Abstract

In the second half of the 14th century, the merchant and shipowner Juan Gutierrez de Escalante carried out an extensive construction programme at Santander’s collegiate church (now the city’s cathedral), which included closing off the church’s Nave of the Epistle with a wall decorated with a wooden Virgin and Child, and the erection of two chapels: Santa María de Cueto in the church itself; and Santiago, attached to the cloister. The aforementioned wall, with its heraldry, its inscription and its image of the Virgin and Child, is a symbol promoting the virtues of a family that ruled over “La Puebla Vieja”, where the town’s noblemen lived. The chapel of Santiago is the most luxurious in the collegiate church and reveals the importance of secular private patronage in 14th-century Gothic art.