*The Royal Chapel*

Henry II took advantage of the support that most of Córdoba's nobility had offered him against his stepbrother, as well as the symbolic importance of this city as the former capital of the Umayyad Caliphate of Al Andalus, to stage his accession to the throne and leave an indelible visual mark of his reign as a legacy for eternity. Without a doubt, his most important artistic undertaking was the Royal Chapel in the main church of Córdoba (the Mosque/Cathedral).

According to the inscription on this chapel, it was completed in 1371 (For this study we rely on previously conducted research, to which we refer for more information: [17]), [18,19], (It has also been a subject of interest, more recently, for [20]) (We must highlight the works of Nogales Rincón, especially his doctoral thesis: [21]). Henry II had the bodies of his grandfather, Ferdinand IV of Castile, the Summoned; and his father Alfonso XI, transferred there. Ferdinand IV was already buried in Cordoba, but Alfonso XI was in the Royal Chapel of the Cathedral of Seville (along with Fernando III and Alfonso X). Apparently, above the aforementioned inscription, there hung a portrait of Henry II himself, thereby rounding out the message of legitimation. To this must be added the location of the chapel just behind the old clerestory of Caliph al-Hakam II, reused by the Christians as a main chapel after the conquest until the 16th century, dedicating it to Our Lady of Villaviciosa. In the latter, there was a series of images exalting the apostles Peter and Paul (the city was conquered on June 29, these saints' feast day), a frieze representing kings and saints, and a gallery of kings and saints that ran around the upper part of the walls; Professor Laguna Paúl has ascribed them to the painter Alonso Martínez and dated them to 1351, under the reign of Peter I [22]. Today, we only have a Latin inscription and two fragments identified as belonging to Christ and the Virgin, preserved at the Museum of Fine Arts. The aforementioned inscription reads: "[In the name of the Glorious Trinity] the mighty Father and Son and Holy Spirit the very noble King Ferdinand won the very noble city of [Cordoba]". According to Romero Barros, it was completed with the name of Alfonso X, the son of the holy king, and the date of the city's conquest [23].

Even more interesting for the purposes of this study is that, on the west wall of the Royal Chapel, R. Ramírez de Arellano and Mateo Inurria discovered, in three niches, evidence of paintings of three kings placed there, presumably the portraits of Henry II, in the center, flanked by Alfonso XI, his father, and Ferdinand IV, his grandfather [24]. That of

Henry II was, apparently, just above the founding inscription, which read: "This is the very grea<sup>t</sup> king, Henry, who, to honor the body of the king, his father, had this chapel built in MCCCLXXI", that is, in 1371.

On the east wall of the chapel, there is a niche framed by a pavilion arch full of muqarnas (honeycomb vaulting) and polychrome with gold leaf. The niche's background is blue, dotted with golden stars, and in the center, there must have been an image, originally on the altar table. This image was replaced by a sculpture of Ferdinand III, the Saint, canonized in 1671. The original figure may have also been that of this king, as the alcove is flanked by the shields of Castile and León, with two superb lions rampant crowned in relief guarding it. In addition, the plasterwork frieze that tops the tiled plinth features, alternately, the emblems of Castile and León, along with the inscription 'happiness' in Kufic Arabic (Figure 2).

**Figure 2.** Royal Chapel's East wall. 1371. Mosque/Cathedral of Córdoba.

There is no doubt as to Henry II's aim to erect this chapel within the city's most important church to portray himself as a descendant of the kings extending back to Ferdinand III, who had managed to recover Córdoba for Christendom after five centuries under Islamic rule. The ensemble formed by the main chapel and the adjoining Royal Chapel, conceived as interconnected spaces, constituted a material manifestation, an offering to God signifying those feats, a memento regum to reach paradise, with these monarchs, who had been appointed by divine grace to rule, thus providing an account of themselves (On the meaning of the royal chapels of the late Trastamara Dynasty, see [9] (pp. 67–68)). The last years of his reign were marked by policies that sought to pacify the different kingdoms and to integrate Portugal [25]. The king died in 1379 and his son, John I, married Beatrice, the daughter of Portugal's King Ferdinand I, in 1383 [26].

#### **5. The Majestic Image of the King: Sigillography and Numismatics**
