Great Melodrama

In 1547 the Spanish Duke of Gandia conveyed the corpse of the empress Isabel of Portugal to her burial-place in Granada. It is said that, when he saw the effect of death on the once so beautiful and charming empress, he decided to become a monk.

The Conversion of the Duke of Gandia (1884) is by the famous Spanish history painter José Moreno Carbonero (1858-1942). It’s a perfect constructed melodrama with the desolate duke in the center but concentrating with the light from the left on the casket with the dead body.