Linaje y devotión en la Plasencia del siglo XV : San Vincente Ferrer y Don Juan de Zúñiga y Pimentel

The gilt silver image of St. Vicente Ferrer preserved in the Museo Nacional de Artes Decorativas constitutes one of the first representations of this Dominican saint in Castile, which documents the early diffusion of the cult to the Valencian saint through Castilian lands. At his feet, Juan de Zúñiga appears kneeling down, by desire of his mother, Leonor Pimentel, who would have commissioned the effigy with the intention of donating it to the convent of St. Vicente Ferrer, that she and her husband, Álvaro de Zúñiga, had founded in 1464 in Plasencia. This paper aims to highlight the exceptional iconographic and technical nature of this piece, as well as to analyze the devotion that the Dukes of Plasencia and, more specifically, the above-mentioned Leonor Pimentel, would have had to the Order of Preachers, in general, and to the Valencian saint, in particular. [Publication Abstract]