The Eloquence of Painting. The Doors of the University of Salamanca’s Archive

Abstract

Martín de Cervera’s paintings on the doors of the University of Salamanca’s archive, located in 1613 in the Casa del Bedel, conform a rich intervisual message trasferred to different modal records: narrative emblematic, heraldic, allegorical and epigraphic. The paintings testimony audiences and teaching practices in the chairs of Law and Theology, university norms and disputes, in a representation that modulate the sigilar record of the sixteenth century Estudio, reinforcing its monarchical promotion. Translated into a narrative model, this seal underlines the secret nature of the archive and warns of the inviolability of the documents in it, during the ceremonial opening of the furniture that, when is closed, seals -real and metaphorically- with this stamp, the place where the matrix of the seal is guarded. It is an essential figurative document in the construction of the institutional university account.

Keywords

• salamanca
• archivo
• imagen sigilar
• epigrafía, cultura visual
• puertas figuradas.