SWEET NAME OF JESUS ALTARPIECE

HISTORY 

Juan Alonso de Gamiz served as almoner and chaplain at the Court of king Charles I. Under the protection of his cousin, Martín de Salinas, he became a diplomat upon the latter's death in 1547, first at the Court of the Emperor and later as Ambassador to king Ferdinand I of Habsburg. Both posts allowed him to travel throughout most of Europe.

To the end of his career, shortly before he retired to his home town of Vitoria, he made a last journey to the Low Countries in the year 1558 which he probably took advantage of to commission this altarpiece. That same year, the Chapter of the collegiate church of St. Mary's had ceded him a pillar at the head of the temple where the Brotherhood of the Sweet Name of Jesus (Dulce Nombre de Jesús) had been founded and where his predecessors had been buried. There he founded a chapel dedicated to the same Brotherhood and displayed his family coat of arms on the said pillar. The Emperor dispensed him the right to crown his coat of arms with a two-headed eagle. In 1574, the same year he died, he made arrangements for his own burial there.