(Mis)Reading Iconic and Textual Artifice in Alfonso X's Cantiga 16

This study treats how the compilers—poets and miniaturists for the Galician poetry and the accompanying visual presentation in the miniatures, and the prosifier for the fifteenth-century Spanish rendition—negotiate the narrative regarding how the Virgin Mary intervenes to convert a knight's earthly love into a more spiritual one in which She becomes the object of the young lover's affection, thereby transforming an earthly love to a spiritual one which guarantees the young man's salvation. It further examines how the Spanish marginal prose version employs the poetic and visual presentation to render its own version of the narrative. Finally, it views how the miniaturists using the medium of structure and color supply details supporting and sometimes exceeding those of the poetry or prose.