sance. For King Philip II of Spain, he com-
pleted several works on mythological
themes, includingPerseus and Andromeda,
Diana and Callisto, andThe Rape of Eu-
ropa. Several major works, includingAdam
and Eve and the Martyrdom of St.
Lawrence, were painted for the monastery
of San Lorenzo del Escorial near Madrid;
in the royal palace of the Escorial Titian
paintedChrist Carrying the Cross, The Last
Supper, andAgony in the Garden. Titian’s
last painting is thePietà, a work he in-
tended to decorate his tomb. The painter’s
original use of perspective, foreshortening,
and his technique of blending colors to
mask outlines of figures and objects were
taken up by painters of the Mannerist and
Baroque styles who would dominate art
after the end of the Renaissance.
SEEALSO: Bellini, Gentile; Giorgione;
Michelangelo Buonarroti; Tintoretto, Ja-
copo; Venice
Torquemada, Tomás de ....................
(1420–1498)
A notorious prosecutor of the Spanish In-
quisition who served the Spanish mon-
archs Ferdinand and Isabella by ruthlessly
ridding their kingdom of non-Christians
during the 1490s. It was Torquemada’s task
to root out all false converters and punish
them with imprisonment, public humilia-
tion, expulsion from the kingdom, or
death. Born in the town of Torquemada,
he was the nephew of a Catholic cardinal,
Juan de Torquemada. Raised in Valladolid,
Tomás became a friar of the Dominican
order and was then appointed as the prior
of Santa Cruz, a monastery in Segovia. He
became confessor of Isabella, heir to the
throne of Castile, while the princess was
living in Segovia. In 1474, when Isabella
became the queen of Castile, Torquemada
followed her to the royal palace, where he
became both confessor and adviser.
In 1478, Pope Sixtus IV established the
Inquisition, an office meant to root out all
religious heresy. The first Inquisition court
was established in the southern city of
Seville. In 1483, the pope rewarded Torque-
mada for his service to the church by nam-
ing him to the post of General Inquisitor.
Over the next few years Torquemada
founded Inquisition courts in Valladolid,
Seville, Cordoba, Zaragoza, and Avila, es-
tablished a council of five to hear appeals,
and wrote a set of rules and regulations
for religious trials that remained in effect
until the eighteenth century. But the In-
quisition had jurisdiction only over Chris-
tians; in the meantime the Jews of Spain,
also known as Marranos, were accused of
heinous crimes, including the notorious
murder of Pedro de Arbues, another mem-
ber of the Inquisition, in 1485. Frustrated
by his inability to arrest and try members
of the Jewish faith, Torquemada decided
on a show trial as the most effective way
to enhance his authority. He had eight Jews
rounded up in the town of LaGuardia, and
had them tried and convicted of the ritual
murder of a Christian child—even though
the court had no evidence of the crime
and no victim. In 1492, the threat of Jew-
ish ritual murder, as revealed by the La-
Guardia trial, persuaded Ferdinand and
Isabella to pass the Alhambra Decree, giv-
ing all Jews one month to leave Spain;
those who remained had to sincerely dis-
avow their faith and convert to Christian-
ity.
Torquemada’s Inquisition court ar-
rested suspects denounced by a network of
spies, and extracted confessions through
torture. The Inquisition seized the prop-
erty of those it accused, then paraded them
through the streets before having them
publicly whipped at the doors of a church.
Some of the suspects were turned over toTorquemada, Tomás de