(11) memory and Charles V

Memory could also be depicted by Charles V’s emblem of two columns (shown here in a later illustration), since the chapter on memory in the Rhetorica ad Herennium suggested visualizing a scene in an intercolumniation, that is in the space between two columns. The tapestry copies of The Garden of Delights/El Jardín de las Delicias were “improved” by the addition of two columns that could either allude to Charles V, or to the ars memoria in the Rhetorica ad Herennium. But if Memory is only part of the virtue of Prudence, and if (as Bruegel seems to have suggested) Juana was an embodiment of Prudence, even with the columns the triptych is still mostly about Juana. Even though all three panels include events in the past, they also represent past, present, and future, that is memoria, intelligentia, and providentia, all parts of Prudence.