The scene there described as painted upon one
wall of the hall of Glory perhaps led Santillana to
bestow definite form upon that other great allegor-
ical type, the Panegyric, and the pictures in the
hall of Fortune were present to Juan de Mena's
mind when he wrote the Laberinto. The Corbaccio^
again, is one of the foundation stones for the Erotic
Hell, and the forbidding wilderness where the au-
thor finds himself astray is certainly as effective
as the seha oscura of the Divine Comedy in fur-
nishing a background to the many allegories of
sinister content. Other Italian compositions by
Boccaccio played a less significant role. Of the
Latin works, the De Casibus performed an encyclo-



MEDIAEVAL SPANISH ALLEGORY 33

paedic office similar to that of Petrarch's Trionfiy
supplying a list of famous downfalls that was util-
ized by such rhymesters as Gonzalo Martinez
de Medina. It was also one of the numerous
sources from which the Spaniards drew their con-
ceptions of Fortune, and, as Santillana himself
acknowledges, it suggested to him the idea of the
Comedieta de Ponza.
