Boabdil, the last ruler of Moorish Granada, was accused of indecision. This picture certainly seems to agree, for it shows him hanging back when a courtier arrives and tells him either that his city is being besieged or that the jig was over.

A scene a thousand times painted, Boadbil, last Moorish king of Granada, surrenders to Ferdinand and Isabella, thus marking the end of Muslim Spain.

Columbus' dazed gaze, in conventional historical iconography signifying the quality of the visionary, is here emphasized to the extreme where he actually looks as if he was crazy. The sniggering monks, if they had some serious education and some common sense, must have known that the world was round.

Traditionally, Columbus was represented as a visionary, which meant he had a sort of dazed look. Here he looks upwards in a gesture of gratitude to God. Most of his companions try to emulate him. It was believed that Columbus had made landfall in one of the Antilles, but a likely reconstruction of his 1492 voyage indicates that in America the first land he sighted was a treeless islet of the Bahamas.

After the unification of Spain in 1492, the Dominican friar Torquemada insisted on the expulsion of the Jews and he finally won his case before the Catholic kings Ferdinand and Isabella. Torquemada himself came from a family of conversos, or converted Jews.