A History of Spanish Painting: Volume IV–Part 1 A History of Spanish Painting, Volume IV: The Hispano-Flemish Style in North-Western Spain, Part 1 [Reprint 2014 ed.] 9780674600294, 9780674599772

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A HISTORY OF SPANISH PAINTING VOLUME IV—PART I

LONDON : H U M P H R E Y

MILFORD

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

A HISTORY OF SPANISH P A I N T I N G BY

C H A N D L E R R A T H F O N POST H A R V A R D UNIVERSITY

VOLUME I V — P A R T I T H E HISPANO-FLEMISH S T Y L E IN N O R T H WESTERN SPAIN

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS

H A R V A R D U N I V E R S I T Y PRESS *933

COPYRIGHT,

I933

BY T H E P R E S I D E N T A N D F E L L O W S O F H A R V A R D C O L L E G E

PRINTED AT T H E HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS CAMBRIDGE, MASS., U.S.A.

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF VOLUME IV 1 Agapito y Revilla, J., La capilla de San Juan Bautista en la parroquia del Salvador (Valladolid): un retablo flamenco con pinturas de Metsys, Valladolid, 1912 (reprinted from a series of articles in the Boletin de la Sociedad Castellana de Excursiones, beginning in V, 1911-1912, p. 50a). La pintura en Valladolid, series of articles in the Boletin del Museo Provincial de Bellas Artes de Valladolid, beginning in No. I, January, 1925. El retablo con pinturas de Metsys en el Salvador (Valladolid), Boletin de la Sociedad Castellana de Excursiones, VI (1913344-349· Alexandre, Α., Les Collections Manzi, Les arts, No. 177,1919, pp. 1-23. Altadill, J., Artistas exhumados, series of articles in the Boletin de la Comision de Monumentos Historicos y Artisticos de Navarra, beginning in 1909; especially on Pedro Diaz de Oviedo, X I V (i923)> 265-268. Alvarez Carballido, D., Pinturas murales halladas en Santa Maria de Mellid, Galicia historica, November-December, 1903, pp. 800804. Amador de los Rios, J., Toledo pintoresca, Madrid, 1845. Amador de los Rios, R., Burgos, in Espana, sus monumentos y artes, Barcelona, 1888. Angulo Iniguez, D., Dos lablas de hacia 1490 en el Museo del Prado, Archivo espanol de artey arqueologia, III (1927), 93-94. Gallego y Schongauer, Archivo espanol de arte y arqueologia, VI (1930), 74-75. Maestro castellano de la catedral de Barcelona, Archivo espanol de arte y arqueologia, VI (1930), 284-285. El "Maestro de la Virgo inter Virgines," La tabla del primer Conde de Alba, Archivo espanol de arte y arqueologia, I (1925), 193-196. Oer Memling zugeschriebene Hl. Ildejons der Sammlung Pacully, Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft, X L V I (1925), 38-41. La pintura en Burgos ä principios del siglo XVI, Archivo espanol de arte y arqueologia, VI (1930), 75-77. El retablo de San Ildefonso del Museo de Bellas Artes de Valladolid, Boletin del Museo Provincial de Bellas Artes de Valladolid, July, 1925, pp. 45-48. Aru, C., Colantonio,Dedalo, X I (1931), 1121-1141. 1

In addition to the Bibliography at the beginning of volume I.

VI

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Barcia Pavon, Α. Μ. de, Catälogo de la coleccion depinturas del Excmo. Sr. Duqtte de Berwicky de Alba, Madrid, 1911. Retratos de Isabel la Catolica procedentes de la Cartuja de Miraflores, Revista de archivos, XVII (1907), 76-87. Benavides, J., (Notes on the cathedral of Plasencia), Boletin de la Sociedad Espanola de Excursiones, XIII (1905), 40-43. Bertaux, E., TJn triptyque flamand a Valence, Gazette des beaux arts, 1906, II, 217-222. Betolaza y Esparta, G., Parroquia de San Gil de Burgos, Burgos, 1914. Bode, W., Roger van der Wey dens sogen. Reisealtar Kaiser Karls V im Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum, Amtliche Berichte aus den königlichen Kunstsammlungen, X X X (1908), 28-35. Brockwell, M. R., A Catalogue of the Paintings at Doughty House, Richmond, and Elsewhere in the Collection of Sir Frederick Cook, vol. I l l , London, 1915. Buttin, C., Un primitif espagnol de la Collection Manzi, Gazette des beaux arts, 1926,1, 79-88. Capilla de Santa Catalina, 'Toledo, Boletin de la Sociedad Espanola de Excursiones, IX (1901), 173. Catälogo general de la Exposicion de Arte Retrospectivo, VII centenario de la catedral de Burgos, 1921, Burgos, 1926. Catälogo monumental de la provincia de Palencia, Fasc'tculo primero, Partidos de Astudillo y Baltanas, published by the Diputacion Provincial of Palencia, 1930. Colorado y Laca, E., Segovia, Segovia, 1908. Cruzada Villaamil, G., Retabloy sepulcros de la capilla de D.Alvaro de Luna, El arte en Espana, VI (1867), 73-82. Diaz-Jimenez, J. E., Historia del Museo Arqueologico de San Marcos de Leon, Madrid, 1920. Dvorak, M., Das Rätsel der Kunst der Brüder van Eyck, Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses, XXIV (1903), 161-317. Escobar Prieto, E., La catedral de Coria, Boletin de la Sociedad Espanola de Excursiones, IX (1901), 245-252. Falck, G., Mester Michiel og Kunstmuseets Portraet af Christiern II, Kunstmuseets Aarsskrift (Copenhagen), XIII-XV (1926-1928), 129-136. Flama, Les taulesflamenques de Näjera, Gaseta de les arts, July 15,1927, ΡΡ· 3-5· Friedländer, Μ. J., Die altniederländische Malerei, Berlin, 1924 ff. Die Anbetung der Könige Hugos van der Goes, Jahrbuch der königlichpreussischen Kunstsammlungen, X X X V (1914), 1-4.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

vii

——- Ein neu erworbenes Madonnenbild im Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum (by Miguel Sithium?), Amtliche Berichte aus den königlichen Kunstsammlungen, X X X V I (1915), 177-183. Neues über den Meister Michiel und Juan de Flandes, Cicerone, X X I , I (1929), 249-254. •——• Von Eyck bis Bruegel, Berlin, 1921. Gallego y Burin, Α., La capilla real de Granada, Granada, 1931. Garcia de Quevedo, E., Exposicion de Arte Retrospectivo de Burgos, Museum (Barcelona), III (1913), 307-348. Glück, G., Bildnisse von Juan de Flandes, Pantheon, IV (1931), 313— 3*7Gomez-Moreno, M., La capilla de la Universidad de Salamanca, Boletin de la Sociedad Castellana de Excursiones, VI (1913i9T4), 3 2 I ~3 2 9· Francisco Chacon, pintor de la Reina Catolica, Archivo espanol de artey arqueologia, III (1927), 359-360. and Sanchez Canton, F. J., Sobre Fernando Gallego, Archivo espanol de artey arqueologia, III (1927), 349-357. TJn tresor de peintures inedites du XV siecle a Grenade, Gazette des beaux arts, 1908, II, 289-314. Valladolid, in the series El arte en Espana. Gonzalez Palencia, C., La capilla de Don Alvaro de Luna en la catedral de Toledo, Archivo espanol de arte y arqueologia, V (1929), 109-122. Gonzalez Simancas, M., Toledo, sus monumentos y el arte ornamental, Madrid, 1929. Haro, H. (editor), (Sale) Catalogue of the Emile Pacully Collection, Paris, 1903. Herrera y Oria, E., Onay su real monasterio, Madrid, 1917. Un retablo del monasterio de Ona, Boletin de la Sociedad Espanola de Excursiones, X X I V (1916), 52-55. Huidobro Serna, L., La iglesia de San Nicolas de Burgos, Valladolid, 1911. and Garcia Sainz de Baranda, J., El Valle de Valdivielso, Burgos, 1930. Hulin de Loo, G., Quelques notes de voyages, Bulletins de la Classe des Beaux-Arts, Academic Royale de Belgique, August 6, 1925, pp. 100-106 (on Flemish pictures in Spain). Justi, C., Altflandrische Bilder in Spanien und Portugal, Zeitschrijt für bildende Kunst, X X I (1885-1886), 93-98 and 133-140. Juan de Flandes, Jahrbuch der königlich preussischen Kunstsammlungen, VIII (1887), 157-169.

viii

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Justi, C., Miscellaneen aus drei Jahrhunderten spanischen Kunstlebens, Berlin, 1908. Die Werke des Hieronymus Bosch in Spanien, Jahrbuch der königlichpreussischen Kunstsammlungen, X (1889), 122-144. Kay, H. Isherwood, 'Two Paintings by Juan de Flandes, Burlington Magazine, LVIII (1931), 197-201. Kehrer, H., Martin Schongauer in Spanien, Monatshefte für Kunstwissenschaft, III (1910), 157-158. Kleinschmidt, B., Anna selbstdritt in der spanischen Kunst, Spanische Forschungen der Görresgesellschaft, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Kulturgeschichte Spaniens, Erste Reihe, Münster in Westfalen, 1928, pp. 149-165. Lafuente Ferrari, E., Las tablas de Sopeträn, Boletin de la Sociedad Espanola de Excursiones, X X X V I I (1929), 89-111. Loga, V. von, Spanische Maler des 15. Jahrhunderts in Neapel, Monatshefte für Kunstwissenschaft, X I (1918), 191-193. Zum Altar von Miraflores, Jahrbuch der königlich preussischen Kunstsammlungen, X X X I (1910), 47-56. Lopez Ferreiro, Α., Galicia en el ultimo tercio del siglo XV, La Coruna, 1896-1897. Madrazo, P. de, El descendimiento: retablo pintado por Rogier van der Wey den, Museo espanol de antigüedades, IV, 263-282. El triunfo de la iglesia sobre la sinagoga, cuadro en tabla del siglo XV atribuido ά Jan van Eyck, Museo espanol de antigüedades, IV, 1-40. Marti y Monso, J., Estudios historico-artisticos, Valladolid, 1898-1901. Retratos de Isabel la Catolica, Boletin de la Sociedad Castellana de Excursiones, I (1903-1904), 496-506. Martinez Kleiser, L., La villa de Villagrana de Zumaya, Madrid, 1923. Mayer, A. L., Die " altspanische Ausstellung " in der Galerie Heinemann in München, Cicerone, III (1911), 51-59. Dos tablas primitivas hispanoflamencas, Boletin de la Sociedad Espanola de Excursiones, X X X I I (1924), 255-256. Una exposicion retrospectiva de pintura espanola en Munich, Museum (Barcelona), I (1911), 296-303. Gotik in Spanien, Leipzig, 1928. Madrider Privat-Sammlungen, Cicerone, II (1910), 308-309; IV (1912), 93-100; and V (1913), 161-168. Segovia, Avila und El Eskorial (Berühmte Kunststätten), Leipzig, I I 9 3· Melgar, J. N. de, Gut a descriptiva de Avila y sus monumentos, Avila, 1922.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ix

Melida, J . R., Catälogo monumental de Espana, Provincia de Badajoz, Madrid, 1926. Morales de los Rios, Conde de, Algunos cuadros cast desconocidos de la pinacotheca de la Reina Isabel la Catolica, Boletin de la Sociedad Espanola de Excursiones, X X X V I I (1929), 133—139. Moreira Freire, J., Un probleme d'art, l'ecole portugaise creatrice des grandes ecoles, Lisbon, 1898 (including, on p. 174, a publication of the Mass of St. Gregory, a copy after the Master of Flemalle). Moreno Villa, J., Un pintor de la reina catolica (Juan de Flandes), Boletin de la Sociedad Espanola de Excursiones, X X V (1917), 276-281. Nicolas, A. de, La capilla del palacio arzobispal de Valladolid, Boletin de la Sociedad Castellana de Excursiones, II (1905-1906), 41-49. Nicolini, F., Harte napoletana del Rinascimento, Biblioteca napoletana di storia, letteratura ed arte, Naples, 1925. Nuno Garcia, Α., El Valle de Menay suspueblos, Santona, 1925. Pablo Ibanez, L. de, Burgos y su provincia, Burgos, ?. Palazuelos, El Vizconde de, Toledo, Guia artistico-practica, Toledo, 1890. Palomino de Castro y Velasco, Α., El museo pictorico, Madrid, 1724. Pemän, C., Sobre las tablas de Sopetran, Boletin de la Sociedad Espanola de Excursiones, X X X V I I I (1930), 128-130. Perez Minguez, F., Los tripticos de Zumaya, Boletin de la Sociedad Espanola de Excursiones, X X X (1922), 1 2 1 - 1 3 1 . Perez-Villamil, M., La catedral de Sigüenza, Madrid, 1899. Polo Benito, J. (editor), Toledo, Guia oficial, Toledo, 1928. Post, Paul, Der Stifter des Lebensbrunnens der van Eyck, Jahrbuch der preussischen Kunstsammlungen, X L I I I (1922), 120-125. Ramirez de Arellano, R., Las parroquias de Toledo, Toledo, 1921. Pinturas murales del siglo XV conservadas en San Lucas de Toledo, Boletin de la Sociedad Espanola de Excursiones, X X I I I 7 (191$), 263-269. Ramon Parro, S., Toledo en la mano, Toledo, 1857. Reinach, S., A Copy from a Lost Van Eyck, Burlington Magazine, X L I I I (1923), 15-16. Robinson, J . C., The Maitre de Flemalle and the Painters of the School of Salamanca, Burlington Magazine, VII (1905), 387-393. Roblot-Delondre, L., Portraits d'infantes, Paris and Brussels, 1913. Rolfs, W., Geschichte der Malerei Neapels, Leipzig, 1910. Rousseau, J., Les peintres flamands en Espagne, Bulletins des Commissions Roy ales d'Art et d'Archeologie, VI (1867), 316-361. A " Saint Ursula " is Attributed to Jorge Ingles, Art News, December 1929> Ρ· 8 ·

χ

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Sanchez Canton, F. J., Maestro Jorge Ingles, pintor y minialurista del Marques de Santillana, Boletin de la Sociedad Espanola de Excursiones, X X V (1917), 99-105, and X X V I (1918), 27-31. Nueva Sala del Museo del Greco, Madrid, 1921. Los pintores de camara de los reyes de Espana, Madrid, 1916. El retablo de la Reina Catolica, Archivo espanol de arte y arqueologta, V I (1930), 97-133, and VIII (1931), i^S2· Tablas de Fernando Gallego en Zamora y Salamanca, Archivo espanol de arte y arqueologia, V (1929), 279-283. Sanpere y Miquel S., Miguel Sithium, Revista critica de historia y literatura espanolas, portuguesas e hispano-americanas, VII (1902), 5-22. Sanz Artibucilla, J. M., Historia de la fidelisimay vencedora ciudad de !Tarazona, Madrid, 1929-1930. Sentenach, N., La Bureba (Provincia de Burgos), Madrid, 1925 (reprinted from the Boletin de la Sociedad Espanola de Excursiones, X X X I I , 1924, pp. 153-163 and 205-220 and X X X I I I , 1925, pp. 36-46 and 122-130). Los grandes retratistas en Espana, Madrid, 1914 (reprinted from a series of articles in the Boletin de la Sociedad Espanola de Excursiones, beginning in No. X X , 1912). Retratos de D. Inigo Lopez de Mendoza, primer Marques de Santillana y de su mujer Dona Catalina Suarez de Figueroa, Boletin de la Sociedad Espanola de Excursiones, X V (1907), 141-144. Taracena, B., and Tudela, J., Soria, guta artistica de la ciudady su provincia, Soria, 1928. Tarin y Juaneda, F., La real Cartuja de Miraflores, Burgos, second edition, 1925. Tavera Hernandez, A. Q., Aclaraciones sobre las pinturas encontradas en el claustro alto de la Universidad de Salamanca, Revista de archives, X L V I I I (1927), 199-204. Tejada, Α., El retablo de la iglesia de Ventosilla, Boletin de la Sociedad Espanola de Excursiones, X X X V I I I (1930), 49-53. Terey, G. von, Die Gemälde-Galerie des Museums für bildende Künste in Budapest, Berlin, 1916. Tormo y Μοηζό, Ε., Avila, Boletin de la Sociedad Espanola de Excursiones, X X V (1917), 201-224. La Circuncision, Boletin de la Sociedad Espanola de Excursiones, X X X I V (1926), 16-23. Un " Dalmau " en el Louvre, que parece un " Gallegos," Cultura espanola, 1906, pp. 517-518. Excursion colectiva ά Arenas de San Pedro, Candeleda, trujillo, Plasencia, Barco de Avila y Piedrahita, Boletin de la Sociedad Espanola de Excursiones, X X X V I (1928), 123-147.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

xi

Otra tabla desconocida de Juan de Flandes, Boletin de la Sociedad Espanola de Excursiones, X X V I (1918), 53. Segovia, Boletin de la Sociedad Espanola de Excursiones, X X V I I (1919), 130-137 and 202-214. •—•—• Sigiienza, Madrid, ?. Sobre algunas tablas hisfano-flamencas sacadas de Castilla la Vieja, Boletin de la Sociedad Castellana de Excursiones, II (1905-1906), 529-535; I I I (1907-1908), 8-16 and 546-558. Tramoyeres Blasco, L., El arte flamenco en Valencia, Una tabla inedita del siglo XV, Museum (Barcelona), I (1911), 98-109. TJn triptico de Jeronimo Bosco en el Museo de Valencia, Archivo de arte valenciano, I (1915), 87-102. Trapier, E. du Gue, Catalogue of Paintings (14th and 15th Centuries) in the Collection of the Hispanic Society of America, New York, \93°· Tschudi, H. von, Der Meister von Flemalle, Jahrbuch der königlich preussischen Kunstsammlungen, X I X (1898), 8-34 and 89-116. Vargas, R., Covarrubias: el Museo de reciente creacion, Arte X (1930-1931), 48-49. Villa-amil y Castro, J . , La catedral de Mondonedo, El arte en I I I (1864), 321-358. Pinturas murales de la catedral de Mondonedo, El arte en η (ι 863), 35-41. Pinturas murales de la catedral de Mondonedo, Museo de antigüedades, I (1872), 219-233.

espanol, Espana, Espana, espanol

Waagen, G. F., lieber in Spanien vorhandene Gemälde, Handzeichnungen und Miniaturen, Jahrbücher für Kunstwissenschaft herausgegeben von Dr. A. von Zahn, II (1869), 1-42. Wauters, A. J . , Roger van der Wey den, Burlington Magazine, X X I I (1912-1913), 75-82. Weale, W. H. J . , Hubert and John van Eyck, London, 1908. Review of C. Justi's Miscellaneen, Burlington Magazine, X I V (1908-1909), 1 1 3 - 1 1 4 . Winkler, F., Die altniederländische Malerei, Berlin, 1924. Master Michiel, Art in America, X I X (1931), 247-257. Neue Werke des Meisters Michiel, Pantheon, IV (1931), 175-178. Unbeachtete holländische Maler des XV. Jahrhunderts, Jahrbuch der preussischen Kunstsammlungen, X L I V (1923), 136-146.

CONTENTS CHAPTER THE

HISTORICAL

AND

CULTURAL

SPAIN IN THE SECOND H A L F

XLIII

SETTING OF T H E

C H A P T E R THE

FLEMINGS IN W E S T E R N

OF G O T H I C

FIFTEENTH

PAINTING

CENTURY

IN

. . .

3

XLIV

SPAIN

1. The Earlier Generation 2. The Later Generation

12 28

3. Isabella's Court-Painters 4. The Neapolitan and Pan-Mediterranean Hypotheses

33 55

5. The Spanish Interpretation of the Flemish Style

62

CHAPTER

XLV

J O R G E I N G L E S A N D T H E M A S T E R OF T H E A L B A A N N U N C I A T I O N

C H A P T E R FERNANDO

GALLEGO

AND THE

SCHOOL

. . . .

XLVI OF S A L A M A N C A A N D

ZAMORA

1. His Life 2. The Signed Works, the Problem of Francisco Gallego, and Pedro Bello

87 92

3. Works Authenticated by Style 4. The School of Fernando Gallego in Salamanca and in the Region 5. Other Hispano-Flemish Paintings in the Province of Zamora . CHAPTER T H E S C H O O L OF F E R N A N D O G A L L E G O . THE PROVINCE

65

OF

109 138 148

XLVII

H I S P A N O - F L E M I S H P A I N T I N G IN

LEON

1. Works Produced under the Influence of Fernando Gallego . . 2. The Palanquinos Master

151 155

3. Other Leonese Works of the Period

172

CHAPTER T H E S C H O O L OF F E R N A N D O G A L L E G O . THE PROVINCE

OF

XLVIII H I S P A N O - F L E M I S H P A I N T I N G IN

PALENCIA

Ι. Works Produced under the Influence of Fernando Gallego . . 2. Other Palencian Works of the Period

178 191

CONTENTS

XIV

CHAPTER T H E S C H O O L OF F E R N A N D O G A L L E G O . THE PROVINCE

OF

XLIX

H I S P A N O - F L E M I S H PAINTING IN

BURGOS

Ι. The Burgos Master 2. The School of Ona

202 220

3. "Juan Flamenco"

236

4. Unattached Works of the Gallego School in the Province of Burgos 5. The St. Nicholas Master 6. The Master of the Large Figures 7. The Early Hispano-Flemish Paintings in the Province

246 252 276 of

Burgos and those in which the Influence of the Low Countries is Very Pronounced 8. Other Hispano-Flemish Paintings in the Province of Burgos .

287 300

CHAPTER L OTHER WORKS

OF T H E

GALLEGO

SCHOOL

1. The Budapest Master 2. Carillo 3. Other Works of the Gallego School CHAPTER THE

SCHOOL

OF

318 328 332 LI

AVILA

Ι. The Avila Master

337

2. The School of the Avila Master

347

3. Other Hispano-Flemish Works in the Province of Avila . . . .

365

C H A P T E R HISPANO-FLEMISH

PAINTINGS

CONNECTED

LI I WITH

TOLEDO

1. The Luna Master 2. Other Hispano-Flemish Paintings at Toledo 3. Francisco Chacon C H A P T E R HISPANO-FLEMISH

PAINTINGS

CONNECTED

370 382 397

LIII WITH

VALLADOLID

Ι. The St. Udefonso Master 2. Other Hispano-Flemish Paintings in Valladolid and the Region

401 412

3. The Second Wave of Flemish Influence at Valladolid

415

CONTENTS

xv

CHAPTER LIV PEDRO

D I A Z AND

NAVARRE

Ι. Pedro Diaz of Oviedo 2. The School of Pedro Diaz in Navarre C H A P T E R OTHER HISPANO-FLEMISH

42g 440

LV

PAINTINGS

1. Segovia. The Segovia Master

451

2. Other Segovian Paintings of the Period 3. Sigüenza. The Master of the Retable of Sts. Mark and Catherine (Antonio Contreras?)

456 458

4. Ägreda 5. Unclassified Hispano-Flemish Paintings

463 468

CHAPTER LVI GALICIAN AND ASTURIAN APPENDIX.

FRESCOES

ADDITIONS TO V O L U M E S

478 I-III

Catalan Romanesque Frescoes

487

Romanesque Frescoes in the Western Part of the Peninsula . . . Catalan Romanesque Panel Paintings The Franco-Gothic Style The Circle of Ferrer Bassa Jaime Serra Pedro Serra The School of the Serras Bernardo de Montflorit The Circle of Borrassa Cirera Jaime Cabrera The Manner of Guimera The Master of St. George and his School The Master of the Paheria Other Catalan Paintings in the International Style The Sources of the Italo-Gothic Style at Valencia Pedro Nicolau and Andres Marzal de Sas Works Contemporary with Nicolau but not in the Same Style . . The Continuers of Nicolau's and Marzal's Manners The Catalan Influence at Valencia Other Valencian Paintings in the International Style Majorca

494 494 502 510 516 522 524 532 534 538 540 540 542 558 564 566 570 588 590 600 602 608

xvi

CONTENTS

The Catalan Influence in Aragon The Aragonese Counterpart of the Manner of Guimera

624 626

Aragonese Paintings in the Franco-Flemish Manner

634

The Indigenous Group in Aragon Italo-Gothic Painting in Castile

638 644

The Italo-Gothic and International Styles in Andalusia

660

ADDITIONAL

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

OF N A M E S

INDEX

OF P L A C E S

FOR V O L U M E S

OF A R T I S T S

I-III

667 675 679

LIST OF I L L U S T R A T I O N S Figure

Page

1. Madonna, Copy of a Lost Jan Van Eyck. Colegiata, Covarrubias 2. Gerard David (?). Pieta, Centre of Triptych. Parish Church, Hormaza 3. Juan de Flandes. Fresco of St. Anthony Abbot, University, Salamanca 4. Juan de Flandes (?). Veronica. Miraflores, Burgos 5. Juan de Flandes. Sts. Augustine and Roch. Formerly in the Augustinian Convent, Villadiego 6. Juan de Flandes II (?). Annunciation. Ayuntamiento, Palencia .

19 31 43 47 49 51

7. Retable of St. Vincent Ferrer. Iglesia de la Sangre, Segorbe . . . 8. Jorge Ingles. Portraits of Marquis of Santillana and his Wife,

59

Sections of Retable of Angels. Santillana Collection, Madrid . 9. Jorge Ingles. Predella of Retable of Angels. Santillana Collection,

67

Madrid 10. Jorge Ingles (?). St. Jerome, Centre of Retable from La Mejorada. Museum, Valladolid 11. Jorge Ingles (?). Burial of St. Jerome, Section of Retable from La Mejorada. Museum, Valladolid 12. Jorge Ingles (?). St. Ildefonso's Reception of Chasuble. Formerly

69

in the Gorostiza Collection, Bilbao 13. Kneeling Donor, Section of Retable.

76

Sopeträn 14. Annunciation.

73

Ermita de la Fuensanta,

Alba Collection, Madrid

15. Votive Panel of Juan Martinez de Mendaro. Parish Church, Zumaya 16. Fernando Gallego. Section of Retable of St. Ildefonso. Cathedral, Zamora 17. Fernando Gallego. Madonna, Centre of Triptych. New Cathedral, Salamanca 18. Fernando Gallego. Pieta. Weibel Collection, Madrid 19. Francisco Gallego. Decapitation of St. Catherine, Section of Retable. Old Cathedral, Salamanca 20. Francisco Gallego. Pieta, inserted in Dello Delli's Retable. Old Cathedral, Salamanca 21. Fernando Gallego. Flight into Egypt, Section of Retable. Sta. Maria, Trujillo

71

77 83 85 91 97 99 103 107 113

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

xviii

22. Fernando Gallego.

St. Luke, Section of Retable.

Sta. Maria,

Trujillo

115

23. Atelier of Fernando Gallego. Marriage at Cana. Parish Church, Arcenillas 24. Atelier of Fernando Gallego. Ecce Homo. Private Collection, Madrid 25. Fernando Gallego. Mercury, Section of Vault of Former Library, University, Salamanca 26. Fernando Gallego. Sts. Gregory and Benedict. SS. Cosme y Damian, Burgos 27. Fernando Gallego (?).

119 123 125 129

Sts. Bartholomew and James Major.

Parish Church, Cabeza del Buey 28. Fernando Gallego. Head of St. John, Detail of Crucifixion. Weibel Collection, Madrid 29. Fernando Gallego. Crowning with Thorns. Museo del Greco, Toledo 30. Fernando Gallego. Mass of St. Gregory. Schlayer Collection, Madrid 31. Fernando Gallego. Epiphany. Pacully Collection, Paris (?) . . 32. School of Fernando Gallego. Chaos, Section of Retable of Ciudad Rodrigo. Cook Collection, Richmond

131 132 133 135 137 139

33. School of Fernando Gallego. Via Dolorosa, Section of Retable of Ciudad Rodrigo. Cook Collection, Richmond 34. School of Fernando Gallego. St. Gabriel of the Annunciation, Organ-Shutter. Old Cathedral, Salamanca 35. Deposition. Prado, Madrid 36. School of Fernando Gallego. St. Cyprian Overthrowing Idol, Section of Retable. Parish Church, Villanueva de Jamuz . . . 37. 38. 39. 40.

The Palanquinos Master. Predella of Apostles. Cathedral, Leon . The Palanquinos Master (?). Deposition. Cathedral, Leon . . The Palanquinos Master. St. Damian. Cathedral, Leon . . . The Palanquinos Master. St. Marina Visited in Prison by her Lover, Section of Retable. Sta. Marina, Mayorga

41. The Palanquinos Master. St. Marina Emerging from the Dragon. Drey Collection, Munich 42. School of the Palanquinos Master. Purification, Section of Retable. Sta. Maria de Arvas, Mayorga 43. School of the Palanquinos Master. Temptation of St. Anthony Abbot. Sta. Maria de Arvas, Mayorga 44. School of the Palanquinos Master. Banquet of Herod, Section of Retable. S. Juan, Valencia de Don Juan 45. School of the Palanquinos Master. Epiphany, Section of Retable.

141 147 149 153 157 159 161 166 167 169 170 171

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Parish Church, Marne 46. School of Leon. Martyrdom of St. Erasmus. 47. 48. 49. 50.

School School School School

of Palencia. of Palencia of Palencia of Palencia

xix

Cathedral, Leon .

173 175

Retable of Visitation. Cathedral, Palencia . . (?). Visitation. Museum, Cadiz (?). Circumcision. Museum, Cadiz . . . . (?). Visitation. Mila Collection, Barcelona .

179 183 185 186

51. School of Palencia. Expulsion from Eden, Section of Retable. Sta. Maria del Castillo, Fromista 52. School of Palencia. Burial of Virgin, Section of Retable. Sta. Maria del Castillo, Fromista 53. School of Palencia (?). St. Christopher. Fogg Museum, Cambridge, Mass 54. School of Palencia (?). Paris

St. George.

189 195

Martin Le Roy Collection,

55. School of Palencia (?). Portrait of One of Donors, Section of Frescoes in Parish Church, Valberzoso 56. The Burgos Master. Via Dolorosa. Cathedral, Burgos . . . . 57. The Burgos Master. Epiphany. Cathedral, Burgos 58. The Burgos Master. Entombment. Casal Collection, Madrid . 59. The Burgos Master (?). Purification. Casal Collection, Madrid 60. The Burgos Master. Miracle of Sts. Cosmas and Damian. Formerly in SS. Cosme y Damian, Burgos 61. The Burgos Master (?). Epiphany, Section of Retable. Provincial Museum, Seville 62. The Burgos Master.

187

197 200 203 205 209 210 211 213

Sts. Sebastian and Fabian, Section of Re-

table. Provincial Museum, Seville 63. The Burgos Master. Detail of Death of St. Emilianus, Section of Retable. S. Millan, Los Balbases 64. The Burgos Master. St. Roch. S. Esteban, Los Balbases . . . . 65. School of the Burgos Master. Pieta. S. Esteban, Los Balbases . 66. The Burgos Master (?). Birth of the Virgin. Pickman Collection, Seville 67. The Burgos Master (?). Annunciation. Formerly in the Raimundo Ruiz Collection, Madrid 68. School of Ona. Deposition. Monastic Church, Ona 69. School of Ona. Section of Frescoes in Vestibule of Monastic Church, Ona 70. School of Ona. Resurrection. Provincial Museum, Burgos . . . 71. School of Ona. Flagellation. Provincial Museum, Burgos . . . . 72. School of Ona. Epiphany. Cathedral, Burgos 73. School of Ona. Sts. Dominic and Francis, Section of Retable. S. Nicolas, Espinosa de los Monteros

215 217 218 219 221 222 223 225 226 227 229 230

XX

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

74. School of Ona. Santiago and Another Apostle, Section of Retable. S. Pedro, Tejada

231

75. School of Ona. Section of Retable. Parish Church, Irus . . . 76. School of Ona (?). Deposition and Resurrection. Museum, Ghent 77. "Juan Flamenco." Decapitation of St. John Baptist. Prado,

233

Madrid 78. "Juan Flamenco" (?). Santiago. Prado, Madrid 79. Style of "Juan Flamenco." St. Lawrence Healing Cyriaca. Formerly in the Raimundo Ruiz Collection, Madrid 80. Style of "Juan Flamenco." Martyrdom of St. Lawrence. Instituto

237 242

235

243

de Valencia de Don Juan, Madrid 81. Style of "Juan Flamenco." Christ before Pilate. Lazaro Collection, Madrid 82. Style of " Juan Flamenco." Sts. Anthony of Padua and Bernardine. Lazaro Collection, Madrid

245

248

83. School of Burgos. Exorcism of Eudoxia, Section of Retable. Esteban, Los Balbases

249

247

S.

84. School of Burgos. Last Supper. S. Esteban, Burgos 85. The St. Nicholas Master. St. Nicholas Admonishing the Nobleman to Keep Secret the Gift of the Gold, Section of Retable. S. Nicolas, Burgos 86. The St. Nicholas Master. Consecration of St. Nicholas, Section of Retable. S. Nicolas, Burgos 87. The St. Nicholas Master. Fragment of Consecration of St. Augustine (?). Prado, Madrid 88. The St. Nicholas Master. Epiphany, Centre of Triptych. Cathedral, Burgos 89. The St. Nicholas Master. St. Andrew Saving the Bishop from Sin, Section of Retable. Church, Ventosilla 90. The St. Nicholas Master. Raising of Drusiana. Taramona Collection, Madrid 91. The St. Nicholas Master. St. John Evangelist and the Poisoned Cup. Taramona Collection, Madrid 92. The St. Nicholas Master. Dance of Salome. Strauss Collection, Vienna 93. The St. Nicholas Master. Martyrdom of St. Maurice and his Companions (?) 94. The St. Nicholas Master (?). Epiphany, Section of Retable. Parish Church, Presencio 95. The St. Nicholas Master (?). St. Anthony Abbot. S. Esteban, Los Balbases

251

253 255 257 258 259 261 263 265 267 269 271

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 96. The St. Nicholas Master (?). Ecstasy of the Magdalene. De Miro Collection, Madrid (?) 97. School of the St. Nicholas Master. Presentation of the Virgin, Section of Retable. Parish Church, Villasandino 98. School of the St. Nicholas Master. Trial of St. Peter. Cathedral, Burgos 98A. The St. Nicholas Master or a Pupil. Monte Gargano Episode in Legend of St. Michael. Parish Church, Hontoria de la Cantera 99. Master of the Large Figures. Annunciation. S. Nicolas, Burgos 100. Master of the Large Figures. Massacre of the Innocents. S. Nicolas, Burgos 101. Master of the Large Figures. St. Peter Enthroned, Section of Retable. De la Sota Collection, Bilbao 102. Master of the Large Figures. Purification, Section of Retable. De la Sota Collection, Bilbao 103. Master of the Large Figures (?). St. Rufina, Section of Retable. Parish Church, Yillasante 104. Master of the Large Figures (?). St. Francis. Santo Domingo de Silos 105. School of Burgos. St. John Baptist and Donors, Panel from Church of S. Gil, Burgos. Cathedral, Burgos 106. School of Burgos. Wings of Altarpiece. Augustinian Convent, Villadiego 107. St. Anne, Virgin, and Child, Centre of Altarpiece. Casa de la Beneficencia, Logrono 108. School of Burgos. Episodes from Life of St. Blaise. Parish Church, Villalonquejar 109. School of Burgos (?). Detail of Mass of St. Gregory. Garnelo Collection, Madrid n o . School of Burgos. Madonna and Angels. Parish Church, Hontoria de la Cantera HI. School of Burgos. St. Lucy. Sto. Tomas, Covarrubias 112. School of Burgos. St. Anne, Virgin, and Child. Parish Church, Haza 113. School of Burgos. The Prophets Isaiah, Samuel, and David, Section of Predella. Parish Church, Arlanzon 114. School of Burgos (?). The Prophets David and Jeremiah, Section of Predella. Parcent Collection, Madrid 115. School of Burgos. Man of Sorrows. Colegiata, Covarrubias . . 116. School of Burgos. Trinity. Church of the Natividad de la Virgen, Villasandino 117. School of Burgos. St. Francis Receiving the Stigmata. S. Esteban, Burgos

xxi 273 275 277 278 279 280 281 283 286 288 289 291 293 295 297 299 301 302 303 305 306 307 309

xxii

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

118. School of Burgos. Marriage at Cana. Parish Church, Belorado . 119. School of Burgos. St. Philip, Section of Predella. Monastic Church, El Espino 120. School of Burgos. Saints, Section of Predella. Gumiel de Hizan

311 312

Parish Church, 313

ι αι. School of Burgos. Decapitation of St. John Baptist, Section of Retable. Parish Church, Salinas de Rosio 122. The Budapest Master. Episcopal Saints. Museum, Budapest . 123. The Budapest Master. Annunciation, Assumption, and Last

315 319

Supper 124. The Budapest Master. Presentation of the Virgin. Museum, Budapest 125. The Budapest Master. Marriage of the Virgin. Cathedral, Barcelona

321

126. The Budapest Master. St. Lawrence Baptizing St. Hippolytus . 127. Circle of the Budapest Master. Deposition. Gallery of the Fine Arts Society, San Diego, California 128. Carillo (?). Mass of St. Gregory. Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, England 129. Carillo (?). Madonna. Kaiser Friedrich Museum, Berlin . . . 130. School of Fernando Gallego. Christ among the Doctors. Lazaro Collection, Madrid 131. School of Fernando Gallego (the Palanquinos Master?). M a donna, Angels, and Donor. Plandiura Collection, Barcelona . 132. School of Fernando Gallego (?). St. Gregory. Prado, Madrid . 133. The Avila Master. Triptych. Lazaro Collection, Madrid . . . 134. The Avila Master. Exterior of Wings of Triptych. Lazaro Collection, Madrid 135. The Avila Master. Meeting at the Golden Gate. S. Vicente, Avila 136. The Avila Master. Christ among the Doctors. Parish Church, El Barco de Avila 137. School of the Avila Master. Nativity, Section of Retable of Nuestra Senora de Gracia. Cathedral, Avila 138. School of the Avila Master. Christ and St. Peter by the Sea of Tiberias, Section of Retable. Cathedral, Avila 139. School of the Avila Master. Departure of the Angel from St. Peter, Section of Reliquary. Cathedral, Avila 140. School of the Avila Master. St. Martial, Central Section of Retable of St. Martial. Cathedral, Avila 141. School of the Avila Master. St. Martial Foretelling his Death, Section of Retable of St. Martial. Cathedral, Avila . . . .

323 324 325 326 327 329 331 333 335 339 341 343 345 349 351 353 355 357

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 142. Master of La Sisla.

The Purification.

Prado, Madrid

xxiii . . . .

361

143. Master of La Sisla or his Atelier. Epiphany. Prado, Madrid . .

363

144. School of Avila. St. Anne, Virgin, and Child. Cathedral, Avila . 145. School of Avila (?). Man of Sorrows. Casa de la Diputacion, Avila ^

367 373

146. The Luna Master. Alvaro de Luna, his Wife, and Franciscan Saints, Section of Retable. Cathedral, Toledo 147. The Luna Master. Madonna and Angels. Prado, Madrid . . . 148. The Luna Master. Deposition. Prado, Madrid

375 377 379

149. The Luna Master or his Atelier. Triptych. Prado, Madrid . . 381 χ 50. The Luna Master. Fragment of Pieta. Formerly in the Gorostiza Collection, Bilbao 383 151. Left Half of Retable in Chapel of St. Catherine, S. Salvador, Toledo 152. Crucifixion, Section of Retable now in the Mozarabic Chapel, Cathedral, Toledo 153. Retable now in the Mozarabic Chapel, Cathedral, Toledo (not according to the present arrangement of the sections) . . . . 154. A Martyrdom, Section of Cycle of Frescoes, S. Lucas, Toledo . . 155. Francisco Chacon. Detail of Pieta. Escuelas Pias, Granada . . 156. The St. Udefonso Master. St. Ildefonso's Reception of Chasuble. Louvre, Paris 157. The St. Ildefonso Master (?). St. Louis of Toulouse. Museum, Valladolid 158. The St. Ildefonso Master(P). St. Anne, Virgin, and Child. Museum, Valladolid 159. The St. Ildefonso Master (?). St. Anthony of Padua. Museum, Valladolid 160. Hispano-Flemish Painter Active at Valladolid. The Visitation. Archiepiscopal Palace, Valladolid 161. Hispano-Flemish Painter Active at Valladolid (?). Triptych: Centre in Pacully Collection, Paris (?); Wings in Museum, Valladolid 162. Hispano-Flemish Painter Active at Valladolid (?). The Circumcision. Lazaro Collection, Madrid 163. Hispano-Flemish Painter Active at Valladolid (?). The Epiphany. Willys Collection, Palm Beach 164. Hispano-Flemish Painter Active at Valladolid (?). Marriage at Cana. Satterwhite Collection, New York 165. Pedro Diaz. Presentation of Virgin, Section of Retable. Cathedral, Tudela 166. Pedro Diaz. Flight into Egypt, Section of Retable. Cathedral, Tudela

389 391 393 395 399 403 405 407 409 413

415 417 419 421 431 433

xxiv

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

167. Pedro Diaz. Encounter of Santiago and Hermogenes, Section of Retable.

Cathedral, Tarazona

439

168. Atelier of Pedro Diaz. Martyrdom of St. Andrew. Cathedral, Tarazona 441 169. School of Pedro Diaz. Annunciation, Section of Retable. S. Saturnino, Artajona 443 170. School of Pedro Diaz. Fragment of Retable. Cathedral, Pamplona 445 171. Painter Influenced by Pedro Diaz. Annunciation, Section of Caparroso Retable. Cathedral, Pamplona 447 172. School of Pedro Diaz. Jeremiah, Section of Retable. Parish Church, Losarcos 449 173. The Segovia Master. St. Udefonso's Reception of Chasuble. Prado, Madrid 453 174. School of Segovia (?). St. Jerome in his Study. Lazaro Collection, Madrid 175. Antonio Contreras (?). Retable of Sts. Mark and Catherine. Cathedral, Sigüenza 176. Antonio Contreras (?). Sections of Retable. Formerly in the Lafora Collection, Madrid 177. Antonio Contreras (?). Sts. Paul and Andrew. Museum, Bilbao 178. Hispano-Flemish School of Castile. St. Blaise, Section of Retable of St. Lawrence. Nuestra Senora de los Milagros, Ägreda . . 179. Hispano-Flemish School of Castile. Retable probably from the Region of Agreda. Hispanic Society, New York 180. Hispano-Flemish School of Castile. Assumption. Prado, Madrid 181. Hispano-Flemish School of Castile. Betrayal. Formerly in the Manzi Collection, Paris 182. Hispano-Flemish School of Castile (?). Assumption. Prado, Madrid 183. Hispano-Flemish School of Castile (?). St. Mark. Santillana Collection, Madrid 184. Hispano-Flemish School of Castile (?). Dream of Jacob. Provincial Museum, Seville 185. Hispano-Flemish School of Castile (?). Triptych. Collection of Lord Lee, White Lodge 186. Hispano-Flemish Frescoes in Apse of Sta. Maria, Mellid . . . .

457 459 461 463 465 467 469 471 472 473 475 477 481

187. Madonna, Section of Frescoes from Sorpe

489

188. 189. 190. 191.

493 495 497

Zone of Saints from Apse of S. Roman de les Bones Section of Frescoes in Apse of S. Miguel, Cruilles Section of Frontal. Parish Church, Greixa Side-Piece of Altar of Frontal of Bishops. Muntadas Collection, Barcelona

501

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

XXV

192. Section of Decoration of Romanesque Beam. S. Miguel, Cruilles

503

193. Annunciation on Wings of Triptych. Cathedral, Tortosa . . . 194. Centre of Frontal of St. Eulalia. Parish Church, Javierre . . . 195. Circle of Ferrer Bassa. Left Section of Polyptych. Morgan Library, New York 196. Circle of Ferrer Bassa. Nativity, Section of Retable

505 509

197. Jaime Serra. Christ at the House of Martha and Mary, Section of Retable. Parish Church, Iravalls 198. Jaime Serra. St. Martha Taming the Tarasque, Section of Retable. Parish Church, Iravalls 199. Pedro Serra or Atelier. Annunciation. Brera, Milan 200. Pedro Serra and Atelier. St. Peter Enthroned, Section of Retable from Cubells. Bosch Collection, Barcelona 201. Pedro Serra and Atelier. The " Q u o V a d i s " Episode, Section of Retable from Cubells 202. Pedro Serra. Detail of Epiphany, Section of Retable from Cubells 203. Master of the Cardona Pentecost. Meeting at the Golden Gate. Museum, Vich 204. Marcos de Vilanova (?). Retable. Parish Church, Aisina de Ribelles 205. Marcos de Vilanova (?). St. Catherine. Monastery, Mount Sinai 206. Bernardo de Montflorit (?). Retable. Muntadas Collection, Barcelona 207. School of Borrassa.

Entombment, Section of Retable.

511 513 515 517 521 523 525 526 527 529 531 533

Parish

Church, All 208. School of Borrassä. Madonna and Angels. Museo de la Ciudadela, Barcelona 209. Borrassa (?). Detail of Panel Representing Angels Bearing to Heaven Souls Released from Purgatory by Requiem Mass, Section of Retable of St. Michael. S. Miguel, Cruilles . . .

534 535

536

210. Borrassa (?). Detail of Panel Representing St. Michael Overcoming Antichrist, Section of Retable of St. Michael. S. Miguel, Cruilles 211. Jaime Cirera (?). St. Anthony of Padua or St. Francis Preaching. Milä Collection, Barcelona 212. Circle of Jaime Cirera. Combat of Angels and Demons. Muntadas Collection, Barcelona

541

213. Jaime Cirera or a Pupil. Crucifixion. Tomas Harris Collection, London 214. Manner of Guimera. Madonna. Museum, Vich

543 545

537 539

XXVI

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

215. Manner of Guimerä. Madonna and Angels. Weissberger Collection, Madrid αϊ 6. Master of St. George. St. Vincent, Centre of Retable. Museo de la Ciudadela, Barcelona 217. Master of St. George. Death of St. Vincent, Section of Retable. Museo de la Ciudadela, Barcelona 218. Master of St. George. Crucifixion. Mila Collection, Barcelona . 219. School of Master of St. George. St. John Evangelist on Patmos. Brimo de Laroussilhe Collection, Paris 220. School of Master of St. George. Predella. Muntadas Collection, Barcelona 221. School of Master of St. George. Christ among the Doctors. Friedsam Collection, Metropolitan Museum, New York . . . 222. Circle of Master of St. George. Retable of Sts. John Evangelist and Lucy. Muntadas Collection, Barcelona 223. Master of the Paheria. St. Blaise. Diocesan Museum, Lerida . 224. Master of the Paheria. Santiago. Diocesan Museum, Lerida . . 225. Master of the Paheria. St. Lawrence, Centre of Retable. Museum, Vich 226. Scenes from Life of St. Ursula. Formerly in the Gorostiza Collection, Bilbao 227. School of Catalonia, First Half of Fifteenth Century. Meeting at Golden Gate and Betrayal. Muntadas Collection, Barcelona 228. School of Valencia or of the Maestrazgo. Retable of Madonna of Humility. Muntadas Collection, Barcelona 229. Workshop or Circle of Nicolau and Marzal de Sas. Salvator Mundi. Museum, Bilbao 230. Workshop or Circle of Nicolau and Marzal de Sas. Annunciation, Section of Retable from Baneras. Aras Collection, Neguri . . 2 3 1 . Workshop or Circle of Nicolau and Marzal de Sas. Pentecost, Section of Retable from Baneras. Aras Collection, Neguri . . 232. Workshop or Circle of Nicolau and Marzal de Sas. Epiphany, Section of Retable. Bosch Collection, Barcelona 233. Workshop or Circle of Nicolau and Marzal de Sas. Entombment. Provincial Museum, Seville 234. Workshop or Circle of Nicolau and Marzal de Sas. Sts. Fabian and Sebastian, Section of Retable. Ermita de S. Sebastian, Puebla de Vallbona 235. Workshop or Circle of Nicolau and Marzal de Sas. Madonna. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 236. Andres Marzal de Sas (?). Crucifixion. Ehrich Galleries, New York (?)

546 547 549 551 553 555 557 559 560 561 563 565 567 569 574 575 577 578 579

581 583 585

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

xxvii

237. School of Andres Marzal de Sas (?). Crucifixion. Collection of P. Jackson Higgs, New York (?) 238. School of Valencia. Sts. Michael and Mary Magdalene. S. Agustin, Alcira 239. School of Nicolau and Marzal de Sas. Madonna and Angels. Bechi 240. School of Valencia. Vision of St. Joachim and Birth of Virgin. Parish Church, Albal 241. Circle of Nicolau and Marzal de Sas. Fragments of Retable of St. Michael. Museum, Lyons 242. School of Valencia. Retable of St. Michael and All Saints. Formerly in Foulc Collection, Paris 243. Domingo Vails (?). Burial of Virgin. Dalmau Collection, Barcelona 244. Bernardo Serra (?). Retable of St. Michael. Ermita de S. Miguel, L a Puebla de Ballestar, near Villafranca del Cid 245. Bernardo Serra (?). Sts. Michael and John Baptist, Section of

588 589 591 593 595 597 603 605

Retable. Parish Church, Cinctorres 246. Bernardo Serra (?). Section of Retable of Magdalene. Ermita de la Magdalena, Olocau del Rey 247. Annunciation. Museo de la Lonja, Palma 248. Martin Mayol (?). Detail of Figure of St. Margaret, Section of

607

Retable. Parish Church, Santa Margarita 249. Martin Mayol (?). St. Peter, Section of Retable. Parish Church, Santa Margarita 250. St. Peter, Section of Retable. Parish Church, Castellig . . . . 251. Episcopal Saint, Section of Retable of St. Bernard. Museo de la Lonja, Palma 252. Fragment of Retable. Ayuntamiento, Santa Maria (Majorca) . 253. St. Lucy's Distribution of her Dowry and the Ecstasy of the Magdalene, Fragments of Retable. Museo de la Lonja, Palma 254. School of Majorca. Madonna. Raimundo Ruiz Collection, Madrid 255. Deposition and Entombment, Sections of Predella of Retable. Parish Church, Anento 256. Juan de Levi. St. Catherine, Section of Retable. Cathedral, Tarazona 257. Juan de Levi. Marriage of St. Catherine, Section of Retable. Cathedral, Tarazona 258. Juan de Levi. St. Prudentius Crossing the Duero, Section of Retable. Cathedral, Tarazona 259. Benito Arnaldin. St. Martin, Centre of Retable. Parish Church, Torralba de Ribota

612

609 611

613 615 617 619 621 623 625 627 629 630 631

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

xxvm

260. St. Andrew, Centre of Retable.

Parish Church, Torralba de

Ribota

632

261. School of Aragon. Retable of St. John Baptist. Gallery of the Fine Arts Society, San Diego, California 262. The Master of Sigüenza. Coronation. Formerly in the Van Stolk Collection, The Hague . . 263. The Master of Sigüenza. Via Dolorosa. Private Collection, Seville 264. School of Aragon. Madonna and Angels. Beck Collection, New York

635 639 641 643

265. School of Aragon. St. Augustine (?). Muntadas Collection, Barcelona

645

266. Stamina (?). Two Saints. Cathedral, Toledo 267. Italo-Gothic School of Castile. Central Section of Retable of San Roman de la Hornija. Prado, Madrid

647 651

268. Italo-Gothic School of Castile. Section of Retable. Church, Torres de Medina 269. Nicolas Frances (?). St. Helen. Cathedral, Leon

653 655

Parish

270. School of Nicolas Frances. Sts. Andrew, James Major, and Thaddaeus, Fragment of Predella. Mayor

Parish Church, Mansilla la

271. School of Nicolas Frances. Ecstasy of Magdalene. Cathedral, Palencia 272. School of Nicolas Frances. Santiago, St. Matthias, and St. Andrew, Section of Frontal. S. Pedro, Astudillo 273. Head of St. Lawrence, Section of Frescoes in S. Lorenzo, Cordova 274. Head of Christ (?). Fragment of Fresco. Seminary of S. Pelagio, Cordova

657 658 659 661 663

PART I THE HISPANO-FLEMISH STYLE IN NORTHWESTERN SPAIN

CHAPTER XLIII THE HISTORICAL A N D

CULTURAL

SETTING

OF

GOTHIC PAINTING IN SPAIN IN T H E SECOND HALF OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY having turned to France, Italy, and the international movement for models, the Spanish Gothic style during its ultimate phase in the second half of the fifteenth century transferred its allegiance to Flanders. W e must not, however, strain the effort to import unity into Spanish painting at this period beyond the truth, since Catalonia and Valencia were much less vitally subjected to the artistic influence of the Low Countries than was the rest of the peninsula. T h e Hispano-Flemish manner begins, broadly speaking, with the reigns of Henry I V (1454-1474) in the western kingdom and of John II (1458-1479) in the eastern kingdom, and it culminates with the federation of the whole country under Ferdinand and Isabella, dovetailing, at the conclusion of their reign in the last years of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth century, into the first pictorial expressions of the Renaissance. In the western kingdom, the painting of which in its Castilian and Leonese manifestations concerns us in this volume, the twenty years of Henry IV's rule were largely an unbroken tale of internecine, civil strife, of consequent economic depression, and of general national decline. The strife centred chiefly in the king's fond attempt to have acknowledged as his heir the girl whose claim to be his daughter was more than dubious, Juana la Beltraneja, and in the bitter opposition of many of his seditious nobles and of the municipalities, whose candidates for the succession were first the sovereign's half-brother, Alfonso, and after this prince's untimely and mysterious death in 1468, the king's half-sister, the maiden who was to become the great Isabella. The political and financial anarchy of this reign, by diminishing the scope of patronage, was doubtless one of the causes for its comparative barrenness in painting. Here and AFTER

4

HISTORICAL

SETTING

there, as in Leon, the international movement still lingered on in a few isolated examples; but despite the facts that the style of the Low Countries had already crystallized into definite form in the great and mature creations of the Van Eyck brothers and of the school of Tournai and that J a n van E y c k had displayed his new miracles of painting in the very peninsula at least as early as his visit of 1428-1429, yet the perturbed conditions in the western kingdom prevented the Flemish spark from taking vigorous fire until Ferdinand and Isabella had established order and well-being in the last quarter of the century. The HispanoFlemish output of Castile, Leon, and Andalusia in the days of Henry IV is significantly scant, and it is only under the bright aegis of the Reyes Catolicos that the style evolves into its typical expression and attains the peak of its development. What few paintings were produced in the fifties, sixties, and early seventies do not seem to have focussed about the distraught court of the feeble monarch; they were done for ecclesiastical institutions or particularly, as was to have been expected, for the great and frequently disaffected nobles whose overweening powers had increased even beyond their pretensions during the previous reign of John I I (of Castile) and among whom the use of magnificent titles had been much augmented. Examples of early Hispano-Flemish works commissioned by these puissant lords, who were often almost or quite as important figures as the sovereign himself, are the first celebrated achievement in the new manner, the retable by Jorge Ingles for the Marquis of Santillana, the panels in the Ermita of Sopeträn probably executed for the same peer or one of his sons, and the Annunciation that comprises an alleged portrait of the first Count of Alba (if this picture does not, indeed, postdate the reign of Henry IV). In addition to the general impetus given to the arts both by the prosperity resulting from the wise and far-seeing administration of Ferdinand and Isabella and by the queen's own enlightened interest in them, almost all the great measures and reforms enacted by the sovereigns had their repercussions in painting. Isabella's role in fostering the importation and the imitation of Flemish pictures will be a subject for our investigation in the following chapter; and the orientation of Ferdinand's

HISTORICAL SETTING

5

masterful diplomacy toward Burgundy and the Low Countries, eventually achieving the marriages of his daughter Joanna the M a d to Philip the Fair in 1496 and of the prince of Asturias, John, to Margaret of Austria in 1497, placed the official stamp upon the Hispano-Flemish manner. T h e royal nuptial alliances with the imperial house of Austria, Burgundy, and Flanders are indeed actually commemorated in a great retable purporting to come from Valladolid, the parts of which are now dispersed through several American collections, and they are less definitely suggested by the presence of a single escutcheon of the Empire even in such remote works as the Aragonese copies, in the Parcent Collection, Madrid, of lost paintings by Bermejo. Ferdinand's policy of a closer rapport with the Empire, to which the Low Countries were now united, and the more intimate contact consummated by the royal marriages were prime factors also in provoking a second wave of exact imitation of Flemish prototypes in a group of Spanish painters active about 1500. The sphere of the Fine Arts was likewise afffected by the achievements through which the Reyes Catolicos gradually centralized the rule in the throne — the curtailment of the nobility's powers and the suppression of their arrogance, the delegation of important governmental and even judicial functions to the Royal Council as a tool of the sovereigns, the incorporation of the masteries of the great Military Orders in the crown, the abridgment of the municipalities' privileges, their subjection to the more direct control of the monarch, and the more immediate responsibility of the army to the king. It was under the spell of such centralization that Spanish art was just beginning to take on the characteristics of the essentially courtly product that it was so largely to become in the two succeeding centuries. The reign of Ferdinand and Isabella witnessed also a much further development of a tendency that had commenced even amidst the aristocratic insubordination under John II (of Castile) and Henry IV, the attraction of the nobles from their castles in the country to the court and their appointment to positions in the royal household. Owing to these new conditions more works of art were executed for the sovereigns themselves than in the earlier centuries, and the great barons and prelates do not stand forth in such strong relief as patrons. T h e function

6

HISTORICAL

SETTING

of court-painter, which had so long been a custom in the eastern kingdom, now emerged clearly in Castile, and we shall have occasion to review the attainments of several of Isabella's official artists, Spanish as well as Flemish and German. The conquests of the royal pair, both diplomatic and military, had very concrete results in painting. Their triumph, immediately after their accession, over Juana la Beltraneja and her supporters, the Portuguese, was perpetuated in painting as well as in architecture. The church of S. Juan de los Reyes at Toledo is a monument to their victory on land in 1476 at the celebrated battle of Toro, but an Hispano-Flemish panel in the parroquia of Zumaya actually depicts the less well known naval success won the previous year for their majesties in the strait of Gibraltar by its donor, Juan Martinez de Mendaro. T h e final capture of Granada in 1492 and the complete suppression of the Moorish sway in the peninsula opened new cities to the realm of Christian art. Granada was even decorated at once with several Hispano-Flemish pictures, among them a Pieta by the courtpainter, Francisco Chacon, who thus seconded with his brush the proselyting efforts, among the infidels, of the mighty prelate, Jimenez de Cisneros. The Navarrese phase of Ferdinand's policy, effecting a Castilian protectorate over this kingdom in 1494 and actual annexation in 1512, may have been instrumental in attracting the painting of Navarre into the Castilian school in place of the older artistic union with Aragon. It is significant that Pedro Diaz of Oviedo, upon whom the Castilian movement in the Hispano-Flemish painting of Navarre depends and who was probably trained in the ateliers of Avila and Burgos, executed his first extant work in Navarre, the retable of Tudela, between 1489 and 1494. Ferdinand's diplomatic acumen and the military victories of the Great Captain, Gonzalo de Cordoba, achieved in 1504 the absorption, also, of Naples into the crown and the commencement of its long line of Spanish viceroys, thus consummating the Spanish domination in the southern Italian kingdom that had begun with the establishment of the Aragonese dynasty in 1443 by Alfonso the Magnanimous and had been no more than temporarily and fragmentarily interrupted by the French invasions in the last decade of the Quattrocento and the first years of the Cinquecento. T h e

HISTORICAL SETTING

7

intimate association of Spain with Naples clarifies certain elements in the production of Jacomart and the ensuing early introduction of the Renaissance into Valencia; but we shall wish to call this historical relationship into service as a basis particularly for the "Neapolitan" explanation of one phase of Hispano-Flemish painting, i. e., the supposition that such artists as Master Alfonso and Bermejo acquired their peculiar fusion of the Italian, Flemish, and Spanish strains by an education at Naples. A similar literary phenomenon is the poet from Barcelona, Benet Garret (1450-1514), who, generally known by his Italian title of Cariteo, dedicated at Naples his unctuous pen to the flattery of the Aragonese sovereigns in Italian verses which betray the influence of his native Catalan tongue. The peaceful and potentially greatest conquest of the reign, the discovery and acquisition of America, did not manifest itself in the sphere of painting before the emergence of the style of the Renaissance. In the eastern kingdom, the anarchy of revolt that during the reign of John I I (1458-1479) preceded the union with Castile under Ferdinand, though quite as serious as the contemporary rebellious upheaval in the western kingdom, yet does not seem to have been able to put a damper upon artistic enterprise in any one of the three domains, Catalonia, Valencia, or Aragon. The attempted revolution, indeed, was largely confined to Catalonia, in which the vigorous spirit of freedom and democracy that had distinguished the province in the earlier centuries died hard; but here special reasons account for the resistance of the Fine Arts to adverse conditions. A t the time of his accession to the kingdom of Aragon through the death of Alfonso the Magnanimous in 1458, John I I was engaged in a struggle for the Navarrese throne with Charles of Viana, his own son by his marriage with Blanche, the daughter of Charles I I I and the heiress of Navarre. The gentleness, generosity, tragic fortunes, and reputed sanctity of Prince Charles have led sentimental critics, as we shall find, fondly to seek the lineaments of his countenance, which are preserved to us in a miniature, in more than one panel of a young masculine saint in the second half of the fifteenth century; and all the perverse modern historical fad for whitewashing cannot clear John I I of such dastardly mal-

8

HISTORICAL

SETTING

treatment of his son that the restive Commons of Catalonia espoused Charles's cause. After the Prince's death in 1461 (perhaps by poison at his father's hands), the Catalan rebels advanced in succession as their candidates for the crown two foreigners who had distant dynastic claims, Dom Pedro of Portugal, from 1463 to 1466, and, next, the deposed king of Naples, Rene of Anjou, whose interests in Catalonia were upheld by his son, John, Duke of Calabria and Lorraine, from 1467 to 1470. The Portuguese pretender actually succeeded in establishing himself at Barcelona from 1464 to 1466, the year of his death, and it was he who, by his intense and discerning interest in the arts, perhaps most largely contributed towards maintaining unbroken, at this critical moment in its history, the great tradition of the Catalan school of painting. Not only did he bring with him a distinguished collection of tapestries to what he hoped would be his new home, but from the political and military welter in which he found himself he stole time to devote to the beautification of the royal chapel at Barcelona, employing artists of such mettle as Jaime Huguet and Master Alfonso. The Catalan school was saved from succumbing also by its very vitality acquired through the accumulated energy of the previous centuries, whereas the lesser productivity of the Castilian school in the earlier Gothic period had not stored up an inheritance sufficiently solid to withstand the turmoil and depression of Henry IV's misrule. With the acquisition of a kind of Mediterranean empire, the magnificence of life and habits, particularly at the court, had reached in the eastern kingdom the superlative degree, and this luxurious taste is reflected in the contemporary pictures of the three federated provinces of Catalonia, Valencia, and Aragon by a more prodigal and brilliant display of the rich gold brocades in costumes and hangings that constitute a distinctive feature of Spanish paintings in general during the second half of the fifteenth century. The schools of Valencia and Aragon were, indeed, little touched by the civil distress of John II's reign. Valencia, like Catalonia, continued in the artistic paths that had there been so gloriously and extensively laid down in the first part of the fifteenth century, evolving to maturity its own native style and but slightly interested in Flemish achievement. Aragon, as

HISTORICAL

SETTING

9

closer to Castile, the radiating centre, in the peninsula, of the fashions from the Low Countries, gave birth, largely through the stimulus of Bermejo's presence, to an Hispano-Flemish school that is, however, quite sui generis·, but there was a wide market also for the pictorial wares of the region on the other side, Catalonia. Navarre, irremediably involved in John II's schemes for aggrandizement, was so devastated by internal warfare that after the decline of the international style in the first half of the Quattrocento little or no Hispano-Flemish painting, if we may judge by the absence of extant monuments, was produced until the artistic soil was refertilized in the last years of the century by the rapprochement to Castile. T h e joint sway of Ferdinand and Isabella, under which the Hispano-Flemish movement in Castile and Andalusia attained its apogee, signalized in Catalonia the beginning of the end for the honorable old local school. T h e occasions of the collapse were principally political. With the dual reign was initiated the process of centralization of the government at Madrid that eventually was to transform Spanish art so largely into the instrument and the delectation of the court; but although in theory the eastern kingdom retained its autonomy and was connected with Castile only by the fact of the marriage of its sovereign, Ferdinand, to Isabella, yet the king, taught a lesson by the seditions against which his father, John II, had had to struggle, devoted special effort to breaking the Catalan sense of independence, from which the arts of the province had drawn inspiration, and thus to debasing Catalonia into a subordinate division of the peninsula. His interests, moreover, seem always to have lain rather in the country that he had adopted by marriage, Castile, particularly when after Isabella's death in 1504 he was regent in this kingdom during more than a year for their daughter, Joanna the Mad, and when after the death of her husband, Philip I, the Fair, in 1506, he entered upon his second and longer regency which lasted until his own demise in 1516. It was the general policy of Ferdinand and Isabella to interfere in the life of the guilds and to regulate them by royal decrees, and by thus hindering the free play of their forces they prepared the way for the guilds' complete desiccation; but in Catalonia Ferdinand dealt an additional and a fatal blow at the very

ΙΟ

HISTORICAL S E T T I N G

heart of liberty by bringing more under his personal control the Council of One Hundred which we have seen in an earlier volume to have been such a centre of Barcelona's municipal energy. I t was not, however, alone through Ferdinand's disdain or actual measures of repression that Catalonia lost the proud position that had been the life-blood of her art: the discovery of America, which brought fresh prosperity through trade with the new world to Seville and Andalusia and hence to the schools of the south in the Renaissance, crippled the flourishing commerce of Barcelona upon the income from which the patronage of the arts had partly depended. The dominating personality in Catalan painting in the second half of the fifteenth century, Jaime Huguet, was doing his last great works in the decade ensuing upon Ferdinand's accession to his father's throne, and immediately thereafter the manner that he had established during the period in question as the characteristic pictorial expression of his region dwindled to decrepitude in the hands of the Vergos family and other imitators. Bermejo found some employment in Catalonia in the final years of the century; but such painters of the early Renaissance as Juan Gasco were less distinguished than the representatives of the first stages of Italianism in the rest of the peninsula, and after the beginning of the sixteenth century Catalonia sank to a quite subordinate significance in painting from which there was no rescue until almost modern times. When Pedro de Aponte and a number of his contemporaries had completed the task of introducing the Renaissance in painting into Aragon and Navarre during the first half of the Cinquecento, the schools of these districts also lapsed into a slumber that lasted until the days of Goya; but in the third division of what had been the eastern kingdom, Valencia, it was perhaps the constant close artistic intercourse with Italy that chiefly helped to maintain the regional school in undiminished eminence. Italian literature of the Trecento had afforded models to the Marquis of Santillana and to many others among his compatriots in the first half of the fifteenth century; and the humanistic studies of the Italian Renaissance proper percolated into Spain in considerable volume during the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella. Both the king and the queen sought instruction in classi-

HISTORICAL S E T T I N G cal lore, the former from the precursor of the Renaissance and translator of Latin literature, Francisco Vidal de Noya, the latter from an erudite lady, Beatriz Galindo. Before the end of the century, the Sicilian scholar, Lucio Marineo, was professor of Latin in the University of Salamanca, and the still more famous Lombard humanist, Pietro Martire d'Anghiera, was educating the most distinguished youths of the peninsula in the new learning. The native translator of Plutarch and Josephus, Alfonso Fernandez de Palencia, who even in his other compositions sought, like many of his contemporaries in Italy, to cast the vernacular in Latin cadences, lived wholly within the fifteenth century; and the man who is usually accounted the most notable of the indigenous humanists, Antonio de Nebrija, produced several of his many scholarly books before the days of the Hispano-Flemish style had run their course. Upon painting and upon real literature in the vernacular, nevertheless, this imported Italianism of the Quattrocento had no immediate significant efFect. The work of a few painters of the very early Renaissance, such as Rodrigo de Osona, Pedro Berruguete, and Juan de Borgona, overlapped the limits of the Hispano-Flemish period, and the Burgos Master and one or two other late Hispano-Flemish artists sometimes adorned the landscapes of their pictures with bits of the architecture of the Renaissance, just as Alfonso Fernandez de Palencia sought to enhance his writings with flourishes of Latin constructions; but the Renaissance cannot be said actually to have begun in Spanish painting and letters until the years of Ferdinand's regencies and of Charles V's reign in the first half of the sixteenth century.

CHAPTER XLIV T H E F L E M I N G S I N W E S T E R N SPAIN I.

THE

EARLIER

GENERATION

IN THE second half of the fifteenth century the painting of western Spain succumbed to the general wave of Flemish influence that then overspread a large part of Europe and constituted the outstanding phenomenon in the pictorial art of the period. All movements in European art have been international, although, by convention, we restrict the adjective to the sprightly and elegant Gothic manner of the end of the fourteenth and beginning of the fifteenth century; and the second half of the latter century, with its well-nigh ubiquitous enthusiasm for the painting of the Low Countries, was no exception to the rule. Germany, France, England, and Portugal received the Flemish style and gave to it national expressions. Even Italy was much more profoundly affected than has usually been recognized. The Portinari altarpiece of Hugo van der Goes created a tremendous stir in Florence, partly determining the subsequent character of the achievement of such men as Ghirlandaio, Pier di Cosimo, and even Leonardo. Justus of Ghent established the foreign fashions in central Italy. The art of the Vivarini, the Bellini, and Carpaccio and indeed the whole future evolution of the local school in the sixteenth century are unimaginable apart from the Flemish lessons that Antonello da Messina taught at Venice. Because of the close connection with Spanish painting, we shall later have to concern ourselves at length with the Italian school where the contribution of the Low Countries stood forth most clearly in the amalgamation with indigenous tendencies •— the Neapolitan. The artists of Castile and Leon were as infatuated as the Germans or the French with the new potentialities of the painting that the Flemings were displaying to the world, but they likewise impressed upon the borrowings their national stamp. In Andalusia, the saturation in the Flemish tendency was not

FLEMINGS IN SPAIN

13

quite so complete, and one phase of Sevillian painting remained largely uninfluenced. Even if we force ourselves to believe that Master Alfonso and Bermejo obtained their thoroughly Flemish manners solely through an education in the schools of Cordova and Seville, they would have to be looked upon as exceptions to the Andalusian norm. The wave from the Low Countries penetrated only sporadically and for the most part superficially into the painting of eastern Spain, partly because the indigenous style of the first half of the century had been both in Catalonia and Valencia a more significant manifestation than in the west, with enough vitality at the present crisis to beat back the foreign stream and to persist as the basis of the artistic achievements of the later Quattrocento. The channels by which a knowledge of Flemish models was introduced into the eastern kingdom and the fate of these models in Catalonia and Valencia will be topics for our investigation in a subsequent volume. B y reason of its geographical situation, the province of Aragon proper divided its artistic allegiance between devotion to the Hispano-Flemish modes popular in Castile on its western borders and an imitation of Huguet and his circle who were setting seductive pictorial standards in Catalonia, the contiguous region at the east. It may, however, have been the chance of the presence of Bermejo's dominating personality in Aragon that after all was the principal cause for the headway gained by Hispano-Flemish fashions against the insinuating influence of Catalonia. A special reason existed in Castile for the greater efficacy of Flemish models. The admiration and imitation of the painting of the Low Countries seem to have centred particularly about the court of the western kingdom, which then resided chiefly in Castile, in distinction from Andalusia. Alfonso V, who ruled the eastern kingdom in the middle of the century, was, to be sure, consumed with enthusiasm for Flemish painting, but he dwelt at Naples and impressed his aesthetic predilections rather upon the Italian capital than upon his native domain of Catalonia and Valencia. A leaning towards the art of Flanders may be discovered in the western court as early as the reign of John I I of Castile (1407-1454), and with Isabella it attained the proportions of a passion. The great nobles aped the tastes

14

F L E M I N G S IN SPAIN

of the sovereigns. The further one gets from the seat of the Castilian court, whether to the south or east, the less potent one finds the foreign influence; the east, indeed, comprising Catalonia, Aragon, and Valencia, despite the nominal federation with Castile through the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella, constituted, until the beginning of the sixteenth century, a separate nation in which somewhat different aesthetic conditions prevailed. In Castile and Leon the painters became as thoroughly Flemish as they had ever been Italian. The fundamental and immediate occasion for the change was the general European tendency of the epoch, and the Drang nach Flandern declared itself as well in Spanish architecture and sculpture. The adoption of Flemish pictorial modes, however, was rooted also in a remoter and partial cause, a tradition of keen interest in the artistic products of the Low Countries already established in the Iberian peninsula since the end of the fourteenth century. The international style of painting itself, which had enjoyed such favor in Spain, contained at least certain Flemish ingredients, and the Spanish manipulators of the style had at times 1 stressed the Flemish rather than the French constituents of the movement. The eyes of Spaniards had long been turned toward the Low Countries for the importation of tapestries and stained glass, and the popularity of Flemish sculpture 2 smoothed the way for the introduction of the new Flemish mode in painting which with the Van Eycks and the school of Tournai had already succeeded in Belgium during the second quarter of the fifteenth century to the international style. In earlier volumes we have sometimes perceived that certain forms and draperies in Spanish internationalists, which might seem to reveal a nascent familiarity with the productions of the Van Eycks and Roger van der Weyden, were probably in reality derived from Hispano-Flemish sculpture or tapestries; and even after the complete triumph of the pictorial models of the Low Countries in the second half of the century, the Spanish masters frequently caught their ideas from statuary, glass, and textiles as well as from paintings. A further explanation of the warm wel1 2

See vols. II, p. 440, and III, p. 189. See my History of European and American Sculpture, I, 131-135.

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15

come extended to Flemish art is that its naturalistic trend was in accord with Spanish aesthetics. As the Spanish affection for Gothic architecture lived on far into the sixteenth century, producing even such important churches as the new cathedral of Salamanca and the cathedral of Segovia, so in many localities painters continued to produce in the mediaeval HispanoFlemish manner as late as 1550, resisting the encroachments of the Italian Renaissance except in so far as they occasionally adorned their works with small bits of finery purloined from the new movement. Side by side with the Hispano-Flemish masters, however, there emerged in each region of Spain at the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth century a certain number of painters, for example Pedro Berruguete in Castile, Alejo Fernandez in Andalusia, and Rodrigo de Osona at Valencia, who, though still clinging to some Flemish characteristics, were vitally affected also by Italianism and who must therefore be consigned to a later volume. It should be noted at once that the Italian models to which they were indebted were not as yet those of Raphael, Michael Angelo, and the full Roman Renaissance, but the paintings of the more primitive artists, such as Ghirlandaio at Florence or the Vivarini and Bellini at Venice, the foundations of whose style were laid in the Quattrocento. Critics have sought to trace the origin of the imitation of Flemish art in Spain to a specific fact, the visit of Jan van E y c k to the peninsula in 1428-1429. That this event had any significant effect upon Spanish painting can be denied for three reasons: first, because he was so occupied with other matters during the ten months of his sojourn that he would have had no time to train any pupils or establish any Flemishizing school; second, because the first signs of an interest in the new mode of painting in Belgium do not appear in the art of western Spain until twenty-five years subsequent to the visit; and third, because when the Spaniards did begin to imitate the Flemish, they revealed very little concern with the work of Jan van Eyck but rather with other masters of the Low Countries, especially the school of Tournai. Jan van Eyck arrived at Lisbon, December 12, 1428, as a member of an embassy the purpose of which was to obtain the hand of the Portuguese Infanta Isabella,

ι6

FLEMINGS IN SPAIN

daughter of John I, for the Duke of Burgundy, Philip the Good. His special task was to make the portrait of the lady, and this, as well as a replica, 1 he had finished and despatched to his patron by February 12, so that he was in all probability one of those persons in the embassy who spent the three months from February to M a y in a tour of the peninsula, accomplishing the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela and visiting John I I of Castile, the Sultan of Granada, the Duke of Arjona (finding him probably in northern Spain and not in his domain of Arjona in Andalusia 2 ), and other illustrious personages. During his short and formal calls in Castile and Andalusia, it would not have been possible for him to have made any impress upon the local schools of painting, although at a later date cultivators of the Flemish manner appeared in both these regions. The only leisure that he would have had for any teaching would have been in the months from M a y to the sailing date of the embassy, October 8, a period that the commissioners passed at Cintra and Lisbon, but the fact that neither in Portugal nor in Spain did any native pupils of his forthwith appear shows that he gave no instruction. It is all the more surprising that the sojourn of Jan van Eyck scarcely ruffled the surface of Spanish art when we remember that at this and other times he may have executed additional pictures in Spain or at least sent them to the peninsula. The most celebrated example was an elaborately symbolical representation of the Fountain of Life, the original of which has disappeared but a somewhat later copy of which was found in the monastery of El Parral near Segovia and now constitutes one of the most interesting possessions of the Prado. It has been supposed that the original was done for Spain, ordered by John I I of Castile from the master at the time of Jan's visit to the court in 1429. The reasons for the supposition are not only the discovery of the copy of the Prado in Spain and the existence, as late as the end of the eighteenth century, of what may have been the actual original or another copy in the cathedral of Palencia, 3 but also the internal evidence of the painting itself. 1 2 W. H. J . Weale, Hubert and John van Eyck, 15. Ibid., 16, η. ι. 3 Antonio Ponz, writing his Vi age (XI, 170) in the latter part of the eighteenth century, enthusiastically describes the example at Palencia. Madrazo, in his article of

FLEMINGS IN SPAIN

17

T h e analogy of the architectural background to the complicated structure of a Spanish custodia for the Sacrament, the absence of the setting of landscape that usually appears in Flemish pictures, the antipathy to the Jews manifested in depicting the discomfited representatives of the Synagogue, the intricate ecclesiastical symbolism •— all these things have been taken as proof that the original, though undoubtedly by Jan van Eyck, was nevertheless painted by him under the direction and with the suggestions of a Spanish prince and his advisors. Neither the provenience of the Prado and Palencia pieces, however, nor the subjective evidence is absolutely conclusive for the Spanish genesis of the original. Elaborate symbolism, extensive architectural setting, and hatred of the Jews expressed through depicting them as malicious were by no means confined to mediaeval Spain. If enterprising critics have rightly discerned among the exponents of Christianity at the left of the panel any members of the ruling house of Burgundy, it would be strange that they should have been introduced into a picture intended for the monarchy of Castile. On the other hand, although the Palencia example is not definitely known to have been the original, a Spanish provenience for the original would be argued, as Friedländer suggests, by the striking fact that none of the copies (preserved or lost) can be shown to have come from the Low Countries or from anywhere else but Spain. Putting to one side the question of the very hypothetical identification of certain figures with Burgundian princes, which might date the original as early as c. 1420, Friedländer decides that on purely stylistic grounds it could be set c. 1430, a moment that would accord with the assumption of an order from John II at the time of Jan van Eyck's spanische Reise* T h a t the original, 1875 ' n 'he Museo esfanol de antigüedades (IV, 40), mentions a replica of the subject in the hands of a restorer at Paris: could it have been the Palencia example, or still another repetition? He also speaks of a copy then existing in the cathedral of Segovia. Ponz states that he was familiar with several copies in Castile, but his emphasis on their inferiority would go a certain way towards proving the Palencia specimen the original. 1 Paul Post ("Jahrbuch der preussischen Kunstsammlungen, X L I I I , 1922, pp. 120125), on the basis of a not very convincing identification of the portraits, argues that Philip the Good ordered the picture about 1420 for a Belgian or Burgundian monastery. He guesses that the original, which may have been the Palencia example, did not reach Spain before the sixteenth century, and he revives the old and impossible theory that the painter of the Prado specimen was Luis Dalmau, imagining that he may have made the copy during his sojourn in Flanders.

ι8

FLEMINGS IN

SPAIN

however, was a response to a Spanish commission or ever made its way to the peninsula, must be regarded as no more than likely and not as finally demonstrated. Certain connoisseurs have thought that they could see through the copy to the hand, in the original, rather of Hubert van E y c k ; but those historians who have guessed that he too toured Spain are on the ground of the merest hypothesis. The copy of the Prado has a certain pastiness, lack of luminosity in the color, and lighter tonality which would indicate that this at least was the product of one or possibly two native craftsmen. The Spanish paternity even of the copy, nevertheless, has found its doubters. It is possible that, in an old book in the provincial library of Segovia treating the foundation of the monastery of El Parral at Segovia, an entry that records a donation by Henry I V of a Flemish picture described as a "dedication of the C h u r c h " may refer to the panel now in the Prado. Madrazo, 1 who divulges this information, evidently believes that the picture was presented at the time of the inauguration of the new building, which he sets in 1454, so that Henry I V must have made the gift immediately after his accession. T h e commencement of the new monastery of El Parral is usually dated 1459, but I cannot see that the architectural year is of much significance, for Henry was already interested in the institution while he was crown prince and before the new edifice was started, and might have endowed it before he became king. The importance of the entry, if it has to do with the Prado panel, would be that it proves the picture to have been already in the possession of the royal family by the time of Henry I V . Because it has enjoyed but little publicity, 2 1 include an illustration of a panel in the little Museum of the Colegiata at Covarrubias, south of Burgos (Fig. 1), which is probably an early Spanish copy of a non-extant original of a Madonna and Child by Jan van Eyck. I t is obviously very similar to his rendering of the subject that was formerly in the Collection of Mr. Weld-Blundell at Ince Hall near Liverpool and now belongs to the National Gallery, Melbourne, but the variations in the 1 2

Op. cit., 39. _ It was published, however, by S. Reinach in the Burlington Magazine,

km), 15-16·

XLIII

FIG. I.

MADONNA, COPY OF A LOST JAN VAN E Y C K . (From the Catalogue oj the Exposiciin

COLEGIATA, COVARRUBIAS

de Arte Retrospectho,

Burgos )

20

FLEMINGS IN SPAIN

types, the draperies, and the setting of the room appear to be too great to be ascribed to so servile a copyist as the painter of the Covarrubias panel himself and imply the existence of another, lost treatment of the theme by Van E y c k which must have been almost a duplicate of the Melbourne example. T h e differences, moreover, from the Melbourne picture are faithful reflections of Van Eyck's characteristics and mode of execution; and the inscription on the right wall of the room, which seems to read, Wer ist des sicher, is not the same as that in the Melbourne picture, which is Jan's usual device of Als ich can (whether or not it is a later addition in this picture). Although, as in the case of the Prado Fountain of Life, the craft is of an unusually high order for a Spanish copyist, there is a slight provincial quality in the touch that seems to forestall the possibility that the Covarrubias picture was done by a Fleming. It is perhaps Spanish devotion that has added the haloes in this subject where Jan van E y c k omits them. Inasmuch as it is hardly reasonable that a Spaniard, while studying in the Low Countries, should have made the copy and then brought it back home with him, the existence of this copy of the fifteenth century 1 in Spain almost imposes the belief that the original was also in the peninsula at least very soon after it was executed. If we should suppose that the copyist was using merely the Melbourne picture and himself made all the alterations, we should be involved in a perplexing problem, since two Sicilian copies of the Melbourne panel and an Italian inscription on its back suggest that it early found its way to the island. 2 N o other works by Jan van E y c k or in his manner that have come to light in the Iberian peninsula provide any really valid evidence of having been there painted or of having been ordered by native patrons. With the discovery that St. Francis's reception of the stigmata in the Johnson Collection, Philadelphia, and its repetition in the Gallery of Turin were in all probability the two pictures by Jan van E y c k which Anselmo Adorn es at Bruges in 1470 bequeathed to his daughters, we are virtually forced to discard the elaborate web of argument that 1 The Catalogue of the Retrospective Exposition at Burgos, where it was shown, assigns the copy to the sixteenth century (p. 23), on what possible ground, I cannot see. 2 Friedländer, Die altniederländische Malerei, I, 54.

F LEM IN G S IN SPAIN

21

had been woven from the reputed purchase of the Johnson example at Lisbon and from internal characteristics to prove that it was painted by the master in Portugal. These internal characteristics are the landscape, conjectured to be that of Montserrat or the Pyrenees, the southern vegetation, and, instead of the grey habit of the ordinary Franciscans, the reformed Order's brown, which is said not to have penetrated the Low Countries from the south until the end of the fifteenth century, long after the picture was painted. Even if the likelihood of its existence at Bruges in the fifteenth century be left out of the reckoning, none of this internal evidence was very cogent, for, as Friedländer indicates, Jan van Eyck might have brought back to Belgium studies of meridional flora and memories of a brown Franciscan habit, and the absence of the brown robe in the Low Countries during the fifteenth century is not conclusively demonstrated. Criticism has not finally decided whether the head of Christ, No. 528 of the Kaiser Friedrich Museum at Berlin, is an authentic work of Jan van Eyck or a copy after a lost original; in any case the type embodied in the head was much imitated in Spain, and the Berlin panel is actually reported to have once been in a convent near Burgos and then at Segovia. Jan van Eyck may have painted two versions of the subject, and their popularity in Europe is revealed by several extant replicas. Of the Crucifixion and Last Judgment in the Hermitage at Petrograd, variously attributed to Jan or Hubert, nothing further can be said than that they were bought at Madrid in 1845. While at Lisbon, Jan may have portrayed another lady, or the lost picture described in the sixteenth century as " l a belle Portugaloise " may have been one of his representations of the Princess Isabella. The possibility of a journey of Jan van Eyck to eastern Spain just before the Portuguese expedition will be discussed in connection with the pictorial production of Valencia and Catalonia. In order to explain the Flemish character of west-Spanish painting during this period, it is not necessary to flounder about in a sea of hypotheses in regard to the Van Eycks. The general artistic trend of the times did not require the additional stimulus of their visits or pictures a quarter of a century before the foreign style became acclimated on Spanish soil. When the

11

FLEMINGS IN SPAIN

Flemish fashions were once firmly established, the importation of a host of works by other Belgian masters sufficiently accounted for their vogue. The half that remains, for instance, of Isabella the Catholic's private collection, now miserably housed in the Royal Chapel attached to the cathedral of Granada, consists in large part of Flemish panels, some of which are masterpieces and will receive our later notice. Margaret of Austria, also, at her marriage in 1497 to Prince John, the son of Ferdinand and Isabella, is said to have brought with her a number of pictures from the Low Countries. A t the turn of the fifteenth into the sixteenth century, by reason of Isabella's ardent affection for Flemish art and the new Burgundian political ties, a second wave of Flemish influence partially enveloped the western kingdom, occasioning in a number of instances a reversion to as faithful an imitation as that with which the movement had begun almost fifty years before. T h e local Flemish school which won most admiration from the Spaniards was that of Tournai. We are not obliged to resort to the far-fetched theory that the enigmatical painter who was perhaps the founder of the school, the Master of Flemalle, may actually have been a Spaniard by birth or have sojourned in the country, nor is it incumbent on us to decide whether or not he was Robert Campin. 1 All that concerns our purpose is to remember that two or three paintings by him or close imitators have been found in the peninsula and that a knowledge of his manner is plainly reflected in native Castilian production. T h e unquestionably authentic works in the Prado, the two wings of the triptych ordered by Heinrich von Werl of Cologne, probably did not reach Spain in the fifteenth century; but they do not exhaust the number of pieces by him or his atelier that have appeared in the peninsula. In the panel illustrating two episodes of the Marriage of the Virgin in the Prado, whether by the Master himself or a pupil, the presence of Santiago as one of the saints on the back may be taken for what it is worth as proof that the commission was given to the artist by a Spaniard. T h e Annunciation of the Prado, less certainly a creation of the 1 Nor do we need to enmesh ourselves in the now agitated question of whether the Master of Flemalle is really Roger van der Weyden in one of the latter's phases — although I am bound to register myself on the negative side.

FLEMINGS IN SPAIN

23

Master himself, may be the other half of a diptych to which the Marriage belonged. Of two copies made in the fifteenth century of a lost Mass of St. Gregory by the Master of Flemalle, one exists in the Moreira Collection at Lisbon, and the composition was imitated in Spain. 1 Miss Leila Barber has pointed out in an unpublished thesis that, if by any remote chance he could have been a Spaniard, we could thus account more logically for the indigenous preference for the school of Tournai. The evidence for the Spanish vogue of his disciple or companion, Roger van der Weyden, is more extensive and concrete. Although the great Deposition of the Escorial was not brought to the peninsula until the latter part of the sixteenth century, the Prado contains a copy of the fifteenth century coming from the church of Nuestra Sefiora de los Angeles at Madrid, which may conceivably have graced Spain from the beginning (in addition to the other Prado copy, probably the work of Michiel Coxie in the sixteenth century). But we need not rest our argument wholly on copies. Isabella possessed what the concurrence of critics has judged an authentic and primary production of Roger's hand, a triptych of the Virgin, the centre and left wing of which are now in the Royal Chapel at Granada and the right wing of which, depicting the appearance of Christ to His mother after the Resurrection, has eventually found its way into the Metropolitan Museum at New York as a part of the Dreicer Collection. Of this triptych, a replica exists in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum, Berlin, considered, until the recognition of the picture at Granada, an original by Roger himself but now deemed a repetition by his own hand or, according to the more commonly held opinion, a copy made in his shop or by an imitator of the end of the fifteenth century. The reason for believing in the genuineness of the Berlin painting was that its history was traced back so as to establish its identity with a triptych of the same themes ascribed to Roger and recorded to have been given by the Pope Martin V to John I I of Castile and by the king to have been bestowed in 1445 on the monastery of Miraflores near Burgos. If it was really Martin V who made the presentation to John I I , the picture would have been Roger's earliest known achievement, and the sovereign must 1

See below, p. 332.

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have kept it in his own possession for some time, as the Pope died in 1431. The discovery at Granada of what is usually conceded to be the original makes it likely that Isabella appropriated, or was endowed by her royal father with, Roger's own work, and that John II, therefore, or perhaps Isabella, gave to the monastery a copy. The chain of documentary evidence, however, that connects the Berlin triptych with the picture at Miraflores and the picture at Miraflores with Martin V's gift is not absolutely unimpeachable, 1 and it is just possible that the Granada example is the picture bestowed (temporarily) upon Miraflores. Tormo's conjecture that the triptych of St. John Baptist in the Berlin Museum, also ascribed to Roger van der Weyden, was really the creation of an Hispanicized Fleming called Juan Flamenco and that it was therefore another painting mentioned by the traveller, Antonio Ponz, 2 at the end of the eighteenth century as at Miraflores, has not met with general acceptance. 3 The Berlin picture itself, whether a production of Roger or a pupil (Juan Flamenco?), might possibly be the one that Ponz saw at Miraflores, but it is not absolutely beyond the range of credibility that the painting admired by Ponz was a series of six panels from the life of the Baptist, now in the Prado, belonging to the school of Fernando Gallego. 4 The Prado enshrines still another work, a triptych with the Crucifixion at the centre surrounded by miniature representations of the sacraments, certainly a creation of Roger's immediate entourage and perhaps partly by his own hand, hailing again from the Convento de los Angeles at Madrid and possibly the same as an altarpiece completed by him for Cambrai in 1459. Since, however, this identity is not proved, it may be that the triptych was the result of a peninsular order. The Spanish pioneer in the scientific study of art, Don Pedro de Madrazo, once owned a version of Christ's appearance to His mother which is different from that of the Granada triptych, which is judged by Friedländer an Cf. K. Voll, Die altniederländische Malerei, second edition, Leipzig, 1923, p. 257. Viage de Espana, X I I , 55-56. 3 Cf. F. Winkler, Der Meister von Flemalle und Regier van der Weyden, Strassburg, 1913, p. 158. 4 See below, pp. 238 fr., for the full argument; and for the question of the identity of Juan Flamenco with Juan de Flandes, p. 46. 1

2

FLEMINGS IN SPAIN

25

authentic work by Roger, and which was last known to me as in the possession of the dealer, Durlacher. A considerable number of fifteenth-century copies of Van der Weyden or of pieces produced in his actual shop have also turned up in Spain, though in no case is it possible to assert categorically that they existed in the peninsula from the first. The most notable are: the Presentation of the Virgin, in the Escorial; replicas of his St. Luke painting the Virgin, one now in the Hermitage at Petrograd, another in the monastery of the Trinity at Madrid, and a third, coming from Toledo, reported by Justi in 1885 as owned by the Infante Don Sebastian de Bourbon; a portrait of Philip the Good of Burgundy in the royal palace at Madrid; and at Valencia, on the east coast, in the Ayuntamiento, 1 a Last Judgment framed by small representations of the various Works of Mercy, acquired by the city in 1494 but perhaps in the peninsula before that date. 2 The Flemish masters outside the school of Tournai also found abundant favor in Spain. If we consider the sparse number of works extant from the brush of Jan van Eyck's pupil, Petrus Christus, he was unusually well represented in the peninsula. The Kaiser Friedrich Museum harbors two of his altar-wings, one depicting the Annunciation and Nativity, the other the Last Judgment, which made a peregrination in Spain itself, before reaching Berlin, from a church at Burgos to a convent at Segovia. Another Nativity, from a private collection at Madrid, has recently appeared in the international market, but is not certified as having been always in the peninsula. The monastery Del Risco, near Piedrahita, west of Avila, has provided the Prado with a Madonna painted by the same master. His portrait of a monk in the Bache Collection, New York, whether or not done originally as a Spanish order, was once in Majorca and thence passed into the hands of the Marques de Dos Aguas at Valencia. In view of the strong influence of Roger van der Weyden's follower, Dierick Bouts, upon Fernando Gallego and other indigenous painters, it is not surprising that the peninsula 1 Friedländer wrongly places it in the church of Nuestra Senora del Milagro at Valencia. 2 The Prado obtained in 1925 a Pieta by Roger or an immediate follower, which, however, was bought by its donor in Paris.

20

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should have yielded up several of his works. Four panels from the life of the Virgin, No. 1461 of the Prado, were imported from the Escorial and, though formerly ascribed to Petrus Christus, are at present very generally recognized as a production of Bouts. Isabella's collection included a triptych of the Passion by Bouts, now used as an altarpiece at the right side of the nave in the Royal Chapel at Granada, a smaller version of which, also apparently by the master, is housed in the Colegio del Patriarca at Valencia. If Friedländer's 1 hypothetical dating of the Prado panels in 1445 and of the Granada triptych in 1450 is correct and if they were in Spain from the time of their creation, they were painted early enough to have had their effect upon Fernando Gallego's first works. It is possible that the two Flemish painters who were especially popular in Italy, Justus of Ghent and Hugo van der Goes, also enjoyed a vogue in the sister peninsula. Justus may have been represented in Spain by an Epiphany now in the Blumenthal Collection at New York. The Kaiser Friedrich Museum at Berlin contains two masterpieces by Hugo van der Goes, both of which have a Spanish provenience but neither of which can be proved to have been in Spain at a very early date, 2 an Adoration of the Shepherds from a private collection at Madrid and, of more recent acquisition, an Adoration of the Magi from the monastery of Monforte de Lemos in Galicia. In the Retrospective Exposition at Burgos in 1921 there was shown (No. 587) another Epiphany, belonging to the Poor Clares of Medina de Pomar (near Villarcayo), which the Catalogue ascribed to Hugo van der Goes or a pupil but which, though it bears decided resemblances to Van der Goes, may be rather a production of the school of Bruges at the time of Memling. It is an adaptation of the cartoon employed by Roger van der Weyden for the subject in the St. Columba altar of the Alte Pinakothek, Munich. Friedländer catalogues two pieces of the school of Van der Goes that are at least now in the peninsula, another version of the Epiphany in the Archaeological Museum at Madrid and a Deposition in the Museum of Ancient Art at Lisbon. 1

Die altniederländische Malerei, Dierick Bouts und Joos van Gent, 38. Friedländer (Die altniederländische Malerei, Hugo van der Goes, 57) argues that the early copies which were made of the Monforte picture in the Low Countries indicate that it did not reach Spain until late in the sixteenth century. 2

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27

The salvage of Isabella's collection at Granada contains several works of her contemporary, Memling, but the other paintings by this master that are now in Spain or Portugal or were there obtained cannot definitely 1 be traced back to an early existence in these countries, except the three panels of Christ surrounded by angels, in the Antwerp Museum, which once decorated the organ of Sta. Maria la Real at Najera and are demonstrated by the escutcheons of Castile and Leon on the vestments of some of the central angels and on the reverse of the pictures to have been executed for the place. The mudejar fabric of Our Lord's stole would almost suggest that Memling had been in Spain. The same monastery of Najera has contributed to the Roman Vicente Collection at Saragossa an Annunciation by a master closely related to Memling. The works of the lesser Flemish painters of the fifteenth century that have appeared in Spain may be found by consulting Friedländer's catalogues. One of these artists, the Bruges painter of the end of the century called the Master of the St. Lucy Legend, is of particular interest because his St. Catherine at Pisa has currently been attributed to Bermejo. Indeed, one might wring the deduction that he visited the peninsula from the Spanish provenience of three of his few known pictures,2 from the rather Iberian cast of countenance in some of his masculine personages, from his predilection for gorgeous brocades, from possible traces of his influence in Spain, and from the fact that the left wing to his St. Catherine at Pisa may have been painted by a Spaniard. The Iberian face of the Maximin crushed under St. Catherine's feet in the Pisan picture was doubtless one of the factors that misled certain connoisseurs into the ascription to Bermejo. It would be significant if we could establish any considerable vogue in Spain of the Dutch painters of the fifteenth century, so closely related to those of Belgium, for the influence of one of them, the Master of the Virgo inter Virgines, is perhaps to be discerned in a Spanish panel of the Annunciation in the Collection of the Duke of Alba and in an Andalusian triptych of the Passion in the Collection of Don Alfonso de Orleans at 1

See, however, below, p. 208. Nos. 141, 151, and 156 in Friedländer's catalogue of his works in the volume on Memling and David in Die altniederländtsche Malerei. 2

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Sanlucar de Barrameda. M a y e r claims an indebtedness of Bermejo to Geertgen tot Sint Jans, but, as we shall see, the creditor may have been rather Geertgen's master, Albert van Ouwater. Friedländer, however, notes only one picture by the Master of the Virgo inter Virgines as having been once in Spain, a Pieta now in the Metropolitan Museum, N e w Y o r k , and a single example likewise of Geertgen, a Madonna now in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum, Berlin. Winkler carries much conviction in ascribing to a Dutch painter whose personality he has defined, the Master of 'S Hertogenbosch, a Crucifixion belonging to Isabella's collection at Granada. 1 T h e painter's works have often been confused with those of the young Jerome Bosch, who will soon concern us and whose home was the same town, 'S Hertogenbosch. Winkler dates the Crucifixion c. 1470, and guesses that it may have been a part of the same altarpiece as a Via Dolorosa now in the Museum of Brussels. 2.

THE

LATER

GENERATION

As the fifteenth century came to an end and the sixteenth century began, because of the closer political and commercial relationships with the Low Countries, the popularity of Flemish artistic standards even increased, continuing throughout the Cinquecento; and the form that Italianism took in Belgium eventually had almost as much influence upon the painting of the Spanish Renaissance as the direct importations from Italy. T h e concrete examples of an indebtedness to the Low Countries during the full Renaissance may be reserved for a subsequent volume, and at this point we need to mention only the Flemish painters who were transitional from the mediaeval manner to the developed style of the sixteenth century. T h e augmented enthusiasm for Flemish artistic achievement provoked in Spain just before the Renaissance, as we have seen,2 a second wave of exact imitation in which the models were these transitional painters as well as the early founders of the Belgian school. Gerard D a v i d apparently was more a favorite in Spain than 1 2

Jahrbuch der preussischen Kunstsammlungen, See above, p. 11.

X L I V (1923), 142-146.

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29

any of his predecessors. The large number of works by him and his Flemish followers which have come to light in the peninsula and of which many must have been executed for Spanish patrons or bought by them at the time have been catalogued by Justi, 1 Bertaux, 2 and Friedländer. It would be superfluous for us to name more than those that are still in sacred edifices or are known to have such a provenience: the Madonna of the Rose in the church of the Sacro Monte, Granada; a Madonna from a convent at Toledo, last recorded in the Traumann Collection at Madrid; a version of the same theme in the Bosch Collection of the Prado, said to have been acquired in a Navarrese convent; and still another in the Von Nemes Collection at Munich, coming from a Carmelite institution at Salamanca. Since it is so little known, I insert an illustration (Fig. 2) of a Pieta that I have the authority of Dr. C. L. Kuhn for attributing to David himself or an immediate follower, the central panel of a triptych in the parish church of Hormaza, west of Burgos, the wings of which depict the donor and his wife with their patron saints. The composition of the Pieta is taken from the painting by Petrus Christus now in the Metropolitan Museum, New York. The Catalogue of the Burgos Retrospective Exposition of 1921 attributes the triptych (No. 51) to David's imitator, Adriaen Isenbrant. In perambulations through Spanish churches, one is always coming upon pictures of the school of David, as in a chapel at the left of the nave in S. Gil at Burgos, another beautiful Pieta, close to the master himself. Certain miniatures in Isabella's breviary, which is now in the British Museum, were also limned by David or a faithful disciple. Several of the most important religious paintings in Spain that belong to the school of David, as well as a number of portraits found in the peninsula, have been tentatively ascribed to the Flemishized Lombard, Ambrosius Benson. At least two of Benson's works were set up in churches of Segovia, a triptych still in S. Miguel and five panels of a retable of the Virgin and St. Anne now in the Prado (Nos. 1927, 1928, 1929, 1933, and 1935), coming from the Dominican monastery of Sta. Cruz. 1 2

Miscettaneeriy 334-336. In A. Michel's Histoire de I'art, IV, 2, p. 894.

3°

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Quentin Matsys was not quite so richly represented in Spain. No surely authentic work of his can be definitely traced to an early resting-place in the peninsula. The pundits have not determined whether we should assign to him or an imitator, perhaps the Master of the Morrison Triptych, the painted wings of the carved altarpiece of 1504 in the chapel of St. John Baptist in S. Salvador at Valladolid. Friedländer attributes to the Morrison Master a triptych of the Nativity, Epiphany, and Flight into Egypt in the Seminary of Belchite, south of Saragossa. To a second follower of Matsys, the Master of Frankfurt, he ascribes an altar of the Epiphany in the monastery of Guadalupe and a triptych of the Madonna, saints, and angels in the convent of Casbas, near Huesca. Jerome Bosch, because of his naturalism and grotesque proclivity, was ensured of fervent patronage in Spain. Although no evidence confirms the old idea that Bosch visited the peninsula, Friedländer's list includes a tremendous array of his paintings the provenience of which is Spanish. A goodly number were acquired after Bosch's death, which occurred in 1516, by Felipe de Guevara, a courtier of Charles V who wrote upon the Fine Arts, including a discussion of Bosch, and whose collection of the Flemish master's works passed into the hands of Philip I I . Further paintings of Bosch were obtained by Philip I I himself, and the extent of his Spanish vogue may be gauged by the fact that, despite the quantity of important specimens from Spain comprised in Friedländer's list, many of his pictures that were in the peninsula during the sixteenth century have been lost. Some must have entered the country even during his lifetime. The monastery of Sto. Domingo at Valencia 1 has bestowed upon the Museo Provincial a triptych of the Passion, copied after Bosch, the central panel of which is based upon the original Crowning with Thorns now in the Escorial and the lateral panels of which have the interest of preserving the memory of the lost original wings of the Escorial picture. A further good replica of the central panel, perhaps by Bosch himself, is in the Museo Provincial at Segovia. The present section of this volume would swell to enormous proportions, if one were to attempt to set down all the works of secondary Belgian and Dutch masters of the fifteenth and early 1

See Tramoyeres Blasco in Archive de arte valenciano, I (1915), 87-102.

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sixteenth century that reached the Iberian peninsula. Y e t a few even of the secondary masters of the Low Countries who were transitional to the Renaissance demand passing mention at this point because of the beauty, celebrity, or historical interest of the monuments that they have left in Spain. Some of them became more or less Hispanicized, but here will be considered only those in whom the process of naturalization made

FIG. 2.

G E R A R D DAVID (?). PIETÄ, C E N T R E OF TRIPTYCH. PARISH CHURCH, HORMAZA (Photo. Photo Club)

but slight advance. Since they remained primarily Flemish and therefore are not strictly a part of the panorama of Spanish painting, we need do little more than catalogue their achievements for the benefit of the curious traveller. Because the lovely retable of Nuestra Senora de la Compasion on the trascoro of the cathedral of Palencia was, according to the inscription, executed at Brussels in 1505 (or slightly earlier) by a painter who, so far as is known, never saw Spain, it is wholly untouched by indigenous qualities. The newly chosen bishop of Palencia, Juan

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Rodriguez de Fonseca, gave the commission for the altarpiece while he was in Flanders on an embassy to announce to Joanna the M a d and her husband, Philip of Burgundy, the death of Queen Isabella, and he kneels before the grief-stricken Virgin (supported by St. John) in the central panel. The painter is named, in an account-book of the cathedral, as Juan de Holanda, whom Friedländer, on internal evidence, has convincingly demonstrated to be Jan Joest of Haarlem. 1 Andalusia can boast a triad of Flemish retables about contemporary with this work and incorporating much the same delightful phase of transition between the manners of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries: one at the end of the south aisle in the church of Sta. Ines at Seville, treating episodes from the life of the Virgin; eight panels from the lives of Christ and the Baptist, combined with sculptured sections and with painted guardapolvos by the native master, Alejo Fernandez, to form the retable of the high altar of S. Juan at Marchena; and a similarly constructed example over the high altar of the church of Santiago at Ecija, the themes of the painted Flemish panels being the Passion and the guardapolvos again executed by Alejo Fernandez. T h e Marchena retable, which was in process of painting in 1507, has been dubiously ascribed by some critics to the Flemish artist who will soon concern us, Juan de Flandes. The author of the scenes of the Passion at Ecija, despite the similarity in the formation of the altarpiece, does not seem the same as the Marchena master. He is more Hispanicized and closer to Alejo himself; I should not exclude the possibility that he was a native Spaniard under the influence of the Flemish art of the early Renaissance. But it was not only the purely Flemish form of the northEuropean aesthetic gospel that was preached in the peninsula. The Spaniards were not so orthodoxly bound to what they learned from the Low Countries that they refused to accept its German modifications, and we shall have occasion to note many instances in which the indebtedness was rather to Teutonic 1 Van Eyck bis Bruegel, 135-141, and Die altniederländische Malerei, I X , ί ο ff. and 125. Justi (op. cit., 330) had previously guessed that it might be an early work of the shadowy personality, Jan Mostaert of Haarlem, a surmise in which Weale (Burlington Magazine, X I V , 1908-1909, p. 114) already had not concurred.

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precedents. T h e German architects and sculptors who were warmly welcomed in Spain are better known artists, but hand in hand with them came secondary painters from the same country. There is no real reason to think, as has sometimes been stated, that the great master, Hans Holbein the Elder, wandered to the peninsula; but among the principal vehicles for the dissemination of the Teutonic forms were the popular engravings of Schongauer. Mayer, on the basis of the name, claims for the German race the Master Conrad whose retable in the Dominican church at Saragossa Jaime Lana was asked in 1506 to use as a model for his own altarpiece at Mallen. Indeed, when the adjectives flamenco or aleman are applied to artists in the Spanish documents of the time, it is not always possible to be absolutely certain in regard to the nationality, for each term was used somewhat indiscriminately to mean Flemish, Dutch, and German.

3.

ISABELLA'S

COURT-PAINTERS

The taste of the period is mirrored in Isabella's elevation, not only of Spaniards, but also of Flemings or Germans to the post of court-painter; but unable to procure the services of the very greatest northern masters, she was obliged to content herself with some of the lesser luminaries. N o one has attempted to attach any extant picture to the name of one of them, a German (if his surname is used in the strict sense), Melchior Aleman; but after several more or less unscientific and unsuccessful endeavors by other writers, Friedländer has finally been able to recover with virtual certainty the personality of a second of these court-painters, the Fleming, Miguel Sithium or Zittoz. His sojourn at the Spanish court began at least as early as 1492 1 and probably indeed a decade before, in 1481, when Isabella was thirty years old, the age at which he is recorded to have portrayed her. After her death he found enthusiastic patronage with her daughter-in-law, the already widowed Margaret of Austria. When he repatriated himself in her court in Flanders is uncertain, but if, as it will appear later that we are almost 1 For the known facts of Miguel's life, the article by Sanpere y Miquel noted in the Bibliography is old but not antiquated.

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bound to do, we identify him with the "Mester Mechil" who in June, 1 5 1 4 , left Reval (now called Tallinn, still at that time closely affiliated with Denmark) in Esthonia for the court at Copenhagen, he was in the north at least by this year and had probably been given leave of absence by Margaret in order that temporarily he might carry out orders for the Danes. At Reval he may have been working for the bishop, Johan Blankenhof. He was back in Spain at Valladolid to collect arrears in his salary from the royal family at the end of 1 5 1 5 and beginning of 1516. The last notice of him is J u l y 10, 1 5 1 6 , when we find him once more in Belgium in the employ of the young Charles V. The foundation of Friedländer's edifice is his reconstruction, as a diptych, of two panels one of which, depicting the Madonna and Child, was discovered not far from Burgos and is now in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum, Berlin, and the other of which, once in a Madrid collection and now in the hands of dealers, represents a donor whom he claims as a Spaniard because of the lilied cross of the Order of Calatrava conspicuous in the brocade of his garment. Friedländer adduced as another argument for Spanish manufacture the southern ethnic type of the Virgin in this painting that otherwise belongs essentially to the Flemish manner of the early Renaissance. He then proceeded, on internal evidence, to assign to this artist a portrait of a lady in the Vienna Museum, and because the picture, as by the same author, might be presumed to have been painted in Spain and because of the letter C encrusted upon the neck of her bodice and the K's and English heraldic roses in her necklace, he tentatively identified her as Catherine, the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella and the wife of Henry V I I I of England. 1 He had thus found another Flemish painter who worked in Spain at the turn of the century; but the grounds for making him equal to Miguel Sithium were as yet very slight — the considerations that he was employed by the royal family of Castile and that in 1 Miss Catherine W. Pierce (Art in America, X V I I I , 1930, pp. 284-292) has subsequently attributed this portrait to the Master of Moulins and identified the sitter with Anne of Brittany, the wife of Charles V I I I ; but after giving much thought to the matter, I still must cast my lot with Friedländer in the matter of attribution, whoever the lady herself may be. Miss Pierce believes the halo a later addition and does not interpret the device on the bodice as the letter C but conceivably as J . P. (Jean Perreal?) or I. E . , the beginning of the name of Jesus.

FLEMINGS IN SPAIN

35

the Vienna portrait (if the halo be not a subsequent addition) he depicted an aristocratic personage, according to a documented practice of Master Miguel, in the guise of a saint. A further attribution of Friedländer, however, to the artist who did the diptych and the feminine portrait has helped to strengthen and virtually to demonstrate his whole equation. In Isabella's celebrated polyptych of forty-seven small panels, in the main painted by Juan de Flandes, Miguel is known to have executed two pieces, an Ascension and an Assumption, which have now been unanimously recognized as still extant respectively in the Collection of the Earl of Yarborough, London, and in the Quesnet Collection, Paris. Their correspondence in general style and in dimensions 1 with the preserved sections done by Juan de Flandes would seem in itself sufficient to prove Miguel's authorship; but the difference in specific style from the pieces by Juan de Flandes and the exact analogy in specific style to the diptych and portrait constitute a most convincing argument for admitting them as Miguel's creations and for uniting to them, as likewise by Miguel, the Berlin, Calatrava, and Vienna paintings. An additional reason for seeing in the Quesnet Assumption a fragment of Isabella's polyptych is the presence of a weak, sixteenth-century copy in a private collection at Madrid. Through stylistic considerations Friedländer increases the legacy of Miguel Sithium by a Coronation in the Heugel Collection, Paris, a Madonna with St. Bernard in private hands at Madrid, and a Via Dolorosa in the Moscow Museum. T h e internal evidence is quite sufficient to justify an attribution made by the Danish critic, Falck, a portrait of Christian II in the Art Museum, Copenhagen, but it is supplemented by partial documentary proof. 2 The unity of authorship with the portrait of the Knight of Calatrava is self-evident, but the sceptic may compare particularly the nearly identical costumes, the modes of painting the crimped, linen shirt, the brocaded coat, and the fur collar, the treatment of the hair and of the eyes. If, therefore, Miguel Sithium was the author, as is very probable, of the Calatrava portrait, he would be responsible also for the portrait See F. Winkler in Pantheon, IV (1931), 176. G. Falck, Mester Michiel og Kunstmuseets Portraet af Christiern II, Kunstmuseen Aarsskrift (Copenhagen), X I I I - X V (1926-1928), 129-136 (not published until 1930). 1

2

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of Christian II, and there is, furthermore, record of a Master Mechil active for this Danish monarch in 1514. T h e existence of the portrait of Christian almost demands that the Master Mechil be identified with Miguel Sithium, and the ascription of the Calatrava portrait to Miguel Sithium receives additional confirmation through the likelihood that the Danish portrait by the same hand was painted by an artist called Michael. T h e documentary record in question is a letter of June 1, 1514, despatched to the king by the customs-officer at Elsinore, in which, among other things, he announces that he is sending to Christian the painter Master Mechil about whom the sovereign has written him and who is stated to be coming from Reval. Since Master Mechil was in Denmark in 1514 and Miguel Sithium was back in Flanders by March 23, 1515 (when he received a payment from Margaret of Austria), the fact that the portrait bears the date 1515 might seem an obstacle for the attribution, but the ciphers look like a subsequent addition and afterthought, perhaps put there by someone else at the period of Christian's marriage to Isabella, the sister of the future Charles V and the niece of Margaret of Austria, in 1515 (although Miguel Sithium might have remained in Denmark until the first days of 1515 and himself at that time have painted the date). 1 If the court-painter of Isabella of Spain, Miguel Sithium, is indeed to be credited with the distinguished portraits that have been mentioned in these pages, he approached very closely in merit the more celebrated artists of Flanders whom she was unable to lure to the Iberian peninsula. Since he was known to have depicted Isabella, he used sometimes to be thought the painter of her portrait in the Royal Palace, Madrid, which, however, is certainly by a Spaniard exercising himself in the Flemish pictorial modes and which it will be our duty to discuss in connection with another questionable attribution, namely to Bermejo. In the Madrid portrait, moreover, the queen appears as too far along in middle life to harmonize with the age of 1 Winkler (Art in America, X I X , 1931, p. 248, n. 3) convincingly attributes to Miguel Sithium the portraits of Christian I I and his wife represented at prayer in the lower part of a L a s t J u d g m e n t in the N a t i o n a l M u s e u m , C o p e n h a g e n , that he believes to be b y Jan M o s t a e r t or a follower.

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thirty at which he is said to have represented her. On the other hand, a half-length portrait of Joanna the M a d in the Collection of the Marquis of Santillana at Madrid may be one of the rare instances in which an old random guess 1 has chanced to be correct in the light of modern scholarship, for the mode of portraiture and the technique conform to the personality created by Friedländer for Miguel Sithium, who is recorded to have painted the unhappy lady. 2 T h e picture indeed is so similar to the " C a t h e r i n e " that the chief difference is constituted by the sympathetic characterization of Joanna's pitiful and morbid sickness in contrast to the buoyant health of the Vienna example. Justi sought to unearth Miguel in a rather mediocre Flemish Madonna of the end of the fifteenth or beginning of the sixteenth century in the sacristry of Nuestra Senora de la Oliva at Lebrija, north of Jerez de la Fronter a, merely because Margaret of Austria possessed, among her pictures by this master, a Virgin holding, as here, a sleeping Infant. But the dormant Child is too common a motif of the art of the Middle Ages and Renaissance to bear the heavy burden of such a weighty identification, and Friedländer judges the manner of the Lebrija picture closer to Joos van Cleve than to the man whom he believes to be Miguel Sithium. Winkler has recently and persuasively augmented Miguel's canon with a Magdalene in the August Berg Collection, Portland, Oregon, two half-lengths of Madonnas, one in the world of German dealing and the other at Budapest, and, more tentatively, with a Nativity also last recorded in German commerce. A third court-painter, Juan de Flandes, is a very definite personality. His presence in Spain may be traced back to 1496, and he died in 1519 or slightly earlier, probably at Palencia. His documented works are: the meagre pieces of a predella that are preserved from the sections 3 that he began in 1505 for the retable of the chapel of the University at Salamanca, namely busts of St. Apollonia and the Magdalene in grisaille, a frag1 N. Sentenach, Lapintura en Madrid, 15, and Los grandes retratistas en Espana, 15; L. Roblot-Delondre, Portraits d'infantes, 10-11. 2 Sanpere, op. cit., 19. 3 For the sections by Juan de Flandes, see Gomez-Moreno in Boletin de la Sociedad Castellana de Excursiones, V I (1913-1914), 325-326.

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ment showing a sprig of lilies and books, perhaps the attributes of a further saint, 1 and another bit so largely erased as to be indecipherable, all last seen by me in the class-room of Professor Antonio Garcia Boiza at the University; and the twelve panels from the lives of Christ and the Virgin that unite with sculpture to form the retable of the high altar (the Entombment being perhaps his masterpiece) in the cathedral of Palencia, a commission for which he engaged himself in 1506 but could scarcely have begun until he had left Salamanca in 1508, unless he despatched the paintings from his Salamanca shop. Although Bertaux would make of them a separate triptych, a Crucifixion now in the Sala Capitular at Palencia and a Deposition and a Pieta in the Capilla de S. Fernando, undoubted works of Juan de Flandes, almost certainly belonged originally to the ensemble of the high altar 2 or were at least intended for this destination. On the basis of the stylistic qualities revealed in these paintings is ascribed to him in whole or in part with unanimity (except for the Ascension and Assumption by Miguel Sithium) one of the most delightful pictorial products of this time anywhere in Europe, what remains to us from the forty-seven small panels that constituted a polyptych belonging to Isabella and represented the complete history of Our Lord and His mother. Sanchez Canton, in his recent admirably gründlich and clarifying articles,3 is the first to break the unanimity that attributed the entire cycle (with the exception of the Ascension and Assumption) to Juan de Flandes. With subtlety but with much persuasiveness, he assigns eight of the extant panels to a stylistically related collaborator. Of the twenty-seven 4 panels preserved from this retable (including the two by Miguel Sithium), fifteen found a highly proper resting-place in the Royal Palace at Madrid, returning once more to the bosom of the reigning family; the others are scattered through various public and private collections, the latest list of which the inter1 Gomez-Moreno guesses at St. Quiteria, but it might rather be St. Catherine of Siena. 2 M. Vielva Ramos, La catedral de Palencia, 88. 3 See the Bibliography. 4 Twenty-eight, if we accept the Circumcision (or Purification?) in the Alfred Hirsch Collection, Buenos Ayres. Sanchez Canton, in his first article, enumerates only twenty-seven, because he did not then know the Ascension by Miguel Sithium.

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ested student may find by consulting the excellent catalogue in the articles of Sanchez Canton, 1 who also gives, with a lucidity too seldom met in writings upon aesthetic subjects, the rather continuous history of the polyptych, so far as it is known, since the days of its execution. It is not only the larger size and different shape of the lovely panel of the Baptism in the sacristy of the monastic church of Guadalupe that necessitate rejecting it as a part of Isabella's polyptych: it is quite impossible to accept Tormo's attribution of it to Juan de Flandes. Its style, indeed, is much closer to that of Miguel Sithium; Friedländer ascribes it to Jan Provost. 2 T h e personality that emerges from the Salamanca and Palencia retables and from Isabella's shrine (for, if there is a collaborator, he closely approximates the manner of Juan de Flandes) is that of a charmingly sensitive and chastely imaginative northerner of the early Renaissance, who exhibits analogies to Gerard David but who was likewise familiar with the French translations of the Flemish style as they manifested themselves in such men as the Maitre de Moulins. Sanchez Canton, for instance, rightly notes an analogy in the composition of the Transfiguration to David's representation of the subject in Notre Dame at Bruges, but it is difficult to follow him in seeing any real relation of the Via Dolorosa to a panel by David in the Philip Lehman Collection at New Y o r k (formerly in the Kann Collection, Paris). Since the delicacy and illuminator's technique that Juan maintains even in his larger pictures reveal a training with the miniaturists, he should perhaps rather be compared, among French artists, to Jean Bourdichon or Jean Fouquet. He shows, moreover, a Gallic susceptibility to lovely feminine types and a Gallic feeling for solemnity and restraint in the treatment of religious themes, subduing the tonality of his color to an elegant sobriety. He likes to set his scenes amidst architecture of the new Italian fashions, and he already has something of the sentiment of the Renaissance for ruins; but his Franco-Flemish manner was not essentially modified by his 1 For the present situation of the Temptation and Marriage at Cana at Cornbury Park, England, see H. Isherwood K a y in the Burlington Magazine, L V I I I (1931), 197-201, and the second article of Sanchez Canton. 1 Die altniederländische Malerei, I X , p. 147 (no. 146).

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Spanish environment, so that an exhaustive discussion of his attainments does not fall within the province of this book. How merely adventitious his slight Spanish touches are, may be illustrated by various panels of Isabella's altar. He occasionally introduces among his supernumeraries peculiar types or celebrated personages from the life of the peninsula, such as the turbaned Moor and the negro in the Resurrection of Lazarus or the portraits of Ferdinand and Isabella in the Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes. He, or, according to Sanchez Canton, his collaborator, sets the Mocking of Christ in front of a patio, and amidst the landscape backgrounds, in the exquisite rendering of which he delighted and excelled, we may possibly here and there recognize a Spanish vista, for instance the profiles of mountains in which is placed the Holy Sepulchre visited by the three women or the bleak expanse that surrounds Christ's entry into Jerusalem (the walls of which seem to the present writer too massive and high to have been inspired, as has been supposed, by reminiscences of those of Avila). The recognition of this series of works by Juan de Flandes has brought about the convincing attribution of a number of other paintings to him. The principal further piece at Salamanca is a much dilapidated retable in the cloister of the Old Cathedral, the centre of which is occupied by St. Michael, 1 the two wings by an enthroned Santiago and St. Francis's reception of the stigmata, and the predella by a Pieta and busts of Sts. Peter and Paul, the last two figures possibly a subsequent addition or repainted. The precision of draughtsmanship, the types, and the draperies are unmistakably the property of Juan de Flandes. St. James Major sits in one of those prettily painted and correctly foreshortened rooms of Renaissance architecture that Juan so often affects. St. Francis kneels in one of the Flemish master's delicate translations of Giorgionesque landscape. Everywhere, even in these large figures, we sense the illuminator's exquisite touch, as, for instance, in the Virgin of the Pieta, upon whose face he has delineated the tears with the 1 The popularity of the St. Michael is revealed by copies, on canvas, existing in the Museum of Salamanca and in the Museo de la Ciudadela at Barcelona. The latter, though probably a work of the sixteenth century, is betrayed by the inferior technique, particularly in the rendering of the red mantle and of the glint upon the armor, as not by Juan de Flandes himself. The likewise mediocre Salamanca copy is signed by a "Johannes Perez Cassatus (or Gassatus) " and dated 1687 (or 1587).

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utmost scrupulousness. The lovely figure of St. Michael, whose red cape billows forth in a flight of enmeshed Flemish drapery almost as spirited as upon Bermejo's archangel, is as near as Juan de Flandes ever approaches to bigness of manner, and yet even here he retains much of the miniaturist's technique. Like so many other Flemish artists, who never quite forget the beginnings of the school in illuminations, he delights in meticulously representing the reflections of town and country in the breastplate of the burnished armor and centre of the shield. In view of the general analogy in all treatments of St. Michael fighting the dragon in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the parallelism to Bermejo's earlier and celebrated rendering of the subject, despite the presence of a round targe with a crystal or polished piece of steel in the middle, is not sufficiently exact to support the often advanced theory of the Flemish painter's familiarity with the Spanish master's work. Directly in connection with the retable of the Salamanca cloister should be mentioned, because of its subjects, a panel in the Cook Collection at Richmond, Surrey, England, which is certified by its style as a production of Juan de Flandes and represents again the victorious St. Michael, though conceived more as an angel than as a warrior, and a standing effigy of St. Francis, displaying the sacred wounds that in the Salamanca picture he receives. The composition of the St. Michael was apparently suggested by Schongauer's engraving of the subject. T h e umbo of his shield once more reflects a landscape, but Juan de Flandes has now succumbed far enough to the Spanish atmosphere to gild the two arched niches against which the saints stand. Another work at Salamanca that may with confidence be ascribed to him is of unusual interest because it finds him painting in the medium of fresco. It consists of two figures of St. Anthony Abbot, relieved from whitewash in 1923, at either end of a wall in the upper story of the patio of the University, one almost a repetition of the other, except that the effigy at the left is depicted full-face and the example at the right in a threequarters position (Fig. 3). T o the interest of the medium is added an iconographic and even a medical importance. St. Anthony in both instances is represented in the phase, rare in the

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Fine Arts, of his connection with skin diseases, not, however, as we shall see, in his guise of defender against them, but in that of their imposer. The disease called after him St. Anthony's fire is now usually identified with erysipelas, but here at Salamanca he is the controller of a whole potpourri of such and other afflictions. He is accompanied not only by his common attribute of the pig but also by a brazier (placed, for the effigy at the left, on the adjoining cross-wall) from which issue in the form of flames three scrolls inscribed with Latin hexameters naming and discussing in the bathos of lofty poetic strain the loathsome diseases that are conceived as burning in the receptacle, i. e., as the fire of St. Anthony. The three inscriptions beside one St. Anthony duplicate those beside the other, and read: H o c in igne latent plantas nodosa tumentes nobilium morbus medicos risura p o d b a g r a (sic or podragra for podagra) omne m a r a s m o r u m genus et sine v o c e sinanche (sic for synauche) I m p r o b a mordaci serpens prurigine lepra et c a p u t involvens nebulis lethargica moles fereus (sic for ferreus) et medica sopor incurabilis arte E t m e n t a g r a c u t e m maculis v a r i a t a cruentis e t P h l e g e t o n t e o (sic) veniens a flumine cancer dira lues populans artus liquor ignibus ardens. (In this fire there l u r k : g o u t , the disease of nobles, t h a t k n o t s the swelling feet and is of a nature to baffle physicians; e v e r y kind of wasting sickness; and voiceless q u i n s y ; accursed leprosy creeping w i t h biting itch; and the weight of l e t h a r g y , enveloping the head in clouds, an iron stupor incurable b y medical art; and chin-disease m a r k i n g the skin w i t h bloody spots; and cancer, coming from the Phlegethontian river, a dire plague d e v a s t a t i n g the limbs and a fluid ablaze w i t h fire.)

The verses perhaps reflect the combined humanistic and medical interest of some member of the faculty at the beginning of the Renaissance. In a kind of inventory of the works of art and inscriptions of the University published by Juan Gonzalez de Dios between 1748 and 1762, Tavera Hernandez 1 has found record of two other such effigies of St. Anthony depicted above stone benches on landings on the stairway to the library of the University and 1

Revista de archivos, X L V I I I (1927), 199-204.

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accompanied by like braziers and scrolls. T h e y have now perished, but Gonzalez de Dios quotes the inscriptions, which turn out to be virtually identical with those preserved, except that the order of the tercets is reversed and two major variations are introduced. Since the first of the lines describing the

FIG. 3. JUAN DE FLANDES.

FRESCO OF ST. ANTHONY

ABBOT, UNIVERSITY, SALAMANCA (Photo. Arxiu Mas )

gout no longer stands at the beginning of the verses, the words " h o c in igne l a t e n t " have to be abandoned, and the line reads: "quaeque manus redditque pedes nodosa tumentes" ("which makes hands and feet swell with knots," or " t h e knotty disease that makes hands and feet swell"). T h e second variation consists in the addition of a line at the end of the category of dis-

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eases, which seems to modify the whole purport of the iconography: corripiant quicumque locum foedaverit istum. (May all these diseases seize upon anyone who befouls this place.) St. Anthony would thus become not the champion against disease but its inflicter upon all who should commit a nuisance at these convenient spots, and Tavera Hernandez actually adduces a proverbial phrase, quoted by the writer of the seventeenth century, Master Correas, in his Vocabulario de refranes,1 to show that effigies of St. Anthony were frequently executed with this intention and that the specimens at Salamanca were stock examples: " T o paint St. Anthonies in recesses and in flames (as on the stairways of the Escuelas Mayores of Salamanca, to threaten anyone who should dare to commit a nuisance in such a place)." Because the two lost figures were so conceived, it is logical to believe that the extant paintings had the same significance, although the minatory sentence is lacking from the verses; but St. Anthony, in any case, would maintain his connection with diseases, in this instance not only, as usual, chiefly disturbances of the skin but also a few other maladies. His uncommon attribute of a brandished torch would carry out still farther the idea of his threat of fiery disease to defilers. The modern mind may be shocked by the use of the figure of a saint for the designated vulgar purpose and the employment of so distinguished a painter as Juan de Flandes for executing what corresponded in those times to the prohibitory warnings inscribed in such tempting nooks in the Latin countries at the present day; but our ancestors were more direct, natural, and simple in these matters and discerned little that was ignoble in them. In his further contention it is impossible to follow Tavera Hernandez, namely that the failure of Gonzalez de Dios to mention the preserved examples in the upper story of the patio means that they were painted in the second half of the eighteenth century after the publication of the inventory! He states that the whitewash that used to cover them was relatively modern, so that Gonzalez de Dios ought to have seen 1 Edition of Madrid, 1906, p. 602. It is a question whether the author of the book on proverbs is identical with the philologist of the same period, Gonzalo Correas or Correa.

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them, and he gets rid of the difficulty of the epigraphy by deeming it a later imitation of earlier writing; but this is an instance in which stylistic evidence must outweigh all other considerations. The manner is unquestionably that of c. 1500, and the type of countenance, the technical method, the charming tenderness of touch, and the intensity of the gaze link the paintings with Juan de Flandes. 1 The nuns of the convent of Sta. Ursula at Salamanca were once so kind as to show me a small and delicate triptych, containing at the centre a Madonna and on the wings Santiago and St. John Evangelist, a work so repainted that an attribution to Juan de Flandes rather than to some other Flemish master of c. 1500 is a hazardous proposition. A further relic of his sojourn at Palencia may be seen in six panels of a retable built into a structure of the seventeenth or eighteenth century over the high altar of the church of S. Läzaro, representing, in a now disturbed order, at the right the Nativity, Annunciation, and Resurrection of Lazarus and, at the left, the Ascension, Agony in the Garden, and Pentecost. A smaller panel of the same original retable, depicting the Visitation in the presence of a thin, Bouts-like cleric as donor, was relegated to the sacristy, where there is preserved also a bit of the ancient Gothic frame, but the picture has recently entered the Prado. The compositions for the Annunciation and Nativity resemble those in the documented retable of the cathedral. The Resurrection of Lazarus and Pentecost are slightly modified representations of these scenes as they occur in Isabella's polyptych. In both renderings of Whitsunday, for instance, the Virgin, enthroned at the centre, has a book upon her lap; and in each case Lazarus rises half-way from one of the tombs in a cemetery, while a captivating Magdalene, in contemporary Flemish costume, watches behind. In the Nativity and in the crumbling arch upon which the chalice rests in the midst of the delightful landscape of the Agony in the Garden, Juan de Flandes once more gives expression to the romance that the Renaissance found in ruins. 1 I understand that Don Antonio Garcia Boiza, the present professor of the Theory of Art in the University and the discoverer of the frescoes, has written an article on them, which I have not been able to obtain.

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He is demonstrated to have obtained patronage also in the province of Palencia, as well as in the city itself, by an Epiphany combined with sculpture of the same epoch to form a retable in the chapel of the Huidobro family in the parish church at Cervera de Pisuerga (whether or not the painting was originally intended for this altarpiece). The credit of having recognized here a work by Juan de Flandes belongs to Tormo, who was familiar only with a photograph. 1 The picture has suffered from neglect and is further disfigured by a splash of repaint at the bottom that gives the impression of a dirty mass of cloud, but the maltreatment cannot conceal the unmistakable marks of Juan de Flandes's own hand in tonality, sensitive draughtsmanship, and gentle types and of that hand at its most skilful and most entrancing. One of his characteristic personages, for example, is the negroid Magus. The scene is set again amidst his beloved ruins, in this instance fragments of late Gothic architecture. It is impossible, on stylistic grounds, to identify Juan de Flandes with the Juan Flamenco whom Antonio Ponz records as working in the Carthusian monastery of Miraflores near Burgos from 1496 to 1499, 2 if we consider Juan Flamenco to have been the author either of the triptych of the Baptist now in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum, Berlin, 3 or of the series of panels from the life of the same saint now in the Prado, 4 both of which works are reported to have come from this Cartuja; but evidence for the activity of Juan de Flandes at Miraflores is perhaps to be found in a veronica in the institution that Gomez-Moreno with some show of reason ascribes to him (Fig. 4). 5 The type and method of execution in this head of the Saviour are intimately associated with the manner of Juan de Flandes, but the craft hardly seems worthy of him. If perchance it is his creation, a Juan de Flandes at Miraflores might have been dubbed also Juan Flamenco, but such an admission 1

Bolet'm de la Sociedad Espanola de Excursions, X X V I (1918), 53. Viage de Espana, X I I , 55-56. 3 See above, p. 24. "> See below, p. 236. 5 Quoted by Moreno Villa in his article in the Boletin de la Sociedad Espanola de Excursiones, X X V (1917), 281. I take it that it is to this veronica that Gomez-Moreno refers by the term, a "Nazarene." 2

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does not involve, of course, the attribution to him of the Berlin triptych or the Prado series. We do not need the Miraflores veronica, however, to substantiate the employment of Juan de Flandes in the province of Burgos, for a panel representing St. Augustine and St. Roch (Fig. 5), which has now disap-

Fic. 4. JUAN DE FLANDES (?). VERONICA. MIRAFLORES, BURGOS (Photo. Photo Club )

peared from its old home, the Augustinian convent of S. Miguel de los Angeles at Villadiego, northwest of the capital, bears in its types and setting of stately towers the indisputable marks of an authentic and masterful work of his own hand. St. Augustine, the patron of the Order, holds his attribute of the heart; St. Roch is flanked by his usual iconographical companions, the

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dog and the angel, 1 the latter of whom should be compared with the St. Michael in the Cook Collection. The monks at Miraflores ascribe to Juan de Flandes a large triptych of the Crucifixion, Via Dolorosa, and Deposition that I last saw hanging at the right of the high altar. Despite the somewhat inferior drawing in spots and despite the rather Spanish types in some of the figures of older men, the triptych may indeed be the production of a secondary Fleming of c. 1500 using a style related to that of Juan de Flandes; but he is certainly not Juan de Flandes, nor is he by any means his equal as an artist. Friedländer has recently added to the list of Juan's works, authenticated by style, a small panel of Salome receiving the head of the Baptist, in the Ariana Museum at Geneva, and a charming portrait of a lovely girl coming from the Collection of the Marques de Santillana (Duque del Infantado) and now in the Collection of the Schloss Rohoncz, exhibited in 1930 in the Neue Pinakothek, Munich. 2 Winkler 3 has recognized the pendant to the Geneva panel in a representation of Salome exhibiting the Baptist's head to Herod in the Mayer van den Bergh Collection, Antwerp. Sanchez Canton ascribes to Juan another Baptism, besides that of Guadalupe, in the Collection of the Vizconde de Roda at Madrid. It is easy to accept Glück's attribution to Juan de Flandes of two companion portraits of an aristocratic young man and a young woman in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, but somewhat harder to follow him in identifying the youth as Philip the Fair and therefore the girl as his wife, Joanna the Mad, who is a very different personage in her certified effigies, for instance the example in the Santillana Collection that I have assigned above to Miguel Sithium. Glück goes on to surmise that the similar maiden in the Rohoncz picture would be one of Joanna's sisters. On the more or less justifiable supposition that a son of Juan de Flandes who is known to have existed, to have been called by the same Christian name as his father, and to have followed 1 The angel is too small to be a separate saint, such as Michael, or anything else but Roch's frequent attribute. 2 For the latter, see the Catalogue of the Exhibition of the Collection at Munich, the volume on the paintings, p. 50, no. 166, plate 31. ' Pantheon, IV (1931), 178, n. 2.

FIG. 5.

JUAN DE FLANDES.

STS. AUGUSTINE AND ROCH.

IN THE AUGUSTINIAN CONVENT, VILLADIEGO (Photo. Photo

Club)

FORMERLY

ζο

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the paternal profession would have weakly reproduced his parent's style, Mayer has plausibly ascribed to him certain less talented imitations of the first Juan de Flandes in Palencia and the region: a small Deposition now in the office of the Hospital de S. Bernabe y S. Antolin in the city itself, and a small retable in the sacristy of the parish church of Santoyo, just southeast of Fromista. The Palencia Deposition reveals a painter who remains fundamentally a Fleming of the early Renaissance in types and color and, if he be Juan de Flandes II, is surprisingly little affected in his art by his sojourn in the peninsula. N o very exact dependence upon the elder Juan's manner is apparent, except in the setting of a broad vista of a barren Spanish landscape accented by grandiose architecture and ruins. Some power of trenchant characterization is preserved in the Joseph of Arimathaea kneeling at Christ's feet, but the best figure is the clerical donor at the other side of the picture, upon whose shoulder Nicodemus lays his hand. Y e t the general inferiority to Juan I is betrayed by this very figure in the loss of the old Flemish skill in counterfeiting the linen of the surplice. N o t only has the central piece of the Santoyo retable disappeared, but Mayer attributes to Juan II merely some of the panels that remain, the Christ enthroned as Pantocrator above the central aperture, the four scenes from the life of the Virgin immediately at the sides, and the predella of the Purification, Christ in the Temple, and three episodes of the Passion. The style is much more palpably an imitation of that of Juan I than in the case of the Palencia Deposition, the Annunciation, for instance, reproducing the versions in the high altars of the Palencia cathedral and of S. Läzaro; but the craft is so much more helpless and so nearly puerile as to arouse a doubt whether the Palencia Deposition is by the same hand or by Juan II, if, as seems more probable, he be the author of the Santoyo retable. Mayer 1 discerns in the Santoyo panels also a knowledge of the Palencia paintings by Jan Joest. I cannot absolutely persuade myself, with Mayer, that the other sections of the Santoyo retable are not by the master of the above-mentioned parts but additions of c. 1550 by a different hand, an Assumption over the Pantocrator, at the left of the structure full-lengths of 1

Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft, X X X I I (1909), 521.

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Sts. Anthony of Padua and Margaret 1 and, at the right, of St. Bartholomew and St. Anne with the Madonna; and yet the group of St. Anne, the Virgin, and Child appears more Italianate. The altar of the chapel in the Ayuntamiento of Palencia is embellished with a small and lovely panel of the Annunciation

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JUAN DE FLANDES II (?). ANNUNCIATION. AYUNTAMIENTO, PALENCIA

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(Fig. 6), a Flemish work of the very early sixteenth century or a Spanish work closely reproducing the Flemish manner, which, for want of a better place, I catalogue at this point in connection with the discussion of Juan de Flandes II. In types and technical methods it is so far affiliated with the Deposition of the Hospital that I should not scruple to assign it to the same 1

Mayer calls this figure St. Catherine.

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author, if the talent exhibited in the piece of the Ayuntamiento were not decidedly superior. I t is the kind of painting that one would have expected a son of the first Juan to do, since the style is obviously derived from that of Isabella's court-artist. The author possesses not only the miniaturist's characteristic, scrupulous brush-work that marks all Flemish painting of the fifteenth and early sixteenth century but even the increased delicacy of an actual Flemish illuminator, the manner that would be natural to the son of the man who had done the little panels of the queen's shrine. To realize this quality, one has merely to look at the rendering of the draperies (in which the superiority to the Hospital Deposition is especially perceptible), at the vase of lilies, the rug upon which Our Lady kneels, and the basket introduced beside her on the floor according to the affection of the Low Countries for such bits of domestic genre. The Renaissance architecture of the room opens through a window to a landscape like those of Isabella's polyptych. Yet a Spanish ethnic layer has been superimposed upon the types, especially the Gabriel, who has a distant likeness to the Christ of the Hospital Deposition. The Virgin's counterpart in this picture is the Magdalene who kneels beside the dead Saviour. The Ayuntamiento Annunciation is almost certainly the creation of a Fleming who had long sojourned in Spain, an equation that again would accord with the facts about Juan II. I t is, however, not only the higher artistic endowment of the master of the Annunciation that militates against a definitive ascription to the painter of the Hospital Deposition; the curious light tonality of pink is different, with the Virgin clad in a white mantle over a blue tunic, and the angel in rose over white. If Juan II is the author of the Annunciation, he is possibly but not certainly responsible for the Deposition and much less surely for the Santoyo panels. If he did the Santoyo panels, there are obstacles in the way of recognizing him in the other two pictures; but even artists have their ups and downs, and it is within the range of credibility that Juan II may after all have executed the whole series of paintings. In addition to its Pre-Romanesque architecture and its connection with the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, the church of Bamba, just west of Valladolid and south of Palencia, has the

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interest of possessing in a sepulchral niche on the Epistle side of the nave a small and beautifully preserved retable that is closely related stylistically to this group of paintings more or less dubiously attached to the name of Juan de Flandes II. The Epiphany occupies the centre; Sts. Peter and Paul are ensconced in the compartment at the left; and St. Catherine patronizes the donor at the right. The Pieta, in the middle of the lower tier of subjects that serves as a kind of predella, is flanked by St. Michael accompanied by masculine members of the donor's family and by St. John Baptist with the feminine contingent. The parts that most vividly suggest a familiarity with the manner of Juan I are the Magus at the right in the Epiphany, the donor, the Pieta, and the St. Michael, who seems to be derived from Juan I's representation of the archangel at Salamanca. The links with the above-mentioned group of Palencian works are made particularly by the St. Paul, who recalls the types of the Hospital Deposition, and the Madonna in the Epiphany, who resembles the Virgin of the Annunciation in the Ayuntamiento. The Spanish atmosphere is given by the gold hangings interposed between the figures and the landscapes in the three upper panels. The author is an artist of more than ordinary talents and in the St. Catherine attains to almost masterful heights. The church of Tordehumos, still further west, contains, together with two other retables of the Renaissance, one altarpiece, at the east end of the right aisle, which, though exhibiting no specific parallelisms with the so-called works of the son, Juan de Flandes, yet was perhaps executed by a painter who rather late in the sixteenth century was still striving lamely to reproduce the manner of the father. The upper row of compartments displays, in what is at least now an illogical order, the Presentation of the Virgin, next the subject for which the Germans have the convenient title Anna selbdritt, and finally the Meeting at the Golden Gate. The lower row comprises St. Francis's reception of the stigmata, a statue, and the penitence of St. Jerome. There is also a predella with the Pieta and with two lateral sections, each containing three figures of saints. If anything further exists in the remate than the anomaly of a mere landscape, I was unable to make it out.

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The panels built into a later retable on the Gospel side of the nave in the church of Sta. Maria at Astudillo, just northeast of Palencia, are much more distinguished in execution, about contemporary with Juan de Flandes I, and witness far more palpably to his influence, though again not to any contact with the problematical personality of his son. The larger panels, in a disturbed order, enshrine the Passion, depicting the Last Supper, the Agony in the Garden, the Kiss of Judas, the Arrest of Christ (the Betrayal being thus expanded to cover two compartments), the Flagellation, the Crucifixion, the Deposition, and the Entombment. The themes utilized for the predella are the Mass of St. Gregory, the torture of St. George by the dragging of his body(?), and busts of Sts. Apollonia, Anthony of Padua, and Catherine of Alexandria (the three last figures set against backgrounds of decoratively incised gold). Mayer is right in bringing into connection with the production of father and son the small Flagellation, No. 1925 of the Prado, but the style is too harsh for Juan de Flandes I and reveals no close relationship with the Palencia Deposition and Annunciation or the Santoyo retable. The Christ is somewhat in the mode of Juan I, as well as the background of vaulted colonnades of Renaissance architecture surmounted by spectators and set against a bleak Iberian landscape; but it would not be surprising if the pundits of Flemish connoisseurship eventually revindicated this panel, together with the Guadalupe Baptism, for Miguel Sithium. The Museum of Posen contains a Crucifixion (No. 5) which has been ascribed to the school of Castile in the fifteenth century but which in reality is a rather capably executed Flemish or Dutch work contemporary with Juan de Flandes, though painted neither by him nor his son nor Miguel Sithium nor any of the anonymous masters mentioned in these last paragraphs. It is hard to see how the idea of an attribution to a Spanish hand could have originated, unless there be some tradition of a provenience from the peninsula. Because of his connection with Juan de Borgona and other masters active in Toledo at the beginning of the sixteenth century, the consideration of the Italianized and Hispanicized Francisco de Amberes (Antwerp) must be postponed to a subsequent volume.

FLEMINGS IN

SPAIN

4 . T H E N E A P O L I T A N AND P A N - M E D I T E R R A N E A N

55 HYPOTHESES

If for the present we omit from the reckoning the painters, such as Pedro Berruguete and Rodrigo de Osona, who are very manifestly indebted to the Italians of the late Quattrocento and who therefore demand a separate consideration, 1 it is still incumbent upon us to account for a few possible Italian elements in artists like Master Alfonso and Bermejo who are fundamentally Hispano-Flemish. T h e explanation has been sought in a hypothesis that, if substantiated, would solve many problems, not only in Spanish, but also in Italian art — the importance of the Neapolitan school of painting. T h e essence of the hypothesis, so far as it affects Spanish painting, would be that these Spanish artists acquired their training at Naples or, at least, from examples of the Neapolitan school which had found their way into Spain, and that this is the reason for the admitted similarity of their works to the production of Antonello da Messina, who likewise, according to the same theory and in this case according to one tradition, would have there passed his apprenticeship. The scholar who has definitely advanced this explanation is the Spaniard Tormo, 2 but he merely states the point without developing it. Naples is certainly the one place in Europe that a student conversant with the political and artistic history of the city would have guessed to be the provenience of a picture by Bermejo, if he had come upon any such picture unawares without knowing its author either by name or nationality. It was here that the three strains which make up the style of Master Alfonso and Bermejo met, the Italian, the Flemish, and the Spanish. T h e acquisition of Naples by Alfonso the Magnanimous of Aragon in 1443 naturally meant the summoning of Spanish painters to the court that he set up in the city as his favorite residence, especially the principal painter of Valencia at the period, Jacomart. A taste for things Flemish, tapestries, sculptures, miniatures, and even larger paintings, already existed in Catalonia and Aragon from which Alfonso V had come and in the royal family from which he had sprung, so that the sovereign's own aesthetic leanings and those of the Spanish 1 1

See above, p. ι ζ. In his book on Jacomart, p. 43.

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artists who accompanied him stimulated in the new capital a fondness for the art of the Low Countries. T h e rival claimant for the throne of Naples, the last of the Angevin dynasty, Rene d'Anjou, whom Alfonso ousted, had already, by his partiality for Flemish art, prepared the Neapolitan ground for the reception of the northern seed. Alfonso obtained for his own collection at Naples not only tapestries of the Passion by Roger van der Weyden but one and probably two paintings by Jan van E y c k (both now lost), a St. George and a triptych of the Annunciation, flanked by Sts. John Baptist and Jerome, with the donors, Giovanni Battista Lomellini of Genoa and his wife Geronima, on the outside of the wings. Sanchis Sivera's investigations among the Valencian documents 1 have revealed that the St. George was bought for Alfonso in 1444 at Valencia and was there packed to be despatched to Naples; and it was in all probability this representation of the warrior-saint that was copied by the Neapolitan master, Colantonio. 2 In the Valencian account of the panel St. George is described as mounted and surrounded by " m a n y other works very highly finished" — with reference, evidently, to the Flemish multiplication of carefully delineated details, which are stressed also in the remarks about Colantonio's copy by the Neapolitan historian, Pietro Summonte. Alfonso's son, Ferdinand I of Naples, is definitely recorded to have sent, as late as 1469, an artist of Swiss extraction, Giovanni di Giusto, to Bruges " to learn to paint." B y the middle of the Quattrocento, indeed, the Flemish influence was far more pronounced at Naples than anywhere else in Italy, except perhaps in Sicily, the other Italian domain of the Aragonese. Florence had not yet fallen under the spell of Hugo van der Goes, Justus of Ghent had not yet found patronage at Urbino, and Antonello had not betaken himself to Venice. T h e same coalition of several artistic strains occurred in Sicily as in Naples for identical reasons, but, if we are going to seek a disseminating centre for the Hispano-Italo-Flemish style, it is more logical to select the capital, Naples. The existence of an Italian strain in the art of Naples and Sicily needs no comment. T h a t Master Alfonso and Bermejo might have acquired their 1 2

Estudis universitaris Catalans, V I (1912), 444-445. F. Nicolini, L'arte napoletana del Rinascimento, 162 and 232.

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conglomerate style at Naples is indicated by a number of pictures in the churches and Museum of the city painted during the Quattrocento in the Flemish or Spanish manners or in a combination of both manners, usually with Italian modifications. B y virtue of recent discoveries, particularly through the publication of the whole text of Pietro Summonte's celebrated letter on Neapolitan art written in 1524 and because of the credibility that he thus acquires in his attributions, 1 it is now practically established that the first great Neapolitan exponent of this fused style was the painter who hitherto has been little more than a myth, Colantonio. Summonte's sound and almost contemporary authority assigns to him the retable of St. Vincent Ferrer in the church of S. Pietro Martire and the St. Jerome from the church of S. Lorenzo, now in the Museum; and with these works as a basis for judgment, we may claim for him at least one or two other important and disputed pictures of the fifteenth century the ascription of which has been the sport of many connoisseurs. The retable of St. Vincent Ferrer is fundamentally Flemish but with evidence of the Italian environment in the types and backgrounds and with such indebtedness to Spain as the composition for the panel of St. Vincent's sermon and the general form of the altarpiece (although the sections of the predella are separated, not in the Spanish mode by pieces of the wooden frame, but by the Italian method of architecture simulated in paint). The parts of the retable have been set in a modern frame, but their arrangement must even originally have agreed with Spanish fashions. 2 The hypothesis of 1 See F . Nicolini, op. cit., and C. Aru, Colantonio, Bedalo, X I ( 1 9 3 1 ) , 1 1 2 1 ff. * The close affiliation of the art of the eastern Spanish littoral with that of Naples is concretely demonstrated by the existence, in the Iglesia de la Sangre at Segorbe, of a retable (Fig. 7) the central panel of which is a copy or rather adaptation of the standing effigy of St. Vincent Ferrer in the altarpiece in S. Pietro Martire. T h e Spanish example, a Valencian work of the fully evolved Roman Renaissance, must have been executed c. Ιζ2ζ, some seventy-five years after the Neapolitan altarpiece. The posture, gestures, the open book in the left hand, and the disposition of the Dominican habit are taken directly from the Neapolitan figure, but in the face the idealism of the Renaissance has substituted for the corpulent Flemish realism of the original a placid and benevolent masculine beauty. T h e Spanish note is given by the checkered gold background above the balustrade, hung with a red, brocaded fabric, against which the saint stands. A diminutive image of the judging Christ, enveloped with clouds, is added in the upper left corner, and St. Vincent Ferrer points to Him with warning words inscribed on a fluttering scroll, a version of the seventh verse of the fourteenth chapter of Revelation: " T i m e t e Deum, et date illi honorem, quia venit hora judicii eius." Upon

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the importance of the Neapolitan school for Spanish art would also help to solve the problem of the parallelism existing between the Spaniards Master Alfonso and Bermejo and the Italian Antonello da Messina. A certain popularity of Flemish models in Sicily as early as Antonello's youth proves that he might conceivably have obtained all his training in his native island (unless we believe that his familiarity with Flemish painting is such as to postulate an actual sojourn in the Low Countries); but since the Flemish current ran more strongly at Naples and since it cannot be supposed that Master Alfonso, Bermejo, and even other great Spanish masters resorted en masse to the remoter Sicily, the analogies between them and Antonello could more easily be elucidated by the theory that Antonello, as well as they, spent a period of study in the Italian capital of the Aragonese dynasty. There is, indeed, no reason for discrediting the old tradition, which may be traced back as far as Summonte's letter of 1524, to the effect that Antonello's teacher was Colantonio. Although there is nothing in Antonello's production that can be definitely denominated as Spanish, the fusion of Flemish and Italian qualities in his pictures results in something so similar to the style of Master Alfonso and Bermejo that it is not preposterous to assume a point of contact. Certainly no other spot is so likely for the contact as Naples. Some parallelisms between the art of Bermejo and that of the paintings ascribed to the school of Avignon in the second half of the fifteenth century, the best known of which is the Pieta from Villeneuve-les-Avignon now in the Louvre, might imply that the Spanish masters got a few of their Flemish ideas in France. The Flemish gospel that Juan de Flandes preached in Castile was impregnated with Gallic elements, and when we discuss the the left side of his book is written an adaptation of the forty-sixth verse of the twentyfifth chapter of St. Matthew: " I b u n t mali in supplicium aeternum: justi autem in vitam aeternam." The right side contains a like admonition from the Apocrypha, the last verse of the seventh chapter of Ecclesiasticus: "Memorare ergo novissima tua, et in aeternum non peccabis." The central panel is framed in uprights embellished with small figures of Sts. Christopher, Sebastian, Lawrence, and Roch. In a lunette is what looks like another representation of St. Vincent Ferrer. The only narrative sections are in the predella, the Entombment of Christ in the middle, at the left St. Vincent Ferrer tending the sick, and at the right his obsequies (the body being laid upon a goldbrocaded bier); but the composition of neither of the two latter scenes is derived from the lateral pieces of the Neapolitan picture.

FIG. 7.

R E T A B L E OF ST. V I N C E N T FERRER.

IGLESIA DE LA S A N G R E , SEGORBE

(Photo. Arxiu Mas )

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pictorial production of Catalonia in the second half of the fifteenth century, we shall find in the retable of Canapost and perhaps other works tangible evidence of a connection with France. It is not absolutely impossible that, if the Spanish artists went to Naples, they should have absorbed a French strain there, or that, if they were influenced by the school of Avignon, they should have discovered in that school some Italianism. 1 The Mediterranean provided easy lines of communication between France, Italy, and Spain, and the fact that, among the multiple ascriptions for the two versions of the Pieta. in the Frick Collection, New York, both southern France and Antonello have been suggested is an indication of how close the southern French and Neapolitan schools were to each other. The generally accepted attribution of a book of hours done for Ferdinand I I of Naples and now in the Bibliotheque Nationale at Paris (Latin manuscript, no. 10532) to Jean Bourdichon of Tours or his atelier carries with it the contact of the Neapolitan school with another division of French painting, and Venturi 2 has singled out one or two Neapolitan pictures of the period that he considers to have been executed under the influence of this French miniaturist. One of the ascriptions that had been suggested for Colantonio's retable of St. Vincent Ferrer is a painter of yet another region of France, the still obscure personality of Simon Marmion of Amiens and Valenciennes; and although this attribution is nullified by the discovery of the true author, it is nevertheless symptomatic of possible French influences at work in Naples. Carlo Aru 3 has recently adduced, indeed, cogent (though, for me, not absolutely convincing) evidence to show that Colantonio executed the renowned triptych of the Annunciation, the central piece of which is at Aix-enProvence. Are we, then, to conclude that France also furnished its quota to the conglomerate style of which Naples was perhaps the purveyor? Or, at least, that certain French painters, as well as Spanish, learned the A Β C of their art in this city? He would be a bold critic who, on the existing evidence, would answer either of these questions with a categorical affirmative, but it is 1

No longer, of course, the Italianism of Simone Martini's circle. Storia delVarte italiana, V I I , 4, pp. 146 ff. 3 Op. at. 2

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quite as illogical, on the other hand, to exclude such possibilities. There is yet another rational interpretation of the problem, the assumption of a kind of Pan-Mediterranean style to which all the artistic centres on the coasts of this sea contributed and in the resulting blended form of which they all shared. Such a style might have had its genesis in Naples and thence have been disseminated and nationally modified in the painting of the other cities of the Mediterranean basin; or perhaps there was no single point of origin, but the Pan-Mediterranean manner may have been spontaneously and simultaneously evolved in the several maritime schools of painting (where there was always the general Flemish deposit) through the interchange of aesthetic ideas and models along the commercial, nautical routes. The consequence would be very much the same sort of painting on the eastern littoral of Spain, at Avignon, at Naples, and in Sicily. I t must be acknowledged, in the end, that the evidence does not absolutely justify the supposition that Naples was a radiating centre for Italo-Flemish painting or for Hispano-ItaloFlemish painting, from which Antonello and certain Spaniards acquired a similar basis for their artistic efforts. Venturi conceives Naples of the Quattrocento as a passive recipient rather than an active creator and distributor. We shall subsequently discover that there is some sort of documentary ground for bringing Master Alfonso to Naples; but no definite statement exists to the effect that Bermejo or other painters of western Spain actually sojourned there, and in my discussion of Bermejo I shall minimize the possibilities of a Neapolitan influence upon him. When we do come to a Spanish artist who is surely known to have visited the city, Jacomart of Valencia, he turns out to possess a style different from that of Bermejo and Antonello, which we have hypothetically assigned to Naples, and to be affected only in a superficial degree by the Flemish models that he saw while he resided at the Italian court of Alfonso of Aragon. Some Italianism Jacomart did pick up at Naples, but the eastern part of Spain, to which he belonged, was much less subject to the aesthetic domination of the Low Countries than the western, despite the fact that its geographical and political con-

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nections with Naples were closer. There are, then, strong arguments against the theory of a Neapolitan school that played a vital role in the development of Spanish painting. Considerations quite as potent, however, in favor of the hypothesis have been advanced in the foregoing paragraphs, so that in future investigations of the history of Spanish painting it must be reckoned with and may, through further research, eventually be demonstrated. One could, I suppose, make out somewhat of a case for Ferrara as a centre where Flemish and Italian methods were fused and where some Spaniards might have studied, for Roger van der Weyden, during his italienische Reise, probably did some painting there in 1449 or at least sent pictures to the town, 1 and an "Alfonso of Spain," conceivably the Master Alfonso who did the martyrdom of St. Cucufas in the Barcelona Museum, is recorded about 1450 as painting in the studio of Lionello d'Este that contained Roger's w o r k ; 2 but since no examples of a Ferrarese Italo-Flemish school are preserved, Naples is a more plausible choice. 5.

THE

SPANISH

INTERPRETATION

OF T H E

FLEMISH

STYLE

In adopting the Flemish style, the Spaniards naturally accommodated it to their own aesthetic standards, as they modified the other successive foreign manners that they imitated one after the other throughout their artistic history. T h e first step was that which the painters of all countries invariably take: they changed the Flemish types into Iberians, or even if they were so consumed with a passion for the art of the Low Countries that they retained in their figures a partial resemblance to Flemish bodies and faces, they altered them to a certain degree, perhaps unconsciously, so as to make them conform to the ethnic qualities of the peninsula. The element in the Flemish style that the artists of the Latin races, the French, the Italians, 1 It has been generally assumed that Roger stopped at Ferrara, but the ancient sources say no more than that works of his were to be seen in the town. He was certainly employed by Lionello d'Este, and it is highly probable that he actually visited Ferrara; but it is enough for our purpose that Italian and Spanish masters might have there studied his productions. 2 A. Venturi, I primordi del rinascimento artistico a Ferrara, Rivista storica italiana, I (1884), 614.

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and the Spaniards, found it hardest to palate was the rather ill-favored Belgian cast of countenance, as is witnessed by Antonello's superb physical enhancement of the kinds of persons that he found in the painting of the Low Countries. Nor could even the sterner Spaniards quite brook the harshness of Flemish visages, and they substituted for them, so far as their loyalty to the northern models permitted, the softer and lovelier southern norm of beauty. Aragon was the exception that proved the rule, for in accordance with their sturdy indigenous trend the artists of that region even accentuated Flemish asperities in face and draperies. The brilliancy and variety of color that illuminated the painting of the Low Countries and was occasioned by its genesis in the miniatures did not entirely conform with the more solemn Iberian ideals; and even though the Spaniards (with such notable exceptions as that of the Catalan Luis Dalmau) very generally abandoned tempera for the richer medium of oil, they reduced the chromatic gamut or sobered somewhat the tonalities, exhibiting often a predilection for harmonies of brown or green. Flemish precedent endeavored to banish the gold backgrounds in favor of landscape but never was completely triumphant over the deeply imbedded national instinct for gilded magnificence. In many instances, although glades, hills, trees, waters, and buildings were admitted, they were still surmounted, as in the Spanish manifestations of the international movement, by golden skies, and in places where the foreign influence was not potent, as in Catalonia, the whole background frequently remained a gilt expanse opposing a stubborn barrier to the introduction of any landscape as setting. When landscapes were introduced, the architecture of the buildings, civic and ecclesiastic, therein represented was regularly and strangely derived from the edifices of the Low Countries rather than from those of the peninsula. Since the Spaniards did not yet concern themselves seriously with the scientific questions of art, such as perspective and anatomy, and throughout the primitive period looked upon a picture as a piece of decoration and devotion rather than as a convincing reproduction of reality, they neglected almost altogether one important achievement of the Flemings in the fifteenth century, the solution of the problem of transmitting the

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illusion of proper spatial relations, particularly in the representation of interiors. They are, indeed, inferior to their models in well-nigh all aspects of technique, and even so distinguished an artist as Bermejo cannot quite vie with a Jan van Eyck or a Hans Memling. The majority of them never mastered the miraculous skill of the miniaturist that still so entrances us in the paintings of the Low Countries, but tried to produce the Flemish effects with a broader fashion of brush-work and without acquiring the nicety of Flemish methods. We shall have to find compensation in the aesthetic qualities that the Spaniards most valued, the casting of a picture in an impressive formal design enhanced by the splendor that they so consistently cultivated, the delight in piquant touches of naturalism for which they now had the authority of the Flemish models (although, with the subsiding of the international movement, naturalism in Spain and elsewhere lost some ground), and the desire for a vivid realism in the rendering of the countenances, a characteristic that through the instruction from the Low Countries they were now better able to attain. B y the end of the fifteenth century, particularly in remoter districts that did not keep in constant touch with the ever fresh aesthetic Flemish developments, the complete nationalization of the artistic debt to the Low Countries was achieved; but at the same time, as we have indicated above, 1 there was a limited revival, especially in circles connected with the court, of a very faithful reproduction of Flemish precedents. 1

Pp. 1 1 and 28.

CHAPTER XLV JORGE INGLES A N D T H E MASTER OF T H E ALBA

ANNUNCIATION

SINCE more than in any other period and region of Spain (except, of course, in the Romanesque and Franco-Gothic epochs) the critic is confronted with a confused mass of anonymous works in studying the painting of Castile and Leon in the second half of the fifteenth century, the most lucid mode of procedure will be to establish first as landmarks the personalities of those artists whose names are known, so that we may group together and clear away at once as many pictures as possible by attaching them to these masters and their following and may use their productions as points about which to orient the conglomeration of pictures the authors of which have not been discovered. This method will enable us to commence our account in the orthodox fashion with Jorge Ingles, for it conveniently happens that the first Castilian work in the new Flemish style that can be definitely dated is documented as by this master whom we can name. The great man of letters, warrior, and statesman, Inigo Lopez de Mendoza, the first Marquis of Santillana, in a codicil to his will dated June 5, 1455, made provision, among other matters, that a retable " o f the Angels" already ordered by him from this artist should be placed on the high altar of the church of the hospital built by the nobleman at his ancestral town of Buitrago. Almost all the parts of the altarpiece have been preserved and are now, recently cleaned, in the palace of the present Marquis at Madrid: the twelve angels who surrounded the non-extant, central statue of the Virgin and who are depicted as holding each a piece of parchment upon which is inscribed a different stanza of Santillana's poem on the twelve Joys of Our L a d y ; the portraits of the poet and his wife, Catalina Suärez de Figueroa, who were represented beneath the angels as praying before the Madonna and each of whom is accompanied in the background by a retainer of the appro-

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INGLES

priate sex (Fig. 8); and a predella with the four Latin fathers (Fig. 9). The thirteenth and last stanza of the poem, a prayer to the Virgin, is aptly placed upon another sheet of parchment conceived as hanging upon the wall beside the kneeling peer. Except for this one reference, Jorge Ingles is an unknown quantity, and we are left to amuse ourselves at will with guessing whether "George the Englishman" was born and trained in northern Europe in the Flemish manner before he set foot in Spain or whether, a native Spaniard, he acquired his sobriquet of " I n g l e s " because his father was of British extraction or by reason of one of those jests or accidents which often in the Middle Ages bestowed such nicknames, so that he would have learned his style from the Flemish importations into the peninsula itself. The possibility of an English education in painting is not absolutely to be scouted as absurd, for in the panel of the martyrdom of St. Erasmus in the cathedral of Leon we shall again encounter evidence, however obscure, that implies some sort of an artistic connection between the Flemishized productions of both countries. Even this first Hispano-Flemish picture that we study reveals the high favor in which the Spaniards held the school of Tournai, and Jorge Ingles has a certain nicety of execution and a certain cramped mode of conception which demonstrate, as we shall see, that he was probably instructed by some miniaturist of this school. The medium of oil at once reveals the general Flemish affiliation; but there is little here that may be traced definitely to the founder of Flemish technique, J a n van Eyck, and the forms and methods are rather derived from an examination of the paintings by the Master of Flemalle and Roger van der Weyden. The portrait of the kneeling Marquis has inevitably been compared with that of the Chancellor Rolin in a similar posture before the Virgin by J a n van Eyck in the Louvre, and the fluttering angels have suggested dimly analogous figures of the same spirits in other works by the master, especially in the detail of the peacock wings. The color employed in the painting of the angels gives the impression that Jorge derived them from tapestries of the Low Countries. The portraits, however, have the greater attenuation of form and sensitiveness of personality that are found in Roger van der Weyden's

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likenesses in contrast to the relative stolidity of Jan van Eyck; and although the angels are less svelte than Roger's and do possess something of Jan's stubbiness and excessive puckering of drapery, yet more exact parallels for them may be sought in the productions of the Master of Flemalle. The Latin fathers in the predella embody the closest approximation to the style of the school of Tournai. In other respects, the retable consists largely of the general Flemish repertoire and property-room. The modelling in light and shade results in a more lifelike portraiture than was attained by the international school, and this effect is increased by an adoption of the scrupulous, detailed, and often unflattering realism with which the Flemish painters treated their sitters and which was a determinative characteristic of all Flemish art of the period. Jorge Ingles has further learned from his models the fixed stare of their portraiture and the position of the head half-way between the profile and fullface views. The costumes exhibit the richer tones made possible by the use of oil, and the artist has followed his teachers in a form that realism often took with them, the illusory rendering of fabrics, particularly velvet. Although the Low Countries also were fond of gorgeous stuffs, the ostentatious gold brocade that lines the mantle of Dona Catalina may be interpreted, in the light of the greater Spanish addiction to this kind of display, as an indigenous trait. In the rooms that are conceived as backgrounds of both portraits, the door, and in the case of the feminine portrait, also a window, open on those lovely glimpses of landscape which constitute not the least of the delights that Flemish painting has to offer. Yet Jorge Ingles trails far behind the great Belgians whom he imitates. This is not saying that he is a provincial bungler. He lacks, to be sure, the ease and surety of draughtsmanship that belong to a real master, as may be seen especially in the figure of the esquire who accompanies the Marquis and in the distortions that result from his endeavor to give the half-profile position to the heads of Sts. Jerome, Augustine, and Ambrose; but he takes honestly gained rank among the respectable group of secondary painters who throughout Europe at this time were looking to the Low Countries for inspiration. It has already been stated that one senses in the retable the

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ο< I-J kJ Μ Q tu as Ch c "tLn) J U Ζ Μ U O ΟS

7°

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hand of a painter who had been trained in the art of illumination, and this feeling has now been substantiated by recent scholarship. Basing his conclusions chiefly on the analogies in the delineation of angels, Sanchez Canton has convincingly attributed to Jorge Ingles certain miniatures in five manuscripts that were Santillana's property and are now in the Biblioteca Nacional at Madrid, and it is probable that further research in the remains of the Marquis's library will discover additional illuminations by his hand. The most memorable pieces are the first page of a Spanish translation of Plato's Phaedo and the first page of a similar translation of St. Augustine's De vita beata. T h e borders exhibit not only a superlative aspect of the technical exquisiteness of Flemish and other Gothic miniaturists but also a captivating expression of the fertile and grotesque imagination that was the peculiar endowment of this craft, manifesting itself in the shapes of exotic birds and beasts, in veristic sketches of human heads, or in whimsical stylization of leaf and flower. The initial letter of the Phaedo contains a representation of Socrates drinking the hemlock in the presence of his disciples, conceived, after the fashion of Flemish naturalism, like a tragic scene from rural life. 1 T w o other works may be related on internal evidence to the manner of Jorge Ingles, but in neither instance, in my opinion, can the definitive attribution to him be finally hazarded until it is supported by the discovery of documentary proof. I am under obligation to the generosity of Don Diego Angulo for suggesting to me, in a conversation, the proper affiliations of one of the works, the retable of St. Jerome coming from the Hieronymite monastery of L a Mejorada at Olmedo, south of Valladolid, and now in the Museum of Valladolid. T h e large central compartment (Fig. 10) is occupied by a representation of St. Jerome writing and accompanied by three other seated monks, drawn on a much smaller scale than the principal figure. The four, less capacious lateral compartments depict St. Jerome extracting the thorn from the lion's paw, the lion driving the 1 A short notice in the Art News of December 14, 1929 (p. 8), ludicrously attributes to Jorge Ingles a painting of the betrothal of St. Ursula exhibited at that time in the King's Galleries, London. The work is in all probability a forgery, aping the appearance that the Flemish style assumed in France and Spain at the end of the fifteenth century.

FIG. IO. JORGE INGLES (?). ST. JEROME, CENTRE OF RETABI.E FROM LA MEJORADA. MUSEUM, VALLADOLID (Photo. Arxiu

Mas)

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JORGE INGLES

camels into the monastery, the saint's last communion, and burial (Fig. n ) . In the predella, the dead Christ, erect in the tomb at the centre, is flanked at the left by half-lengths of the Virgin, St. Ambrose (or Augustine?), and St. Dominic and at the right by Sts. John Evangelist, Gregory, and Sebastian. The style is an early phase of the Hispano-Flemish manner in which the indebtedness to the art of the Low Countries is still very pronounced. According to the general trend of the Spanish imitations of Flemish painting, the debt is owed to the school of Tournai and especially to Roger van der Weyden, as is apparent particularly in the figures of the priest and the two acolytes in St. Jerome's last communion, the former clad in the characteristic bluish white draperies of Tournai; and it is difficult to recognize any of the connections with Jan van Eyck that, even in the retable of Buitrago, have been perhaps wrongly predicated. The close general likeness to the style of Jorge Ingles is obvious, but there are many compelling parallelisms in detail. The two fathers of the Church in the predella are the mates of their homonyms in the Buitrago retable; the corpulent member of the monastic trio who accompany St. Jerome in the central panel repeats in visage and tilt of the head the St. Gregory of the Santillana predella; the Hieronymite receiving the camels might be the brother of the St. Jerome in this predella; the types of the four fathers in the Buitrago altarpiece, indeed, recur again and again in the retable from La Mejorada; St. Sebastian displays a contemporary head-covering exactly like that of the Marquis; and the heraldic beast which was the only sort of lion that the painter of La Mejorada knew is reduplicated, with no nearer approach to the biological truth, in St. Jerome's attribute in the Santillana predella. The landscapes are allotted more space, but they are exactly like those glimpsed through the openings of the rooms in which the Marquis and his lady kneel, with the same precocious and utterly delightful realization of deep vistas stretching to a remote horizon and of aerial perspective. Do I merely imagine that these headlands, these gently sloping hills, these neatly laid out fields and prim hedges, these groves and quietly emerging spires, are English rather than Spanish or even Belgian? La Mejorada and Buitrago are

FIG. II.

JORGE INGLES (?).

BURIAL OF ST. JEROME, SECTION OF RETABLE

FROM LA MEJORADA. fPhoto.

MUSEUM, VALLADOLID Arxiu Mas )

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not too far distant from each other to have fallen within the sphere of a single artist's activity. The grade of craftsmanship is neither higher nor lower than that exhibited in the "retable of the Angels." The best passages of draughtsmanship are the head, hands, and draperies of the central St. Jerome, in which the author attains much of the illusory realistic expertness of the Flemings. As he excels in his landscapes, so he almost rivals the Flemings in the illuminator's charm with which he depicts the domestic paraphernalia of St. Jerome's study and again of the cell of his last communion. Likewise in the mood of the Low Countries, he carefully paints the tears that well from the eyes of the monk directly to the left of St. Jerome's head in the scene of the interment. Zoological accuracy was rarely achieved at this period in the world's painting, but in the altarpiece of La Mejorada the delineation of animals is unusually ridiculous. Like Carpaccio in the scenes from the life of Jerome, the painter has a fondness for humorous genre. He represents the lion in the central section as gnawing a bone and in the episode of the thorn as frightening one of the monks to take refuge under a table. T o one of the two merchants with the camels he gives a pot-belly, and in the panel of the obsequies he verges on the mediaeval satire of monks in endowing with obesity the selfsatisfied crucifer and, as in Bermejo's Dormition at Berlin, also the thurifer blowing upon the coals in the censer. The Spanish strain has been potent enough to modulate Flemish tonality to a kind of brown but not sufficiently vital to introduce gold backgrounds, even in the predella, where the figures are set against a flat color that originally seems to have been blue. T h e presence of the Fonseca arms under a bishop's hat upon the retable would imply that it was executed between 1469 and 1485 during Alonso de Fonseca's episcopate at Avila, to the diocese of which L a Mejorada belonged. 1 1 I take the dates from Eubel's authoritative Hierarchia catholica, but there is much confusion in regard to the exact years of Alonso de Fonseca's episcopate and indeed in regard to his personality, since there were three great prelates of this name in the fifteenth century. Agapito y Revilla (La pintura en Valladolid in Bolettn del Museo Provincial de Bellas Artes de Valladolid, No. 10, December, 1927, pp. 92-93) mentions an episcopate of an Alonso de Fonseca at Avila from 1446 to 1453, not recorded by Eubel and only with a point of interrogation by Gams (Series episcoporum). In any case these dates are probably too early for the retable from L a Mejorada, but Agapito selects as the donor a prelate whom the style of the retable renders chronologically an absolutely

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It is with somewhat less peace of mind that I claim for Jorge Ingles the other work, a representation of the bestowal of the chasuble upon St. Ildefonso formerly in the Gorostiza Collection at Bilbao and last seen by me on the New York market (Fig. 12). The closest approximation is encountered in the angels 1 of the Virgin's suite, who, like those of the Santillana retable, are not the ethereal creatures of Roger van der Weyden but resemble the more robust and fuller-faced angels of Jan van Eyck and the Master of Flemalle. The type of St. Ildefonso is paralleled to a certain extent by the Latin fathers of the Santillana predella, and the folds of his alb form themselves into much the same broken lines as those of the Marquis's vesture. He finds a nearer relative in the priest who administers the last communion to St. Jerome. The three acolytes who serve him are dwarfed in size like the monks who sit together with St. Jerome in the central panel of the retable of L a Mejorada, and conform in general to Jorge's physical norm. Except for somewhat lesser profundity, the landscape also accords with his pleasing standard. The panel, furthermore, embodies Jorge's rather unique combination of a dependence upon the school of Tournai with possible dim and lingering reflections of Jan van Eyck's achievement: the head of St. Ildefonso is delineated somewhat in the mode of the Van Eyck portraiture, whereas the Virgin is a highly Hispanicized version of Roger van der Weyden's feminine types. The two principal figures of Our Lady and the holy bishop are rendered with the scrupulous minuteness of the illuminator that distinguishes the manner of Jorge Ingl6s even more than it does the production of the other Hispano-Flemings. The general tightness of execution, the primitive character of the forms, and the faulty perspective bespeak a date almost, if not quite, as early as that of the altarpieces of Buitrago and L a Mejorada. The artistry is entirely impossible choice, the J u a n Rodriguez de Fonseca who as bishop of Palencia from 1505 to 1 5 1 4 commissioned the beautiful retable of J a n Joest (see above, p. 3 1 ) . E v e n his first episcopates at Badajoz (1495-1499) and Cordova (1499-1505) postdate the picture. J u a n Rodriguez was never bishop of Avila; but it is, of course, not necessary that the donor of the St. Jerome retable should have held that see, and he might have been any other ecclesiastic of the family who for any reason had an interest in the monastery. 1 Another angel flies through a window at the left with a scroll upon which is inscribed one of St. Ildefonso's perfervid addresses to Our L a d y from his treatise upon her perpetual virginity: " O domina mea, dominatrix mea, dominans mihi."

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worthy of Jorge Ingles, especially in the figure of St. Ildefonso, upon whom the author has impressed an inner intensity of rapt Spanish mysticism which is unequalled in the annals of HispanoFlemish painting and for the like of which we shall! have to await the expressiveness of the seventeenth century. The

Fic. 12. JORGE INGLES (?). ST. ILDEFONSO'S RECEPTION OF CHASUBLE. FORMERLY IN THE GOROSTIZA COLLECTION, BILBAO

sacred objects upon the altar are perhaps painted with less care than the appurtenances of St. Jerome's dwelling, and yet, with Flemish technical alertness, the author reveals the same interest in experimentation with their cast shadows that may be discerned in the retable of La Mejorada.

FIG. 13.

K N E E L I N G DONOR, SECTION OF R E T A B L E .

ERMITA

DF. LA F U E N S A N T A , S O P E T R Ä N (From "Las tablas de Sopeträn" by Ε. Lajuente Ferrari)

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Directly in connection with the Buitrago altarpiece must be mentioned four panels that have recently come to the attention of the critical world in the Ermita de la Fuensanta in the grounds of the ruined Benedictine monastery of Sopeträn near Hita in the province of Guadalajara. T h e reasons for considering them at this point are not only that, whether Flemish or Spanish in parentage, they belong to the same general style as Jorge's work and to about the same moment in the evolution of mediaeval painting, but also that they comprise what is possibly another portrait of the Marquis. Hung in pairs on the lateral walls at the east end of the edifice, they depict the Annunciation, the Nativity of Christ, the Dormition, and a gentleman accompanied by a youthful retainer kneeling in a church before an altar of the Virgin (Fig. 13). T h e pictorial style, the themes of the life of Our Lady, and the presence of a masculine portrait would indicate, though not definitely prove, that they were once parts of a retable which Antonio de Heredia, in a history of the monastery published in 1676, states to have existed in the chapel of the highly venerated image of Nuestra Senora de Sopeträn in the monastic church, to have been built into a new retable in the renovations of 1639, to have looked Flemish in manner, and to have included an effigy of the Marquis of Santillana. 1 The likelihood that the panels once constituted the retable in question is increased by the equality of the altar before which the gentleman prays to that described as having originally decorated the old Gothic chapel, with a representation of the actual Flemish statue of the Virgin that the Marquis himself had donated. The monks depicted as wandering through the aisles of the simulated church wear the Benedictine garb of the religious whom the Marquis had established in the institution. If the preserved sections of this retable could be conclusively shown to have been eventually transported to the Ermita, the donor's figure might more certainly be identified with the Marquis, although even then it would have to be demonstrated that Heredia in the seventeenth century was on sure ground in thus denominating a portrait two centuries old. In favor of the identification are the Marquis's well known and 1 See the article of Lafuente Ferrari in the Boletin de la Sociedad Espanola de Excursiones, X X X V I I (1929), especially p. 104.

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active interest in the monastery and the probability that Heredia derived his information from earlier books on the institution.1 The principal argument on the other side is the decided dissimilarity from the authenticated likeness executed by Jorge Ingles; and in the more faithful and conscientious portraiture of the Flemish modes such a factor can no longer be discounted to such an extent as in the earlier phases of Gothic painting. Furthermore, although the Sopetran panels are proved by style to be subsequent to the Buitrago retable, the personage in these panels is obviously younger than the representation of the Marquis by Jorge Ingles, and yet does not resemble the nobleman at an earlier age. The next guess would be the Marquis's son, Diego, the first Duke del Infantado, who, however, is not recorded to have shown any considerable favors to the Benedictine institution; the great churchman, the cardinal Pedro Gonzalez de Mendoza, also a son of the Marquis, would seem to be excluded from the reckoning because the donor in the Sopetran panel is a layman. His identity must thus remain a moot point, with the cards about equally stacked for and against the Marquis. In addition to this historical question, there is the aesthetic one of whether the pictures should be registered in the inventory of Flemish or Spanish art. Their intimate association in types and architectural settings with Roger van der Weyden no one would dispute, and the Annunciation literally repeats, except for such minor variations as reversals in the activities of right and left hands, the early version of the theme by Roger or a close follower, No. 396 of the Museum at Antwerp.2 The first commentator upon the panels, Lafuente Ferrari, adduces such parallels as the large zigzag pattern upon the columns in the Dormition, probably derived by Roger from the Master of Flemalle. Cesar Peman 3 has indicated the analogies of the donor and his page to the figures in the illuminated frontispiece of the manuscript of the Chroniques du Hainaut, often attributed by most reputable critics to Roger himself and certainly 1

Ibid., 105. The Sopetran rendering does not approximate so nearly Roger's later adaptation of this same composition in the St. Columba triptych now in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich. ' Bolet'tn de la Sociedad Espanola de Excursiones, X X X V I I I (1930), 128-130. 2

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at least executed in his immediate entourage. But other elements seem to embody an acquaintance with the great Flemish masters just after Roger and influenced by him. In the Nativity, the group of the angels kneeling and adoring the Child does not become a common motif until this later moment, appearing, for instance, in the version by Dierick Bouts in his early series in the Prado and characterizing Memling's treatments of the subject, and the sweetness of the angelic types at Sopetran suggests Memling rather than the sterner Roger. If the painter was conversant with Memling's style, the Sopetran panels would have to be dated after the latter's independent beginnings, which may be set at the end of the sixties in the Quattrocento; but the gentler cast of the angels' faces may be taken from other Flemish sources or have been evolved by the Sopetran artist himself, and we could slip back to the date of the early sixties that Peman champions through comparisons with the miniature of the Chroniques du Hainaut which was probably done about this moment or even earlier. If we set aside, indeed, the Memling factor, there is really nothing in the panels that would militate against the hypothesis of creation within the very lifetime of the Marquis, who did not die until 1458, although the features are somewhat young for a man of middle age. Even if the author was a Spaniard, he would have had time, by the fifties of the century, to have absorbed the manner of Roger and his immediate followers. After much vacillation, I am glad to have decided for myself that these rather charming works should indeed be credited to the country whose art I am studying, though the hand is manifestly not that of Jorge Ingles. Their unusually faithful dependence upon Flemish example has already become abundantly apparent in the preceding discussion, and the high degree of craftsmanship that they exhibit, especially in the rendering of the complicated spaces of the church in which the donor makes his devotions, is above the average of Spanish attainment; and yet the man who did them seems to me to betray in many ways that he was after all only a Spaniard saturated in an admiration for Belgian models. He was scarcely more under the Flemish spell than Bermejo in the Berlin Dormition. T h e draughtsmanship is less incisive even than the secondary Flem-

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81

ings achieved; the heads of some of the Apostles in the Sopeträn Dormition quite sound the Iberian provincial note; and Lafuente Ferrari has already drawn attention to the Spanish round plaque of gold for the Virgin's halo in the Nativity. If it is a Spanish hand, we have already seen the possibility of an execution at the end of the Marquis's life, but the greater likelihood would be a somewhat later date by reason of the considerable lapse of time that it ordinarily required for the Flemish manner to be assimilated by peninsular imitators. Even so, the identity of the depicted donor as the Marquis could still be maintained on the ground that it would be a posthumous portrait. In that case, are we to recognize one of his sons, and not a mere retainer, in the lad behind him, who resembles him in facial traits and who has naturally and restlessly, as the donor indulges in a long prayer, unwound the copious cloth that the modes of the day prescribed in his elder's hat which he holds? Although obviously not by Jorge Ingles, the Annunciation in the Alba palace at Madrid (Fig. 14) naturally suggests itself for consideration with the Santillana retable because it has usually been judged an early example of north-European influence, because the subjection to such northern precedent is likewise more unrelieved than with Fernando Gallego or the other later Spanish manipulators of the foreign modes, and because of the presence, as kneeling donor, of a figure said to represent another great nobleman of the period, the first Count of Alba, Hernando Alvarez de Toledo. Except for the portrait, the hair of the Virgin and Gabriel, and the pavement of the room, the Annunciation is executed in grisaille; and Diego Angulo 1 is therefore probably right in maintaining that (according to Flemish example) it was the reverse of the panel, on the front of which is a half-ruined representation of the Epiphany originally in full color. T h e work has generally been assigned to a Spanish hand, but Angulo proposes to add it to the list of paintings attributed to the Dutch artist of the end of the century called the Master of the Virgo inter Virgines or at least to the northern pictures created under his immediate influence. It is true that the types are not so near to those of the school of 1

In Archivo espanol de arte y arqueologia, I (1925), 193-196.

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Tournai as are the figures of Jorge Ingles. If a Flemish (in distinction from Dutch or German) model had to be sought, a good guess would have been Petrus Christus, whose Annunciation on one of the altar-wings found in Spain and now in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum is in some respects similar; but the types unmistakably indicate affiliations with Dutch or German adaptations of the style of Belgium. The portrait especially has about it a certain Teutonic haggardness and angularity, though these qualities are not so pronounced in the original as the photograph would imply and perhaps should be interpreted rather as an expression of the Spanish velleity for the austere. The ascription to the Master of the Virgo inter Virgines does not quite carry conviction. That there are similarities in composition and even in types, Diego Angulo has cleverly discovered and acutely demonstrated. The Annunciation is closely parallel in many respects to the Dutch Master's rendering of the theme, also in grisaille, in the Suermondt Museum at Aix-la-Chapelle. Types somewhat like the Virgin of the Epiphany and the first Wise Man are encountered in his authenticated productions, but the composition for the Adoration of the Magi is not related to his version in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum, Berlin, except in so far as there is in the fifteenth century a general resemblance between all representations of the subject. The forms in the Alba panel lack the quaint stubbiness of the Master of the Virgo inter Virgines, and an Iberian cast of features is to such an extent superimposed upon the northern borrowings that the old attribution to a Spaniard may still be held without blushing for one's opinion. It may perhaps be granted that the author had seen the Dutchman's productions, unless we suppose that they were both indebted to a single predecessor; but the connection was scarcely a very immediate one. W e must, then, reject Angulo's attempt to identify the Alba panel as the movable wing of a diptych in which the Adoration of the Shepherds by the Master of the Virgo inter Virgines in the Vienna Museum constituted the fixed wing, or we must imagine that the Master would have handed over the movable wing — and that the wing with the aristocratic portrait •— to a Spanish pupil. The acknowledgment of the influence of the Dutchman,

FIG. 14. ANNUNCIATION.

ALBA COLLECTION, MADRID

(From Mayer s "Geschichte der spanischen Malerei" )

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whose activity commenced at the earliest about 1470,1 necessitates the shoving along of the Alba picture to a later date than has usually been admitted; and the sentiment for ruins in the background of the Epiphany (a characteristic that appears in the Dutch painter's own works) would likewise suggest the dawn of the Renaissance at the very end of the century. W e should then scarcely be able to recognize the donor as the first Count of Alba, who is usually stated to have died about 1462 and was certainly not living in 1469, when under his successor the title was elevated to that of a dukedom. He would have to be some later member of the family (for the escutcheon in the Annunciation and the monogram in the Epiphany relate the painting to the Albas), if we are not to be forced into the supposition of a posthumous endeavor to honor the first Count's memory. Because of a connection with a known historical person and event, an almost exact date may be given to another of these early panels that comprise portraits of the donors. A well preserved work hanging in the sacristy of the parish church at Zumaya in the province of Guipuzcoa (Fig. 15), it displays in its upper half the enthroned Madonna and Child, flanked at the right by St. Catherine clad in the fussy richness of contemporary costume and trampling upon Maximin and at the left by St. Peter presenting the kneeling donor, the maritime hero of Zumaya, Juan Martinez de Mendaro. T h e lower half depicts the naval victory that in 1475 he won in the strait of Gibraltar over the Portuguese during the hostilities occasioned by the endeavor of Juana la Beltraneja and the Portuguese to recover the Spanish crown from Ferdinand and Isabella; and the date must therefore be shortly subsequent to the battle. T h e style, though revealing no obvious relations with Jorge Ingles, is that of an early, thoroughly Spanish, and moderately competent adaptation of the models of the Low Countries. T h e special model was patently Dierick Bouts, but the author is linked with the Gallego atelier by no other ties. T h e elements most pal1 Friedländer (Die altniederländische Malerei, V, ηο) says that " h e may have begun about 1460 or 1470," but since on page 65 he gives 1450 as the earliest date for his birth, he must really mean 1470 for his debut. His beginnings are ordinarily put about 1480, and Friedländer (page 76) sets down 1480-1495 as the definite dates when he may be placed at Delft.

FIG. IJ.

VOTIVE PANEL OF JUAN MARTINEZ DE MENDARO. PARISH CHURCH, ZUMAYA (From "Los triplicos de Zumaya"

by F. Perez

Mtnguez)

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pably dependent upon Bouts are the Madonna and Child. The artist has also imitated the Flemish practice of simulating statuettes of Prophets and heraldic beasts upon the throne, but his Spanish blood asserts itself in the gilding of the throne and in the brilliant brocade that he hangs upon its back. With a sense of harmony he carries the stereotyped formality of the religious subject into what is for us the most interesting part of the panel, the naval battle. He has wisely not attempted a realistic setting forth of the fray, but taking advantage of the highly decorative values of the ships' hulls, sails, and pennants, he has arranged them in effective rhythmical repetitions.

CHAPTER XLVI F E R N A N D O G A L L E G O A N D T H E SCHOOL OF SALAMANCA AND i.

His

ZAMORA

LIFE

THE second known artist in the succession, Fernando Gallego, accounts for an enormous number of works in the entangled aggregation of Hispano-Flemish paintings, because an unusually large proportion may be attributed to him by signature or internal evidence and because his style dominated the greater part of northern and western Spain, creating a legion of imitators, so that a very considerable quota of productions in the several provinces may be grouped together under his school. The easiest way, therefore, of bringing order out of the chaos has seemed to me to consider first the provinces in which the majority or at least many of the paintings are dependent upon the manner that he evolved. T h e works of his following that have found their way into public and private collections and cannot be as yet attached to any provincial school may be reserved for a separate chapter. Next in order will follow logically the chapters on the output of the artistic centres, such as Avila and Toledo, in which the influence of the Gallego shop is not a determinative factor. T h e provinces that naturally concern us first are Salamanca and Zamora, since they are the seat of Fernando's own activity and since he and his immediate pupils supplied there in the second half of the fifteenth century virtually the whole pictorial trade. He is the first Castilian painter in the Hispano-Flemish manner who answers to Ruskin's demand that an artist shall demonstrate his claim to the rank of a true master by the quantity as well as the quality of his output. Y e t his surname, Gallego, 1 may indicate that he was not a Castilian by birth or even by extraction but that he or his family hailed from the 1 The form Gallegos, by which he has frequently been known, wrongly adds an s from the Latin form as it appears in his signatures, Galecus or Gallecus (= Gallaecus, a Galician).

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GALLEGO

1

province of Galicia. Palomino, the so-called Spanish Vasari of the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth century, drawing on his own imagination or using sources unknown to us, alleges that he was born in Salamanca. In any case, Fernando's activity centred at Salamanca and the nearlying cities and villages, where his influence was powerful enough to set in motion an artistic current that sent forth its ripples to the remotest corners of the northwestern section of the peninsula and even to the south as far as Estremadura. He possessed another indispensable attribute of mastery: he had a sufficiently strong individuality to develop a manner so peculiarly his own that it can easily be recognized. This does not mean only that he was something more than a servile copier of the Flemings, and to a further degree than the majority of his compatriots used their suggestions merely as a foundation for rearing a thoroughly Spanish and original style; it means also that his style was a highly personal expression. It has usually been considered that the first ascertained dates in his life are provided by the signed retable in the chapel of S. Ildefonso in the cathedral of Zamora, a work which was ordered by the bishop Juan de Mella, who, as donor, is depicted in the accoutrement of a cardinal in the panel of the gift of the miraculous chasuble, and which therefore was declared to have been surely executed between 1456, when he received the red hat, and 1467, the year of his death. It seemed, indeed, that the altarpiece could not have been painted before 1466 when the pope Paul I I sanctioned the foundation of the chapel; but it does not appear to have occurred to anyone that it might have been a posthumous commission of the prelate, a pious commemoration demanded in his will. Into this last conclusion criticism is now virtually forced by the comprehensive erudition and discerning eye of the Andalusian scholar, Diego Angulo, 2 who has discovered that the panel of the Crucifixion in the retable exhibits a knowledge of Schongauer's treatment of the subject in his series of engravings on the Passion, 3 so that 1

Museo pictdrico, Madrid, 1724, p. 239. In Archivo espanol de arte y arqueologia, VI (1930), 74-75. 3 Max Lehrs, Geschichte und kritischer Katalog des deutschen, niederländischen und französischen Kupferstichs im XV. Jahrhundert, the volume 011 Schongauer, Vienna, 1925, nos. 19 to 30. The Crucifixion is no. 27. 3

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the earliest possible date would be c. 1480. I cannot follow Angulo in seeing quite so extensive a dependence upon the German print, but the two holy women in the group of three at the left of the cross, the one clasping her hands and her companion veiling her face in grief, are lifted bodily out of the Schongauer composition, as well as the St. John at the right of the cross, where Fernando has copied exactly the gesture of the hands and the fold of drapery billowing out at the young Apostle's side. Y e t after all he is no slavish imitator: he removes two of Schongauer's five holy women, but on the other hand sets additional figures beside St. John and broadens and amplifies the landscape and composition to fill the larger space of his panel. A few would still date Schongauer's beginnings as an engraver in the late sixties of the fifteenth century, but it is more usual to assign them to about 1476. 1 I do not know that anyone would set the Passion series earlier than 1476, and it is commonly placed in the late seventies, 2 so that, in order to give time for these engravings to be known in Spain or to Fernando for travel in Germany, the Zamora retable could not have been executed before 1480. The indebtedness to Schongauer might seem to constitute an exemplification of the recent theory of a strong Teutonic influence upon Fernando, but, as will appear later, this influence does not go beyond a possible knowledge of Conrad Witz, who was after all a Swiss, and the use of some of Schongauer's cartoons, which were as much general European property as the universal Flemish forms. The lower tier in the body of the retable consists of three scenes from the story of St. Ildefonso: his vision of St. Leocadia, to verify the reality of which he cuts oft* a piece of her wimple with a knife handed him by King Receswinth (Fig. 16); the Virgin, with Sts. Catherine and Ursula, vesting him in the chasuble before two angels, one of whom presents the donor (Sts. Ildefonso, Ursula, the angel behind them, and the sky repainted); and the arrival or discovery of the saint's relics at Zamora, where they display their curative properties upon the crippled. St. Leocadia in the first episode is accompanied by one of the characteristic flying Flemish scrolls, inscribed with a 1

2

Lehrs, op. cit., pp. 5 and 26.

Ibid., 33, 34, and 166.

9°

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part of her recorded address to St. Ildefonso as a champion of the Blessed Virgin against the heretics: " P e r te vivit Domina mea quae caeli culmina tenet." T h e Crucifixion (in which the heads at the left are repainted) in the middle of the upper tier is flanked at the left by the Baptism of Christ and at the right by the decollation of St. John Baptist. T h e predella contains from left to right busts of St. John Evangelist, a canonized bishop, St. Peter (repainted), the veronica of Christ, St. Jerome, and Santiago, the first and the last truncated by the curves of the frame. Treating the, guardapolvos as if they were the folding wings of a Flemish altarpiece, Fernando has painted the forms upon them in grisaille, balancing Adam with E v e and the personification of the Synagogue with an extraordinarily beautiful and majestically conceived figure of the Church, the effigy upon which mediaeval artists had the habit of exerting their utmost powers in the rendering of the loveliness of ennobled womanhood. His two other signed works are not dated: a triptych of the Madonna (face repainted) with Sts. Andrew and Christopher (skies of setting repainted) now in the chapel of St. Anthony of Padua in the New Cathedral, Salamanca, but once in a chapel on the cloister of the Old Cathedral; and a Pieta in the Weibel Collection, Madrid. P a s s a v a n t 1 saw figures of David and another Prophet in the cathedral of Salamanca, which he believed to be parts of the same altar as the signed triptych, so that Mayer considers the triptych to be merely the relic of a larger ensemble; but these two figures are no longer extant, and since indeed they are not mentioned in connection with the triptych even by Palomino who saw it still in the cloister at the beginning of the eighteenth century, they may have belonged to an entirely different retable. 2 T h e other facts hitherto discovered about Fernando are pitiably scant. In 1468 he was painting in the cathedral of Plasencia with a Juan Felipe, 3 and since the Die christliche Kunst in Spanien, 79. T h e y can scarcely be the David and Isaiah painted on canvas with other figures in the doors by Fernando's pupil, Pedro Bello, for the Gallego altarpiece of St. Catherine: see below, p. 108. 3 Not, of course, the Valencian engraver of this name, who lived in the seventeenth century. The references for the above data on Fernando Gallego may be found in the article by Gomez-Moreno and Sanchez Canton in Archivo espanol de arte y arqueologia, I I I (1927), 349 ff· 1

2

FIG. Ι 6. FERNANDO GALLEGO. SECTION OF RETABLE OF ST. ILDEFONSO. CATHEDRAL, ZAMORA

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St. Ildefonse» altarpiece can no longer be assigned to c. 1466, the year 1468 becomes the first known date in his life. In 1473 he was commissioned to do no less than six retables in the cathedral of Coria, every vestige of which has been lost. T h e last record is in 1507 when in company with another painter, Pedro de Tolosa, he asks payment for work done in the now destroyed tribune or elevated coro of the chapel of the University at Salamanca. It has generally been supposed that, since, as in Sto. Tomas, A v i l a , the tribune probably held the altar, this reference has to do with the retable, and Palomino actually ascribed to Fernando the principal altarpiece of the chapel of the University, fragments of which, by Juan de Flandes and (in sculpture) by Felipe Vigarni, are preserved; but if Fernando was a collaborator in the retable, none of his contribution is extant, and the documentary language 1 seems to refer quite clearly to his painting merely of the artesonado of the tribune. Palomino impossibly sets his death in the vicinity of 1550, unless one is to suppose that he lived to be a centenarian. If he enjoyed a ripe old age, it is not absolutely incredible that he should be identical with the painter of the surname of Gallego mentioned several times in documents of Santo Domingo de la Calzada as active upon the decoration of the trascoro of the cathedral in 1 5 3 1 1532; 2 but the artist of Santo Domingo might be Fernando's relative, Francisco Gallego, if, as we shall inquire later, there was any such relative, or he might have belonged to a totally different family of the same appellation.

1.

THE

SIGNED

WORKS,

GALLEGO,

THE P R O B L E M

AND P E D R O

OF

FRANCISCO

BELLO

T h e most scientific mode of approaching the vast production of Fernando Gallego will be to establish the elements of his style by a survey of his signed works and then to discover w h a t fresh light is thrown upon his achievement by the paintings that may be attributed to him on internal evidence. Inasmuch as in the retable of the chapel of S. Udefonso in the cathedral o f Zamora he is already thoroughly in control of his art and as he 1 2

Boktin de la Sociedad Castellana de Excursiones, V I (1913-1914), 323. J. Marti y Monso, Estudios historico-artisticos, 585.

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93

was still busily employed at least as late as 1507, the retable may be taken as the standard of his developed manner. It illustrates the curious phenomenon that he picked as his favorite model so eccentric a Flemish master as Dierick Bouts. It is still stranger that he should have chosen to imitate a painter who was so little his elder and whose works could scarcely have reached the peninsula in any large number before the creation of the Zamora altarpiece. If Friedländer's chronology is correct 1 and if the pictures found their way into the peninsula immediately after their execution, the Prado panels by Bouts and the triptychs at Valencia and Granada might have been seen by Fernando in Spain; but the mannerisms of Bouts that he copies are not yet evolved in the Prado series, and, by and large, to account for his thorough familiarity with the mature style of Bouts, we are virtually forced to postulate that Fernando's enthusiasm for him was aroused during an actual sojourn in the Low Countries. He often adopts bodily, particularly for figures of young men, Bouts's oddly elongated forms with their impossibly attenuated legs which Bertaux aptly compares to those of herons and which make the feet by contrast appear abnormally large. His characters are very apt to reproduce the Belgian painter's peculiar dolichocephalism (if the word may be used in its derivative rather than scientific sense). When Fernando employs contemporary costumes (as he does wherever it is possible), they are also like those of Bouts, especially the queer and characteristic caps. Good instances of such drawing and dressing may be seen in certain of the attendant personages in the scenes of the relics and of St. Ildefonso's vision of St. Leocadia. N o t all of Fernando's figures are of the long-drawnout, emaciated build, and his ladies are less so than his gentlemen. T h e scene of the bestowal of the chasuble contains some of these fuller figures, especially the St. Catherine. T h e svelte impression is likely to be lost in the swelling waves of broken but carefully designed Flemish drapery in which, more than Bouts, he is prone to swathe his personages. Outstanding examples are the St. John in the Crucifixion, the youth at the extreme right behind the kneeling Receswinth in the vision of 1

See above, p. 16.

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St. Leocadia, and, above all, the superb figure of the Church. In the vision of St. Leocadia the garments of the youth and the cleric who kneels behind St. Ildefonso may serve to illustrate Fernando's affection for the pipe-shaped folds to which Mayer alludes. His Flemish taste was too catholic to confine itself to taking ideas from Bouts. The influence of the school of Tournai is more apparent in other works of his, but it is unmistakable even here. The nudes of Adam and E v e are the pitiful, spindleshanked physiques into which Roger van der Weyden lapses when he strips his actors, although, within the limits of this peculiarity, Fernando is fairly accurate in his anatomy. In the Baptism and vision of St. Leocadia there flutter the inscribed scrolls to which the school of Tournai resorted as a substitute, in the pictorial drama, for the spoken word. The general Flemish trade-marks are indeed everywhere present. He seeks, as best he may, to reduplicate the success of his models in the illusory rendering of jewels, with which, in such scenes as those of the relics and the vision of St. Leocadia, his Spanish love of opulence has led him to inset the vestments of the clergy in even greater profusion than was the custom of the masters of the Low Countries. He has learned from his teachers the j o y of picking out details of interiors and of bringing them to the highest point of finish. The sacred edifice, for example, in which the vision of St. Leocadia is imagined as occurring contains one of the raised tribunes that were common at the west or even the east end 1 of Castilian churches in the second half of the fifteenth century, and within this there is simulated as set against the wall a triptych of the Crucifixion flanked by two saints that he has executed with a miniaturist's perspicacity, particularly the frame, which is similar to the lovely late Gothic carving that encloses the actual Zamora retable. Except for the saints of the predella, the authority of the Low Countries has given him the hardihood to renounce the gold backgrounds and in the Crucifixion and Baptism to substitute charming landscapes that almost vie with the Umbrian specimens in their openness and depth. The Flemings have taught him also to people his land1

Cf. Sto. Tomas, Avila, and the chapel of the University at Salamanca, and see above, p. 92.

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95

scapes with figures, often acting episodes secondary to the principal theme, in order to give the settings life and actuality and in order, by the placing of these groups of subordinate personages, to establish middle grounds and backgrounds and thus, in guiding the eye through middle and rear planes, to approximate Perugino and Raphael in transmitting the illusion of space and in achieving correctness of spatial relationships. So against the setting of the city behind the Baptism, with its large and very Flemish tower, there may be seen tiny groups of St. John baptizing converts and of Christ and the Apostles approaching, and other figures are prettily scattered through the town. Much more than many of his rivals Fernando Gallego nationalizes the foreign basis to the style and infuses it with his own personality. The types, however indebted to those of Bouts as starting-points, take on an unmistakable Iberian cast. The metamorphosis of the Flemish forms consists partially in a brushing out of the angularities, a smoothing away of the harshness. In the busts of saints in the predella, the process has gone so far that the foreign derivation is scarcely discernible and an indigenous type is virtually achieved. The St. John Evangelist is particularly Spanish and is already imbued with the sinister fervor of the race and of El Greco; the veronica foreshadows the national popularity of this theme and the grim intensity and piercing impression of actuality with which it was treated. As an individual possession, Fernando has a gift rare enough in Spain, a feeling for beauty and charm of person, incorporated in such figures as the St. Leocadia and the splendidly posed and draped youth who looks at her from the extreme right of the panel. But it is perhaps the color that is most effective in casting a Spanish tone over Gallego's achievements. The oranges and yellows, the blues and whites of the school of Tournai are largely abjured for a soberer gamut of green, softer blues, and grey. Instead of using actual gold in the brocades of his fabrics like most Spanish painters, he resembles Bermejo in substituting yellow pigment. His other, less significant Spanish traits he shares with many of his fellows. Spanish drawing at this period is always likely to be more provincial, i. e., less authoritative, than that of the Low Countries, and even though

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Fernando is one of the best mediaeval painters of the peninsula, he suffers somewhat from this defect. T h e flat, golden haloes, as almost everywhere in his production, are a devout Spanish accretion upon the Flemish foundation. Now and then there intrude into his paintings the figures from the lower and more sordid walks of life that the Spaniards have always liked to exalt into themes of art. A cripple hobbles into the panel depicting the miracles wrought by St. Ildefonso's relics, and across the face of the picture a deformed creature drags himself by supports of the hands. T h e mediaeval Spanish painters and their patrons betrayed a predilection for subjects where " t h e halt, the lame, and the blind" could be represented seeking relief at the tombs of saints. As further witness in this scene to a naturalistic trend may be reckoned, I suppose, the presence of a dog and a child with a top. I t would be hard to outdo the brutal literalism of Dierick Bouts's martyrdoms and executions, but the decapitated body of St. John Baptist, depicted, with daring initiative, in the very act of collapsing and of spouting forth its lifeblood in a stream upon the wall, when taken in conjunction with a more frequent occurrence of such revolting exhibitions in the art of Spain, may be set down as an exemplification of the indigenous proclivity for the naturalistic and the gruesome. Among Fernando's personal virtues should be included the expressiveness of the gesticulating hands which bestow a Latin animation upon his productions in contrast to the stolidity that is a distinctive feature of contemporary Flemish painting. Here and there, as in the St. Leocadia and the accompanying, heavily draped youth and as in the executioner of the Baptist, he created single impressive figures that almost place him among masters of the first rank. T h e occasional tendencies to greater fullness of form and drapery that we have observed in the Zamora retable are developed, in accordance with the constant ideals of mediaeval Spanish painting, into such serene amplitude and monumentality throughout the Salamanca triptych that, in opposition to Mayer's assignment of it to Fernando's youth, one is almost forced to agree with Sanchez Canton that it belongs to the acme of his career. T h e figures, except one or two of the subordinate personages in the landscape behind St. Christopher, retain

FIG. 17. FERNANDO GALLEGO. MADONNA, CENTRE OF TRIPTYCH. NEW CATHEDRAL, SALAMANCA (Photo. Arxiu Mas )

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little or nothing of the mannered attenuation of Dierick Bouts but have expanded virtually into the classical breadth and composure of the Italian early Cinquecento. It is rather surprising, also, that Fernando should not have followed in the St. Christopher any of the several prototypes for this subject by Bouts and his pupils. The closest is perhaps the panel of Bouts's school in the Johnson Collection, Philadelphia, but Fernando's real model was Schongauer's print of the theme. Connoisseurship has been almost certainly right in discerning in the enthroned Madonna (Fig. 17) a reflection of the treatment of the subject by Petrus Christus in the altarpiece of the Virgin, St. Jerome, and St. Francis in the Städel Art Institute at Frankfurt. All renderings of the Madonna and Child are bound to resemble one another, but the identity of the two pictures in Our Lady's activity of handing a rose to the Infant, in the delineation of her hand, and in the Infant's gestures practically compels a belief in some kind of a relationship. Inasmuch as the Frankfurt panel is not known to have ever been in Spain, it points again to a visit of Fernando to the Low Countries; but since the date on the Christus picture has been variously deciphered all the way between 1417 and 1477 (when Petrus was already dead!), we are not much assisted in a very close chronological assignment of the Salamanca triptych. The items of the general Flemish legacy are still everywhere abundantly present. Fernando has curiously encrusted, not the borders of the Virgin's garments, but the base of the throne with the jewels to which in Flemish fashion he liked to give a veristic representation. Attaining almost the exquisite Flemish skill of Bermejo in rendering the transparent gauze shift in which he clothes the Child, he warns us, even more than in the St. Leocadia panel at Zamora, against debasing him too cavalierly to the second rank. The virtually nude body of the Child, indeed, is modelled with astounding accuracy and beauty, and the expression of infantile excitement has been caught marvellously. The drawing throughout the triptych is surer and more masterly than at Zamora, and the heads of Sts. Andrew and Christopher are really powerful characterizations. In the little windows of the lateral rooms seen through the doors opening at either side of the throne, he has interested himself in Flemish problems of

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lighting, and in the room at the left he has stopped to sketch a carafe with the domestic concern and illuminator's delicacy of the Low Countries. The landscapes are now, later in his career, rather grandly rocky and bleak, though they are still animated with picturesque Gothic towns and human life. In the defile

Fic. 18. FERNANDO GALLEGO.

PIETÄ.

(Photo. Arxiu

WEIBEL COLLECTION, MADRID Mas )

behind St. Christopher the smaller figures are the hermit who taught him and the pilgrims whom the hermit with a lantern guides to the river and its giant porter. St. Christopher's cloak is a piece of flying red drapery, puckered with the usual Flemish conventionalization, but the Virgin's is a softened tone of rose that appears not infrequently in Fernando's paintings. The

ΙΟΟ

F E R N A N D O GALLEGO

gold of the brocade on the back of her throne is once again simulated in yellow pigment. The Pieta of the Weibel Collection (Fig. 18) is assigned to an earlier date in Fernando's career than the Zamora retable by the labored execution, the comparatively untutored drawing of Christ's nude body, and the strange slighting of the kneeling masculine and feminine donors, who for this reason and because of their diminutive size are not much more advanced than the little portraits of the international movement. They are, nevertheless, painted in the new Flemish modes, the masculine figure already suggesting the types of Dierick Bouts. The derivation of the composition from the central panel of Roger van der Weyden's Granada triptych or its Miraflores repetition or from one of the several other adaptations of this cartoon by Roger and his school is obvious; but it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the expansion of the composition into a great monumental triangle through a magnificent sweep of the Virgin's drapery denotes a cognizance, on Fernando's part, of the art of the Swiss painter, Conrad Witz. The folds of her dark blue-green mantle assume the brittle quality of Witz's draperies, and the landscape, which resembles closely that of the St. Christopher in the Salamanca triptych, has a little of the mountainous grandeur of the Swiss master's background in his picture of the miraculous draught of fish in the Museum of Geneva. Was, then, Gallego's admiration for Witz the source of his general tendency to give his forms greater breadth than Bouts by clothing them in vast spreads of Flemish drapery, and did his predilection for stern, upland landscapes have a like origin ? Because of the connection of Witz, as a Swiss, with German art, his influence upon Fernando might be regarded as evidence of the otherwise lamely substantiated theory of the Spanish painter's dependence upon Teutonic as well as Flemish precedent. The landscape is once more enlivened with human activity and even with stray animals, including a wolf slinking up the hill to a castle. Since some critics have listed among the documented works of Fernando Gallego the retable of St. Catherine that has now been moved from the Old Cathedral of Salamanca into the small Museum of works of art belonging to the institution which

FERNANDO

GALLEGO

ΙΟΙ

has been made in the former Sala Capitular adjoining the cloister, it is incumbent upon us next, in our endeavor to establish a group of his absolutely authenticated pictures as a basis for attribution of other paintings, to attack the problem of the documentation's validity. As a matter of fact, on the face of it, the document points in exactly the opposite direction, a statement of payment by the chapter of the cathedral of Salamanca in 1500 for the St. Catherine retable to a Francisco Gallego; but since there exists no other absolutely unimpeachable record of a Francisco Gallego and since the style of the St. Catherine retable resembles closely that of Fernando's certified productions, some connoisseurs have held that Francisco (which is written in the document merely franco) is a scribal error for Fernando and have therefore elevated the retable to the rank of the established canon of the master's paintings. In two further entries of payment of the same year, probably referring to the St. Catherine retable, the author is designated only by his surname Gallego. When, however, all the evidence is taken into account, it seems conclusive for the existence of a Francisco Gallego, who would have been a relative of Fernando, probably his son or brother, and for the assignment of the St. Catherine retable to him. The further documentary evidence consists in the proof of the existence at Salamanca of a painter called Francisco, without the addition of a surname, in accounts of remuneration to him in 1500 and 1501 for other jobs about the cathedral; 1 and it becomes likely that he was Francisco Gallego in view of the stylistic evidence that the St. Catherine retable is executed in a manner which is very similar to that of Fernando Gallego but which, on close inspection, turns out to be the craft, not of the master himself, but of an imitator, who would be the Francisco Gallego explicitly denominated in the document. T h e retable, so far as it remains to us, comprises: the effigy of St. Catherine enthroned at the centre and flanked by the ordeal of the wheels and her decapitation (Fig. 19); and, against a gold background of an incised brocade, an upper tier of busts of saints, Peter and Paul united in a single panel over the cen1

Archivo espanol de arte y arqueologia,

V (1929), 282.

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tral Catherine, Gregory 1 above the miracle of the destruction of the wheels, and Jerome above the scene of the decollation. As in the predella at Zamora and as in many another Spanish altarpiece, the busts are disproportionately large in comparison with the narrative scenes, betraying the Spanish tendency to conceive such effigies as idols. In the midst of the general close parallelism in types, drapery, and settings to Fernando's manner, there emerge enough differences to impose an attribution rather to Francisco. T h e first of these is a very tangible inferiority as a draughtsman. So it is that the countenances are sometimes weak, as in the man behind the executioner at the decapitation, or, in an attempt at vivacity, they are distorted, as in the case of the youth at the extreme right in the same scene. T h e lesser strength of his types appears in the odd habit that he has in the lateral scenes of making the representations of St. Catherine herself look like the pathetic and frail Lillian Gish. Francisco has an infelicitous way, also, of painting the eyes so that they resemble the glass orbs of an idol or doll, and they are likely, moreover, to be disfigured by a slight squint, as in the central St. Catherine herself. St. Gregory is even popeyed, and, although he is one of the best figures in the altarpiece, a comparison with the episcopal saint of the Zamora retable or with the St. Gregory of the Trujillo altarpiece is an object lesson in the superiority of the real Fernando. T h e St. Jerome is nearly a replica of the Zamora representation of the same father of the Church, but the easy power of the true master is again demonstrated by the simplicity with which in the bust at Zamora the intensity of mysticism is rendered. T h e whole St. Catherine retable, indeed, is marred by a strained desire for expressiveness. Despite the fact that some of the forms repeat the attenuated canon derived from Bouts, particularly the executioner of St. Catherine, even in these we miss the facile elegance of Fernando, and in certain other figures the proportions are distinctly stubbier. 1 The canonized pope here depicted can hardly be other than Gregory, since he is pendant to another father of the Church, Jerome, and since he carries, as frequently, the double-barred cross; but he bears in his other hand the unusual attribute of the chalice and host, probably a symbol of the Mass of St. Gregory. The identification is corroborated by the appearance, in Fernando's Trujillo retable, of a pope with the same cross, host, and chalice acting as balance to still another father of the Church, Augustine.

Fic. 19.

FRANCISCO GALLEGO.

SECTION OF RETABLE.

DECAPITATION OF ST. CATHERINE, OLD CATHEDRAL, SALAMANCA

(Photo. Arxiu

Mas)

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Except for the rather stupid face and strabism, the central St. Catherine is worthy of Fernando, who may have assisted his relative in parts of the altarpiece. The room in which she sits, with its window at the right opening to a bit of verdant landscape, is charmingly rendered in the Flemish mode. No more delightful pieces of the meticulous aspects of the Flemish legacy could be found than the book laid upon the sill at the left, the carafe and glass on the opposite ledge, and the curling leaves of the volume that she fingers. This middle panel is one of many examples that demonstrate Bermejo's (earlier executed) Sto. Domingo de Silos not to be an isolated phenomenon in Spanish art but rather the greatest manifestation of an established indigenous tendency. The chief interest of the St. Catherine is perhaps that the union of monumentality with an Hispanicization of the Flemish borrowings produces a result fortuitously but arrestingly analogous to the achievements of the great Cordovan. The similarity extends to such subordinate considerations as the direct frontal position, the partial transmutation of the form into the rigidity of a magnificent image, and even to such decorative devices as a less stylized phase of the upward twist of a lower edge of the garment that comes to be almost equivalent to Bermejo's signature. It is a curious coincidence that in effigies of St. Catherine the Spaniards should more than once have declared their mediaeval proclivity for forcing a composition into a formal design by using the wheel as a factor in the general pattern. The instance in the retable of Tudela, 1 in all probability the work of Juan de Levi, 2 has already received our attention, and we shall discover another in Martin Bernat's St. Catherine in the Kocherthaler Collection, Madrid. Here at Salamanca the wheel, in colossal size, is effectively woven into the general design as a background for the canopy under which she is seated. In many other respects Francisco reproduces the peculiarities of Fernando Gallego. The decapitation is depicted with all the brutally sanguinary directness of the Baptist's martyrdom at Zamora, though Bertaux may not be correct in interpreting the combination of the bloody gash in St. Catherine's neck and 1 2

Vol. I l l , p. 186. See below, p. 628.

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105

the swinging and cruelly gigantic sword of the executioner to mean a repetition of the blow rather than the natural conditions of the two bodies after the single blow has been delivered. T h e apartment in which the gory horror is taking place is again precisely and prettily painted according to Flemish precedent. As several times in the Zamora altarpiece, a personage is represented as just passing through a lateral doorway into the chamber of the execution. T h e treatment of the background foretells, in its dependence upon similar Flemish experimentation, those Dutch paintings of the seventeenth century that exhibit a room within a room. Another door opens into a second, inner apartment, in which, in order to establish a middle ground, is depicted a further episode in the story, St. Catherine's dispute with Maximin, and from this apartment a window looks out over a garden upon a landscape. The figures in the disputation are in smaller, though not correct, scale, and Francisco has not attempted to distinguish the values of the three lights. The episode of the wheels presents us with a factor that we have not up to this point encountered in the Gallego atelier, the rather successful management of varied and lively postures, however petrified according to the Flemish mode, in some of the discomfited operators of the instruments of torture. In the victim who lies prostrate in the foreground, the struggle after expressiveness that differentiates Francisco's work is carried too far in the convulsion of the limbs and countenance; but the man who is bent double and clasps his stricken head between his hands is one of the most memorable figures in Spanish Gothic art. A similar, though less prominent, piece of effective naturalism appears in the gesture of the spectator of the saint's decollation who presses his thumbs together. The central St. Catherine and particularly the St. Gregory reveal the delight of the Gallego shop in the Flemish simulation of rich jewelry: in the latter case even the brocade of the chasuble is painted with scrupulous but surpassingly beautiful skill. All the saints in the upper tier are so well executed that they elevate Francisco almost to the position of Fernando or arouse the suspicion of Fernando's collaboration. T h e general tonality of the retable is Fernando's already mentioned shade of rose. In the brocades yellow paint takes the place of gold.

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I t has been universally recognized that the two later additions to Dello Delli's retable in the Old Cathedral of S a l a m a n c a / the panels of the V i a Dolorosa and the lament over the dead Christ (Fig. 20), are by the same hand as did the altarpiece of St. Catherine, and this hand I am convinced is that of Francisco Gallego. T o choose a few instances of the identity of authorship, the y o u n g man, with eyes slightly askew, in the scene of the decapitation is twice repeated in the bravoes assisting in the carrying of the cross; the M a g d a l e n e of the lament almost exactly equals the central St. Catherine; and the same curious sort of filigree halo is employed. B u t the peculiarities and defects of Francisco's manner now stand forth more baldly perhaps because he did not have the benefit of Fernando's immediate inspiration, oversight, or assistance. H i s feebler drawing is more unrelieved, descending to its lowest point in the well-nigh puerile rendering of Christ's nude body in the lament. H i s squattier canon for the human form is everywhere more pronounced, occasioning the effect of disproportionately large heads noted by Sanchez Canton. T h e struggle for expressiveness is more exaggerated. Nevertheless, when he wants to make the effort, he can create such impressive characterizations as the standing holy woman at the extreme left of the lament. His close dependence upon Fernando is still everywhere evident. For instance, he has lifted right out of the Zamora Crucifixion the idea of half veiling the face of one of the holy women (the Virgin?). H e has made more of the landscapes than in the St. Catherine retable, but it is to be doubted whether M a y e r should have singled this out as a trait that distinguishes him from Fernando, who is also, to say the least, a lover and enhancer of nature. T h e middle ground of the lament is prettily accented b y a town on the shores of a lake, and the surrounding country is dotted with the rural churches that are so characteristic an element in the life of the Spaniards and are called b y them ermitas. In the V i a Dolorosa, the middle ground is more firmly established, in Fernando's and the Flemings' typical w a y , by the introduction of figures in smaller scale acting subordinate episodes of the story, Christ bidding farewell to H i s 1

Vol. I l l , p. 239.

FIG. 20.

FRANCISCO GALLEGO. PI ETA, INSERTED IN DELLO DELLI'S RETABLE. OLD CATHEDRAL, SALAMANCA (Photo. Arxiu

Mas)

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loved ones at the gate of Jerusalem from which the procession to Calvary issues, and (with some realization of aerial perspective in the dimmer outlines of the forms) the two thieves conducted to their death. The actual background is occupied by the two malefactors' crosses, already erect, grimly awaiting their victims. Since the paintings of the canvas doors of the St. Catherine retable are documented as works of a pupil of Fernando Gallego called Pedro Bello, we may as well at once, before we proceed to the distribution of the undocumented productions, define the personality of this further member of the Gallego atelier, though he is far inferior to Francisco Gallego, with attainments little above those of a rustic craftsman. The document, which is the record of payment to him in 1503, describes his task as "labor on the retable of St. Catherine and on the doors," but no trace of the hand that did the doors, which is explicitly that of Pedro Bello, can be found in the retable. The doors, which now also have been consigned to the small Museum of the cathedral, consist of eight large subjects: on the exterior, the Virgin and Gabriel of the Annunciation, Christ before Pilate, and the Resurrection; on the interior, Isaiah and David, each seated in a room like those that Fernando Gallego imitated from Flemish prototypes, the disputation of St. Catherine with the philosophers, and the angelic translation of her body to Mt. Sinai. The paintings betray what happened to Fernando Gallego's manner when it fell into rude and awkward hands. Now and then Pedro Bello caught a dim reflection of the master's tapering elegance, as in the two participants in the Annunciation; and the landscapes of the translation of St. Catherine and of the Resurrection, by a desperate effort, preserve something of Fernando's distinction in this phase of art, in the latter case with a middle ground of the holy women trudging on towards the tomb. He exerts himself to render the jewelled border of the Saviour's mantle in the Resurrection, and he was perhaps thinking of the encrusted base of the Virgin's throne in the triptych of the New Cathedral when he queerly girded the sarcophagus with a molding of pearls. But no amount of effort can really save him from worse than mediocrity. Not only are his figures for the most part dumpy, stolid, and heavy, but they

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are clumsily drawn, and there is no understanding of the articulation of movement. In the representation of the Ecce Homo Pilate is hugely out of scale and much bigger than Our Lord! This scene shows what a disease the abuse of lettered scrolls in lieu of the " t a l k i e s " has become with him, although the treatment of the theme by Nicolas Frances or a pupil in the cathedral of Leon reveals that they were rather customary in the iconography of the Ecce Homo. Above Pilate fly the words (in Latin): " I am innocent of the blood of this just person." One of the Jews below replies, by means of this artifice, " H i s blood be on us and on our children," while others are imagined as crying, " Crucify him, crucify him." Pedro Bello, in this passion for explanation, has depicted as carved even upon the sarcophagus in the Resurrection an inscription proclaiming the miracle. Intrinsically, Pedro Bello is a dull artist, but he has the interest of suggesting the question whether he might be identical with the painter of the same name who, definitely denominated as Castilian, in 1494 contracted to execute in oil a non-extant retable at Vich, 1 and whether he might thus belong to the sparse number of Castilian masters who wandered as far afield as Catalonia. 3.

WORKS

AUTHENTICATED

BY

STYLE

In the group of paintings that internal evidence assigns to Fernando Gallego, the retable of the high altar of S. Lorenzo at Toro demands first attention because it is approximately dated and because, like the St. Udefonso altarpiece at Zamora, it embodies his developed style before it has quite unfolded into the monumental fullness of the Salamanca triptych. T h e approximate date, indeed, would bring the Toro retable into the chronological region of the St. Ildefonso altarpiece and is obtained in the following way. T h e structure bears the escutcheons of Don Pedro de Castilla and his wife Dona Beatriz de Fonseca, who are buried in a tomb beside the high altar and who died in 149a and 1487 respectively: if the retable was painted before their decease, it would be about contemporary with the Zamora 1 See Sanpere, Los cuatrocentistas, II, 185-187 and xlvi-xlvii. In the Catalan document the surname is spelt Velio, but Β and V are often interchangeable in Spanish orthography.

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altarpiece, which belongs to c. 1480; if it was posthumous as a testamentary stipulation, it would probably not h a v e been carried out more than a decade later, for Fernando has not y e t evolved the ripeness of the Salamanca triptych. M a y e r once attributed it to Francisco Gallego, and then abandoned this opinion in the article in the Thieme-Becker Lexikon, although in the Spanish edition of his Geschichte he has subsequently so far resuscitated his first idea as to claim for Francisco the section depicting the enthroned Saviour; but one cannot long look at the retable without being absolutely convinced that all the panels, even that of the enthroned Saviour, are essentially a production of Fernando Gallego himself and moreover perhaps constitute his masterpiece. A s at Zamora, the structure comprises two tiers of narrative scenes. In the lower are the A n n u n ciation, the N a t i v i t y , the E p i p h a n y , and the Purification. T h e central panel in this tier, the Saviour enthroned amidst the signs of the Evangelists, has, after a varied peregrination, eventually reached the P r a d o in the Bosch bequest. T h e upper tier is dedicated to the patron of the church, St. Lawrence, depicting the arrest of his spiritual father, the pope St. Sixtus, his distribution of the ecclesiastical treasures, his flagellation, and m a r t y r dom on the gridiron. T h e central space at this level was occupied by a (lost) statue of St. Lawrence the canopy for which still remains. T h e narrative sections are both surmounted b y and raised upon Fernando's regular motif of friezes of busts of saints against gold backgrounds, and the contracted intervals that are formed between the narrative sections and the central panels harbor further canonized worthies depicted at full length. I f one discerns a greater blandness in the enthroned Christ's face than is met in Fernando's documented works, it m a y be ascribed with much confidence to the liberal repainting that disfigures so m a n y pictures in the Bosch Collection. T h e types and draperies are for the most part u n m i s t a k a b l y those of Fernando himself at his best, although now and then a passage of less careful drawing, as in some of the m a n y Boutslike figures of youths that he so much affected, possibly betrays w h a t was almost inevitable in so large an undertaking, the occasional intrusion of an assistant. W h e r e v e r it is possible, he gratifies his fondness for imitating the Flemings in their repre-

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sentation of interiors, and he almost overdoes his practice of introducing figures half seen through doors or windows. In the Epiphany St. Joseph peers through a window behind the Madonna; in the Nativity he and one of the midwives are just entering the stable through a door, an utterly lovely angel occupies the entrance on the other side, and an opening at the back is filled by the form of a large shepherd. The alertness to pictorial experimentation that he has learned from his northern teachers manifests itself in this scene in another way. He now tackles one of the problems of lighting, with literary naturalism conceiving the birth of Christ as a nocturnal event, so that, as with Correggio, the stable is illuminated only by the supernatural radiance emanating from the Babe, and the pitchier darkness outside by the celestial glow that accompanies the proclamation of the angels. In the panel of the scourging of St. Lawrence, perhaps the most powerful and best executed section of the retable, revealing indisputably Fernando's own hand, a second room is depicted in the background, where there takes place the martyr's arraignment. At Toro Fernando abuses the Tournai mannerism of lettered scrolls as badly as Pedro Bello. So in the arrest of St. Sixtus the conversation of St. Lawrence and the pope is figured; in the scene of the trial at the back of the panel of the flagellation, the remark of St. Lawrence to his judge; in the actual martyrdom, his last words upon the gridiron; and the symbols of the Evangelists about the enthroned Christ thus graphically express their sentiments. As usual, Fernando seeks to vie with the Flemings in the introduction and scrupulous rendering of small accessories, for instance one of his favorite vials in a niche in the room of the Annunciation, the pearls on the edge of the enthroned Christ's tunic and around the morse of His cope, the mosaics adorning the step of the throne, and the allegorical figurines of the Church and the Synagogue on its arms, the former having something of the physical loveliness that Bermejo lends to the statuettes of Virtues on the seat of Sto. Domingo de Silos, the latter clad in the yellow of the school of Tournai. In the arrest of St. Sixtus he makes much of the Roman soldiers' armor, so that his follower who did the retable of Ciudad Rodrigo and is called by Bertaux the Maitre aux Armures had, contrary to the French scholar's

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opinion, the master's precedent to follow in this respect. In the fondness for simulating armor and depicting the glint of light upon it, we are perhaps to see another influence, upon the Gallego atelier, of Conrad Witz, who betrays a similar velleity in the Basel altarpiece. It is not so agreeable when Fernando itemizes the warts all over the body of St. Christopher in one of the narrow panels that flank the central sections. A pleasanter bit of naturalism is the detail of the old woman displaying the alms that St. Lawrence has bestowed upon her. A queer piece of iconography, perhaps indicative of Iberian devoutness, is the representation of Simeon as kneeling to receive the Child in the Purification, but the bringing of the Virgin to her knees in this subject, although it does not appear at Toro, is a peculiarity encountered in other Spanish painters. 1 As in the St. Ildefonso altarpiece, when Fernando comes to do the friezes of busts of saints, he somewhat amplifies his manner, losing the pettiness that is never absolutely separable from the Flemish style of the fifteenth century; and, as again at Zamora, he is able to endow these effigies with a surprising vividness of gaze. The retable over the high altar of the church of Sta. Maria la Mayor at Trujillo, in the province of Cäceres but well within the geographical orbit of a Salamancan painter, has never received its proper meed of appreciation as unequivocably demonstrated by style to be (with the exception of the predella) an authentic and primal work of Fernando Gallego and as vying with the Toro altarpiece for the first place among his achievements. The centre of the two lower tiers in the main part of the structure is now occupied by the tabernacle of 1545 and, above it, a modern, sculptured Assumption. Because of the dedication of the church, the narrative panels relate the life of the Virgin. In the lowest row, they read, from left to right, the Meeting at the Golden Gate, the Nativity of Our Lady, the Marriage, and the Annunciation. At least in the present arrangement, the order changes in the second row and continues from right to left with the Visitation, the Nativity of Our Lord, the Epiphany, and the Purification. Pursuant of this zigzag disposition, the top row returns from left to right with the Flight into Egypt (Fig. 21), the young Christ among the Doctors, the Dormition, and the 1

Vol. I l l , p. 1 2 9 , and below, p. 198.

FIG. 2I.

FERNANDO GALLEGO. FLIGHT INTO EGYPT, SECTION OF RETABLE. STA. MARIA, TRUJILLO (Photo. Guerra J

ii

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Assumption, and naturally sets in the middle, which in this tier is reserved for painting, the Coronation on a larger panel than the rest of the compartments. E a c h of the rows of sacred story is flanked at either side b y panels of the single, gloriously monumental effigies of saints whom Fernando, conscious of his power in this respect, was loath to omit from his altarpieces. A t Trujillo they are full-length, seated effigies, in the lowest row Sts. John Evangelist and M a t t h e w , in the second tier the other pair of Evangelists, Sts. L u k e (Fig. 22) and M a r k , and at the top two of the L a t i n fathers, Sts. Gregory and Augustine. In the predella, which, as so often, enshrines the Passion, a sixteenthcentury rendering of the Pieta has been substituted for the lost version of this theme from the Gallego shop, but even the other scenes, the A g o n y in the Garden, the V i a Dolorosa, the Harrowing of Hell, the Resurrection, and the Ascension, were executed, at least in large part, b y a rather weak assistant. Perhaps Fernando himself p u t in his brush here and there in the A g o n y in the Garden and in the Ascension. T h e narrative scenes are set in interiors or in landscapes, including some of the loveliest examples of Fernando's sensitiveness to this aspect of nature. T h e feeling for a vista of hills and architecture in the A g o n y in the Garden transmits an almost modern impression. T h e backgrounds of the effigies of saints are gold incised with boldly magnificent, brocaded designs, in the case of St. John and his pendant St. M a t t h e w with one pattern and in the case of the rest with another. T h e vocal scrolls are perhaps somewhat less frequent than in Fernando's other altarpieces. T h e y appear chiefly beside the worthies of the Old T e s t a m e n t who surround the throne of the Coronation, in this instance the usual ejaculations from the Song of Songs taken as applying to Our L a d y . Upon the pavilion behind the throne in this scene is written, " P o s u i s t i , Domine, super caput eius." T h e tiling beneath St. G r e g o r y is stamped with the enigmatical monograms and lettering that in the Spanish painting of the epoch so often d e f y explanation (if there is indeed usually any other than the merely decorative explanation). Since in the figures of the Evangelists and fathers the style unfolds to a breadth and grandeur almost as great as that of the Salamanca triptych and since this largeness of manner is felt to

FIG. 22. FERNANDO GALLEGO.

ST. LUKE, SECTION OF RETABLE.

STA. MARIA, TRUJII.LO (Photo.

Guerra

)

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a certain extent throughout the retable, the date would probably be rather late in Fernando Gallego's career. When the subjects are the same as in his other productions, the compositions are variations of the shop's iconographic stock-in-trade. The Annunciation, for example, betrays a more extreme aspect of the passion that he had caught from the Flemings for multiplying and defining to the last degree objects of domestic genre. The Nativity of Christ, on the other hand, is very much simplified. He does not attempt here a nocturnal effect, and he excludes the flights of angels that he customarily introduces into the foreground of this theme (although they appear, of course, in the subordinate incident of the background, the proclamation to the shepherds). The charm of the scene, however, is increased by spottings with bits of verdure — as a mattress for the Child upon a fold of His mother's mantle and as fodder in troughs for the ox and ass, whose heads are made over-prominent in the composition because the painter wished to expend upon them an attempt at more than ordinary zoological exactness. The Purification does not repeat the anomaly of the Toro version, but it reveals one of Fernando's definitive mannerisms, a form half-seen entering through a door. The subjects that are not found elsewhere in his extant output are presented with his habitual piquancy. The countenance of the serving woman who accompanies St. Anne to the Golden Gate displays one of his laudable but never quite successful endeavors at facial expression, in this instance a smile, just as in the Dormition he seeks to implant agonized grief upon the visage of St. John. The subordinate episode that he so often depicts in miniature in the landscape here shows St. Joachim keeping his flocks. In addition to the painstaking delineation of the paraphernalia of the household, including a most naturalistic interchange of incivilities between a dog and a cat, the Nativity of the Virgin is enhanced by a number of unusual elements, St. Anne struggling up in her bed to watch a wet nurse suckle the child while another woman cools the mother with a fan as magnificent as those borne in papal processions. 1 In accordance with the tendency to a monumental largeness perceptible at Trujillo, 1

The face of St. Joachim in this panel is repainted.

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the Marriage of Our Lady is a compact mass of more numerous and more crowded figures than Fernando ordinarily admitted to his compositions, attired in broad expanses of his own peculiar and beautiful adaptations of Bouts's draperies. Instead of observing the practice of transforming the priest of the nuptials into a Christian cleric, he has made an attempt at Hebraic archaeology, garbing him in exotic vestments richly encrusted with the jewels that the Flemings had taught him to simulate. Fortuitously the setting of the ceremony reminds one of Florentine painting in the Quattrocento, a battlemented patio overshadowed, at the back, by trees. In the Flight into Egypt, the tale of the palm tree that bent to give Our Lady its fruit is prettily rationalized, perhaps on Schongauer's precedent, so as to represent St. Joseph pulling the tree over with his staff and handing the dates to the Child; and the customary little figures in the landscape enact the story of the encounter of Herod's bailiffs with the farmer and with his suddenly grown crops.1 No one any longer accepts for Fernando Gallego's own handicraft all of the fifteen panels from the life of Christ that once constituted a section of the retable of the high altar in the cathedral of Zamora and are now hung along the walls of the nave in the church of Arcenillas, just southeast of the capital (some of them rather badly injured through an inexpert cleaning). Since a new main apse was constructed for the cathedral of Zamora between 1496 and 1506, it is probable that the retable was made at this time.2 Although the fifteen panels form a rich legacy from the past, as a matter of fact they make up only a part of the original huge retable, which comprised at least thirty-five pieces.3 It was perhaps because the Toro retable was a commission from a nobleman of royal blood and a smaller monument that Fernando so largely carried out the execution himself, whereas in the vast undertakings of the Zamora and Trujillo retables he was almost obliged to have recourse to assistants and was willing to be less scrupulous in the case of less aristocratic, ecclesiastical patrons. His own hand I discern with surety only at the beginning of the series 1 2 3

See below, p. 188. Gomez-Moreno, Catalogo monumental of the province of Zamora, 109 and 308. See Archivo espanol de arte y arqueologta, I I I (1927), 354.

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in the Annunciation and N a t i v i t y and with less confidence in the Purification, Marriage at Cana (Fig. 23), and E n t r y into Jerusalem. These last three subjects, however, may be by the second hand, which did the L a s t Supper, the Agony in the Garden, the Flagellation, the Via Dolorosa, the Crucifixion, and the Deposition. T h e Entombment, Resurrection, Incredulity of St. Thomas, and Ascension are certainly the productions of a third hand, which uses actual gold in the brocades and armor, contrary to Fernando's practice of substituting yellow pigment for gilt. Neither of these assisting hands is that of the Trujillo predella. Since the retable was obviously executed under Fernando's direct supervision, it m a y be regarded as an expression of his artistic personality, although in the majority of the panels his style is watered down by his followers. T h e markings showing that there were originally three arches of wood-carving over the Crucifixion instead of two, as in the other instances, prove that it was one of the central sections of the assemblage. T h e Arcenillas paintings incorporate the same characteristics that we have repeatedly analyzed in his other creations. I t is necessary, first, to dismiss the theory of a potent German influence upon him, for it is in these panels that Gomez-Moreno and Sanchez Canton 1 have endeavored to substantiate it. A f t e r a careful examination of the series of instances that they adduce to champion a dependence of the Arcenillas compositions upon Teutonic prototypes, I cannot persuade myself that in any one of them is the parallelism sufficiently exact to bear the weight of the supposition that Fernando Gallego was even familiar with the German pictures in question or that the vague similarities indicate anything more than the general uniformity of European iconography at this period. Nor do m y eyes see a derivation of his type for the Saviour from Germany rather than Flanders. I t does not mean much that the Via Dolorosa is a very free adaptation of Schongauer's large version of the theme (not the one in the Passion series). Rarely he may have been spurred by Teutonic example to try his hand at agitated expression. 2 The forms and draperies of Arcenillas still find 1 2

7^,354-357.

See below, p. 134.

FIG. 23. ATELIER OF FERNANDO GALLEGO.

MARRIAGE A T CANA.

PARISH CHURCH, ARCENILLAS (From "Söhre Fernando Gallego" hy Gomez-Moreno and Sanchez

Canton)

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their ultimate source in the school of Tournai and Dierick Bouts. Even the color often reflects a study of the Master of Flemalle and Roger van der Weyden — the light grey tunic of Gabriel in the Annunciation, for example, and the respective blue-white, rose-white, and yellow-white draperies of the three little serenading angels in the Nativity. The panels are full of Fernando's elongated, tall-capped men, imitated from Bouts, especially the Marriage at Cana. Many of the themes afforded him an opportunity to paint his Flemish rooms, often opening upon pretty slices of landscape, in the case of the Last Supper through four small windows. Through the door at the left of the Annunciation we see a roof rising delightfully above an orchard, a passage that could have been painted by no other than Fernando himself. The room of the Annunciation, which at Toro remains chastely simple in its decoration, is now, as at Trujillo, fairly crammed with punctiliously rendered domestic detail. The Nativity is apparently again conceived as a night scene, and he attempts a naturalistic lighting in the Annunciation, the room and particularly Gabriel's wings being illuminated from without. He again establishes middle grounds by subordinate incidents in smaller scale — Judas sheepishly introducing the armored soldiers through the gate of Gethsemane or the three holy women approaching with the spices in the Resurrection, as in Pedro Bello's treatment of the subject. Once more in the Simeon and Anna of the Purification, the good Centurion at the Crucifixion, and the angels at the Ascension, he has recourse to the vocal scrolls. In the Purification he paints almost as captivating a Child as in the Salamanca triptych, and again lavishes all his skill upon the rendering of the transparent veiling in which He is lightly dressed. Even his assistant excels in painting the delicate loin-cloth of Christ in the Deposition. The armor is featured in the man with his back towards us behind the Saviour in the Via Dolorosa and in the centurion and his soldiers in the Crucifixion. The Virgin throughout the series wears draperies of an exquisite shade of greenish blue, and the panels in general embody Fernando's customary modulation of Flemish brilliancy to a neutralized blue or green tonality. His invention manifests itself in the fact that the subjects, when they are the same, do not reiterate exactly the composi-

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tions at Toro and Trujillo, although the general outlines of the arrangements are usually analogous. The Purification resembles more the example at Trujillo than it does the anomalous composition of Toro, but a comparison with the greater simplicity and grandeur of Trujillo argues strongly for an assistant's hand in at least the major part of the Arcenillas version. Here and there at Arcenillas Fernando girds himself for rather striking dramatic touches. At the front of the group of Apostles about the round table of the Last Supper, Judas kneels in false humility hypocritically stretching forth a finger to question whether it be he who is accused of treachery and hiding the money-bag behind his back. The flabby drawing of the Flagellation clearly betrays the execution of a pupil, but the design would be Fernando's and is fraught with dramatic concentration. While two henchmen ply their whips, a third stops only long enough to pull the cords more tightly about Our Lord's hands, in his haste holding his idle scourge in his teeth; and in the left corner another tormentor sinisterly tests the strength of the crown of thorns. In the dim mountainous distance of the Via Dolorosa the crosses await the sufferers, as in Francisco Gallego's version in Dello's retable. But the most novel and spirited composition is that of the Marriage at Cana, which bears, however, a remote resemblance to the rendering of the theme in the great Catalan retable of the Transfiguration by the Master of St. George or a follower, particularly in the featuring of the wine-jars in the foreground. In the usual iconography the emphasis is upon the wedding feast; but in the Arcenillas panel it is not even represented as a subordinate incident, and the stress is upon the miracle. The action really revolves about the beautifully realized amphorae, one of which Christ blesses while from a tap at its bottom a servant (a characteristically attenuated figure of Fernando) draws forth the new-made wine. Another retainer is filling a j a r with the firkins of water, a maid is bringing a further supply in an urn upon her head, and through a door at the left Our Lady may be seen giving directions to a menial, "Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it." I very much suspect that the panel of which an illustration is herewith published (Fig. 24) is the Ecce Homo in some private collection at Madrid which is said to have been another member

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of the series at Arcenillas. 1 T h e style is patently that of Fernando's immediate shop, and, if the picture really comes from Arcenillas, perhaps that of the assistant who did the majority of the scenes from the Passion. The armored guard at the right, for instance, literally repeats the soldier in the foreground of the Via Dolorosa, even to the scarf tied round the helmet. The composition resembles rather significantly the version by Nicolas Frances or a pupil on the trasaltar of the cathedral of Leon, actually reproducing the detail of a woman peering at the scene from a small lateral window, 2 so that the question arises whether Fernando Gallego, who must at least have drawn the cartoon, had studied his predecessor's achievements or whether, instead, there may have been a continuity of iconographical tradition in Castile and Leon between the international school of the first half of the century and the Hispano-Flemish movement of the second half. The dramatic touches that have been noted in the panels at Arcenillas continue in the man who leans forth from an embrasure with the ominous scourge and in the presence, at the lower right, of a lone child whom we are perhaps not too modern in interpreting as an intended pathetic contrast. There appear only two of the scrolls that Pedro Bello in the same theme uses to excess, and the sentences upon these are short — the " E c c e H o m o " of Pilate and, above the crowd, " H i s blood be on us." The next comprehensive and extant undertaking of Fernando Gallego authenticated by style that demands our consideration transports him and us into a new sphere for his brush, the frescoes of astronomical themes upon the barrel vault in the old library of the University of Salamanca, in which the keen eye of Gomez-Moreno detected the master's hand. The great Spanish scholar 3 has also established the dates of the construction of the library and chapel, so that it is possible to specify the years within which Fernando must have painted the ceiling — namely between 1479, when the vault of the library was completed, and 1493, when the distinguished humanist and professor of Latin at Salamanca, Lucio Marineo Siculo, 4 writing 1 2 3 4

See Bertaux in Michel's Histoire de I'art, III, 2, p. 792. See vol. I l l , p. 281. Boletin de la Sociedad Castellana de Excursiones, V I (1913-1914), 321 ff. See above, p. 11.

FIG. 24. ATELIER OF FERNANDO GALLEGO. ECCE HOMO. PRIVATE COLLECTION, MADRID (Photo. Ruiz

Fernacci)

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his De laudibus Hispaniae (actually printed before 1504), speaks of it as already decorated with a representation of heaven. A documentary entry of April 24, 1506, alludes to the repair of the frescoes depicting heaven, which had been injured by water and which had now become the embellishment of the chapel's roof inasmuch as the floor of the library had just been removed and the library sacrificed so that its space might enlarge the chapel underneath. W e have already noted 1 that in . 1507 Fernando requested payment for another job in the chapel, the painting of the artesonado of the tribune. Only one third of the original vault is now preserved, and since a modern ceiling has been built in below the vault, the frescoes can be seen only by climbing up into the space between the ceiling and the vault. T h e background is painted to represent the blue sky flecked with golden stars, and upon this the planets and constellations, specified by identifying inscriptions, are symbolized as large figures, of which we cannot do better than translate Gomez-Moreno's description, with some interpolations in parenthesis: " t h e Sun in his chariot drawn by four horses, dressed in a tunic open at the sides and with flying sleeves and accoutred in crown, sceptre, and rays; in front, Mercury, with his caduceus, seated in a chariot of four wheels drawn by two griffins (Fig. 25); below, Bootes, with lance and axe (I take this to be rather the constellation Hercules, figured by a man wielding a club whose body is rendered with almost the habitual Spanish obtuseness to the anatomy and beauty of the nude and whose head naturally resembles that of the St. Christophers whom Fernando was more frequently called upon to depict); in the axis of the vault, Leo, as a lion; Virgo, in the form of a winged angel (clad in robes of very Flemish folds); Libra, which chances to be placed in the middle of the section of the vault that is preserved; Scorpio and Sagittarius, the latter in his usual guise of a centaur shooting his bow; at the end, a human monster representing Serpentarius (or rather Ophiuchus, the constellation that is conceived as a man holding another constellation, Serpens, and is here imagined, contrary to Gomez-Moreno's interpretation, as a human being involved in the snake's coils), and below, a crown, the 1

See above, p. 92.

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(constellation of the Corona) Borealis, according to its label, mistakenly to judge by its location (meaning that it ought astronomically to be above, rather than below, Serpentarius); Auriga, figured as a centaur with the lower body of a bull and strange garments, holding a goat (?) in his right hand and in the other hand a lance from which hangs a hare (the inscription is largely erased, but the subject might be rather a curious treatment of Taurus, although the Charioteer is customarily represented as carrying a goat and kids); further on, a tree, Robur, and above, the serpent Hydra, Crater or the cup, and Corvus, the crow. In the next section of vaulting, the impost of which remains, appears Navis, or Argo. In the lowest part of each of the five divisions that constitute the complete sections are distributed large heads (conceived as masks), one of them black, that probably (surely) represent the winds. Finally, on the arches could be read pertinent Biblical texts, such as: 'Videbo celos tuos opera digitorum tuorum, lunam et stellas que ( = quae) tu fundasti' (Psalms, viii, 3 ) . " Too small a part of the whole vault remains to us perhaps to justify an opinion in regard to Fernando's ability to solve the problem of a vast and centralized composition in a huge expanse of ceiling, which is quite a different matter from arranging figures successfully in the time-honored iconography of the panels of a retable; but from what is left we may gather that it was rather a piecemeal affair lacking a unified scheme, although the tree, Crater, and the coils of Serpentarius are effectively wedged in to fill out the background. The individual figures, nevertheless, are magnified to a breadth and grandeur attributable to Fernando's recognition of the needs of monumental decoration as well as to his greater maturity subsequent to the works at Zamora and Toro and about contemporary probably with the Salamanca triptych. Except in the draperies, he has pretty thoroughly risen above the pettiness of the Flemish miniaturist-manner. Of the paintings that are now dissociated from retables and may with more or less surety be ascribed to Fernando Gallego himself, those in the parish churches of Campo de Penaranda and Villaflores, just east of Salamanca, deserve first consideration. At my visit to the former town, the panels of the Nativity

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of Christ and of the Flagellation were hanging on either side of the capilla mayor. The composition of the Nativity resembles in general the renderings of Toro, Trujillo, and Arcenillas. A new and impressively beautiful element is the representation of the angels, in Flemish monochrome and all differently posed, descending in a line, as a kind of central axis for the composition, upon the Holy Child, who lies upon a cloth held by one of them. The kneeling Virgin, whose hair is lightly touched with gold, has hands very similar to those drawn by Dierick Bouts. The smaller size of the panels, as compared with those of Arcenillas, reduces the space for the Flagellation, but in any case the compositional analogy is not very decided, although the executioner at the right with his back towards us at Arcenillas is in a way repeated in the red-clad scourger at the left at Campo de Penaranda. The painting contains several figures incorporating Fernando's characteristic types — the svelte youth enveloped in a long robe and erect before a window in the right background, conceived in the same mold as the stripling who views the vision of St. Leocadia at Zamora, and the other attenuated, Bouts-like spectators at the upper left. There are some troublesome factors, nevertheless, that stand in the way of an unqualified attribution to Fernando himself instead of an immediate pupil. The pronounced elongation of the Virgin in the Nativity can perhaps be paralleled in his absolutely authenticated productions; and yet it is to be observed that in her tunic and in St. Joseph's mantle, actual gold, contrary to Fernando's practice, is used in the brocade. In the Flagellation, on the other hand, yellow pigment is substituted in the garments. The bits of landscape in both panels are rather more summarily treated than accords with Fernando's norm; but in the attempt to arrive at a categorical yes or no, one is constantly buffeted back and forth, since the draperies are painted with a delightful command of Flemish technique quite worthy of the master himself. More doubt overhangs the Coronation in the sacristy of the church at Villaflores, although it is difficult to cavil with anyone who wishes to claim it for Fernando. In a composition which is a variation of that of Trujillo, the Virgin, wearing a lovely greyish drapery of the school of Tournai, kneels to re-

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ceive the crown from Our Lord, seated on a throne behind which stand musical angels and at the sides of which are aligned four Prophets, 1 each with his appropriate scroll, for instance St. John Baptist at the lower right with the inscription, Ecce agnus qui tollit. T w o of the very Flemish angels effectively close the composition at the top by crossing their trumpets above Christ's head. T h e face of the Saviour is instinct with a nervous intensity sometimes encountered in Fernando's personages. Nowhere has he or any of his followers painted jewels more affectionately or more memorably than on Christ's vestments or on His crown and that of the Virgin. It is possibly the repaint on her countenance that wrongly makes one hesitate to concur in the ascription to Fernando. If he did not execute the picture, the stare of the eyes would suggest Francisco Gallego as the most likely choice. Three panels of paired saints in the church of SS. Cosme y Damian at Burgos are of the utmost importance not only because they bear on their very faces the proof of being indubitable and superb works of Fernando Gallego himself but also because they provide the concrete evidence of his activity at Burgos to account for the evolution of the great local school derived from his style. They are all that is left of a retable that he must have done for the edifice. T w o hang on the south wall of the nave, one depicting Sts. Gregory and (?) Benedict (Fig. 26), the other, St. Andrew and a canonized bishop, both couples being ensconced in landscapes that are absolutely characteristic of Fernando. The third panel, displaying Sts. Catherine and Barbara and now relegated to one of the dependencies of the church, cannot conceal even beneath the extensive repaint the certain traces of his own handicraft. T h e y stand in a vaulted interior quite as typical of him as the landscapes of the companion panels. T h e Tightness of the attribution scarcely needs comment, for particularly in the virgin-martyrs and in the St. Andrew the lover of Spanish painting will meet old friends whose society he has often enjoyed in Fernando's productions. T h e St. Andrew may even be called, without contumely, a less pretentious version of the grand conception of the 1 Mayer mistakes two of the Prophets for donors, perhaps because the second from the top at the left is painted in profile with the vividness of Flemish portraiture.

FIG. 26.

FERNANDO GALLEGO.

STS. GREGORY AND BENEDICT.

SS. COSME Y DAMIAN, BURGOS (Photo. Photo

Club)

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Apostle in the Salamanca triptych. T h e St. Gregory, in a chasuble the simulated gold brocade of which is perhaps lovelier than would have been the result if the painter had used the actual gaudier gold-leaf, merely repeats, with slight variations, the representations of the same pope in the St. Catherine altarpiece at Salamanca and in the retable of Trujillo. T h e rayed haloes, instead of the round plaques, are a curiosity, being otherwise employed by Fernando in general only for the Saviour or the Virgin. The edge of St. Barbara's mantle carries an inscription that in this instance is intelligible — a petition for her prayers; but unfortunately it appears to be a later superimposition. T h e sacristy of the parroquia at Cabeza del Buey harbors a panel of the standing St. Bartholomew 1 paired with Santiago (Fig. 27) which, whether by Fernando Gallego or an immediate follower, has a significance beyond its small size and moderate aesthetic merit, in that it demonstrates the spread of the widely popular Gallego fashions further south even than Trujillo into the northeastern part of the province of Badajoz. It reveals that at this period in Estremadura the pictorial models from the north fought for supremacy with those which emanated from Andalusia and are also encountered in the region. Both saints are manifestly Gallego types, the upper part of the Santiago, for instance, well-nigh a replica of the bust of the same Apostle in the predella of the St. Ildefonso retable at Zamora. Their draperies fall in exactly the swollen expanses affected by Fernando, and the mantle of St. Bartholomew almost reproduces the contours of St. Andrew's in the Salamanca triptych. The jewelled border of this mantle is rendered with just Fernando's touch. T h e Apostles are separated by a column of mottled stone, and each is set behind one of the painted Gothic segmental arches with which he likes to frame his figures and scenes. T h e principal element in the landscape is a charming walled town. I rather think that the panel is the relic of an altarpiece by Fernando himself, but I am content if it be acknowledged as only of his school. In any case, we may safely register as a late production by 1 N o t St. Philip, as Melida in his Catälogo Monumental of the province of Badajoz has it (II, 187).

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his own hand the Crucifixion in the Weibel Collection, Madrid, which, because of its much greater artistic maturity, cannot possibly be a part of the same retable to which the signed Pieta in the same Collection belonged. Although his artistic fingerprints are everywhere to be descried in the Crucifixion

FIG. 27. FERNANDO GALLEGO (?). STS. BARTHOLOMEW AND JAMES MAJOR. PARISH CHURCH, CABEZA DEL BUEY

— particularly in the types of the Virgin and St. John, in the landscape, and in the peculiar interpretation of Flemish conventionalization of the drapery — yet the panel embodies the same relaxation of his cramped, primitive manner as the Salamanca triptych and the same surer and more facile manipu-

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lation of his art, here approximating again the achievement of a really great master. But there is more than this. He now essays with unexpectedly impressive result a degree of nervous emotionalism that is scarcely encountered elsewhere in his output or indeed anywhere, with the exception of the foreigner, El

FIG. 28. FERNANDO GALLEGO. HEAD OF ST. JOHN, DETAIL OF CRUCIFIXION. WEIBEL COLLECTION, MADRID (Photo. Arxiu Mas )

Greco, in the staid norms of Spanish painting. The head of St. John (Fig. 28), particularly, although rendered in an extreme and beautiful phase of Flemish scrupulousness, is powerfully infused with an expression of agonized grief. I am willing to follow Sanchez Canton 1 in attributing to 1

Nueva sola del Museo del Greco, Madrid, 1921, pp. xi, 3, 4, and 25-27.

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Fernando a painting on canvas of the Crowning with Thorns said to have come from a monastery at Toledo and now in the Museo del Greco in that city (Fig. 29). Its principal interest is

FIG. 29. FERNANDO GALLEGO. CROWNING WITH THORNS. MUSEO DEL GRECO, TOLEDO (From "Nueva

Sala del Museo del Greco " by Sanchez Canton )

that it is another of his works based upon Schongauer's prints, in this instance the version of the subject in the series on the Passion; but he has used his German source with his usual free-

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dom, here simplifying the composition. The picture is keyed to the highly emotional pitch of the Weibel Crucifixion, but the derivation of this excitement from the Schongauer print arouses the suspicion that, when Fernando occasionally violates Spanish sobriety, he is merely succumbing for the nonce to the agitated temper of Teutonic Gothic art, whether or not he has any definite prototype in mind. The Spanish love of opulence and the delight in the new-found verisimilitude of Flemish technique have caused him to add jewels to the costumes of Christ and of the frantic tormentor at the upper left, the latter of whom he has taken directly from the Schongauer engraving. If anyone can distinguish a shade of difference from the manner of Fernando Gallego himself in the Mass of St. Gregory in the Felix Schlayer Collection at Madrid (Fig. 30), it is so infinitesimal as not to be worth arguing about, and, for all practical purposes, the picture may be placed in the master's canon. Formerly in the English Collection of Sir J . Charles Robinson, it is said to have come from the retable in the chapel of the Chaves family 1 in the parish church of Bonilla de la Sierra in the province of Avila, west of the capital and on the border of the province of Salamanca which was a centre of Fernando's activity. In addition to two deacons and a pair of cardinals who assist the pope at the Mass, the aged lay donor kneels in the right foreground presented by St. Catherine, and is balanced at the left by the portrait of a cleric, probably the chaplain of the donor or a beneficiary of the church of Bonilla. All the types are absolutely those that we have encountered again and again in Fernando's output; in pose and bulging sweep of Flemish stylized drapery, the St. Catherine almost reproduces the prominent youth at the right in the Zamora vision of St. Leocadia. The donor and his companion are the most powerful characterizations and the most developed pieces of technique among Fernando's extant portraits, vying with the best Spanish imitations of the Flemish mode of portraiture and revealing a tremendous advance beyond the still almost "international" sort 1 T h e small retable shown to me in the chapel as that which once included the Schlayer picture is a very rustic work of the early sixteenth century, except for the modern daub, not representing the Mass of St. Gregory, said to have been substituted in the spot that used to contain Fernando's panel.

FIG. 30.

FERNANDO GALLEGO. MASS OF ST. GREGORY. SCHLAYER COLLECTION, MADRID {Photo. Gray )

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of portraiture embodied in the donors of his early Pieta in the Weibel Collection. T h e bottom of the panel bears one of the inscriptions promising indulgences to the devotee that were customarily appended to representations of the Mass of St. Gregory. 1 T h e discussion of the works that can with any confidence be assigned to Fernando himself may be concluded with two separate versions of the Epiphany, both of which are slight variations of the composition that he used for the theme at Trujillo, the principal difference being that at Trujillo he followed the tradition of making the third Magus a negro. The elongation of the figures and the more pinched technique, in contrast to the breadth of the Trujillo retable and the Salamanca triptych, would set the two panels at an early date in his production. One of them still remains in its Barcelona home as No. 120 of the recently and munificently published Catalogue of the Muntadas Collection. The other (Fig. 31) was shown in the Barcelona Exposition of 1888 as then in the De Miro Collection at Madrid 2 and in 1903 was recorded in the Pacully Collection, Paris; 3 whether it continues to be a member of the latter, largely dispersed Collection or has undergone a further peregrination, I am uninformed. In this second example, the virtual identity of the landscape (so far as it is not concealed by the residence of the Holy Family) with that of the Weibel Pieta argues for a position at the very opening of the master's career. It is to be supposed that Tormo 4 would no longer hold to the opinion that Fernando's hand is to be discerned in a large Via Dolorosa in the Collection of the Duchess of Parcent at Madrid (No. 17), which is a very exact translation into paint of the more pretentious of Schongauer's two versions of the theme. Reported to have come from a religious institution at Valencia, it has nothing to do even with the Gallego tradition but is patently a Flemish work of the early Renaissance or a Spanish work strongly imbued with the Italianate aspect of Flemish art. See vol. II, p. 352. Album of the Exposition, p. 109 and plate 8. 3 Revue de l'art ancien et moderne, X I I I (1903), 295. ι See his Catalogue of the Collection (then called the Iturbe Collection), p. n . 1

2

FIG. 31.

FERNANDO GALLEGO.

EPIPHANY.

PACULLY COLLECTION, PARIS (?)

(From the Album of the Barcelona Exposition

0} 1888)

i38

4.

FERNANDO

THE

S C H O O L OF F E R N A N D O AND IN T H E

GALLEGO

GALLEGO

IN

SALAMANCA

REGION

At the head of the works that should be definitively ascribed to the school of Fernando Gallego rather than to the master himself must be placed, because of its vast extent, the retable of the high altar of the cathedral at Ciudad Rodrigo the many sections of which, so far as they are preserved, are ensconced in the Cook Collection in Doughty House at Richmond, England. The iconographical repertoire is devoted to the life of Christ from the beginning through the Last Judgment, but, like Pedro Serra's altarpiece at Manresa, it includes also two themes from Genesis, in this instance the creation of E v e and a representation of the Chaos that existed before the world was made, larger than the other panels and therefore once a central division of the retable (Fig. 32). In the Cook Collection, the strictly narrative panels are arranged, in a disturbed order and with a simulation of the lost frames in modern gilt laid on perfectly flat, in four rows: (1) the creation of Eve, the Last Supper, the Deposition, the Marriage at Cana, and the Transfiguration; (2) the Entry into Jerusalem, the Crucifixion, the commission of Our Lord to St. Peter to feed His sheep, the young Christ in the Temple, and the Betrayal; (3) the Temptation, the Ecce Homo, the Circumcision, the Healing of a Blind Man, the Agony in the Garden, and Pilate washing his hands; and (4) the Resurrection of Lazarus, the Magdalene washing Christ's feet, Christ and the Woman of Samaria, the Via Dolorosa (Fig. 33), the Resurrection, and the Last Judgment. Chaos, on a separately hung panel, is represented by God the Father in a mandorla, by a second, lower mandorla containing an old man holding a machine of wheels, by an intermediate circle surrounding the enigmatical word H I L L E ( ? ) , and by four wreaths of angels in alternating bands of gold and white serving to set off the mandorlas and circle. The word CAHOS (sic) is inscribed at the bottom, 1 and the background is at least in part repainted. The symbolism of the man with the rotating machine and of the 1 Actually, of course, Chaos is probably conceived as the space inscribed with the word, outside the circles and mandorlas.

FIG. 32. SCHOOL OF FERNANDO GALLEGO. CHAOS, SECTION OF RETABLE OF CIUDAD RODRIGO. COOK COLLECTION, RICHMOND (Photo. Gray )

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circle with HILLE has not yet been adequately elucidated. In a manuscript note inserted in the copy of the Catalogue of the Cook Collection lent to the visitor at Doughty House, the former is explained as St. Peter with the clock of time; but it is hard to believe that an Apostle of the new dispensation would have been transplanted back into Urzeit, and one would naturally interpret him rather, with the common mediaeval confusion of classical antiquity and the Bible, as Saturn in his chronological capacity. It is perhaps not too great a strain upon the imagination to wonder whether the H I L L E , which is one of the Netherlandish forms cognate with the English word hell, might not have been copied by the artist from some Flemish painting of Chaos that he was using as a model. He would thus (cryptically for Spanish-speaking spectators) have wished to place hell at the lowest point in the universe beneath the circles of angels. Or should we read rather NILLE, and is this someone's repainting of NIHIL, namely nothingness or void? Together with the spirits who surround the Father, the angels in the wreaths make the nine orders, with one order represented in each half of the four wreaths. Some of them are clearly distinguishable, the archangels at the left of the second ring from the outside, a crowned group and a sceptred group in the third ring, who would be the dominations, virtues, or powers, and at the right of the inmost ring the thrones designating themselves by the chairs that they hold in their hands. Three pieces of the predella are also preserved in the Cook Collection, representing, in the customary larger scale of the Gallego atelier for this section of a retable, paired busts of Apostles engaged, according to the old motif of Gothic sculpture, in discussion, Sts. Peter and Andrew, John and Bartholomew, Thomas (with his not infrequent Spanish attribute of the Virgin's girdle) and an unidentified member of the college of the Twelve (called in the Catalogue, Mark). Again in harmony with the practice of the workshop, the Apostles are set against gold backgrounds (absent from the rest of the altarpiece) incised with a florid, schematized design, and their forms are delineated with more care than the actors in the narrative scenes. The general opinion has been that Fernando himself did some parts of the retable and two or more of his pupils the rest, but

FIG. 33. SCHOOL OF FERNANDO GALLEGO. VIA DOLOROSA, SECTION OF RETABLE OF CIUDAD RODRIGO. COOK COLLECTION, RICHMOND (Photo. Gray )

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the present writer is bound to state forthwith that he is doubtful whether Fernando's hand is to be detected anywhere and that he believes the whole retable to be executed in the single, uniform manner of one of the master's disciples (although in any mediaeval Spanish retable it goes without saying that the artist in charge — in this instance, the disciple — may have employed some assistants, who, however, are dominated by his personality and style). A figure now and then rises almost to Fernando's level, for example Christ in the scene with the Woman of Samaria, parts of the Last Judgment, or the Sts. John and Thomas of the predella; but even pupils, like Benozzo assisting Fra Angelico in the Vatican, sometimes nearly vie with their teachers when under their direct inspiration, and Francisco Gallego in the St. Catherine pictures often approximates his relative in achievement. The members of the Gallego shop, contrary to the habit of other painters, generally outdid themselves when they came to execute the large separate figures of saints. It is not impossible that Fernando was responsible for some little work upon the monument, but the style of one pupil so largely predominates that the retable should be catalogued as an expression of this pupil's personality. He is a highly individual disciple. The attenuation of form that he had learned from his master is developed to the point of an exaggerated mannerism and commonly accompanied by a disjointing of the body, for which Bouts had set a mild precedent, so that the combination of the two peculiarities produces a result which seems like a primitive aspect of El Greco's purposed distortions. In such instances, also, the physiques have El Greco's strange flabbiness. It is curious that at this moment in history the sculptor Amadeo was intentionally perpetrating the same aberrations in northern Italy. The defective drawing and the incorrect foreshortenings that crop forth in certain sections of the Ciudad Rodrigo retable, appearing in their most outrageous phase in the Roman soldiers of the Resurrection, may have been done with design on the part of the author, for mediaeval artists were not so unsophisticated as it is our superior modern way to judge them, and the Ciudad Rodrigo painter may have thus consciously sought, like the earlier Giovanni Pisano or the later El Greco, emotional and neurotic effects. Other outstanding examples are the spasmodically and incredibly convulsed

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thieves in the Crucifixion. Of the two assistants whom, besides Fernando, Bertaux believes to have worked upon the retable, he denominates the one responsible for the faulty draughtsmanship the Maitre aux Armures by reason of the suits of armor in which many of the soldiers of the Via Dolorosa and the Resurrection are encased; but although the concern with armor in the Resurrection is more pronounced than in Schongauer's rendering of the theme in the series of the Passion, upon which it is partly based, it is best not to perpetuate the nomenclature because the artist in this as in other respects merely gives embodiment to an interest that is everywhere present in the Gallego atelier 1 and in many other Hispano-Flemish productions, and the Maitre aux Armures is, as a matter of fact, to all intents and purposes the author of the whole altarpiece. A further peculiarity of his is that he paints more unmistakably Iberian types than does Fernando. It is a tenable theory that he is the assistant of the Trujillo predella, developing larger powers when forced to rely more upon himself at Ciudad Rodrigo, or that the Trujillo assistant helped him here and there, as in the Apostles of the Last Judgment; but such splitting of the hairs of connoisseurship is beyond the scope of a general History of Spanish Painting. Except in the case of the Marriage at Cana, which practically repeats the memorable rendering at Arcenillas, the compositions are not any closer to those that one meets in other productions of the Gallego shop than would be natural in view of the generally established iconography of the sacred themes. In some instances, indeed, the painter departs rather originally and piquantly from the accepted norms. The Circumcision is a drastically new and medical treatment of the subject, and, as in the celebration of the Marriage in the Trujillo retable, there is even an attempt to imagine, for the officiating priest, the kind of headdress that a Hebrew cleric would have worn. In the Temptation, the Satanic request to turn the stones into bread is made principal, and the other two episodes of the ordeal are relegated in smaller scale to the background. The chief emphasis in the Betrayal is oddly centred upon the violently agitated figure of the servant who, in front of Christ, is threatened by St. Peter and becomes the axis of the composition (suggested 1

See above, p. 111.

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by the corresponding figure in Schongauer's Betrayal in the series on the Passion). The scourger of the Ecce Homo which perhaps comes from Arcenillas 1 puts in his appearance in the Ciudad Rodrigo version standing in the background, and since he is included also by Pedro Bello, he may have been a regular constituent of the Gallego cartoon. The commission to St. Peter to feed the sheep is moved from the seashore to one of the interiors so characteristic of the Gallego shop, and, as we might expect in Spain, is translated into an ecclesiastical ceremony in which Christ is vested in a cope and the prince of the Apostles in a chasuble, while hard by another Apostle courteously and with miraculous foreknowledge stands ready with the tiara. Save for the round table, the composition of the Last Supper does not correspond to that of Arcenillas, and contains a curious and mysterious element of genre, an Apostle, not Judas, holding his nose. Except in so far as the new treatments of the sacred themes that have just been mentioned can be so interpreted and except for the emphasis upon objects of the household, genre is rarely encountered in the Ciudad Rodrigo retable. A dog, to be sure, is crouched upon the floor in the room of the Magdalene's penitence, but the recently made beasts and birds at the creation of Eve are not lay-figures but actors in the story. There is, of course, the subordinate genre of the tiny personages customarily peopling the backgrounds of the pictures that issued from the circle of Fernando, as in the panels of the Woman of Samaria, the Via Dolorosa, and the Deposition. Although the artist of Ciudad Rodrigo is Fernando's inferior, he possesses all of his master's charming concern with settings of landscape. The retable is stamped with the various trade-marks of the general style that was promulgated by the Gallego atelier ·—• the Flemish featuring of jewels and of domestic detail (such as the plates on the wall in the Last Supper), the spindle-legged nudes, whose anatomy is fairly well defined (especially in the Last Judgment), and the mannerism of vocalization through scrolls (as in the Healing of the Blind Man, in the commission to St. Peter, and again in the Last Judgment). The indebtedness to the school of Tournai is more than ordinarily obvious. 1

See above, p. 121.

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Bertaux points out in the Last Judgment, especially in the figures of the damned, close analogies to the forms in Roger van der Weyden's rendering of the theme at Beaune, which the author may have known through the imitation in one of the wings of the so-called Cambrai altar, now in the Prado, if the latter reached Spain at a sufficiently early date. 1 T h e Cook retable is dated between 1480 and 1488 in an inscription visible before the structure was dismounted and mentioned in a letter of the canon of Ciudad Rodrigo, Ramon Pascual Diez, quoted by Ponz 3 in his account of the town; and in view of the abovementioned influences of Schongauer's prints, this is indeed the earliest possible decade for its creation. 3 T h e Via Dolorosa owes somewhat more than the Arcenillas version to the larger of Schongauer's two treatments of the subject, but this larger treatment is ordinarily assigned to no later a period than the series of engravings on the Passion. In a woodcut of the Resurrection in the humanist Antonio de Nebrija's Aurea expositio hymnorum published in Saragossa by Paul Hurus in 1499, Van de P u t 4 would like to see a derivation from the version in the Ciudad Rodrigo retable, so that, if he were right, we should be provided with corroborative evidence of a date before the end of the century; but as a matter of fact the similarities arise from a mutual dependence upon Schongauer, the woodcut copying the German treatment almost exactly and the Ciudad Rodrigo version following it only in part. W h a t remains at Salamanca itself outside of Fernando and Francesco Gallego's own creations is rather sorry stuff. Despite the beauty of the landscape, I cannot concur with the critics who see Fernando's own hand in the effigy of St. Christopher accompanied by a diminutive kneeling clerical donor in the cloister of the Old Cathedral, at least in its present condition: a comparison with the authenticated representation of the same saint in the triptych of the New Cathedral is too unflattering. An enthroned St. Andrew, of lumbering build, over an altar in the cloister, I could conceive of as having been painted by Pedro Bello, but should not venture the attribution with much seriousness. The detail most reminiscent of Fernando's tutelage is See above, p. 24. Viage, X I I , 347. See also Quadrado, Salamanca, Avila y Segovia in Espaiia, sus monumentos y artes, 234. 3 See above, p. 89. 4 Burlington Magazine, X I I I (1908), 156. 1

2

i46

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GALLEGO

another small clerical donor. A faithful but far from gifted follower did the two organ-shutters of Gabriel (Fig. 34) and the Virgin Annunciate that h a v e been transferred from the D e A n a y a chapel in the cloister to the little M u s e u m of the cathedral. T h e tradition of the shop forced the elaborate architectural settings upon him, but he did not know how to represent them in any other w a y than shockingly out of scale. M a y e r has placed in the Gallego school a helplessly executed retable in the chapel of St. B a r b a r a in the cloister. T h e centre is occupied b y a statue; the paintings consist of the trial of the virgin saint at the left, her decapitation at the right (in which the figures are gigantically disproportionate to those of the trial), and at the top, the V i a Dolorosa, Crucifixion, and Deposition. I t is difficult to follow the German scholar in discerning any relation to the Gallego style, except perhaps in the elongated form of Christ in the Deposition; and the paintings should properly be described as rustic productions of the early sixteenth century, already touched b y the Renaissance, possibly in its Flemish form. W h e n it comes to accepting as Fernando's own handicraft the martyrdom of St. Ursula in a room of the Dominican monastery attached to S. Esteban at Salamanca, one must take decided issue with M a y e r , for, although it is a fairly well painted Hispano-Flemish panel of c. 1490, it is doubtful whether its author belongs even in the Gallego orbit. T h e best executed passages are the draperies, and these, together with the general tonality of color, are the only factors that remotely suggest a knowledge of the Gallego fashions. T h e heavier bodies and facial types are v e r y different. T h e scene is set against a Gothic city intended as Cologne: as, at the right, Ursula with her virgins arrives in one boat and Pope C y r i a c u s with his cardinals in another, they are attacked b y a swarm o f barbarians from the left. T h e panels of a M a d o n n a , a St. P e t e r , and a St. Bartholomew assigned b y M a y e r to Fernando's school were sold m a n y years ago from the church of C a n t a l p i n o , east of Salamanca, where he states that they exist. O f the Virgin and Child and of the St. Bartholomew, copies h a v e been substituted in the church, which are not very instructive in regard to a connection with the Gallego group except to show that the M a d o n n a was enthroned in an interior such as Fernando loved to paint.

FIG. 34. SCHOOL OF FERNANDO GALLEGO. ST. GABRIEL OF THE ANNUNCIATION, ORGAN-SHUTTER. OLD CATHEDRAL, SALAMANCA {Photo. Arxiu

Mas )

i48 5.

FERNANDO OTHER

HISPANO-FLEMISH OF

GALLEGO

PAINTINGS

IN T H E

PROVINCE

ZAMORA

The Deposition, No. 1298 of the Prado (Fig. 35), although reported to have come from the city of Zamora, reveals no dependence upon the Gallego manner. The style, indeed, is so entirely impregnated with reminiscences of Roger van der Weyden that we might legitimately question whether it is the work of a Spaniard at all and not rather a secondary Fleming's copy of one of Roger's lost paintings. The provincialism is not enough to stamp it as Spanish, and the factors tending most to confirm the Prado authorities' designation of it as indigenous are the somewhat Iberian types of Christ and especially of the Nicodemus or Joseph of Arimathaea who supports His legs. The other figures are lifted bodily out of Roger's works; the landscape and particularly the miniature city at the left, girt with walls and water, are only somewhat less exquisite renderings of the similar details that we encounter in Roger's backgrounds; and even his color has not been transmuted into Spanish tones. The scene is framed in the mode of Roger's panels by a sculptured arch simulated in monochrome. The subjects in the archivolt are six statuettes of Prophets and in the medallions of the spandrels Samson tearing asunder the lion and smiting the Philistines with the jawbone of an ass. Here as well as in the carved pure design of the arch the author attains almost the exquisiteness of the Flemish master himself. The composition is apparently based upon the Deposition in the Granada triptych by Dierick Bouts (of which a replica exists at Valencia), 1 unless we are to suppose that Bouts took his arrangement from a lost representation of the theme by Roger. Although the panel does not seem to be affiliated with the Gallego atelier, it reveals the potent influence of the school of Tournai and of Bouts in Zamora at about the time when Fernando began his career, and it is therefore a witness to the main sources out of which his art grew. In the church of S. Miguel at Villalpando in the province of Zamora, there are built in at the sides of the high altar not only 1

See above, p. 26.

FIG. 35.

DEPOSITION.

PRADO, MADRID

(Photo, Ruiz Vernacci)

ISO

FERNANDO

GALLEGO

fragments of a retable by Nicolas Frances or a pupil 1 but also two Hispano-Flemish panels depicting the Agony in the Garden and the Trinity. Gomez-Moreno 2 perceives in them the budding influence of Italy and assigns them to the beginning of the sixteenth century, but I should not naturally have thought them quite so late and should have judged what GomezMoreno evidently considers an Italianate relaxation of the Flemish mannerisms rather to be the result of provincialism's deadening taint. N o kinship with the Gallego movement at Zamora is apparent. T h e situation of Villalpando close to the borders of the provinces of Leon, Palencia, and Valladolid would have accounted for a connection with the art of any one of these regions; but the indifferently gifted author reduces the Hispano-Flemish manner to so generalized and countrified an average that it is a fruitless task to determine in which group he should be classed. There remain for final record in the province of Zamora the frescoes that embellish the east end of the Ermita of Sta. Maria de la Vega (popularly described as of the Cristo de las Batallas) at Toro. Although obviously creditable Hispano-Flemish productions of c. 1490, they are not affected by the proximity of the Gallego shop or of any other contemporary atelier that I know, and it is also hard to recognize which of the great Flemish masters the author was particularly endeavoring to ape. The subject of the semidome in the apse is the Coronation. Our L a d y kneels before the throne of the Trinity encompassed by musical angels, full-faced like those of Melozzo, and, at a higher level, by flame-colored seraphim represented as complete bodies feathered in the manner of birds. In the draperies of the two flying angels the painter has reproduced with much skill the stylized Flemish puckerings of the folds. T h e originally blue background, now faded to white, is emblazoned with embossed stars. T h e bay of vaulting in front of the semidome and the intervening arch have retained a frescoed decoration of a pattern of laceria, and the rosettes that are inserted in this Moorish design are, on the vaulting, rendered also in relief. 1 2

See vol. I l l , p. 286. Catalogo Monumental, Provincia de Zamora, 249.

CHAPTER XLVII T H E SCHOOL OF F E R N A N D O GALLEGO. HISPANO-FLEMISH P A I N T I N G IN T H E PROVINCE OF LEON I.

WORKS

PRODUCED

UNDER

FERNANDO

THE

INFLUENCE

OF

GALLEGO

As M I G H T have been prophesied from its location directly north of Salamanca and Zamora, the province of Leon provided a rich market for wares similar to those of the Gallego shop. The examples closest to Fernando's manner, though scarcely quite worthy of the master himself, are four panels from the life of St. Cyprian of Carthage built (together with other sections that will concern us in subsequent volumes) into the later retable of the high altar in the church of Villanueva de Jamuz, southeast of Leon. The scenes depicted are: his coronation as bishop, a somewhat less pompous composition than Spanish artists ordinarily made of these episcopal consecrations; his overthrow of an idol in an interior of the characteristic Gallego sort, in which the painter has set for himself and solved with considerable success a difficult problem of an elaborate oblique perspective (Fig. 36); his cure of a sick child (or perhaps his care of the afflicted at the time of the pestilence); and his decapitation outside the walls of the carefully painted city of Carthage (though, as a matter of fact, his martyrdom took place at some distance from the town). The series of panels are particularly rich in Fernando's characteristic svelte youths, derived from Bouts and topped with high caps. The nearest approximations to Fernando's potentialities are embodied in the aged spectator with a staff who watches St. Cyprian's victory over the idol and in the holy bishop's executioner. It is impossible to follow Gomez-Moreno 1 in ascribing to the painter of Villanueva the rustic panels, made worse by accretions of dirt and repaint, that constitute the retable of the high 1

Catälogo monumental, Promncia de Lein,

467.

152

P R O V I N C E OF

LEON

altar in the church of the near-lying Saludes de Castroponce. T h e y are, to be sure, the production of some countryman who about 1500 had come into contact with distant reflections of Fernando Gallego's manner, but technically they lie far below the standard of Villanueva. T h e body of the retable consists of eight scenes from the life of Christ, the predella of six halflengths of Apostles. In addition to the copy of Bonaventura Berlinghieri's St. Francis, 1 the church of Villace harbors a fairly presentable panel of the decapitation of St. John Baptist that has at least a certain connection with the Gallego school. T h e setting is a landscape, but the Spanish tradition has been sufficiently potent to substitute a delicately incised gold heaven for a Flemish sky. Another panel, depicting the Mass of St. Gregory and catalogued by Gomez-Moreno, I did not find in the church. T h e Churrigueresque structure over the high altar of the church at Escobar, south of Sahagun, contains eight panels that come from an earlier retable of St. Clement, to whom the parish is dedicated, and constitute a late and agreeable manifestation of the Gallego style. T h e scenes represented from the life of St. Clement, now arranged in a confused order, are: his consecration as bishop of Rome; his baptism of a group of people, probably Sisinnius and the three hundred and thirteen of his household; his trial before Mamertinus; his departure on a boat for exile, while Mamertinus watches from the land; another episode in which from a ship he blesses a man upon the shore and of which I cannot interpret the significance, unless it be a second phase of his farewell to Mamertinus; the miraculous lamb indicating to him on the island of his banishment the spot where he is to strike the rock for water; his martyrdom by being cast into the sea with an anchor; and the mother finding alive the child who had been engulfed at St. Clement's tomb under the waves. M a n y of the types are again those that the Gallego circle took over from Dierick Bouts, occasionally so softened that, probably quite by chance, they resemble the personages of Pintoricchio. T h e backgrounds perhaps demonstrate the relation to Fernando's shop even more clearly, whether they be 1

See my vol. II, p. 183.

P R O V I N C E O F LEON

153

his Flemish landscapes or his interiors of churches or churchlike edifices. In the churches of the consecration and the christening the author has reproduced Fernando's trick of depicting a retable within a retable. He is particularly felicitous at paint-

FIG. 36. SCHOOL OF FERNANDO GALLEGO. ST. CYPRIAN OVERTHROWING IDOL, SECTION OF RETABLE. PARISH CHURCH, VILLANUEVA DE JAMUZ

ing in the pretty Flemish way the water that strangely flows through the whole legend of St. Clement, for instance the lovely sea accented with a sail-boat in the episode of the recovery of the child. As usual in the school-pieces, in distinction from Fernando's own handicraft, actual gold is utilized in the bro-

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P R O V I N C E OF L E O N

cades, and at Escobar some of such objects as the baptismal font are gilded. T h e panel of the suffering Christ between the Virgin and St. John in the sacristy is too far ruined to permit sound judgment in regard to Gomez-Moreno's opinion that it once belonged to the St. Clement retable. Various ecclesiastical buildings at Astorga possess paintings of the Gallego school that have been collected for the prospective Diocesan Museum. In the new Palacio Episcopal are four panels from the life of St. Anthony Abbot gathered in from the parish church of Villafäfila, north of Zamora, and representing his distribution of his goods to the poor and sick at the commencement of his asceticism, his castigation by devils, the young hermit carrying him back into the cave for a second bout with the demons, and Satan calling at the door of his cell while an angel (of the miniature Flemish cast) hovers above in the air. T h e author is indifferently gifted, and repainting further derogates from his modest attainments. Removed from direct Flemish inspiration, he reverts like a true Spaniard to gold backgrounds. The three pieces of the predella representing the Pieta, Sts. Francis, Anthony of Padua, Dominic, and Peter Martyr, which Gomez-Moreno 1 registers as parts of the Villafäfila retable, I could not find at Astorga. A room of the Seminario contains a panel (not catalogued by Gomez-Moreno) which has been saved from a retable at Santa Marina del R e y , between Astorga and Leon, and which evidently depicts the trial of the virgin patroness of the village of provenience. She stands before a magistrate; a woman in the feminine crowd behind her holds a lamb; and a goat or ram is being slain in the foreground. I take it to be some phase of the trial of the Galician St. Marina (not the more famous Marina who was disguised as a monk), since she was confused with, and appropriated the story of, the great St. Margaret, who is called by the Greeks Marina and who kept the sheep of her nurse.2 T h e craft is somewhat better than that of the Villafäfila panels but still seems to have its roots in the Gallego tradition. 3 A final CatAlogo monumental, Provincia de Zamora, 316. See the account of St. Marina of Orense in the Bollandists under July 18; in Alonso de Villegas Selvago, Flos sanctorum, edition of Madrid, 1593, vol. I, p. 640; and in Espana sagrada, X V I I , 216-222. 3 See below, p. 165. 1

2

P R O V I N C E OF L E O N

155

and fairly tolerable work of the Gallego school that I have seen at Astorga (again not noted by Gomez-Moreno is a panel in a room of the Hospital depicting the bulls bringing St. James's body to Queen Lupa's palace, with the strange detail of a devil on the rock in the background and with particularly brilliant gold in the brocades of the costumes. 2.

THE

PALANQUINOS

MASTER

The dominant figure in the Hispano-Flemish painting of the diocese of Leon was an anonymous artist whose personality was first recognized by Gomez-Moreno and some of whose productions were grouped together by him. Gomez-Moreno suggested for him the title of the Palanquinos Master inasmuch as the most significant works of his that the Spanish scholar knew were six panels from the church of the town of Palanquinos, south of Leon, now built, together with the great series by Nicolas Frances, into the conglomerate retable of the high altar in the cathedral of L e o n ; 2 and although I have recently come upon much more capacious and important achievements of the same artist, it would only create further chaos to abandon Gomez-Moreno's designation and to invent a new (and more truly descriptive) name from the town of one of these larger altarpieces. He doubtless owes something to Fernando Gallego's influence, but he also stands upon his own feet as a rather gifted translator of the Flemish models into terms that are both very Iberian and highly individualistic. The most systematic method will be to begin with the panels from Palanquinos that have bestowed a title upon the artist and then to tabulate his other paintings at Leon itself which have been identified by GomezMoreno, before we attempt, in climactic order, to discuss the whole retables of his that are preserved in villages of the diocese. Four of the Palanquinos panels are among the six sections of the present predella in the high altar, the Annunciation, Nativity, Epiphany, and Purification. The other two (perhaps themselves originally parts of a predella) contain each three 1 The same subject is treated in one of those two of the now dispersed panels from the retable of the cemetery chapel at Astorga which have entered the Lazaro Collection at Madrid and which, as of the early Renaissance, will concern us in a later volume. ' Vol. I l l , pp. 262-263.

156

PROVINCE OF LEON

half-lengths of Apostles (Fig. 37), Andrew, John, Paul, Peter, James Major, and Thomas (again with the attribute of the girdle), 1 and are inserted in the structure higher up under the translation of Santiago's relics by Nicolas Frances. The mudejar patterns tooled in the gold backgrounds are one of the Palanquinos Master's peculiarities. The attenuation of physique and the nature of the countenances may bespeak some influence of Fernando Gallego, but, whatever his sources, the author has created out of them types that are always easily recognizable as his own. T w o of their qualities are their vitally Spanish character and a watery intensity of gaze. T h e student should note particularly the fervid and thoroughly indigenous asceticism of the Santiago. Like Fernando Gallego and his circle, the Palanquinos Master reserves his best powers for the effigies of saints in a predella, and the Apostles are unexpectedly well characterized and differentiated. Neither in the scenes from the Infancy nor in any other of his narrative panels does he show himself an original or interesting composer. A token of Hispanicization is the increase of gold in the draperies and accessories, as in the tunic of the Virgin and the vase for the flowers in the Annunciation. Although they reveal no relation to the Gallego circle and can scarcely be attributed to the Palanquinos Master, the other two panels in the predella of the high altar, depicting the Death of the Virgin and Pentecost, may be recorded here in order to complete our account of the retable. Their provenience, indeed, the church of Sta. Maria del Mercado at Leon, is not the same. The stylistic divergence is created by superior technical gifts and by a dependence upon the German manner of Schongauer, which in the Death of the Virgin takes concrete form in a rather free adaptation of his engraving of the Dormition, so often copied in Spain, as a basis for the composition. Among the minor variations the most interesting is the addition of a welcoming chorus of miniature, musical angels at the top enveloped in clouds still rendered by the centuries-old Spanish convention of scallops. Although the painter does not reproduce Schongauer's personages figure by figure, yet he is very much under 1

See above, p. 140.

FIG. 37. THE PALANQUINOS MASTER. PREDELLA OF APOSTLES. CATHEDRAL, LEON (From G6mez-Moreno $ " Catalogo Monumental, Provincia de Le6n " )

158

PROVINCE OF LEON

the domination of the German's general style, imitating his Teutonic types and draperies. T h e same influences are at work in the Pentecost, a subject of which, however, there is no extant cartoon by Schongauer. One or two of the heads are somewhat analogous to those of the Palanquinos Apostles, for instance in the case of the prominent old man standing at the right of the Virgin's bed who recalls the Palanquinos St. Paul; but it is improbable that the author of the Dormition and the Pentecost is the Palanquinos Master in a more Germanic phase. Six other panels from Sta. Maria del Mercado, now serving to make a retable on the right wall of the capilla mayor of the cathedral, must await our attention in a subsequent volume as belonging to the early Renaissance. T h e cathedral of Leon, in the chapel of St. Anthony of Padua, contains still another and a larger manipulation of Schongauer's print of the Death of the Virgin (formerly in the sacristy), executed, I think, by a Spaniard of c. 1500 but a Spaniard who, though lacking the German's powerful draughtsmanship, follows the lines of his model more closely and is conversant with the Teutonic system of color as well as with northern engraving. The large Deposition, of unstated provenience, hung at the left of the high altar is our immediate concern because it is almost certainly by the Palanquinos Master (Fig. 38). T h e figures that make the link with the Palanquinos Apostles are the Nicodemus, Joseph of Arimathaea, and the three spectators in the upper right corner. T h e principal interest of the panel, if the Palanquinos Master's work, is that it reveals in him an intense loyalty to the precedents of the school of Tournai. Indeed, there are few other Spanish pictures of so late a date, c. 1500, in which the debt to Roger van der Weyden is still so tangible, not only in the derivation of the composition from the version in the Gallery at T h e Hague or from a very similar rendering by Roger but even in the actual types, as of the Virgin and St. John. I do not find so exact a parallelism of the Leon panel with the treatment of the theme in the Budapest Museum by the Sevillian painter, Pedro Sanchez, as Gomez-Moreno believes that he discerns; what analogies there are derive from the less pronounced indebtedness of Pedro Sanchez to the same cartoon of Roger van der Weyden.

ι6ο

PROVINCE OF LEON

W e may also admit to the canonical works of the Palanquinos Master the large panels of Sts. Cosmas and Damian (Fig. 39) built into the right wall of the chapel of the Virgen del Camino in the cathedral and originally intended to cover the earlier frescoes of these saints in the same chapel which were executed by a follower of Nicolas Frances. 1 T h e y not only, as generally, wear the garments of physicians and are accompanied by the customary medical paraphernalia, but they carry the unusual attributes of the crosses upon which they were ineffectually stoned, and St. Damian (so labelled) displays the arrows that were as futilely discharged against them. In each of the little pointed projections at the tops of the panels that were utilized to fill in the spots necessary to conceal the spaces of the frescoes, a miniature Flemish angel flutters down with a crown of martyrdom. St. Damian is ensconced in a Gothic exedra in the mode of the ecclesiastical interiors that Fernando Gallego loved to paint; St. Cosmas stands in a landscape at the back of which the artist, like his predecessor, Nicolas Frances, in the panel of the translation of Santiago's body, 2 has aptly introduced a semblance of the cathedral of Leon. Charmingly but with geographical inaccuracy he has placed a river at the side of the cathedral, so that he may exhibit his Flemish skill in depicting the reflections of the walls in the water. Despite the Flemish character of the settings, Spanish gold, again incised with mudejar patterns, emblazons the skies, and the garments of the saints are opulent gold brocades. For concrete proof of the authorship, one should compare the head of St. Cosmas with that of St. John in the Palanquinos predella, the mystic expression of St. Damian and his curious fur hat with the corresponding details of the Santiago, and both figures with the spectators at the upper right of the Deposition. In facial types, proportions of the body, and disposition of the draperies, the painter is here so much closer to Fernando Gallego that the suspicion of his influence is justified. In the beginning one balks at accepting Gomez-Moreno's attribution to the same artist of the panel in the Museo Arqueologico of San Marcos at Leon depicting St. Michael accom1 2

Vol. I l l , p. 282. Ibid., 272.

FIG. 39. THE PALANQUINOS MASTER. (Photo,

ST. DAMIAN. ffinocio)

CATHEDRAL, LEON

102

PROVINCE OF LEON

panied by three other angels precipitating to infernal depths Satan and his minions; but prolonged study convinces the student that the Spanish critic was right in the first place. The diapering of the gold background with mudejar patterns would not of itself be determinative, but the visages are eventually seen to conform to the rather sharp-faced types of the Palanquinos Master, especially the countenances of St. Michael and of the angel next to him at the right, which are constructed on the same lines as the physiognomies of St. Cosmas and St. John Evangelist. If he had any training in the Gallego school, the reminiscences are here pretty nearly expunged. In the Spanish mode he has coerced the composition into an effective formal design. Satan, like a crushed and malevolent bat, spreads his wings through the middle of the panel, dividing it into two parts, and the magnificent sweep of his wings ends in the rather powerful dramatic head of another demon foreshortened towards the spectator in his fall; the tiers of victorious angels are ranged across the upper half of the picture; and the other discomfited devils, in the lower half, are counterbalanced by monstrous sprites at the left, both groups being thrown into lines that continue the general movement in the panel towards the right. On the strength of the resemblances of St. Joseph and the Wise Men to the Apostles in the retable of the high altar in the cathedral, we may again safely agree with Gomez-Moreno and ascribe to the Palanquinos Master a panel of the Epiphany once in the chapel of the Granja de San Antolin, close to Cabreros del Rio, just south of the capital, but last reported as in the house of the Granja's owner, Don Jose Sanchez, at Leon. These scraps at Leon by the Palanquinos Master have, in a way, been poor pickings, and it is pleasant to come in the end to more satisfactory objects of study, two huge retables that are unquestionably demonstrated by internal evidence to be primal works by his own hand. Both are in towns which, though in the province of Valladolid, belong to the diocese of Leon. The panels of one example, dedicated to the two St. Johns, are built into a modern structure over the high altar of the church of S. Juan Bautista at Villaion de Campos. They are arranged in tiers in a slightly disturbed order, the scenes from the life of

PROVINCE OF LEON

163

the Baptist at the left and those from the life of the Evangelist at the right; but one episode in the former series, the Precursor's indication of Our Lord as the Lamb of God, has been moved out of place into the Evangelist's territory. For the sake of creating enough scenes for the Baptist, some events not belonging to the orthodox iconography of his history have to be introduced. The subjects at Villalon from his life read, if stated in proper chronological order: the annunciation of Zacharias; his subsequent encounter with his wife, St. Elizabeth, a scene invented to fill out the series on the model of the meeting of Sts. Joachim and Anna at the Golden Gate; the annunciation of Our Lady brought into the succession as a preliminary to the visitation, which is the next episode depicted; the nativity of the Baptist (with the Virgin assisting, as frequently in Spanish iconography); his circumcision and naming, an event that in art is usually telescoped with his birth; the above-mentioned scene of the Ecce Agnus Dei; the baptism of Christ; the dance of Salome; and the decapitation, with the princess receiving the head. The Evangelist's life is chronicled in the following chapters: one of his sermons (probably intended as the beginning of his missionary activity in Greece); the ordeal at the Latin Gate in Rome; the writing of the Apocalypse on the island of Patmos; the Ephesians welcoming him at the entrance to their city; the raising of Drusiana; the overthrow of the temple of Diana at Ephesus (or perhaps the fall of the baths upon the heretic Cerinthus); the drinking of the poisoned cup; and St. John's translation to heaven (in which the artist imitates the miniaturist's tricks of the Flemings by introducing a carefully delineated retable and antependium, ablaze with gold, in front of the open tomb before which the Evangelist prays prior to his assumption). Eight of the half-lengths of Apostles from the predella are preserved, the very brothers in type of those from Palanquinos and each exhibiting on a scroll or book, according to a regular iconographical custom, one of the versicles of the Creed called after them. Their names, from left to right, are Thomas, James Major, Matthew (?), Simon, John, Andrew, Philip, and Bartholomew. The beautifully tooled gold backgrounds in the predella have the characteristic patterns of lacer'ta with foliate borders; in the body of the retable the de-

164

P R O V I N C E O F LEON

signs are sometimes Moorish, sometimes brocaded. In view of the glorious old Mozarabic tradition of Leon, it was most natural that the Palanquinos Master should continue the use of Arabic motifs, and as a ceiling of the house in the scene that represents St. John Evangelist taking the poisoned cup he depicts an artesonado that is unmistakably mudejar. The Palanquinos Master's greatest extant work is the retable of the high altar in the church of Sta. Marina at Mayorga, a town somewhat to the west of Villalon. The centre of the structure is occupied by a statue, and the two upper rows of painted compartments relate the history of St. Marina, which is virtually identical with that of St. Margaret. 1 She is first baptized; then she is depicted as actually swooning in the country at the advances of her unwelcome suitor; she is brought to trial, incarcerated, visited in the prison by her lover, who is also her judge, and she is scourged. The second row of scenes begins with the most celebrated event in her life and in that of St. Margaret, the encounter with the dragon, an episode that is here extended over two compartments. She is first seen attacked by the monster — in the conception of which the painter transcends his usual dullness of imagination and achieves one of the most outlandish of all mediaeval pieces of grotesquerie; and then, having been swallowed, she triumphantly bursts forth from its body. The demons who persecute her are next routed by an angel; she suffers a second flagellation; again like St. Margaret she floats upon the surface of the water in the vat in which they had sought to drown her; and finally she receives the coup de grace of decapitation. It must already have become apparent that the meagre details of the legend of so obscure a saint had to be much expanded in order to supply the needs of so grandiose a retable, and in the third row the artist was obliged to resort to the Passion of Christ to fill the required space, utilizing the scenes of the Ecce Homo, 2 the Via Dolorosa, the Crucifixion, the Deposition, the Entombment, and the Resurrection. In each of the six compartments of the predella, an Apostle is coupled with a Prophet (except that in one case the Baptist 1

See above, p. 154. Perhaps rather Christ before Caiaphas; and the Ecce Homo may be the subordinate scene in the background where Pilate is washing his hands. 2

P R O V I N C E OF L E O N

165

takes the place of an Apostle). For example, Habakkuk is joined with Santiago, Jeremiah with St. Andrew, and Isaiah with St. Paul (certainly in the last instance an unwittingly appropriate juxtaposition!). The telltale Moorish laceria again appears in some of the gold backgrounds, but the most significant stylistic factor of the retable is that it seems to reveal more clearly than any of the Master's other works an indebtedness to Fernando Gallego and even to Dierick Bouts (Fig. 40). Mr. A. S. Drey of Munich kindly permits me to publish an absolutely characteristic work of the Palanquinos Master in his Collection (Fig. 41), which oddly repeats one of the subjects of the Mayorga retable, St. Marina again victoriously emerging from a superbly imaginative dragon. The inclusion of the picture in the Hispano-Flemish production of the diocese of Leon implies that the martyr is St. Marina rather than St. Margaret. Could it have been a part of the altarpiece of Santa Marina del Rey, of which another section, depicting the maiden's trial, is preserved at Astorga, 1 and would the Astorga panel thus also be a creation of the Palanquinos Master? The Drey painting, as so frequently in Hispano-Flemish art, comprises a secondary episode in smaller scale, in this instance a representation, at the right, of the imprisoned St. Marina in the midst of her orisons. The Master's unmistakable intense and snooping-nosed types appear in the two counsellors at the right of the magistrate inspecting the miracle, and his mudejar patterns adorn an expanse of gold above the primitive wooden structure that the author curiously causes to function as the cell of St. Marina's incarceration. A certain amount of the Hispano-Flemish painting in the diocese of Leon was produced under the Palanquinos Master's influence, and it was indeed a passably gifted follower of his who executed the high altar of another church in Mayorga itself, Sta. Maria de Arvas. a A thirteenth-century group of the Anna selbdritt and a fifteenth-century statue of the Virgin now constitute the centre of the assemblage, and the paintings narrate the lives of Our Lady and of her mother. The topmost tier is filled See above, p. 154. Evidently so called from the great ecclesiastical foundation of this name in the northern part of the province of Leon. 1

2

FIG. 40.

THE PALANQUINOS MASTER.

ST. MARINA VISITED IN PRISON BY

HER LOVER, SECTION OF RETABLE. (Photo.

STA. MARINA, MAYORGA

Winocio)

FIG. 41. THE PALANQUINOS MASTER. ST. MARINA EMERGING FROM THE DRAGON. DREY COLLECTION, MUNICH (Courtesy of Mr. A. S.

Drey)

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P R O V I N C E OF LEON

by the Expulsion of Joachim and Anna from the Temple, the Vision of Joachim, the Meeting at the Golden Gate, the Nativity of the Virgin, her Presentation in the Temple, and her Nuptials. The history continues in the second row with the Annunciation, Visitation, N a t i v i t y of Christ, Circumcision, Epiphany, and Purification (Fig. 42). T h e themes of the lowest tier are the Massacre of the Innocents, Flight into E g y p t , Dormition, Assumption, Coronation, and a queer representation that is perhaps an early symbolization of the Immaculate Conception, Our L a d y seated between two angels, crowned by another pair, and showing on her abdomen a rayed outburst that may signify her identification with the woman of the Apocalypse clothed with the sun. 1 T h e predella marshals, against the customary mudejar patterns in the gold, the whole category of the twelve Apostles displaying the sentences of the Creed. T h e designs in the gold backgrounds of the rest of the altarpiece vary between laceria and motifs of brocades. W e may also assign to the Palanquinos Master's school two other panels in the same church, evidently the relics of a single retable, the first depicting St. Anthony of Padua and the second St. Anthony Abbot undergoing the allurements of a female demon (Fig. 43). The nature of the carved wooden frames might mislead one into thinking them works belonging to the circle of Nicolas Frances, but careful scrutiny, particularly of the head of St. Anthony Abbot, reveals that they were inspired by the Palanquinos Master's prototypes. A still more countrified imitator of the Palanquinos Master is responsible for the principal retable of the church of S. Juan at Valencia de Don Juan, south of Leon, the remains of which are built into two lateral altarpieces in the now abandoned edifice. Their artistic significance is further impaired by repainting. The subjects are the banquet of Herod (with a Salome of such Giottesque sedateness and chastity that without dancing * The emphasis here seems to be rather upon Our L a d y ' s own immaculate freedom from the taint of original sin than upon her spotless motherhood, for in the very similar representation at Penafiel (see below, p. 411), even though the Child is painted on her abdomen, the other symbols and the inscription show that the intent was to depict the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception. The introduction of the Child into this iconography of the Immaculate Conception is occasioned by the mention of the infant in the second verse of the twelfth chapter of the Apocalypse. The countenance in the sunburst at Mayorga may be the visage of the Child or the sun's face.

FIG. 42.

SCHOOL OF THE PALANQUINOS MASTER. OF RETABLE.

PURIFICATION, SECTION

STA. MARIA DE ARVAS, MAYORGA (Photo,

mnocio)

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P R O V I N C E OF L E O N

she merely fingers a lyre, Fig. 44), the decapitation of St. John Baptist, the preaching of St. John Evangelist, his exorcism of serpents from the poisoned cup, four standing Prophets (oddly including Zacharias, the Baptist's father, with the scroll, "Joannes est nomen eius"), and four panels of paired saints in half-length comprising five Apostles, two Evangelists, and again the Baptist. The derivation from the Palanquinos Master be-

FIG. 43. SCHOOL OF T H E PALANQUINOS MASTER. TEMPTATION OF ST. ANTHONY ABBOT. STA. MARIA D E ARVAS, MAYORGA (Photo. Winocio)

comes most tangible in some of the youthful figures, as of Herod in the banquet, the two seated listeners to the Evangelist's sermon, and the Solomon (who carries the inscription from the Song of Songs, ii, 16, "Dilectus meus mihi, et ego illi"). The Zacharias, in type and profile position, distinctly suggests that there was some kind of continuity of artistic tradition between Nicolas Frances and the Hispano-Flemish movement in Leon. 1 1

For the possibility of a like phenomenon in the Gallego atelier, see above, p. 12a.

SCHOOL OF THE PALANQUINOS MASTER. BANQUET OF HEROD, SECTION OF RETABLE. S. JUAN, VALENCIA DE DON JUAN (Photo. Wittocio )

172

PROVINCE OF LEON

Gomez-Moreno affiliates with the retable of Valencia de Don Juan the panels that now form a part of a later structure over the high altar of the church at Marne, close to Leon at the southeast. In works so helplessly provincial that they fall without the scope of real art, it scarcely pays to fritter away space on questions of attribution; but although the author is by no means identical with the painter of Valencia de Don Juan, yet the types and general manner reveal, albeit somewhat less clearly, the Palanquinos Master as his source of inspiration. The author's peculiarities are pursed mouths and faces narrowing almost to a point at the chin. Jumbled in arrangement, the themes now read: in the upper tier, the Annunciation, Visitation (this with lingering reminiscences also of Fernando Gallego), the Assumption, and the Circumcision; and in the lower tier, the Epiphany (Fig. 45), the Flight into E g y p t (with angels prettily depicted as bending the miraculous date-tree), the Nativity of Christ, and the Coronation. The predella consists of four panels with paired Apostles against gold-brocaded backgrounds. 3.

OTHER

LEONESE

WORKS

OF T H E

PERIOD

The Hispano-Flemish paintings in the diocese of Leon that cannot be linked with the Palanquinos Master or with the broader category, the school of Gallego, are very few indeed. B y reason of the still very vital influence of Roger van der Weyden, a somewhat early date may be postulated for a long predella 1 which, in view of its possession by Don Juan Torbado Florez, who is in charge of the upkeep of the churches in the diocese of Leon, may be understood as of Leonese provenience. T h e subjects of the three central compartments have to do with the Passion, the Crucifixion in the middle flanked by the Deposition and the appearance of Christ to His mother after the Resurrection. The anomalous arrangement of the other three themes on each side proceeds from the outer ends inward, instead of in the usual chronological order across the whole predella from left to right (unless the original succession has been disturbed). T h e compartments at the left depict the 1

Shown in the Barcelona Exposition as No. 789.

P R O V I N C E O F LEON

173

Virgin praying during her youthful sojourn in the Temple, 1 the Annunciation, and the Nativity of Christ; those at the right, the Marriage of the Virgin, the Visitation, and the Circumcision. The dependence upon Roger van der Weyden is very exact. In-

Fig. 45. SCHOOL OF THE PALANQUINOS MASTER. EPIPHANY, SECTION OF RETABLF.. PARISH CHURCH, MARNE (Photo. H-'inocio )

deed the two flanking scenes at the centre, the Deposition and the appearance of Christ to His mother, derive their compositions mediately or immediately from Roger's Granada triptych of the Virgin or from the Berlin replica. 2 It is perhaps by 1 Her habit of prayer in the Temple is stressed in the chapter on her Nativity in the Golden Legend. In the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew she is asked to pray for her young companions who had derided her (Montague Rhodes James, The Apocryphal New 2 Testament, 74). See above, p. 23.

174

P R O V I N C E OF L E O N

reason of the author's faithful adherence to Roger that he achieves a technique rather above the level of the general run of his compatriots; but he himself had a well developed aesthetic sense, properly simplifying the compositions to accord with the small spaces of a predella, restricting the number of the actors, and painting with the delicacy of a miniaturist. He does add the Magdalene to Roger's composition for the Deposition and an angel between Christ and the mother to whom He appears, but the actors in these scenes were already reduced to the lowest terms in the Flemish models. There is a certain childlike tenderness about the painter's touch that had not been seen in Spain since the days of the Serras and their pupils. Don Juan Torbado possesses also two panels in a very fragmentary condition, depicting the Presentation of the Virgin and the Epiphany, which are said to have come from the upper part of the retable to which the predella belonged. The absence of these two subjects from the predella is, to be sure, an argument for crediting the report that the two Torbado fragments belonged to the same retable as the predella, but, even so, they could scarcely have been created by the same hand. In the case of a panel representing the martyrdom of St. Erasmus and filling a pointed niche (the recess of the supposed tomb of Bishop Manrique) in the wall at the end of the north transept in the cathedral of Leon (Fig. 46), it is hard to decide whether the primitive impression is due to as early a date as that of the predella in the Collection of Torbado or to the author's incapacity. There would be little except the attenuated forms and the costumes to suggest an affiliation with the Gallego manner, unless the composition appeared to be connected in some way with the celebrated rendering of the painful subject in St. Peter's, Louvain, by Fernando's guide, Dierick Bouts. The parallelisms in the shape of the machine that winds out the intestines of St. Erasmus, the posture of his body, and the activity of the executioner would seem to be too exact to be the result of a mere coincidence, but the problem is complicated by the existence of an English version even more similar to the Spanish rendering, a painting in the possession of the Society of Antiquaries at London dated 1474 and including a portrait of the donor, John Hollingborne, a religious of the Abbey of

PROVINCE OF LEON

175

Canterbury. 1

Christ Church, Since the English artist perhaps reveals some acquaintance with the manner of Bouts, it might be guessed that he too was inspired by the Louvain picture, which is dated by Friedländer just before 1464, but the closer likeness of the Spanish and English versions to each other than to the picture by Bouts implies some kind of an interrelation-

FIG. 46. SCHOOL OF LEON.

MARTYRDOM OF ST. ERASMUS.

CATHEDRAL, LEON (From Gomez-Moreno's "Catälogo Monumental, Provincia de Leon")

ship. There exists a German print of the subject dating from the middle or third quarter of the fifteenth century which was first taken by Lehrs as the denominative piece for an engraver that he called the Meister des heiligen Erasmus 2 but which he has subsequently ascribed to the Meister des Dutuitschen 1 C f . M . C o n w a y , A Canterbury Picture of the 15th Century, Burlington Magazine, X X X ( 1 9 1 7 ) , 1 2 9 - 1 3 3 , and T . Borenius and E . W . T r i s t r a m , English Medieval Painting, Pantheon Press, 1926, p. 43 and plate 86. Borenius hesitates whether to ascribe the work to an Englishman under Flemish influence or to a Fleming or G e r m a n active in E n g l a n d , b u t the picture seems to m e to display unmistakable evidence of an English imitation of Flemish achievement. T h e analogy of the Spanish and E n g l i s h versions was observed by V o n L o g a (Die Malerei in Spanien, 61). 2 Μ . Lehrs, Geschichte und kritischer Katalog des deutschen, niederländischen und französischen Kupferstichs im XV Jahrhundert, I I I (Vienna, 1915), p. 274, no. 84, and plate 105.

ιηβ

PROVINCE OF LEON

Olbergs. It was copied or adapted by other German engravers of the period, but the Spanish, English, and Bouts treatments all resemble one another more than they do the German print. Was there a general mediaeval cartoon for this theme which was not the German print and which was used by Bouts, by the Spaniard, and by the Englishman but modified further by the more original Bouts? Or was there some artistic connection between England and Spain, possibly helped by the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela, a connection which we cannot yet analyze but which was perhaps incorporated also in the activity of Jorge Ingles in the peninsula? In any case, no stylistic points of contact between the Spanish and English versions may be traced beyond a joint dependence upon Flanders (which in the Spanish example is not very pronounced), nor do they exhibit any affiliations with the personal style of Jorge Ingles. The Leonese author of the martyrdom of St. Erasmus was after all rather a lout, incapable of reproducing Flemish technique, if indeed he was very familiar with it. An interior is substituted for the landscapes of the Louvain and English pictures, but through one of the windows may be seen just a bit of a vista accented with a gruesome detail that is used even by Pisanello and is not infrequent in the settings of Spanish paintings during the second half of the fifteenth century, a body dangling from a gallows. The actual faces reveal practically no understanding of the achievements of the Flemings or of Fernando Gallego, and the panel might well have been executed by a belated follower of Nicolas Frances who had seen, with little profit, a few Flemish and Hispano-Flemish pictures. To the literal and unsparing horror of the Flemish and English renderings, the Spanish environment adds the still more revolting touch of the disfiguration of the abdomen at the orifice from which the bowels are extracted. A seated Virgin of the Annunciation, without the accompanying panel of St. Gabriel, in the chapel of St. Anthony of Padua in the cathedral, is so repainted that it is impossible to affirm or to deny the parentage of the Palanquinos Master. The modern restoration has gone so much farther in an effigy of St. Cecilia in the same chapel that even the specification of the epoch in which it was created would be a hazardous matter, if

PROVINCE OF LEON

177

it were not for the likelihood that it was a part of the same retable as the Virgin Annunciate. T h e y are said to have both been once in a house in Leon, and the unity of authorship is further supported by what little of the original style the modern renovation uncovers and by the similarity of the scrolls above each figure, in the case of the Virgin inscribed with the word, Encarnacioriy and in the other instance with the saint's name. The restorer has left such tokens of the Hispano-Flemish manner as the tapestry hung behind Our L a d y , the brocade of St. Cecilia's tunic, and the painted frame of late Gothic foliage in which she is ensconced. T h e two figures must have been rather splendidly monumental achievements, voicing the last cry of the Hispano-Flemish modes before they melted away into Italianism. T h e four panels built into the bottom of the baroque retablo mayor in the parish church of Santa Maria del Paramo, southwest of Leon, might conceivably belong to the circle of the Palanquinos Master, but m y observations were insufficient for venturing such a classification. Certainly Gomez-Moreno 1 has little ground for attributing them to the author of the pictures at Genestacio in the same province, which are to be assigned rather to the subsequent chronological stratum of the early Renaissance. T w o of the panels at Santa Maria del Paramo contain single effigies, St. John Baptist and St. Andrew; in the other two the saints are paired, Bartholomew with Peter and John Evangelist with Thomas. T h e backgrounds are of gold in a mudejar pattern of laceria (although behind Sts. John Evangelist and Thomas the interlacings have been subjected to a coat of repaint), and the passion for garments of gold brocades is still unchecked. T h e Flemish origins of the style have been almost completely submerged in the process of Hispanicization. Perhaps if more of the retable were preserved, we should discern an association with the Gallego tradition, for the head of St. John Evangelist recalls that of Queen Lupa in the Santiago panel of the Hospital at Astorga. 2 T h e author is quite the equal in skill of the not unpleasing painter of the Astorga picture. 1 2

Catalogo Monumental, Provincia de Le6n, 493-494. See above, p. 155.

CHAPTER XLVIII T H E SCHOOL OF F E R N A N D O GALLEGO. FLEMISH PAINTING

HISPANO-

IN THE PROVINCE

OF

PALENCIA I.

WORKS

PRODUCED

UNDER THE

FERNANDO

INFLUENCE

OF

GALLEGO

SINCE the studies of Palencian painting h a v e not as y e t progressed beyond the most rudimentary stage, w e can do little else in this chapter than group together the works affected b y the well-nigh omnipresent influence of Fernando Gallego and those in which the influence is not so tangible. N o t only does there fail to emerge any sharply defined artistic personality to whom a large number of productions m a y be attached, like the Palanquinos M a s t e r at Leon, but, with our present knowledge, it is difficult to attribute even with approximate conviction any two Hispano-Flemish works of the province to a single hand. In the cathedral of the city of Palencia itself, the altarpiece of the Visitation (Fig. 47) in a narrow chapel built into the wall of the coro on the Epistle side must be considered a creation of the general circle, rather than the school, of Fernando Gallego. I t occupies the pointed opening and bevelled sides of a late G o t h i c niche the inmost archivolt of which is embellished with the sculptured symbols of the Evangelists. T h e central panel of the Visitation is flanked b y standing effigies of Sts. A n d r e w and Lawrence, and the bevelled sides are occupied b y Sts. John B a p t i s t and Stephen; but the four lateral pieces h a v e in part lost their frames and Gothic cresting. In the t y m p a n u m of the pointed arch is a veronica of Christ's head upheld b y t w o flying angels. V i e l v a R a m o s 1 suspects that, because of the gold backgrounds (which h a v e an incised pattern at the borders different from that of the body of each panel) in contrast to the landscape setting of the Visitation, the lateral sections m a y be b y a second and somewhat earlier hand; but the whole altar is 1

Catedral de Palencia, 83-84.

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PROVINCE OF

PALENCIA

certainly the product of a single artist, except that it is possible that the Baptist, whose halo is diverse and whose garments are cast in somewhat less tight Flemish folds, was painted by a separate but no less gifted hand in the workshop of the principal master, and that the angels with the veronica were left to a younger apprentice. The wood between the lower section and the veronica bears an inscription difficult to make out clearly but apparently reading, Joannes de Ayllon, Prior, me fecit. T h e cleric in question is a known historical character, buried close to the altarpiece, and the Acts of the cathedral chapter give us the date of the picture, informing us that on September i , 1503, he asked for the cession of an arch for an " a l t a r of the Visitation and, near-by, a sepulchre for himself." 1 He is depicted as donor kneeling in front of St. Andrew; but the language of the inscription involves us in an insoluble problem, for the phrase, me fecit, is the one usually employed by the painter and immediately suggests that Juan de Ayllon was, almost uniquely in the history of art, 2 author and donor alike. Mayer, 3 however, read the fecit as fieri, which would imply a lost, following " f e c i t , " producing the customary words of a donor, fecit fieri \ or the extant word may be really fecit, and a succeeding fieri may have disappeared. 4 In any case, the evidence is not sufficiently plain to establish in the roster of the world's painters a new and definite personality, Juan de Ayllon. The attenuated types, such a head as that of St. Lawrence, and the brittle folds of the draperies have their analogies in the output of Fernando Gallego (although with Fernando the folds are usually more deeply indented); but the similarities may be due to a joint dependence upon Dierick Bouts rather than to any effectual relation between the two Spanish masters. In the Baptist the painter reproduces the manner of Bouts more exactly than Fernando ever succeeded in doing, and there is even a general analogy to the figure of this same saint on one of the wings of Bouts's triptych in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich. In certain other respects, though endowed with more than 1 2 3 4

fecit.

Ibid., 84. See below, p. 369. Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft, X X X I I (1909), 518. The letters in front of the possible fieri may not spell me but be an abbreviation for

PROVINCE OF

PALENCIA

181

average merit, the author is Fernando's inferior. T h e landscape of the Visitation is somewhat scamped. T h e donor's head is a fine example of vivid and detailed Flemish portraiture even to the perspicuous rendering of the heavy beard beneath his shaven skin, but the transparent gauze of his surplice is less entrancingly simulated than in the corresponding passages of Fernando and Bermejo. It is impossible to follow Mayer 1 in ascribing the Visitation altar to the author of the Sts. Athanasius and Louis of Toulouse in the Museum of Valladolid. 2 He modifies his categorical attribution by adding, " o r in any case it belongs to his circle"; and in this there may be a certain truth since these and other paintings at Valladolid appear to have Palencian affiliations. It is, however, quite within the range of credibility that the Visitation master deserves the honor of having painted the rather distinguished panel of another bishop, St. Florian (?),3 at the beginning of the south wall of the enclosure in the cathedral of Palencia known as the Sagrario. T h e canonized prelate is accompanied by a kneeling donor, and the florid Gothic cresting of the panel may imply that it was once a part of a larger ensemble. In the German edition of his History, Mayer places the painting within the circle of Pedro Berruguete, but in the Spanish edition he has wisely abandoned this alignment, for, if the St. Florian is not the work of the master of the Visitation altar, it is at least Hispano-Flemish and untouched by Berruguete's influence. What might deceive one for the moment into discerning a strain of Berruguete is that Flemish harshness is considerably relaxed, more so indeed than in the Visitation altar. T h e pictorial mode in the donor's portrait is still Flemish; his costume and St. Florian's alb are dissected into the broken folds of the Low Countries; the small figures of saints on the orphreys of the holy bishop's cope are rendered with a Flemish illuminator's nicety; he is set against an interior like those in the accurate representation of which the Belgians excelled; on the inside of its open door is depicted one of the Gothic statues in 1 La pintura espanola (Edition Labor), 67-68. * See below, p. 404. 3 So labelled on the halo, San Florian Ohis(po), but I can find no episcopal saint of this name, so that Mayer may well be right in considering it another spelling for St. Froilan of Leon.

182

PROVINCE OF

PALENCIA

niches so often encountered in the settings of Flemish pictures; the deceptive painting of the glass in the window of the room is another trick of the artists of the Low Countries; and the landscape seen through the open door might just as well have been inspired by Flemish precedent as by Berruguete's Italianism. A factor that militates against the attribution to the master of the Visitation altar is that the St. Florian is closer to the manner of Fernando Gallego himself. Nevertheless, an ascription to Fernando is not to be hazarded, however tempting it would be in order to establish his activity at Palencia and thus to provide a solider raison d'etre for his influence in the province. A follower of the author of the Visitation altar probably executed five rather large panels deposited in the Museum of Cadiz by Dona Mercedes Albear y Saint-Just, representing the Annunciation, the Visitation (Fig. 48), the Nativity, the Circumcision (Fig. 49), and the Epiphany. In addition to a general similarity in the types, a relationship is implied by the absolute identity of the two compositions for the Visitation, including even such details as the complete equality in St. Elizabeth's costume, in the wimple, in the mode in which the skirt is caught up, and in the windings of the belt. Both painters also place a similar edifice to the right of St. Elizabeth in the landscape. The ultimate source of the composition at Palencia as well as at Cadiz is Roger van der Weyden, as likewise for the Annunciation and Nativity. But the painter of the Cadiz panels is not the master of the Visitation altar nor indeed quite his peer as a craftsman. For one thing, he has left further behind him the Flemish models and become more Spanish. N o t only does he everywhere admit the garments of gold brocade, but he indulges to excess the indigenous passion for using flat and stiff rectangles of these brilliant fabrics as conventional decorative elements against the backgrounds, actually thus hiding the centre of the landscape in the Visitation (where it takes two angels to support the tapestry!). He even violates the humble character of the house of the Epiphany by protecting the Virgin with a canopy of this sort, which, however, is not kept as a rigid expanse but assumes loose and natural folds. T h e golden stuffs have the same pattern as those of an artist with whom we shall subsequently become acquainted, the Budapest Master, giving

FIG. 48.

SCHOOL OF PALENCIA (?). (Photo. Arxiu

VISITATION. Mas J

MUSEUM, CADIZ

i84

P R O V I N C E OF

PALENCIA

a like prominence to one huge schematized flower and its stem. The type of the Virgin in the Annunciation even approaches very close to the peculiar forms of this Master, although the absence of his mannerisms in the other figures throughout the five panels forestalls the possibility that he was responsible also for the Cadiz series. T h e racial strain is so potent in their author that he was able to look at Schongauer's prints without copying them as exactly as did many of his Spanish confreres. He does little more indeed than employ Schongauer's architecture for the house of the Epiphany in his own very different version of the theme and strangely repeat it in the Nativity for the stable. T h e delineation of the ox and ass in the Epiphany may likewise be suggested by the German prototype, and perhaps to some slight extent the Virgin's figure and drapery in the Nativity. The skill is of average merit or better, although he achieves greater heights in his lovely and successfully interpreted feeling for landscape and in the rather impressively drawn and differentiated masculine and feminine spectators at the Circumcision, especially the man reading from a book at the right. Much the same composition, details of costume, and general style crop forth in a panel of the Visitation in the Collection of Don Pedro Mila at Barcelona (Fig. 50), which therefore may tentatively be assigned to the school of Palencia, though neither to the author of the retable in the cathedral of Palencia nor to the painter of the Cadiz series. T h e types are not far removed from those of the Visitation in the next monument that we shall consider. The bonds of attachment with the Gallego school are securely forged, though the separating stylistic distance is a broad one, in the well preserved and charmingly executed retable over the high altar of Sta. Maria del Castillo at Fromista, north of Palencia. The panels are arranged in four tiers, twenty-five scenes from the lives of Christ and the Virgin but with them, as in the Ciudad Rodrigo altarpiece, some figures and episodes from the Old Testament, at the beginning of the topmost row the fall of man and the expulsion from Eden (Fig. 51) and in the lowest row half-lengths of David and Solomon flanking the customary subject at this spot, the dead Christ between angels.

FIG. 49. SCHOOL OF PALENCIA (?). CIRCUMCISION. (Photo. Arxiu

Mas)

MUSEUM, CADIZ

186

P R O V I N C E OF

PALENCIA

David is accompanied by a scroll with an inscription from the twenty-second Psalm: "Foderunt manus meas et pedes meos; dinumeraverunt omnia ossa mea." The corresponding sentiment for Solomon is taken from the ninth chapter of Proverbs: "Sapientia aedificavit sibi domum; miscuit vinum, et proposuit

FIG. JO. SCHOOL OF PALENCIA (?). VISITATION. MILÄ COLLECTION, BARCELONA (Photo. Arxiu Mas )

mensam suam." There are thus twenty-nine painted panels in all, but the vast structure comprises also a synchronous statue of the Madonna and Child at the centre with its rich, carved Gothic canopy, two other lateral canopies over the adjoining pictures, and what was probably an oddly placed tabernacle for the Sacrament, covering the space where there would otherwise

FIG. SI.

SCHOOL OF PALENCIA. EXPULSION FROM EDEN, SECTION OF RETABLE. STA. MARIA DEL CASTILLO, FROMISTA {Photo. Photo Club)

188

P R O V I N C E OF P A L E N C I A

have been two painted compartments, one above the other, in the lower left section of the retable. Among the subordinate incidents that, as so commonly in the paintings of this time, are introduced in miniature, the left background of the Flight into Egypt displays the husbandman showing to Herod's pursuing officers the grain that has miraculously grown in order to mislead them in regard to the time of the Holy Family's passing — an episode that is usually just suggested in this theme by the mere presence of harvesters. 1 The transportation of the Virgin's body to the grave, as in some other works of Spanish art, is made into a separate scene (Fig. 52), and a rather magnificent scene, at that, with her form ensconced in a gold-canopied bier. It includes the seldom represented detail of the story that relates how the withered and severed hands of the Jew, Jephonias, cleaved to the bier as a punishment for his presumption in attempting to disturb the funeral procession, but here, on no discoverable authority, the impious intruder is multiplied into a pair of persons with four hands hanging from the coffin! 2 The Assumption and Coronation, on the other hand, are fused together into a handsome composition that was not infrequent in the iconography of the period and transmits the effect of a prototype for the theme popular in later art, the Immaculate Conception. The contacts with the Gallego circle are many. Among the types that reflect this orientation, the most tangible are the two Jews in the Virgin's obsequies and the figure of Solomon in the lowest tier. The church-like interiors of the Gallego school appear as settings for the sacred stories. The composition for the 1 See above, p. 1 1 7 , and Mrs. Anna Jameson, Legends of the Madonna, section on the Flight into Egypt. 3 Miss King calls my attention to the somewhat similar representation of the theme in one of the reliefs of the fourteenth century set into the exterior chapel walls of the east end of Notre Dame at Paris: one Jew is clinging to the bier while another is prostrate, having already lost his hands which are hanging from the bier. Male (Uart religieux du XIIP Steele en France, chapter on the apocryphal stories, section on the legends of the Virgin) interprets the Paris relief as an example of the common mediaeval practice of coercing two episodes of a story into the same frame, believing that here Jephonias is first shown as touching the coffin and then as suffering the punishment; but this cannot be the case in the Fromista panel where both the Jews have already been deprived of their hands. The simultaneous representation of two episodes, moreover,, would be rare at so late a date as that of the Fromista retable, but the painter might have been unintelligently adapting the iconography of some such earlier version as that of the Paris relief. In the retable at Villarroya, near Daroca, the theme is depicted in. the same mode as at Fromista.

FIG. 52.

SCHOOL OF PALENCIA.

BURIAL OF VIRGIN, SECTION OF RETABLE.

STA. MARIA DEL CASTILLO, FR0MISTA (Photo. Photo

Ciuk)

190

PROVINCE OF

PALENCIA

Last Supper resembles that of Arcenillas, with the identical incident of Judas hiding the money-bag behind his back. A more distinctly Spanish atmosphere than in the productions of Fernando Gallego and his immediate pupils is given by the prodigal introduction of gold into the garments; but the color is not only delightfully lustrous but rather more brilliant in tone than was the norm either in Fernando or generally in the Spanish adaptations of the Flemish mode, and the affiliations of the elongated types with those of Dierick Bouts are possibly more intimate than in any of the Salamancan painter's preserved works. The measure of the author's capabilities may be taken by the beautifully rendered adoring angels in the Nativity of Christ, and the nudes in the two episodes from Genesis are unexpectedly well realized. T h e retable of Fromista is certainly one of the earliest examples of the spread of the Gallego style from the region of Salamanca to other provinces, so that Mayer's 1 date of c. 1480 cannot be far wrong. He furthermore has indicated 2 a similarity between the style of the Fromista altarpiece and that of the anonymous painter whom we shall later christen the Budapest Master, and I myself once leapt at the hope that there might prove to be a unity of authorship and that thus we might localize the producer of the Budapest panels and of other important works; but a prolonged study of the problem banishes the hope and negatives the supposition that the Budapest Master could have executed the Fromista retable. Certain analogies to this and other Palencian monuments of painting, however, permit at least the guess that he may have hailed from this region. In addition to its international paintings, 3 the conglomerate retable over the high altar of the church at Villamediana, east of Palencia, contains four good panels of the Gallego school that once belonged to a single altarpiece. T h e subjects are the flagellation of St. Catherine, the episode of the wheels, and large busts of the Magdalene and St. L u c y . A lone, large, and dilapidated panel from the life of St. Hippolytus, now over the door of the sacristy in the parroquia of 1 In his Geschichte. In his earlier article in the Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft of 1909 he had impossibly placed the retable before 1450. 2 In his smaller work, La pintura espanola (Edition Labor) of 1926, p. 66. 3 See below, p. 657.

PROVINCE OF

PALENCIA

191

Valbuena de Pisuerga, near Villamediana, plainly belongs within the Gallego tradition but is rather perplexing in its associations. The saint is identified by the inscription on his halo, and the scene represented is that recounted at the beginning of his history in the Golden Legend, the reception of Holy Communion by his household at the hands of the priest St. Justin (vested in a gold-brocaded chasuble) immediately after St. Hippolytus had buried the body of St. Lawrence. T h e type of the priest perhaps involves a distant relationship with the master of the Visitation altar in the cathedral of Palencia, and Mayer's discernment of some sort of affiliation in this altar with the author of the two episcopal saints in the Museum of Valladolid 1 derives a certain support from the rather striking analogy of the St. Hippolytus to the masculine actors in the Louvre panel of St. Ildefonso's reception of the chasuble, which in all probability was executed by the painter of the Valladolid saints. 2 2.

OTHER PALENCIAN WORKS

OF THE P E R I O D

Of the Hispano-Flemish monuments in the province of Palencia apparently dissociated from the Gallego tradition, the retable of the high altar in the parish church of Villalcazar de Sirga, west of Fromista, is the outstanding example. As so often, the pivot of the structure is made from the solider art of sculpture, in this instance a statue of the Virgin and Child, but the rest is painting. T h e two lower tiers in the body of the altarpiece consist of eight scenes from the Passion and Triumph of Our Lord; the themes of the topmost row are the Mass of St. Gregory, the delivery of the chasuble to St. Ildefonso, the Noli me tangere, and the Supper at Emmaus. T h e predella displays in the middle the Assumption, at the sides scenes from the holy Infancy and a representation of Christ enthroned in glory, and at each end the figure of a Prophet. T h e grandiose ensemble extends to include beside the large narrative panels six full-lengths of saints. It is one of the latest expressions of the artistic movement to which it belongs, so that the Flemish qualities have largely subsided, allowing indigenous feeling to 1 2

See above, p. 181. See below, p. 404.

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P R O V I N C E OF P A L E N C I A

come to the surface. Many of the types,, nevertheless, still patently betray their derivation from the Low Countries, as particularly the Virgin and the angels in the scene of St. lldefonso's chasuble, and Flanders seems to have provided the precedent for the composition of the Resurrection. The backgrounds are of landscape, but gold draperies and hangings continue to be liberally allowed. The author is a very competent artist, revealing more charm as a narrator than the majority of his monumentally minded Hispano-Flemish fellows and an agreeable control over the native enrichment of the Flemish gamut of color. A repainted Crucifixion over a lateral altar in the church may once have been a part of this retable. To the same late moment of the Hispano-Flemish manner and to the same distinguished degree of craftsmanship, though not, I think, to the same hand, belongs an only somewhat less pretentious retable at the right of the nave in the parish church of Μοηζόη, just north of Palencia. The sculptured group of the Madonna, Child, and angels at the centre is contemporary with the paintings. Of these, the four principal compartments depict the Annunciation, Visitation, Nativity of Christ, and Epiphany, but the altarpiece expands, as at Villalcazar de Sirga, to admit also six standing effigies of saints, at the left Christopher, Bartholomew (?), and John Evangelist, and at the right Francis (receiving the stigmata), Peter, and John Baptist. The pedestal of the statuary fills the middle of the predella; the four painted compartments comprise the Pieta, St. Anne enthroned with the Virgin and Child, and standing effigies of the Magdalene and St. Helen. An inscription names the donor as a Sancho de Rojas. 1 It is witness to the late date at which the influence of the school ofTournai persisted in Spain that the chief formative strain in the painter of Μοηζόη is still Roger van der Weyden's style, however much in places diluted and nationalized. All that remains intact of another retable in this same general manner at the left of the nave in the Ermita of Nuestra Senora de las Fuentes at Amusco, just north of Μοηζόη, is a predella. Panels decorated with modern pure design occupy, to be sure, the rest of the retable's space; but they are either 1

Not, of course, the archbishop of Toledo who in the first half of the century ordered the retable of San Roman de la Hornija: see below, p. 650.

P R O V I N C E OF P A L E N C I A

193

substitutions for original paintings that have disappeared, or they incorporate a recent and complete daubing over of these paintings. All the figures of the predella are represented at halflength against incised gold backgrounds. At the centre is the Pieta, at the left Sts. Peter and John (strangely repeated since he is a participant also in the Pieta), and at the right the Visitation and St. Ursula encompassed by a few of her virgins. As at Villalcazar de Sirga and Μοηζόη, the technique revealed at Amusco deserves more than ordinary notice. For assigning to the Palencian school a large and superb panel of St. Christopher in the Fogg Museum at Harvard (Fig. 53), there is nothing more substantial than a dealer's statement to the effect that it was once a part of a lateral retable in a ruined convent of Sta. Maria near Saldana in the province. It bears no definitive marks of relation to the Gallego strain in the contemporary art of Palencia. The composition does not reproduce the versions by Fernando and his followers any more exactly than would be expected from the general similarity in all mediaeval treatments of the theme. Nor does the painter seem to have conformed to the instruction of the Gallego atelier even in so far as to have turned to Dierick Bouts as a guide, for he fails to imitate any of the St. Christophers by the great Flemish master or his pupils in details so distinctive as to constitute proof of artistic communication. The nearest parallel is the example in the Gallery at Modena ascribed to Albert Bouts, but the distance in composition from this to the Spanish panel is a long one. Since the types in the Fogg picture are manifestly of German derivation, it is gratifying to discover in the Teutonic domain also closer analogues to the composition. The Child's gesture and the flight of His drapery as well as the folds of St. Christopher's cloak over his right shoulder were possibly suggested by Schongauer's print, and it is significant that in the St. Christopher of the triptych in the New Cathedral at Salamanca Fernando Gallego did not copy these details from his source in Schongauer. For the pose of Christopher, I am familiar with no parallel so convincing as that of this saint in the Peringsdörffer retable of 1487 in the Museum at Nuremberg. The author of the Fogg panel may have known neither of these works, but it can hardly be doubted

194

P R O V I N C E O F PALENCIA

that he had in mind a German prototype of some kind perhaps even more similar in composition; or the variations from the German analogues that I have mentioned may be the result of the painter's own improvisations upon these Teutonic suggestions. His version of the theme reveals no affiliations with the Palencian St. Christopher of the retable at Μοηζόη. At times the picture has even seemed to me the product of some Aragonese atelier under the domination of Bermejo. The dependence upon German rather than pure Flemish models is apparent in the facial traits both of St. Christopher and the Child that he carries and in their harshness. This Teutonic foundation, however, is overlaid with an Iberian cast of visage, but in distinction from the usual Spanish process of mitigating the gnarled rudeness of north-European art, the countenances are more bluntly ugly than those of German painting. In the same way, starting with the aesthetic trend of fifteenth-century Germany to stylization, the painter carries the caprices of his models into an even more pronounced, conscious mannerism of treatment, in agreement with the general desire of early Spanish painting to formalize both composition and figures. Not only are the bodies and draperies thrown into highly schematized and whimsical lines, but the composition and color are brought within the stylizing mood. The balance of St. Christopher's flying mantle, with its out-turned, brilliant red underlining, at the left, and the flying fold of the Child's pink garment, at the right, is obvious; and the diagonal of the staff passes to the left, offsetting the oblique line of the rocks and water passing to the right. In the case of St. Christopher there is a symmetrical progression, on either side, from the dark blue of his tunic through the green of the mantle to the outspread, flashing red of its lining. The water and the dimly and charmingly outlined fish are cast in a pattern of conventionalized swirls. The only possible point of contact with Fernando Gallego is the color, for the painter has toned down Flemish brightness, employing as a basis a subdued green and blue scale, carried from the bluish-green undergarment of the Child down into the darker blues and greens of St. Christopher's garb and finally into the neutralized olive of the water. This cool tonality is set against the diapered gold that the artistically Sybaritic

FIG. 53. SCHOOL OF PALENCIA (?). ST. CHRISTOPHER. FOGG MUSEUM, CAMBRIDGE, MASS.

196

PROVINCE OF PALENCIA

Spaniards even in the second half of the fifteenth century still liked occasionally to substitute for the blue of the sky, and itself serves to set off the bright red of the scarf, which at once relieves and by contrast accentuates the sombreness of effect. The panel would date from about 1490. Its author was one of those many early Spanish masters who were artists of no mean merit but whose names we have not yet recovered. He possesses in high degree the opposing qualities that the Spaniards of the epoch demonstrated could be fused without incongruity — a distinguished feeling for beauty of formal design and convincing realism of detail within the pattern, as in the rendering of the powerful heads and the meticulous definition of the anatomy of the hands and legs. The Martin Le Roy Collection at Paris contains a panel of St. George (Fig. 54) of which, if indeed it is Spanish at all, the nearest relative known to me is the Fogg St. Christopher. T h e countenance and the preciousness of the pose are even more German than the corresponding factors in the Fogg picture, and the St. George actually used to pass as a Hans Baidung Grien. Although this attribution is an impossibility, I am not absolutely convinced that it is not by some other German hand of the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century. The authorities on German painting, however, Professor Adolf Goldschmidt and my colleague, Dr. Charles L . Kuhn, will not admit it into their domain and consider it Spanish. The assignment to Spain was first definitely suggested by Paul Leprieur, backed by the cogent authority of Bertaux, 1 and the analogies to the undoubtedly Spanish panel of the Fogg Museum now go far towards confirming their contention. T h e brawny physique and merely rayed halo (though not unexampled in Spain) would be added arguments for a Teutonic authorship, but even without the similarities to the St. Christopher the case would already have been as strong for Spain as for Germany. St. George's posture is almost identical with that of St. Christopher, his spear taking the place of the diagonal of the holy giant's staff; the two figures are brothers in facial traits; even beneath the armor St. George's knees project with the same curious anatomical exaggeration; and the lines of the drawing, especially in the shield and the 1

Catalogue Raisonne de la Collection Martin Le Roy, V , 57 ff.

FIG. 54.

SCHOOL OF PALENCIA (?).

ST. GEORGE.

MARTIN LE ROY COLLECTION, PARIS (From the "Catalogue

Raisonne"

of the

Collection)

I98

PROVINCE OF PALENCIA

dragon, assume the arbitrary and unnatural contortions that are everywhere encountered in the Fogg panel. Although the sky is blue in the Martin Le Roy picture, the figure stands in the same spatial relation to the rocky background. If the author is Spanish and if he is not identical with the master of the St. Christopher, he must have belonged at least to the same artistic milieu. T h e ultimate provenience of the Paris panel is unknown, and it requires solider proof than a tradition of the dealers' world to establish the theory that this milieu was Palencian. • Despite the progressive decline into which the art of mural painting had sunk for the last two centuries, most of the centres of Hispano-Flemish art can boast a sparse amount of work in fresco, and the province of Palencia is no exception. One example that has come to my knowledge, hitherto mistaken for Romanesque, 1 is the decoration of the church at Revilla de Santullän. The lion's share of what remains, consisting in almost the entire polychromy of the apse, has been transferred to canvas and was last seen by me in the possession of L a d y Limerick at Hall Place, Bexley, Kent. From the semidome comes a repetition of the old Romanesque theme of the Pantocrator, in this instance served by four angels and enshrined in a circular nimbus; two further members of the celestial host, swinging censers, fill the spandrels of the vault. T h e three scenes from the zone beneath the semidome are the Assumption at the centre and the Purification and Massacre of the Innocents at the sides, the Purification with the curious Spanish iconographical detail of the Virgin in a kneeling posture. 2 T h e frescoes on the section of vaulting just in front of the semidome were also well preserved, and they too found their way to Bexley — from the top the Annunciation and Visitation and from the lower spaces the Epiphany and Flight into Egypt. Of all these subjects copies have been painted in the corresponding places in the church, but a few original tatters remain in the edifice that it was not thought worth while to remove. One of the fragments beneath the zone of narrative under the semidome is significant since it may well have been a portrait of the donor, an unhaloed bust 1

See vol. I, p. 197, n. 1.

2

See vol. I l l , p. 129.

PROVINCE OF PALENCIA

199

surmounted by the inscription SANTIO ( = Sancho?) A N Another fragment in the same spot represents a man holding a book. Dim vestiges of frescoes of the same epoch m a y also be seen on the north wall of the nave, episodes of a devil seizing a youth and a martyrdom. As in the case of the contemporary mural paintings of Galicia, it is the technical rudeness that has misled earlier students into assigning the cycle to the Romanesque period. T h e themes and their arrangement also derive from the Romanesque past, but the truth is that a rather countrified workman was imitating the long established iconography for the polychrome embellishment of churches in what he could master of the style that was popular in the second half of the fifteenth century, although in so remote a region he might have clung retrogressively to the Hispano-Flemish manner even in the sixteenth century and not have executed the cycle until then. The veneer of rusticity cannot conceal the complete and ubiquitous allegiance of the frescoes to this manner. T h e types have Flemish ancestors, most obviously perhaps in the Visitation. T h e draperies take exactly the swollen and angular contours of the Low Countries, as on the angel of the Annunciation and even on the Pantocrator. T h e fashion of dress, as on the man who, holding a book, is still preserved in the church, makes a date before the second half of the fifteenth century impossible. In the Epiphany the author even apes, so far as his defective craft will permit, the Hispano-Flemish panel-painters' practice of hanging brocaded tapestries at the backs of their rooms. A second example may be seen in the church at Valberzoso, a little further north in the same region. T h e semidome exhibits at its apex the Assumption and in lower divisions other episodes from the life of the Virgin. The scenes on the adjoining barrel vault are the Marriage of Our Lady, the martyrdom of St. Sebastian, the Flagellation of Christ, and the Via Dolorosa; the frescoes on the wall beneath at the right have been destroyed, but at the left are preserved standing effigies of Santiago and St. Michael. T h e soffit of the triumphal arch is consigned to Sts. Barbara and Anthony Abbot (with his alert pig occupying a whole compartment beneath him), and its outer surface displays Sts. Andrew, Catherine (?), Bartholomew, and a canonized bishop. T h e most interesting passage appears

αοο

P R O V I N C E OF P A L E N C I A

under a representation of the Last Supper on the left wall of the nave, a sturdy cavalier (Fig. 55) much better executed than the nag or rather mere hobby-horse upon which he rides and flanked at the right by the inscription: " T h i s work was ordered by Juan

FIG. 55.

SCHOOL OF PALENCIA (?). PORTRAIT OF ONE OF DONORS, SECTION OF FRESCOES IN PARISH CHURCH, VALBERZOSO (Photo. Arxiu d'Jrqueologia Catalana )

(surname abbreviated and, for me, indecipherable), father of Tristan," followed by the date 1483 (or i486). We are left to decide for ourselves whether it is the father or the son who is portrayed as a horseman. It is quite credible that the painter is

P R O V I N C E OF

PALENCIA

201

the same as the master of Revilla de Santullän. T h e Annunciation is closely analogous in types and composition, and the Purification repeats the odd iconographical element of the kneeling Virgin. In any case, the Valberzoso painter certainly executed the frescoes in the church of the adjacent Santa Olalla. T h e extant decoration is confined to the vault in front of the apse — the Last Supper, episodes of the Passion, a vast Harrowing of Hell, a Noli me tangere, a group of archers remaining perhaps from a martyrdom of St. Sebastian, the arraignment of the church's patroness, St. Eulalia, a figure of St. Michael, and a knight discomfiting three Moors (scarcely Santiago, since he has no halo, but possibly again an ideal portrait of the donor). T h e frescoes on the walls just in front of the apse in the church of another near-lying town, Basconcillos, in the province of Burgos, are slightly later and less rustic. T h e themes are the Last Supper, the mouth of Hell, and the leg miracle of Sts. Cosmas and Damian, to whom the church is dedicated. A painter named Bernaldino, coming from Santa Gadea del Cid in the eastern part of the province of Burgos, is stated by document to have done in 1487 the retable of the high altar in the parroquia of Zorita del Paramo, near Herrera de Pisuerga, in the province of Palencia; 1 but cold reality contradicts Agapito's fancy 2 that the interest already accruing to the church from its frescoes 3 might be increased by discovering Bernaldino's manner in a small retable at the left of the nave. The retable, dedicated to St. Sebastian, is a quite rustic and negligible work of the end of the sixteenth century and could not conceivably have been executed by anyone active in the second half of the fifteenth century. Moreover, it is too small to have embellished the high altar, where scenes from the life of St. Lawrence, the patron of the church, would have been expected. Thus once more, as in so many other instances in Spanish art, the hopes of connecting a recorded master with an extant object are dashed to the ground. 1 Vinaza, Adiciones, etc., I, 26. I take it that Vinaza's term the retable must mean the principal retable. 3 La pintura en Valladolid, in Boletin del Museo Provincial de Bellas Arles de Falladolid, April, 1927, p. 56. 3 See my vol. II, p. 148.

CHAPTER XLIX T H E SCHOOL OF F E R N A N D O GALLEGO.

HISPANO-

FLEMISH P A I N T I N G IN T H E PROVINCE OF BURGOS I.

THE

BURGOS

MASTER

the most distinguished and certainly the most interesting follower of Fernando Gallego active at Burgos was the anonymous painter some of whose works have already been assembled by the discriminating perception of Don Diego Angulo. 1 Possessed of a more strongly defined individuality than the majority of imitators, he modified his borrowings with more pronounced personal qualities. Among the artists whose egos are recognizable in the painting of the province, he deserves the honor of being called the Burgos Master par excellence. T h e fundamental example of his achievement is a series of six large panels from a dismantled retable which were formerly to be seen in the chapel of S. Juan de Sahagun in the cathedral of Burgos but are now transferred to the Museo Diocesano that has been made in the cloister and adjoining chapels. One side of each of these panels depicts scenes from the Passion — the Betrayal, the Flagellation, the Crowning with Thorns, the Ecce Homo, the Via Dolorosa (Fig. 56), and the Nailing to the Cross; but the other sides of three of them are also painted, the subjects being episodes of the Infancy, the Annunciation (badly injured), Nativity, and Epiphany (Fig. 57), respectively behind the Flagellation, the Crowning with Thorns, and the Nailing to the Cross. T h e implication would be that they were used in a retable in which some parts were visible from both sides, and since there was once a retable of such sort over the high altar of the cathedral, it is likely, in view of the size and aesthetic importance of the pictures, that they constituted sections of this structure. The story of the Passion would have been represented on one side and that of the Nativity on the other. PERHAPS

1

Archivo espanol de arte y arqueologia, VI (1930), 75-77.

PROVINCE OF BURGOS

203

The personal characteristics of the author are a fondness for heroic, muscular physiques, a petrified stiffness in his forms and in the articulation of movement, both of which traits recall fortuitously the monumental rigidity of the greater Piero della Francesca, and, strangely combined with these qualities, a

Fic. 56. THE BURGOS MASTER.

VIA DOLOROSA.

CATHEDRAL, BURGOS

passionate violence of gesture and facial expression that appear in a more exalted phase in Piero della Francesca's pupil, Signorelli. The contrast with Fernando Gallego's easy elegance is very marked. The Burgos Master affected the stiff, straight lines of arms and legs also because, with the customary Spanish

2θ4

P R O V I N C E OF BURGOS

mediaeval sense of formal design, he thought that he needed them as arbitrary elements in his compositions. A striking example is found in the two men who plant the crown of thorns upon Christ's head. In the Betrayal and Via Dolorosa these rigid lines serve to increase the impression of movement towards the right. The robust bodies may be studied particularly in the tormentors of Christ in the various episodes of His Passion; the jerky inflexibility of movement, in the negro Magus of the Epiphany and the followers of the Wise Men at the left and in the captors of the Saviour in the Betrayal; the violence of emotion and resulting postures, in the Betrayal and Flagellation. One of the most powerfully strained figures, a study in movement almost worthy of Signorelli, is the man pulling taut with all his might the rope which, aided by the purchase of a tree-stump, is clamping the hand of Christ that is being nailed to the cross. He is prostrate with the effort; his visage is horribly distorted by the tugging; and his long hair falls heavily off his head towards the ground. The high pitch of expressionism often involves open mouths and is carried to the point of depicting the bravo who presents the reed to the thorn-crowned Saviour as projecting his tongue in mockery and a Roman soldier directing a like amenity at the Magdalene under the gate of Jerusalem in the Via Dolorosa. Not only do the countenances of Our Lord's persecutors glower with excited hate, but another peculiarity of the author is that he imbues the faces even of the virtuous with a dour and almost scowling (shall we say, Spanish?) glumness, as again in the two young followers of the Magi at the left or in the St. John of the Via Dolorosa. He tends to a rectangular rather than oval canon for the human face. The largeness of his manner may be gauged even in what is ordinarily the simple scene of the Annunciation, which is magnified into a grandiose composition wherein Gabriel is accompanied by a suite of four somewhat smaller angels. The overlay of these individual qualities conceals, at first sight, the affiliations with the Gallego tradition, but they nevertheless are there, underlying the author's manner. Sometimes the types are close to those of Fernando himself, such as the Christ of the Via Dolorosa. The soldier who pulls at the Saviour's tunic in this scene is only a brutalized translation of

P R O V I N C E OF BURGOS

205

Fernando's gentler youths. Virtually all of the types are descendants of Fernando's personages, but now and again the forms, as in the Nativity and Epiphany, are subjected to such an attenuation as to suggest that the painter's special admiration in the Gallego atelier was the master of Ciudad Rodrigo. Occasionally the cast of countenance, as in the Wise Man who

FIG. 57. THE BURGOS MASTER.

EPIPHANY.

CATHEDRAL, BURGOS

kisses the Child's foot, gives the same impression. T h e painter maintains also the greater allegiance of Ciudad Rodrigo to the school of Tournai. It is possible, as Mayer suggests, that he had looked with pleasure on the works of Hugo van der Goes, but the relationship does not declare itself much in his types and is concentrated chiefly in the resemblance of the Nativity

PROVINCE OF

BURGOS

in certain respects to the Portinari altarpiece, which he would have had to visit either Flanders or Florence to see. T h e Epiphany does not recall very closely the version by Van der Goes from Monforte de Lemos in Galicia, noW in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum. T h e painter is one of the most entrancing interpreters of landscape in the whole Gallego circle, and in the N a t i v i t y he conforms to his training by creating a middle ground of the proclamation to the shepherds. As so often in Spanish iconography, the Nailing to the Cross takes the place of the actual Crucifixion as a principal episode, and here the latter theme becomes merely one of the miniature scenes in the background that were the custom in the productions of the Gallego circle. The Crowning with Thorns also comprises a subordinate scene, St. Peter's denial to the maid, but in this instance in the same scale of size as the main subject. T h e Burgos Master has the national love of opulent brocades and hangings and does them extremely well, but he is again true to his tutelage in refusing to use real gold in these fabrics. In proper Spanish fashion, like " J u a n Flamenco," he subdues the high-keyed Flemish tonality to brown ·— in his case, a peculiarly delightful richness of brown that suggests the color-scheme of Signorelli. His relationship to the Gallego circle and the master of Ciudad Rodrigo is especially apparent in his compositions. What Diego Angulo has taken for direct derivations from Schongauer, I surmise are, at least for the most part, adaptations of Gallego compositions that themselves are indebted to the German prints. The Andalusian scholar himself, indeed, suggests the possibility of an intermediary between Schongauer and the Burgos Master. 1 H e rests his case for Schongauer upon the Betrayal, but the resemblances to the version in the Ciudad Rodrigo retable are more numerous than to the German engraving. I believe that I am right in descrying in the Ciudad Rodrigo version the detail that Angulo finds so distinctive in the Burgos panel — Christ stretching out to Malchus his severed ear. Our Lord's hands are not tied in the Ciudad Rodrigo version as they are in the Burgos panel and in the Schongauer print, but this detail appears in another Spanish treatment of 1 Dominguez Bordona, however, mentions a Burgos miniaturist directly under Schongauer's influence {Spanish Illumination, II, 61).

P R O V I N C E OF BURGOS the theme formerly in the Manzi Collection, Paris. 1 The posture of the wounded Malchus at Burgos is much closer to that of this figure in the Ciudad Rodrigo version than in the engraving. The same statement may be made with regard to the executioner who drags Christ onward, except that the Ciudad Rodrigo version does not present the item of his tugging at the Saviour's robe, which appears in the print and at Burgos. The figure of St. Peter at Burgos is more analogous to that in the German example than to the one of Ciudad Rodrigo, and the detail of the man tearing Christ's hair is common to the print and the Burgos panel but not to the Ciudad Rodrigo version. The treatment of the skulking Judas, on the other hand, is common to the print and the Ciudad Rodrigo version but not to the Burgos panel. The evidence demonstrates an undeniable dependence of the Burgos panel upon the standard composition of the Gallego shop, and it is therefore logical to suppose that the two or three instances of an apparently closer connection of this panel with the Schongauer engraving are in reality taken from other lost renderings of the theme produced by the shop. It is just possible that the Burgos Master had a first-hand acquaintance with Schongauer's plates and added from them a few details to the compositions that he inherited from the Gallego atelier, but the fundamental fact important to our purpose remains -— that he was familiar with the Gallego translations of the German cartoons. This interpretation of the evidence is borne out by a study of the other panels in which there are general parallelisms to Schongauer not noted by Diego Angulo. The Via Dolorosa is, on the whole, more similar to the larger of Schongauer's two treatments of the theme than it is to the Arcenillas and Ciudad Rodrigo versions, but the man holding the long spear behind the cross seems to be derived from these versions. The episode of the veronica may be introduced from Schongauer's smaller rendering of the subject. The Ecce Homo is more like Schongauer's composition, but on the other hand the Flagellation is merely an enlargement of Fernando's own treatment at Campo de Penaranda and reveals no conclusive points of contact with Schongauer. The compositions for the Nativity and Epiphany 1

See below, p. 468.

2o8

P R O V I N C E OF BURGOS

are not based upon the works of the German engraver. The author, however, was an eclectic, apparently choosing as a model for the Epiphany the centre of Memling's triptych now in the Prado, which thus more probably would have been in the peninsula from the beginning.1 It follows from what has been said that I do not concur with Angulo in suspecting that the Betrayal may be by a different hand from the rest of the series, except in so far as in every retable there must have been some intercollaboration of the several members of a shop. All the nine scenes of the six panels are certainly dominated by a single artistic personality. He is not a great draughtsman, but he compensates, when so many others were mere reflectors of Fernando Gallego, by his keenly developed individuality and his strong virility. The use of beautifully executed architecture of the Renaissance in the settings pulls the date down to the region of 1500. I have less hesitation than Angulo in attributing categorically to the Burgos Master the panel of the Entombment in the Collection of the Conde de Casal at Madrid (Fig. 58). The general " f e e l " of the picture is the same, and such an impression, however indefinable, has its weight. But the specific evidence is plentiful enough — the sturdy, masculine types, the woodenness of gesture, the muscular Christ (as in the Flagellation and Ecce Homo), the Magdalene in the right foreground elongated and clad in puckered drapery exactly like that of the angel in the left foreground of the Nativity, the feminine types in general analogous to the maid who hears St. Peter's denial, the disciple at the foot of the sarcophagus repeating the man behind Christ in the Ecce Homo, the stress upon the lovely landscape, the Renaissance sarcophagus adorned with lusty putti like those of Jacopo dello Querela, and the dark Spanish warmth of the color. On the other hand, I am as puzzled as Angulo by the panel of the Purification in the same Collection (Fig. 59) which, while it exhibits general analogies to the Burgos series and to the Entombment, betrays also certain differences. The types are somewhat more suave (though I cannot see in them, with Mayer, anything of Italianism); the draperies are less 1

See above, p. 27.

PROVINCE O F BURGOS

209

tormented; the architectural setting is purely Gothic of the Gallego cast. Yet the youth behind the priest is of the brawny build and hard features favored by the Burgos Master; the Child's anatomy is almost repeated from the Burgos Epiphany; and it is significant that, as the Epiphany appears to be based

FIG. 58.

T H E BURGOS MASTER.

ENTOMBMENT.

CASAL COLLECTION, M A D R I D

(Photo. Moreno )

upon the centre of Memling's triptych in the Prado, so the Purification is an enlargement of one of the wings (St. Joseph carrying a basket or pail instead of an urn). The dimensions of the Casal panels, almost equal to those of Burgos, would agree with the supposition that they once formed a part of the same retable: was the Purification executed by a member of the

2IO

P R O V I N C E OF

BURGOS

shop more independent of the leading master than was true of the average assistant? It is an admirable scholarly caution that again makes Angulo demur at accepting with finality for the Burgos Master a panel last known by me as in the hands of a Spanish dealer and depicting the miracle of Sts. Cosmas and Damian by which they

FIG. 59. THE BURGOS MASTER (?). PURIFICATION. (Photo.

Moreno

CASAL COLLECTION, MADRID

)

substituted a Moor's leg for the cancerous limb of one of their devotees (Fig. 60); but in this instance also he is too circumspect. In the first place he had probably not happened to light upon the fact that the sacristy of SS. Cosme y Damian at Burgos contains a modern replica of the picture, which, in view of the theme, forthwith arouses the strong suspicion that the

P R O V I N C E O F BURGOS

211

original had once been in this church, a likely place in which to seek for a work by the Burgos Master, 1 and that the copy was substituted when the original was sold. But the style itself is

FIG. 60.

THE BURGOS MASTER.

DAMIAN.

MIRACLE OF STS. COSMAS AND

FORMERLY IN SS. COSME Υ DAMIAN, BURGOS (From " La pinlura esfahola" by A. L.

Mayer)

enough to enforce the attribution. The severe, square-faced types put in their appearance again; the legs of the victim have the strongly marked knees and sinews of the Burgos Master's 1

See below, p. 215.

212

PROVINCE OF BURGOS

various representations of the nude Christ; the assisting angels in the foreground are the mates of those in the Epiphany; the garments of the saints are enriched with jewelled borders like those of many of the Burgos cathedral figures and the priest of the Casal Purification; the portal of the room in which the operation takes place is framed in a jamb of the Renaissance decorated with the motif of another robust putto supporting an arabesque, and the spandrels of its arch are embellished with the simulated reliefs of a masculine and a feminine nude stretching scarfs (Adam and Eve?). T h e y suggest in a way the monochrome figures on the guardapolvos of Fernando Gallego's retable of St. Ildefonso; and the principal importance of the panel is that its manner in general is closer to Fernando (to whom Mayer quite impossibly ascribes it) than are the other members of the pictorial group and thus demonstrates more patently the group's affiliation with the Gallego circle. An altarpiece in the Abreu Collection of the Museum at Seville presents a more complex problem, since the principal parts are by no means so manifestly connected with the Burgos Master as is the predella. The only principal parts that have been preserved consist of three large panels, at the centre the Assumption, at the left the Nativity, and at the right the Epiphany (Fig. 61). T h e four sections of the predella display, arranged in pairs against the customary brocade, half-lengths of Sts. Peter and Paul, Gabriel and the Virgin Annunciate, Sts. Apollonia and Lucy, and Sts. Sebastian and Fabian (Fig. 62). The groups of the Annunciation and of Sts. Sebastian and Fabian reiterate the characteristic types of the Burgos Master so faithfully as to render it scarcely worth while to argue the point whether the Abreu predella is the production of the same or a very intimately affiliated artist. T h e rub is that the body of the retable exhibits types which, though very similar to those of the Burgos Master, do not incorporate his curious mannerisms in the countenances. Such comparisons, however, as that of the Virgin in the Epiphany with the St. L u c y of the predella reveal that the whole structure was executed in the same shop, 1 with the logical conclusion that the Assumption, 1 Since I have no definite information in regard to the provenience of the body of the retable and the predella, it is just possible that each is from a separate structure; but in that case I should still believe them to have been executed by the same shop.

FIG. 6I. THE BURGOS MASTER (?). RETABLE.

EPIPHANY, SECTION OF

PROVINCIAL MUSEUM, SEVILLE (Photo. Arxiu

Mas )

214

P R O V I N C E OF BURGOS

Nativity, and Epiphany were painted by a member who had less of a proclivity to indulge in stylization. One might even maintain that the author of the principal sections is the painter of the predella in a more natural phase, for the kneeling Magus is virtually the same man, at a somewhat less advanced age, as the kneeling King at the left in the Epiphany of the Burgos cathedral, the Virgin in the Epiphany and some of the angels in the Assumption are less extreme exponents of the atelier's parrot-nosed visages, and the Christ Child duplicates the Infant of the Burgos Nativity (though He is less like the corresponding figure in the Burgos Epiphany). If the author of the larger Abreu panels does not equal the Burgos Master, he is quite his peer as a technician and as a landscapist, and compensates for what he lacks of that painter's stern force by the charm that emanates from his realization of more normal kinds of human loveliness and character. With the exception of a Mass of St. Gregory in the Museo Diocesano of Burgos, this completes the list of the works assigned by Angulo to the Burgos Master, and it was only in a conversation with me that he included the Abreu predella, the attribution of which possibly gains further validity from the consideration that each of us had arrived at it independently. The ascription of the Mass of St. Gregory is one of the very few instances in which I find myself obliged to disagree with the Andalusian scholar. Save for a certain severity of expression on the face of the deacon kneeling at the right, the types are not those of the Burgos Master. The scene, to be sure, is set in architecture of the Renaissance, but this is not because the Burgos Master was here indulging one of his peculiarities but because the painting itself is already Italianate and, unlike the productions of the Burgos Master, has virtually lost contact with Flemish mediaevalism. There is, however, another representation of the Mass of St. Gregory in the city that is securely authenticated as one of the Burgos Master's works. I t hangs in the same dependency of SS. Cosme y Damian that contains the panel of Sts. Catherine and Barbara by Fernando Gallego, and the existence of both the Mass of St. Gregory and the miracle of Sts. Cosmas

PROVINCE OF BURGOS

215

and Damian 1 in this church tends to confirm there the activity of the Burgos Master and to corroborate reciprocally the attribution of each of the pictures to him. The many stylistic identities include the parrot-faced types of the maid of St. Peter's denial in the symbols of the Passion and of the finely rendered clerical donor in red, the repetition, in the deacon and subdeacon, of the arrow-like physiques of the angels in the miracle

FIG. 62. THE BURGOS MASTER. STS. SEBASTIAN AND FABIAN, SECTION OF RETABLE. PROVINCIAL MUSEUM, SEVILLE (Photo. Arxiu Mas )

of Sts. Cosmas and Damian, the emphasis upon the knees in the nude Christ upon the altar, and again the Renaissance architecture. Among the other works that may be ascribed to the Burgos Master, it is pleasant to be able to add a whole retable (though the framing is more modern) — the example over the high altar of the church of S. Millän in one of the barrios of Los Balbases, southwest of Burgos. Six of the panels incorporate episodes from the story of the patron saint, Emilianus: his conversion, 1

See above, p. 2 1 1 .

2l6

P R O V I N C E OF

BURGOS

in a dream, from the life of a shepherd to that of a hermit, while near-by, with a delightful resort to genre, his flock pastures, his dogs watch him in surprise, and there lies abandoned upon the ground the lute with which it was his wont to drive away sleep; 1 one of his numerous encounters with demons; his preaching at Berceo and, as a subordinate scene perceived through a door in the right background, his administration of the sacrament of Baptism; his cure of the crippled woman, 2 again with an additional event depicted in miniature in the offing, his wrestling with Satan, a theme that occupies a whole compartment in the retable of Irüs; 3 his benediction of a jar of wine so that it may be supernaturally replenished for his devotees; 4 and his death (Fig. 63) and translation to heaven. 5 The ensemble comprises also an Annunciation and a Nativity of Christ by the Burgos Master. The reappearance at every point in the panels of his brawny and almost block-hewn types automatically assigns the retable to him. Among the most gripping parallelisms is the well-nigh exact reduplication of his Sts. Cosmas and Damian in the two young men behind the cripple's bed. The composition of the Nativity is varied somewhat from the rendering in the cathedral, but, except for the standing posture of St. Gabriel, the Annunciation practically repeats the cathedral version, even in the grandiose addition of an angelic cohort to constitute the celestial herald's train. The Master's precocious alertness to contemporary artistic trends is incorporated once more in solemn architectural settings of the Renaissance. Through the great arch, adorned in the manner of the Lombard Renaissance, behind the scene of the cripple's cure, one looks into what is probably intended as the saint's oratory, over the Gonzalo de Berceo thus beautifully puts it in his poem on San Millän (stanza 7): " A b i a otra costumne el pastor que vos digo, Por uso una fitara traye siempre consigo, Por referir el suenno, que el mal enemigo Furtar non li pudiesse cordero nin cabrito." 2 Ibid., stanzas 138 ff. His use of his staff as an instrument of the healing suggests that it is this miracle which is represented rather than any of his several other cures of diseased females or rather than his resurrection of the young maid of Prado in an appearance after his death (stanzas 342 ff.)· In favor of the last interpretation, however, it might be urged that the individual upon whom the miracle is performed looks like a child. 3 See below, p. 234; stanzas 118 ff. of Gonzalo de Berceo's poem. 4 Ibid., stanzas 244 s Ibid., stanzas 294 ff. ff. 1

PROVINCE OF

BURGOS

217

altar of which the painter has charmingly imitated the Flemish trick of simulating an outspread triptych, in this instance depicting the Crucifixion. N o matter how reduced the compass in which the Burgos M a s t e r works, he cannot fail to be heroic. So in two small panels of Sts. R o c h (Fig. 64) and Sebastian in the sacristy of the church of the other barrio at Los Balbases, S. Esteban, with that curious analogy to contemporary central Italian painting that marks his style, he rises to a Melozzo-like monumentality.

FIG. 63.

THE BURGOS MASTER. DETAIL OF DEATH OF ST. EMILIANUS, SECTION OF RETABLE. S. MILLÄN, LOS BALBASES (Photo. Photo

Club)

T h e countenance and powerful physique of St. R o c h and the type of the attendant angel carry with them the certain evidence of his authorship. A Pieta in the same room (Fig. 65) perhaps belongs to a faithful assistant rather than to the M a s t e r himself; but although it is executed on canvas, it does not incorporate j u s t that phase of his school that we shall find in the atelier of Ona. W e are rather safe also in ascribing to him or an artist of his immediate circle two dissociated panels from the life of the Virgin that again present to our view the same queerly parrot-like

218

PROVINCE OF BURGOS

faces. The Birth of the Virgin 1 in the Pickman Collection, Seville (Fig. 66), is not likely to add much to his reputation, and yet many details imply his actual hand — for instance, the body and head of the infant, the resemblance of the midwife who holds the child to the Virgin in the Casal Purification, the analogy of the feminine types in general to those of the Burgos

FIG. 64. THE BURGOS MASTER. ST. ROCH. LOS BALBASES (Photo. Photo Club)

S. ESTEBAN,

Via Dolorosa and of the cure of the cripple at Los Balbases, the virtual identity of the elaborate headdress of the friend carrying the fruit with that of the holy woman in the left background of the Casal Entombment, and a window opening upon the same trees that fleck the backgrounds of the Casal Entombment and 1 It might conceivably be the nativity of the Baptist, though St. Zacharias is not present.

P R O V I N C E OF B U R G O S

219

the Burgos series. The characteristic ponderous touch of the painter here weighs down the panel almost to a leaden dullness. In the other picture, an Annunciation that was offered for sale by Don Raimundo Ruiz in 1925 at New York (Fig. 67),

FIG. 65. SCHOOL OF THE BURGOS MASTER.

PI ETA.

S. ESTEBAN, LOS BALBASES (Photo. Photo Club)

one should note in particular the analogies of the St. Gabriel to the Sts. Cosmas and Damian and of the Virgin to the representation of Our Lady in the Burgos Epiphany. Even a marked peculiarity of the Burgos series is reproduced —• the architectural setting constructed of stones of varying colors.

220

PROVINCE OF BURGOS

I.

THE

SCHOOL OF O N A

T o the following or at least the circle of the Burgos Master should be assigned the pictorial manner of which the monastery of Ona has been sometimes claimed as the radiating centre. If, however, the specimens of the manner were slightly antecedent to the Burgos Master's productions (which contain architecture of the Renaissance) or only just contemporary with them, he may not have been the inspirer of the tendency but only its greatest manipulator. When his works, the best expression of the tendency, are found at Burgos and when some of the productions of the Ona school itself were done for the city, it is questionable whether we should think of an atelier at Ona as its hearth. More probably the atelier was at Burgos, but after it had found patronage at Ona, the adjacent towns would naturally follow the example of the great religious institution and would turn to the same workshop when they wanted any painting done; or the fashions displayed at Ona by the Burgos atelier might have been imitated by local artisans at Ona or in the region. Inasmuch as at least two principal hands are distinguishable in the output of the " O n a " atelier, it is preferable to describe it as a school rather than to single out one of the members of the shop and to call him the Ona Master. Of this manner the chief remains in the monastic church o f Ona itself are six large paintings of the Passion upon cloth in the Panteones de los Reyes — in the Panteon at the left of the high altar the Via Dolorosa, the Nailing to the Cross, and the actual Crucifixion and in the Panteon at the right the Deposition (Fig. 68), Entombment, and Resurrection. Probably commissioned for the very purpose that they now serve, the decoration of the recesses of the Panteones, they reveal the same burly bodies and stiffness of gestures as the story of the Passion by the Burgos Master. In spots the contact becomes rather close. T h e face of Christ in the Nailing to the Cross and in the Crucifixion almost reproduces that of the Saviour on the Via Dolorosa in the Burgos series. All the Ona paintings of the Passion copy the powerful physique that the Burgos Master bestows upon Our Lord, and in the Entombment there is the same tremendous

Fic. 66. THE BURGOS MASTER (?). BIRTH OF THE VIRGIN. PICKMAN COLLECTION, SEVILLE

222

P R O V I N C E OF

BURGOS

emphasis upon the knees as in the Casal version of the subject. The Virgin and the Magdalene in this scene are weak counterparts of the corresponding figures in the Casal panel. T h e absolutely straight and energetic line of the arms in the St. Joseph of Arimathaea (or Nicodemus ?) who lays Christ in the sepulchre in the Casal panel reappears at Ona in the executioner who nails

FIG. 67. THE BURGOS MASTER (?). ANNUNCIATION. FORMERLY IN THE RAIMUNDO RUIZ COLLECTION, MADRID

Him to the cross. The Burgos Master's rocky hillocks of curious geological formation are also liberally sprinkled through the backgrounds of the Ona panels. The affiliation of the author of the Ona series with the Burgos Master is embodied in the derivation of the Resurrection, mediately or immediately, from

PROVINCE OF BURGOS

223

Schongauer's engraving. Y e t he is not the Burgos M a s t e r but a somewhat feebler member of the same tendency. In a more constant resort to haloes he is more Spanish, and it is to be noticed that he revives the old Iberian diagonal composition for the Nailing to the Cross. 1 T h e angels, executed on wood and all but one with instruments of the Passion, now built into the sides of a conglomerate retable of sculpture over an altar at the right of the nave, are creditable achievements belonging to the same phase of the

FIG. 68.

SCHOOL OF OfVA.

DEPOSITION.

MONASTIC CHURCH, ONA

(Photo. Photo Club)

province's art but not certainly to the author of the canvases in the Panteones. Because of the instruments of the Passion Herrera believes them to have been part of the (lost) 2 retable of O u r Lord's life and death that in 1479 was moved to the high altar of the church, and so he dates them before that y e a r ; but angels of the Passion were commonly used to decorate retables See vol. I l l , pp. 167 and 266. Unless, perchance, the canvases in the Provincial Museum at Burgos belonged to this retable. I t will appear below (p. 232) that there is no valid reason for assigning the panels at T e j a d a to this source. 1

2

224

P R O V I N C E OF B U R G O S

of any subject whatsoever, and it is hard to imagine these fragments as executed before the very end of the century. The gold backgrounds are diapered with rosettes and with separate patterns at the borders. With more confidence we may assign to the author of the canvases the seven well preserved angels with instruments of the Passion frescoed on the vaulting in the vestibule of the church (Fig. 69). Indeed the execution is so good that the student thinks for a moment of the Burgos Master himself, but in the end he is obliged to reject the idea of recognizing here his powerful style. The mural scheme extends to escutcheons upheld by wildmen in the archheads. The style joins with the alleged provenience, Ona, in allocating to the group another series of eight large scenes from the Passion also painted on canvas, Nos. 32-35 and 174-177 of the Museo Provincial at Burgos. The author is not the same as the painter of the pictures at Ona but is closely related to him. The type employed for Christ falls within the same family, a somewhat frailer aspect of the Saviour as conceived by the Burgos Master; the St. John Evangelist acknowledges a kinship with his effigies in the Ona series; the landscapes are surprisingly similar; and the composition for the figure of Christ rising from the tomb (Fig. 70) is identical. This detail is more similar to Our Lord in the Ona Resurrection than in the Schongauer prototype, and the only other passage in the panels of the Burgos Museum redolent of Schongauer, the section of the Agony in the Garden depicting Christ kneeling before a rock, is not sufficient to prove the painter's direct dependence upon the German engraver. The affiliations with the Burgos Master are perhaps slightly less tangible than in the Passion at Ona itself, but in compensation we perceive much more clearly the ties that bind this whole group of paintings to the Gallego atelier. I t can hardly be doubted, indeed, that the author, like the Burgos Master, had come into intimate contact with the lackadaisical types of that member of the atelier who was chiefly responsible for the retable of Ciudad Rodrigo. He does not reproduce the compositions, except in so far as the Betrayal may be considered a reduction of the representation in the Ciudad Rodrigo retable to a smaller number of actors, but the rather striking

226

P R O V I N C E O F BURGOS

analogies are concentrated more in the heads, physiques, gestures, and stress upon the armor. The most concrete link with the Gallego atelier, however, unites the series in the Burgos Museum to another production of the shop, since the Flagellation (Fig. 71) almost literally repeats the version in the altarpiece now at Arcenillas. The artistic attainments incorporated

FIG. 70. SCHOOL OF OKA. RESURRECTION. MUSEUM, BURGOS (Photo. Photo

PROVINCIAL

Club)

in the series are not such as to give much aesthetic delight, and the principal interest is found in the palpable revelation of the fusion of the Gallego and local Burgos strains in the output of the Ona school. To this member of the shop rather than to the author of the canvases at Ona itself I am inclined to ascribe a pair of panels

P R O V I N C E OF

BURGOS

227

of Gabriel and the Virgin Annunciate in the Museo Diocesano of the cathedral at Burgos, but, since the two confreres are so nearly identical, I should not press the attribution to one rather than the other. T h e reverses of the panels are also painted, with the Nativity behind the Gabriel and the Epiphany (Fig. 72) behind Our Lady. It is everywhere apparent

FIG. 71.

SCHOOL OF ONA.

FLAGELLATION.

PROVINCIAL

MUSEUM, BURGOS (Photo. Photo

Club)

that the school of Ona was fecundated by the virile Burgos Master. His types, for instance, somewhat enervated, appear in the Virgin of the Annunciation, in all the actors of the Nativity, even in the two angels, and in the first, kneeling Magus of the Epiphany, but the way in which the Ona painters modified the Burgos Master's forms becomes very tangible particularly

228

PROVINCE OF

BURGOS

in the figure of the second, standing Wise Man. The consideration that chiefly demands an attribution to the author of the Museo Provincial canvases is the excessive slimness of some of the physiques. T h e two panels have always been in the cathedral, and their principal significance, as I have hinted above, 1 is that they establish the activity of the so-called Ona atelier in the city itself and thus contribute to the evidence which suggests Burgos rather than Ona as the seat of the shop. The two retainers with the pack-animals on the road winding into the Epiphany incorporate one of those touches from every-day life •— here unusually winsome — that so often enhance the backgrounds of Hispano-Flemish panels. Is the bust in contemporary costume that peers forth from a window in the wall behind the Holy Family in this scene a portrait of the artist? Pintoricchio introduced his own likeness in much the same way into his fresco of the Annunciation at Spello. It is a desperate problem of connoisseurship to determine to which of the two Ona painters that we have distinguished we should ascribe the most important work of the atelier outside of Burgos and Ona and its noblest technical achievement, the impressive retable over the high altar of S. Nicolas at Espinosa de los Monteros, north of Villarcayo, a church that was a dependency of the great monastery. The centre is occupied by a huge Crucifixion, the Christ of which must have been rendered in sculptured wood in the middle and has disappeared. T h e two flanking panels are other scenes from the Passion, the Via Dolorosa and the Deposition. The remate consists of two compartments corresponding in width to the halves of the Crucifixion below and representing Christ and the Virgin seated each amidst singing angels. The predella displays against solid goldbrocaded backgrounds one of the habitual themes for the centre, the Man of Sorrows between two angels, and on either side in pairs half-lengths of Sts. Dominic and Francis (Fig. 73), Augustine (?, to balance a second father of the Church, Jerome, in the corresponding panel on the other side) 2 and Benedict, 1

P. 220.

L i k e the fathers of the C h u r c h , he holds a miniature church as an attribute, b u t , as a companion of St. Benedict in the panel, he might be the great canonized abbot of O n a , Inigo. T h e other father of the C h u r c h , Jerome, however, is coupled with an a b b o t , St. Bernard. 2

FIG. 72. SCHOOL OF OftA. EPIPHANY. (Photo. Photo

Club)

CATHEDRAL, BURGOS

2 30

PROVINCE O F BURGOS

Jerome and Bernard, Victorious 1 and Stephen. The only figured embellishment of the guardapolvos comprises six angels with instruments of the Passion. The analogies in types and compositions to the canvases of the Passion in the Burgos Museum rather tip the balance in favor of an attribution to the member of the shop who was responsible for that series, but the craft is of a distinctly higher grade, reaching its summit in

FIG. 73. SCHOOL OF ΟΝΑ. STS. DOMINIC AND FRANCIS, SECTION OF RETABLE. S. NICOLAS, ESPINOSA DE LOS MONTEROS (Photo. Photo

Club)

the enthroned effigies of Our Lord and Lady. Certain parts, as especially the saints of the predella, approach the style of the Burgos Master in quality as well as in the cast of the countenances more closely even than do the other productions of the atelier. The derivation of this whole phase of art at Burgos from Fernando Gallego here finds expression particularly in the drapery of the enthroned Virgin. The episodes of the Passion 1 The name is spelt on the halo Vitores, whom, because he carries his head as attribute, I take to be St. Victoricus of Amiens. I do not know why he enjoyed a cult in Castile or why he is represented without his companions, Sts. Fuscianus and Gentianus.

FIG. 74.

SCHOOL OF 055A. SANTIAGO AND ANOTHER APOSTLE, SECTION OF RETABLE. S. PEDRO, TEJADA (Photo. Photo

Club)

232

PROVINCE OF

BURGOS

are set against the characteristic landscapes of the Ona school, but the whole retable, both in the backgrounds of the predella and in many of the garments, sparkles with the gold by which the Spaniards acclimatized the Flemish models. The retable of the high altar in the formerly monastic church of S. Pedro at Tejada in the Valdivielso near Valdenoceda, north of Ona, is nearer to the canvases at Ona than to those in the Burgos Museum. In the upper tier a synchronous statue of St. Peter is flanked by two painted scenes from his life, a Mass of St. Gregory, and a panel of two standing episcopal saints. The pair of narrative scenes depict Sts. Peter and Paul raising the dead youth upon whom the spells of Simon Magus had failed and the final arrest of St. Peter. T h e lower tier presents four panels of coupled Apostles (except that the Baptist is coupled with St. John Evangelist) (Fig. 74) and at the centre, very much as in the altarpiece of Espinosa de los Monteros, the Man of Sorrows adored by two angels. It is impossible to follow certain critics 1 in ascribing the last panel to a different hand from the rest of the altar or in the theory that the retable was brought from Ona and adapted to use for a church dedicated to St. Peter. The scenes from the life of St. Peter imply that the altarpiece was made for the church of Tejada, the style is homogeneous, and the parts fit nicely together as one retable. Nor does the simple shield of Castile and Leon at the top of the structure, instead of the escutcheon of Ferdinand and Isabella, seem to prove, as has been held, that the retable was executed before the inauguration of the reign of the Reyes Catolicos in 1474, for it would require some time for the new heraldry to penetrate a country shrine like that of Tejada, and unless a monument were erected directly under the patronage of Ferdinand and Isabella, the old insignia might continue in favor. On internal evidence the activity of the Ona school should be set towards the very end of the fifteenth century. T h e painter's close connection or even identity with the author of the canvases still at Ona is apparent at every point, but Huidobro 2 is right in alluding especially to the parallelism of the St. John Evangelist to the same personage in the Entombment and of the blessing Christ to the Saviour in the Resurrection. T h e alle1

L. Huidobro, El Falle de Valdivielso, 219.

3

Ibid.

Fig. 7J.

SCHOOL OF ONA.

SECTION OF RETABLE. (Photo. Photo

Club)

PARISH CHURCH, IRUS

234

PROVINCE OF

BURGOS

giance to Fernando Gallego is revealed less clearly than in the series of the Museo Provincial at Burgos. The figure that is most reminiscent is perhaps that of the half-nude young man raised by Sts. Peter and Paul. T h e further Hispanicization of the Flemish inheritance, as compared with Fernando Gallego's own works, is signalized by the increase of gold hangings and garments, and yet the painter retains Fernando's Flemish fondness for settings of landscape which is encountered also in the Ona retable of Espinosa de los Monteros. Although he spreads gold-woven tapestries behind the Christ of the predella and the pairs of Apostles, he allows us glimpses, at the sides of the fabrics, of rather pleasant vistas of Spanish hill and dale, accented with bits of architecture. In the retable over the high altar of the parish church at Irus, east of Villasante and between Lecinana and Vivanco in the Valle de Mena, one might perhaps have expected to find a work in that style of the early Renaissance which the great Andalusian, Alejo Fernandez, exemplified at the near-lying Villasana de Mena; but it is again witness to the wide dissemination of the Ona manner that it turns out to be a production of the artist who did the Ona canvases and the Tejada retable (Fig. 75). T h e identity in types and settings bursts through even the thorough job of repainting to which the altarpiece was subjected in 1908-1910. 1 The centre of the lowest row of panels is occupied by effigies of Santiago and St. Emilianus (S. Millän), the latter accompanied by the knightly donor; in the two lateral compartments are scenes from the life of St. Emilianus. In the second tier two further episodes of his story flank the Flagellation of Christ. T h e subjects of the topmost tier are the Via Dolorosa, the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection. T h e predella consists of half-lengths of saints, three of which are wholly modern, and the guardapolvos are embellished with full-lengths of similar effigies, of which the St. Matthias, the central figure at the left, also belongs entirely to the recent restoration. T h e prominence of St. Emilianus finds its reason in the dedication of the church, which depended upon the powerful monastery of San Millän de la Cogolla. 2 1 2

Angel Nuno Garcia, El Valle de Mena y sus pueblos, 118. Ibid., 118 and 612.

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PROVINCE OF

BURGOS

T h e most likely niche that I am at present able to discover for two panels of the Deposition and Resurrection in the M u seum of G h e n t (Fig. 76) is a rather humble spot in the school of Ona. T h e type of Christ, especially in the Deposition, is a more feebly drawn and physically flabbier version of the Saviour's representations in the O n a scenes from the Passion, and the other figures can easily be conceived to h a v e been done b y an indifferently gifted artisan who had seen the creations of the monastic school. T h e landscapes, with their Gothic towns among the hills and rocks, distantly recall those of the O n a school and of the Burgos Master, but the increased pressure of the indigenous atmosphere, in the rustic painter of the G h e n t panels, has turned the skies to gold. T h e garments likewise are enlivened with m a n y gold accents. T h e Gallego parentage of the O n a school is notably signalized by the similarity of the composition for the Resurrection to the versions of Arcenillas and C i u d a d Rodrigo.

3.

"JUAN

FLAMENCO"

A s the focus for assembling another and quite different Burgos group of paintings dependent upon the Gallego manner, we m a y take the six panels of the life of St. John B a p t i s t from the Carthusian monastery of Miraflores and now in the P r a d o under N o s . 705-710; but this classification must be prefaced by two admissions. T h e first is that the only ground for connecting the group with Burgos lies in the provenience of its best known members from Miraflores, whereas the affiliated pictures come from other regions of northern Spain or are of unknown origin; and it is possible that the centre of the shop's activity was some other city. T h e second admission incumbent upon us is that the strongly marked traits of Fernando's individuality h a v e been washed out into a mediocre neutralization in which the relations with the style of the great master are no longer clearly perceptible. T h e subjects are the visitation, the n a t i v i t y of St. John (with the frequent Spanish iconographical detail of the Virgin receiving from St. Elizabeth the newborn child), his preaching, baptism of Christ, arrest, and decapitation (Fig. 77). T h e series has acquired a celebrity quite beyond its in-

FIG. 77.

"JUAN FLAMENCO." DECAPITATION OF ST. JOHN BAPTIST. PRADO, MADRID (Photo. Ruiz

Vernacci)

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BURGOS

different artistic merit because it has sometimes been thought identical with a retable seen by Ponz 1 in the Choir of the Laymen at Miraflores and attributed by him to a Juan Flamenco on the evidence of a document quoted by him as mentioning a baptism of Christ in this part of the church done by a painter of this name between 1496 and 1499. T h e first obstacle in the way of ascribing the Prado series to Juan Flamenco on such evidence is that Ponz himself may have been wrong in identifying the retable with the work referred to in the document, which speaks only of a baptism and not of a succession of scenes from St. John's life. There may have been another representation of this frequent theme in the Laymen's Choir. On the other hand, mediaeval documents sometimes thus loosely refer to a whole altarpiece by one of its prominent parts, so that it is quite possible or even probable that the work which Ponz saw was by Juan Flamenco. But the bigger question remains: is the work that Ponz saw the one now in the Prado ? We have already observed 2 that another claimant for this honor is the triptych of the Baptist, with the baptism at the centre, in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum by Roger van der Weyden or an immediate pupil. The factual arguments against this identification are that the grounds for the erstwhile existence of the Berlin triptych at Miraflores turn out to be no solider than notes in a sale-catalogue 3 and that Ponz describes the altarpiece as consisting of five, not three, panels. Even if one wishes to assign the Berlin triptych to a pupil rather than to Roger himself, it is difficult to believe that a Juan Flamenco, as such a pupil, could have imitated Roger's manner so exactly as late as the very end of the fifteenth century and could thus faithfully have reproduced and worked in the Flemish mode of the first half of the century (Tormo 4 to the contrary, notwithstanding). T h e specifications, however, in the fulsome praise that Ponz bestows upon the paintings that he saw — such phrases as the perfection of details, beauty of color, and expressiveness of faces — are undoubtedly more suitable to the Flemish triptych Viage de Espana, X I I , 55-56. P. 24. 3 Cf. F. Winkler, Der Meister von Flemalle und Regier van der Weyden, Strassburg, I 9 i 3 , p . 158. 4 Bolet'm de la Sociedad Castellana de Excursiones, III (1907-1908), 546-558. 1

2

PROVINCE O F BURGOS

2

39

of Berlin than to the panels of the Prado, but neither this hyperbolical language nor Ponz's criticism has much weight, for he subsequently says that the still extant scenes of the Legend of the Cross at Miraflores, which are in the manner of the early Renaissance and are certainly not superior artistically to the Baptist series of the Prado, embody the same perfection of craft and the same general style as Juan Flamenco's works. So far as this statement of his goes, indeed, it would favor the assignment of the Prado series to Juan Flamenco, for they are closer stylistically to the panels of the Cross than is the Berlin triptych. Tormo significantly points out, however, that the three pieces of the triptych, by their dimensions, would have nicely fitted into the attic and lateral niches of an existing altar of the seventeenth century in the Laymen's Choir, which must have been one of the altars that Ponz saw and into which the pieces would have been built at the time of the baroque remodelling. It would remain queer that Ponz should not have noticed the picture in the large central niche of the baroque retable (whatever that picture would have been); and the contentions urged above seem to me pretty conclusive against an identification of the Berlin triptych with the Miraflores paintings. If Ponz saw either the Berlin or Prado pictures and not an altarpiece now lost, the arguments for and against the Prado series are like those that enmesh the Berlin triptych. He might more easily have mistaken six than three panels for five, the style corresponds with the date, and in many places he betrays that he was not so much an admirer of Gothic pictures or so good a judge of them as to have distinguished the great original Flemish qualities from a countrified Spanish imitation. A prime difficulty in the way of an identification is that, although there are six spaces in the altar in question in the Laymen's Choir, the Prado panels could not possibly have fitted into their varying dimensions. A way out of the difficulty would be to suppose that in the eighteenth century, when Ponz saw them, the Prado panels were heaped helter-skelter in front of the baroque architecture of the structure, as fragments of painted mediaeval retables sometimes are in modern Spanish churches. Juan Flamenco means John the Fleming; but, if the Prado series is by any chance his production, we have already

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seen that stylistic considerations forestall his identification with the great John of Flanders, i. e. Juan de Flandes, who, to be sure, was active in Spain at the end of the century and perhaps even at Miraflores but in comparison with whom the Prado painter is only a lumbering craftsman. Juan de Flandes is equally but for different reasons unthinkable as the author of the Berlin triptych. The derivation of the Prado series from the Gallego manner, however diluted, is still visible. The family descent of the figures from Dierick Bouts is stamped upon their physiques, for instance in the Christ of the baptism, in the executioner of St. John, and in the soldier at the right in the scene of the arrest, who betrays an attenuation of the legs which, as one might expect in the works of a pupil of a pupil, approaches caricature. The facial types, such as that of the preaching St. John, acknowledge the influence of Fernando Gallego; the setting to the decapitation is one of Fernando's Gothic interiors; and the actors wear the rich contemporary apparel of the school. The armor of the soldiers who arrest St. John is executed with a delight that is worthy of the Ciudad Rodrigo painter. The author clings to Fernando's custom of substituting yellow pigment for gold in combination with black or dark green to form the brocades. The only spot where real gold is allowed is on the ceiling of the room of the nativity. In the window of this room he has attempted a Flemish trick in simulating the Annunciation in stained glass. The representation of the martyrdom, although the composition is rather different from that in the Zamora retable, is sanguinary enough to have appealed to the taste of the founder of the Gallego shop. The homely detail of the dog in the Ciudad Rodrigo washing of Christ's feet has two companions in the Prado series, in the visitation and in the arrest. Another example of naturalism, in this case in an extreme form, is the Salome who, in the background of the scene of the decollation, distressfully wipes her eye in the presence of Herod. The naturalism may be viewed as a general Iberian quality rather than as an inheritance from Gallego, and other signs are not lacking to show that the author of the six panels, if he was indeed a Fleming, had become much more thoroughly Hispani1

P. 46.

PROVINCE O F BURGOS cized than his other compatriots who came to the peninsula. The brocades are everywhere conspicuous, and in the case of a garment that is worn by a seated listener to St. John's sermon the design of the fabric, to make it more ostentatious, is spread out in a directly frontal position, without regard to its relation to the figure that it clothes, according to a common Spanish practice that we have often noted. This panel has, furthermore, one of those absolutely symmetrical compositions which are a constantly recurring peculiarity of mediaeval Spanish painting: the section of the congregation at the right is balanced by that at the left, into which the artist has strangely introduced a band of the Carthusian monks for whom the pictures were executed. The more comprehensive and brilliant gamut of Flemish color is reduced in most instances to a monotonous light brown tonality, especially in the landscapes. In the same degree, however, in which Fernando Gallego is inferior to Dierick Bouts, so Juan Flamenco (if it be Juan Flamenco) is more provincial than Fernando. The gestures, which even with Bouts seem artificial, have become those of mechanical dolls. The mannered dissection of the drapery into multiple and broken folds, which in Flemish painting and with Fernando are cast into pleasing designs, now tends to result merely in ugly and disordered meshes. The author has had in mind the landscapes of Fernando Gallego and of the school of the Low Countries. With his sheep in the visitation and his little horsemen and other figurines in the baptism, he has sought to reproduce their pretty detail. In the former panel he follows Fernando's habit of establishing a middle ground by a subordinate incident in smaller scope, the Virgin and St. Joseph on their way to St. Elizabeth's house; and into two separate rooms in the background of the interior in which he sets the decapitation he has introduced the episodes of Salome showing the head to her mother and frightened to weeping by Herod's request to dance or trying the effect of tears upon him in her petition for the Baptist's execution. In all this, however, through ignorance or slovenliness, he achieves only a rude semblance of his models. In a former volume 1 I have attributed to the painter of the St. John Baptist series in the Prado or at least to a closely re1

III, 287.

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lated, somewhat more rustic artist the three scenes from the life of St. Felix now in the Collection of the Duchess of Parcent, Madrid, which were once combined with sections of the school of Nicolas Frances to form a retable at Villalobos in the province of Zamora. We may further, with much confidence, ascribe

FIG. 78.

"JUAN FLAMENCO" (?). SANTIAGO. PRADO, MADRID

to the painter of the Baptist series an enthroned Santiago (transferred to canvas), No. 1297 of the Prado, reported to have come from the monastery of El Parral, near Segovia (Fig. 78). The head, downcast eyes, and beard are identical with those of the St. John in the scene of the arrest, and the modification of the Flemish conventionalization in the draperies takes, as in the St. John series, the curious form of straight lines meeting in

P R O V I N C E OF B U R G O S

243

right angles, so that the effect is as of strips of wood and blocks. Gold likewise is only simulated in the brocade of St. James's tunic. Throughout the picture the painter approximates the manner of Fernando Gallego more closely than in the St. John series. Two panels of the life of St. Lawrence which appeared in the sale of the Collection of Don Raimundo Ruiz at New York in

FIG. 79. STYLE OF "JUAN FLAMENCO." ST. LAWRENCE HEALING CYRIACA. FORMERLY IN THE RAIMUNDO RUIZ COLLECTION, MADRID

1925 belong within this same artistic milieu. The one that represents his preaching recalls the Baptist's sermon not only in the composition but even in the types and postures of the listeners. The stylistic parallelism of these two homiletic scenes almost reaches identity in the landscape, which dips down in a curving cavity behind each saint to reveal at the centre of the extreme background a town girt with similar round towers and surrounded by trees. In the other Ruiz panel, the widow Cyri-

244

PROVINCE OF

BURGOS

aca, healed of her headache by St. Lawrence (Fig. 79), resembles the St. Elizabeth in the visitation and birth of the Baptist, and she is likewise the figure who, in the billowing of her Flemish draperies, most clearly reveals the genesis of the manner in the Gallego atelier. The material, nevertheless, is too slight to prove definitely a unity of authorship with the Prado series or anything more than a general stylistic association; and it is not even out of the question that the two scenes from St. Lawrence's life should have been produced in some other local school which, like the Miraflores painter, had felt the influence of Fernando Gallego. It is in this group of works rightly or wrongly connected with the name of Juan Flamenco that the small panel of the martyrdom of St. Lawrence in the Institute de Valencia de Don Juan at Madrid (Fig. 80) finds it closest affiliations. Sanchez Canton places it in the school of Fernando Gallego, but the reminiscences of such a training have faded into even greater indistinctness than in the other members of the group. Although the head of St. Lawrence suggests the Carthusian monks who listen to the Baptist's preaching and the drapery on the executioner at the left is violently broken in the fashion of the painter of the St. John series, the evidence is not sufficient for a categorical attribution to him. If the painter of Villalobos is another personality, he would perhaps be a more likely choice because of the similarity of the left executioner's idiotic leer and tilted head to the same details in the man who holds the purse behind St. Felix distributing alms. The St. Lawrence panel, however, may be the work of neither painter but of someone who, because of analogous antecedents and artistic environment, developed a parallel style. In the martyr's face the author has managed to retain a little of the delicacy of the Flemish miniaturist tradition, just as flashes of the same quality now and then enlighten the dullness of the St. John series; but a slightly later date, e. g., the beginning of the sixteenth century, is proclaimed by a certain dryness and a less primitive treatment of the forms, particularly in the Christ and angels receiving St. Lawrence's soul, who seem to reflect a knowledge of Flemish painting of c. 1500. There can be no doubt that the artisan of the St. Lawrence

FIG. 80.

S T Y L E OF " J U A N FLAMENCO." MARTYRDOM OF ST. LAWRENCE. INSTITUTO DE VALENCIA DE DON JUAN, MADRID (From Sänchez CantSns Catalogue of the Collection )

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P R O V I N C E OF

BURGOS

picture was responsible also for a panel in the Lazaro Collection, Madrid, depicting Christ before Pilate (Fig. 81). Among other resemblances the identity in the half-bald executioners is conclusive. Additional parallelisms in the rather sour faces of some of the actors and in the costumes, particularly the headgear, to the constituents of the Villalobos series increase the probability that the Villalobos painter was the author not only of the Christ before Pilate but also of St. Lawrence's martyrdom. T h e Villalobos series as well as the other two panels exhibit similarities to the manner of Pedro Bello, especially in the almost imbecile expression of certain visages, but the analogies are not strong enough to support the weight of an attribution. Somewhat more tentatively I admit to the proximity of " J u a n F l a m e n c o " a panel in the Lazaro Collection displaying the paired effigies of Sts. Anthony of Padua and Bernardine standing in the midst of a Gallego-like vaulted room against an ample, ostentatious, and tight-drawn textile (Fig. 82). 1 T h e types insistently recall such figures as the Zacharias of the Baptist's birth, the St. Lawrence on the gridiron, or even the Santiago in the Prado (if we strip him of his beard). T h e drapery on St. Anthony's left arm betrays the mannerisms already described, and the severe and dimly outlined hills visible through the door resemble the extreme distance in the background of the Visitation. T h e evidence is again too slight for a definite attribution to the Baptist master, and the craft indeed is perhaps a step higher in the scale of merit; but the panel was almost certainly produced in the same general artistic coterie. 4.

UNATTACHED WORKS

OF T H E G A L L E G O

PROVINCE

OF

SCHOOL

IN

THE

BURGOS

Despite laborious research and comparisons, I am baffled in my endeavor to find a more exact classification than the above heading for one of the most distinguished monuments of Hispano-Flemish painting, the beautifully preserved retable now 1 It is impossible to concur with Mayer (Spanish edition.of his Geschichte, 1 5 1 ) in the attribution of the panel (in which he mistakes St. Bernardine for St. Francis) to the author of the Luna retable in the cathedral of Toledo. His more detailed description of the panel in his shorter book, La pintura espanola (69), shows that it is this picture in the Lazaro Collection to which he refers.

FIG. 8I.

STYLE OF "JUAN FLAMENCO." CHRIST BEFORE PILATE. LÄZARO COLLECTION, MADRID (From the Catalogue of the Collection )

FIG. 82.

STYLE OF "JUAN FLAMENCO." STS. ANTHONY OF PADUA AND BERNARDINE. LÄZARO COLLECTION, MADRID (Front the Catalogue of the Collection )

PROVINCE OF BURGOS

249

built into a baroque frame over the high altar of the church of S. Esteban at Los Balbases. T h e twelve panels, in a disturbed order, relate St. Stephen's story: his ordination (?); his refutation of the Jews; his trial; his burial at Jerusalem; Gamaliel

FIG. 83.

SCHOOL OF BURGOS.

SECTION OF RETABLE.

EXORCISM OF EUDOXIA,

S. ESTEBAN, LOS BALBASES

(Photo. Photo

Club)

appearing to Lucian for the sake of commanding the invention of St. Stephen's body; the declaration of Lucian's vision to the bishop of Jerusalem; the embarkment of the body; St. Stephen saving from the demoniac tempest the ship upon which his relics are carried; the arrival of the body at Rome or at its earlier and temporary resting-place, Constantinople; the transporta-

2ξο

P R O V I N C E OF BURGOS

tion to the church at Constantinople or Rome; the entombment in one of these two cities; and one of the episodes connected with the delivery of the princess Eudoxia from a devil by the translation of St. Stephen's remains from Constantinople to the eternal city (Fig. 83). The style is a relaxation of Fernando Gallego's primitive tightness into terms closer to those of the smoothness of the Renaissance, and indeed the author introduces into the back wall of the room that witnesses Eudoxia's exorcism an elaborate Italian portal to one column of which is capriciously and inexplicably given a premature Churrigueresque twist. The Burgos Master indulges more liberally in architecture of the Renaissance — even in his retable of S. Millan in the other church at Los Balbases; but although there are some resemblances between their types, the painter of S. Esteban sets a certain elegance over against the Burgos Master's lustiness. He prettily imitates the Flemings' perspicuous definition of tiny interior detail by simulating in the windows of the apartment of the Eudoxia episode representations in stained glass of the Annunciation and Nativity, but, even if he substitutes yellow or tan pigment for gold, he has a true Spaniard's passion for a generous diffusion of brilliant brocades throughout the panels. Analogies to the painter of S. Esteban at Los Balbases, to the St. Nicholas Master who will forthwith concern us, and even to the follower of Fernando Gallego who did the great altarpiece at Fromista in the province of Palencia are suggested by the contemplation of the admirable Last Supper in the sacristy of S. Esteban, Burgos (Fig. 84), but it would be presumptuous to propose an attribution to any one of these artists. Dierick Bouts's attenuation and Fernando Gallego's types and expressive hands may still be recognized in this Burgos translation. Judas (with a halo!) grasps the money-bag at the left end of the table, but the backward posture that is given to this personage in some versions of the subject by members of the Gallego circle is not here repeated. The delight of the Low Countries in the illusory imitation of domestic and naturalistic detail has an opportunity to manifest itself in the paraphernalia of food, drink, and plate upon the table. The homeliness of Flemish and Spanish aesthetics finds expression in the repre-

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PROVINCE OF BURGOS

sentation of two Apostles as in the very act of eating and two others as just lifting the cups to their lips. Such frank directness would have seemed vulgar to the more consciously — too consciously — lofty and academic Leonardo da Vinci, but this unpretending Burgos craftsman has achieved, in his simple way, as much dramatic and impressive differentiation of the Apostles as we shall find, unless we cozen ourselves, in the rhetorical gesticulations of the more vaunted Last Supper of S. Maria delle Grazie at Milan. The Arabic lettering, used as a decorative motif on the border of the tablecloth, since such a phenomenon is sometimes encountered in the art of other countries, would not require particular notice, unless here in Spain it were one of the recurring signs that it was only about the time when the picture was painted that the last vestiges of Moorish power in the peninsula were being extirpated. The unusually pleasing tonality of color is sobered to a rich Spanish sedateness. 5.

THE

ST. NICHOLAS

MASTER

Of the works in the province of Burgos that exhibit no very evident familiarity with the Gallego principles, we must consider first the two sets of panels built into the conglomerate baroque altarpiece on the Gospel side of the nave in the church of S. Nicolas at Burgos itself, inasmuch as they present us with two anonymous masters to whom other extant pictures may be attached. One set of panels, in the lower part of the structure, are eight in number and chiefly depict scenes from the life of St. Nicholas. Of the four in the right section of the retable, a pair are devoted to the story of St. Nicholas's charity to the daughters of the poverty-stricken nobleman, representing him throwing the gold into the house and then admonishing the gentleman to keep the act secret (Fig. 85). The other two incorporate the tale of the young captive Adeodatus — homesick to the point of dropping the cup that he bears at the feast of the heathen king 1 and next miraculously restored, together with the cup, to the chapel that his father had built in honor of St. Nicholas. Only two of the episodes at the left have to do 1 The fall of the cup is a unique detail, for the lad is usually said merely to have sighed.

P R O V I N C E OF B U R G O S

253

with St. Nicholas, his consecration as bishop (Fig. 86) and his rescue of the three innocent men about to be executed. The other pair display St. Andrew with three kneeling masculine

FIG. 85. THE ST. NICHOLAS MASTER. ST. NICHOLAS ADMONISHING THE NOBLEMAN TO KEEP SECRET THE GIFT OF THE GOLD, SECTION OF RETABLE. S. NICOLAS, BURGOS (Photo. Photo Club)

donors and St. Anthony of Padua with the same quota of the ladies of the family. If these eight panels once formed, according to the tradition, 1 a part of the retable of the high altar for which the present elaborate sculptured retable was afterwards 1

L. Huidobro, La iglesia de S. Nicoläs de Burgos, 19-20.

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PROVINCE OF

BURGOS

substituted, they must have been executed at a date considerably prior to 1505, when the sculptured altarpiece was finished; but even so, there could not have been a very long lapse of time between the two works, and it would be curious that the authorities of the church should have taken down a great painted retable so comparatively soon after its completion, which could scarcely have occurred before 1480. It is difficult to say whether the vague similarities in types and architectural settings to the Gallego production are the result of a definite influence from this source or of a joint indebtedness to Flemish models, in the case of the St. Nicholas Master very much diminished in intensity. He possesses no more than moderate gifts as a draughtsman, but he compensates by qualities that recall those of contemporary Catalan painting. One of them is a gentle placidity decidedly different from the harshness and vigor of so much Hispano-Flemish painting in Castile, as, for example, the output of the Burgos Master. Another Catalan characteristic is a more extensive decorative spotting of the panels with gold brocades in costumes and as hangings than we usually encounter even in northwestern Spain. I do not know that the author makes more formally monumental designs out of his compositions than his rivals in this part of the peninsula, all of whom would have coerced such a scene as the saint's coronation into broad and gorgeous symmetry. An elucidation of the Catalan aspects is possibly to be sought in a fragment that with security may be attributed to the St. Nicholas Master, the right half of a coronation of an episcopal saint, perhaps Augustine, 1 No. 52 of the Bosch Collection in the Prado (Fig. 87). Sanpere 2 has discussed the panel and with one of his liberal acts of divination ascribed it to a Juan Luis of Vails, who is known by a contract of 1469 for a non-extant Catalan retable; but not only is it manifestly a production of the Castilian school but even definitely of the St. Nicholas Master of Burgos. T h e attribution finds its justification in much more than the accident that the subject, an episcopal consecration, is inevitably in Spain composed in much the same 1 I cannot read with certainty the difficult Gothic palaeography of the n a m e in his halo, b u t it m a y quite well spell Augustine, as Sanpere thought. 2 Los cuatrocentistas, I I , 196-198.

FIG. 86. THE ST. NICHOLAS MASTER. CONSECRATION OF ST. NICHOLAS, SECTION OF RETABLE. S. NICOLAS, BURGOS (Photo. Photo Club)

256

PROVINCE OF

BURGOS

scheme as the analogous ceremony in the St. Nicholas panels. There is, first, the peculiarity that in both examples a cardinal appears in the group at the right of the throne and that this cardinal is exactly the same individual. The St. Augustine, moreover, almost repeats the type of the St. Nicholas, and the argument is completed by the absolute parallelism of the mitred assistant prelate to the St. Nicholas in the scenes with the grateful father and with the three rescued prisoners. A supererogatory proof is the analogy in the architecture of the church of the consecration to that of the chapel to which the cupbearer is restored. T h e color is the characteristic brownish tonality of the later Castilian members of the Hispano-Flemish tendency. In jumping at an entirely unsupported ascription to Juan Luis of Vails, Sanpere was influenced by the reported provenience of the fragment from the near-lying monastery of Poblet or at least from the province of Tarragona, and although such allegations of the original homes of pictures are always suspicious, the tradition in this instance unites with the possible Catalan traits of the author to stimulate certain speculations. T h e style is manifestly Castilian in essence, but may we explain the Catalan overlay by the theory that a Castilian master had found employment in Catalonia and had then returned to his native heath ? Could he have been one of the Castilian painters whom Sanpere 1 lists as active in Catalonia at this period, perchance Fernando Camargo, since it is probable that the Pedro Velio who contracted for a retable at Vich in 1494 is the same as Pedro Bello of Salamanca? 2 Or did a Catalonian emigrate to Burgos and become thoroughly saturated in the Castilian manner, though never quite forgetting the aesthetic predilections of his own province? Is it possible that he repatriated himself once more and displayed his new Castilian attainments in the region of Tarragona? T h e wanderings of Bermejo and Alejo Fernandez present no more singular a phenomenon. Of the Hispano-Flemish paintings in Burgos itself, we may enhance the St. Nicholas Master's reputation by confidently claiming for him a large and exceptionally well executed triptych that has always belonged to the cathedral of Burgos and 1 Ibid., 185 ff. * See above, p. 109.

FIG. 87. THE ST. NICHOLAS MASTER. FRAGMENT OF CONSECRATION OF ST. AUGUSTINE (?). PRADO, MADRID (Photo. Ruiz

Vernacci)

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P R O V I N C E OF B U R G O S

is now in the Museo Diocesano of the cloister. The Epiphany (Fig. 88) adorns the centre; the Annunciation is in the left wing; and the right wing reveals the mounted St. Julian receiving the dire prediction of the anthropomorphic deer, while at the top of the rock behind is enacted in miniature the realiza-

FIG. 88. THE ST. NICHOLAS MASTER. EPIPHANY, CENTRE OF TRIPTYCH. CATHEDRAL, BURGOS (Photo. Photo Club)

tion of the prophecy, his assassination of his parents. The cachet of the St. Nicholas Master is perceived particularly in the many repetitions of his distinctive type of young man among the spectators in the background of the Epiphany, in the adaptation of the Gabriel to the same facial norm, and in the Virgin of the Annunciation and Epiphany, whose kind of countenance

FIG. 89. THE ST. NICHOLAS MASTER. ST. ANDREW SAVING THE BISHOP FROM SIN, SECTION OF RETABLE. CHURCH, VENTOSILLA {Photo. Photo Club)

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PROVINCE O F BURGOS

we shall subsequently meet in his other works. He reveals in the triptych a dependence upon Flemish models that elsewhere in his production is largely submerged beneath the personal and national accretion. The explanation may be that the date is early in his career, but if so, he is, to say the least, an artist of no less stature than in his maturity. The types in the Annunciation and of the Holy Family in the Epiphany derive from Roger van der Weyden, and the composition of the former subject has the same origin; but there is perhaps a superimposition of an admiration for Hugo van der Goes. Naturally he is most Spanish when, as in the St. Julian, he has least precedent of the Low Countries upon which to lean, but, strangely enough, it is also in this figure that he is least like himself. The Flemish gamut of color is again reduced to the brownish tonality of the Spaniards at this period, but the Master renounces or has not yet developed his prodigal spotting with gold, employing instead yellow pigment. The landscape through which St. Julian rides is more than ordinarily attractive, the shores of a lake accented with a castle. The saint's horse betrays that the author is no animalier, although the dogs here and in the lower right corner of the Epiphany are somewhat better realized. We may next consider the larger retables that must be ascribed to the St. Nicholas Master, and first among them that of St. Andrew over the high altar of the church of what was once the town of Ventosilla but is now debased merely to a granja, in the extreme southern part of the province of Burgos in the municipality of Gumiel del Mercado, near Roa. 1 About the synchronous Apostle's statue at the centre are grouped eight painted scenes from his story: his calling, together with his brother, St. Peter; his dragging through the streets of Murgundia; the miraculous quenching of the fire in the house where he and his young disciple, visible in a loggia, are tarrying; his raising of the youth slain by the seven canine devils; his baptism of Maximilla, the wife of his persecutor, Aegeas; his disputation with Aegeas; his martyrdom on the cross; and his posthumous appearance as a pilgrim to warn the bishop cajoled 1 Alfonso Tejada, who first published the altar (Boletin de la Sociedad Espanola de Excursiones, X X X V I I I , 1930, p. 52), impossibly guesses at Antonello da Messina as the author!

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261

by Satan in the form of a woman (Fig. 89). To one of the usual themes for predellas, large busts of the Prophets, here four in number, are added Sts. Catherine and Barbara. The Prophets are identified by the customary scrolls with their names and verses of their writings as Daniel, Zechariah, Jeremiah, and Isaiah. In the main part of the retable the gold

FIG. 90. THE ST. NICHOLAS MASTER. RAISING OF DRUSIANA. TARAMONA COLLECTION, MADRID

backgrounds, like those of the Palanquinos Master, are of laceria, but in the predella of a brocaded pattern. The identity with the style of the St. Nicholas Master lies ready for anyone to note, but among the figures that most insistently incorporate his types are the St. Andrew, who almost duplicates the same Apostle in the St. Nicholas retable, the man in the long gold robe at the front of the compartment of the dragging, and the

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head to the left of St. Andrew in the scene of the disputation and to the right in the actual martyrdom. There reappears also the St. Nicholas Master's more generous accentuation of his panels with gold-brocaded costumes and tapestries. Among his greatest achievements must be numbered four large and grandiose panels once parts of a retable dedicated to the two St. Johns said to have been in a church in the province of Burgos. T h e three concerned with the Evangelist are in the section of the Taramona Collection of Bilbao that is kept in the owner's house in Madrid. T h e y depict St. John's raising of Drusiana 1 (Fig. 90), one of his sermons, and (somewhat restored) his drinking of the poisoned cup after it had had its deadly effect upon the two criminals who are represented writhing in agony below (Fig. 91). T h e fourth panel, from the life of the Baptist, has appropriately found an eventual home in the house of the composer, Dr. Richard Strauss, at Vienna, since it depicts the dance of Salome (Fig. 92). I will once more itemize some of the details, however obvious, that demonstrate the authorship: in the raising of Drusiana, the pagan priest Aristodemus virtually repeating the type both of the heathen captor of the cupbearer saved by St. Nicholas and of the magistrate presiding over the execution of the three innocent men; three of the St. Nicholas Master's peculiarly individualized faces of adolescents in the background; the same personages among the group who listen to the Evangelist's sermon, especially the top half of the head at the upper left copied literally from the similarly placed countenance of a youth in the Epiphany of the Burgos triptych; in the scene of the poison, the absolute identity of the lad in the upper left corner, covering his face, with the cupbearer; the fraternal relationship between the Aristodemus, here, and the cupbearer's lord and his analogy in posture and costume to the seneschal in this episode of the St. Nicholas legend; the resemblance in features between the white-sleeved spectator just to the left of Aristodemus and the front man in the group who witness the cupbearer's restoration to his father's chapel; the frequent appearance in these panels 1 I am at a loss to explain the presence, in this scene, of the pagan priest, Aristodemus, who naturally appears also in the episode of the poisoned cup, but I am familiar with no other tale of St. John's resurrection of a woman except that of Drusiana.

FIG. 91.

THE ST. NICHOLAS MASTER. ST. JOHN EVANGELIST AND THE POISONED CUP. TARAMONA COLLECTION, MADRID (Photo.

Moreno)

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of the St. Nicholas Master's curious one-fingered gesture; in the dance of Salome, the utilization, in the Herod, of his characteristic hirsute head for heathen worthies; the page who leans upon the arm of the banquet-bench, eavesdropping upon the licentious scene, again an embodiment of the Master's youthful type, like his mate who bends through the door to hear the Evangelist's dissertation or in the Epiphany of the Burgos triptych peers forth above St. Joseph; the emergence, in the Drusiana and the Herodias, of the same visage that we have encountered in the Virgin of the triptych of the Burgos cathedral; the Master's velleity for elaborate, contemporary, feminine headdresses reiterated in the lady among the Evangelist's audience; and the architecture of the church in which he preaches very like that of the chapel of the cupbearer's father. Nowhere has the author more profusely indulged his (Catalan?) passion for gilded brilliancy, dressing Aristodemus, for instance, in both scenes in which he is a participant, in solid gold, encasing the woman who listens to St. John's sermon in a similar tunic, and hanging from the pulpit a fabric of equal preciousness. In this panel, as at Ventosilla, he even gives a glimpse of a diapered gold background through the open door, though in the remaining compartments he follows his other, Flemish practice of using natural skies. His habitual temper of Catalan 1 serenity hovers over the pictures, and, as in Huguet's representations of executioners, even the violent postures of the two victims of poison are petrified. He has succeeded in importing more real movement, however eccentric, into the dancing Salome. Her Terpsichorean performance has strained the imaginations of mediaeval artists into the creation of many bizarre postures, but certainly none are queerer than this, not even the somersault that she turns in the Gothic iconography of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. She seems caught in a spasm of madness, and with the directness of the mediaeval mind, in his endeavor to transmit the impression of the orientally exotic, and with his characteristic interest in coverings of the head, the author has sought to devise a coiffure that will vie with the posture in grotesqueness. Another example of this 1 Von Loga (Die Malerei in Spanien, 39-40) actually published the Salome panel as Catalan!

FIG. 92.

THE ST. NICHOLAS MASTER. DANCE OF SALOME. STRAUSS COLLECTION, VIENNA (Courtesy 0} Dr. Richard

Strauss)

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directness of the Middle Ages is the depositing of the platter with the Baptist's head in the centre of the table exactly as if it were a succulent dish to compensate for the scantily laid board. It is one of many instances in art and literature where the mediaeval mind is so frank in its literalness that it seems to our sophisticated age lacking in humor. T h e composition of the Salome scene is made piquant by being boldly thrown on the bias. T h e series has a special significance as suggesting more than the St. Nicholas Master's other works that, after all, he may have had some affiliations with the Gallego tradition and as revealing again dependence upon Flemish models. T h e type of Salome and the mode of puckering her drapery may proceed from the phase of the Gallego atelier's output embodied in the St. Catherine retable in the Old Cathedral of Salamanca. T h e peering lad in this scene and in the compartment of the Evangelist's sermon may imply that the St. Nicholas Master resorted to Gallego precedent as a starting-point for his treatment of the youthful countenance. Herodias enjoys just the Bouts-like attenuation of physique that is a touchstone of the Gallego circle. In the painting of the lovely red robe in which the St. Nicholas Master always clothes the Evangelist and of Drusiana's shroud, which is a typically Flemish white, his indebtedness to the Low Countries is less overlaid with personal and national qualities than usual. He reproduces the miniaturist proclivities of the Flemings in the delight with which he depicts a large number of wayfarers passing over a bridge into a city in the right background of the Drusiana episode. Although Herod's table is singularly free from the culinary genre for which such stories customarily gave mediaeval artists a welcome opportunity, yet the royal pantry at the back of the hall is more than ordinarily stocked with the domestic objects upon which the Spaniards of the period learned from the Flemings to lavish their efforts at the illusion of actuality. The paintings from the lives of the two St. Johns were once lent to the Museo Arqueologico at Madrid, and with them were shown four small and much injured panels from the Passion in the same general style which still remain in the Museum (No. 1663) and look as if they might have once been sections of a

Fic. 93. THE ST. NICHOLAS MASTER. MARTYRDOM OF ST. MAURICE AND HIS COMPANIONS (?)

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predella. The subjects are the Flagellation, the Crowning with Thorns, the Via Dolorosa (though Christ is already nude), 1 and the Deposition. 2 A t first sight the style does not seem the same as that of the Johannine series, partly because of the lesser size of the panels and partly because the author, in attempting to accommodate his figures to the more restricted spaces, has sometimes made the bodies too diminutive for the heads; but a careful scrutiny reveals that, if the painter is not identical, he is at least a faithful member of the St. Nicholas Master's shop. The search discovers even some of the Master's characteristic heads, such as that of the spectator in the upper left corner of the Via Dolorosa or that of Nicodemus in the Deposition. T h e student, of course, is at once struck by the possibility that we have here fragments from the predella of the retable of the two St. Johns, but the problem is further complicated by the existence, in the Archaeological Museum, of what appears to be another battered predella in exactly the same manner, displaying against gold-brocaded backgrounds (from left to right) St. Sebastian, St. Augustine, a feminine saint whose attribute has been erased, St. Barbara, St. Ambrose, and St. Lawrence. Was this the predella of the retable of the two St. Johns, and were the scenes from the Passion built into another section of the ensemble? Or were both parts of a long predella? Or did neither set belong to the retable of the two St. Johns? Did even the Passion panels and the predella of saints come from a single structure? Whatever our answer, we shall have to reconcile with it in some way an additional small panel in the Archaeological Museum (No. 1667) executed by the same hand as the two predellas and representing the Madonna and Child adored by musical angels. Another work of the St. Nicholas Master I know only in a reproduction from a dealer's catalogue (Fig. 93), a panel depicting a youthful saint viewing the slaughter of his compan1 Could it be the Espolio, although I can see no sign of Christ's garment upon the ground or in his tormentors' hands? 2 A R o i g (now R u i z Vernacci) photograph shows the last two episodes on the right of the poison scene in the life of the Evangelist and at the left two similar small panels of the A g o n y in the Garden and the V i a Dolorosa (with Christ clothed) which I h a v e not been able to rediscover in the M u s e o Arqueologico and which, to j u d g e from the photograph, are not by the same hand as the four others.

FIG. 94.

THE ST. NICHOLAS MASTER (?). EPIPHANY, SECTION OF RETABLE. PARISH CHURCH, PRESENCIO (Photo. Photo

Club)

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tion to the St. Nicholas Master cannot quite be hazarded, the retable of Presencio was in any case assuredly produced within his orbit. The type of the Christ again brings to the fore the question of contact with Fernando Gallego, and in the scene of St. Andrew before Aegeas and in the Betrayal the armor of the soldiers is almost as much an object of the painter's interest as in the Ciudad Rodrigo altarpiece. Like the Flemings and their imitators in the Gallego school, the author dots his unusually delightful landscapes with lesser incidents or actors in smaller scale. So, the Agony in the Garden is seen in the distance of the hills behind the Betrayal; in the background of the Via Dolorosa a henchman is sinisterly dragging a ladder up the slope of Calvary; and Zacharias patiently rests at the gate of his house watching the swans in a river while his wife in the foreground enjoys the Visitation of Our Lady. With a fair degree of equanimity one can claim as relics of a single altarpiece and ascribe to the St. Nicholas Master three panels in the church of S. Esteban at Los Balbases, a pair of which, representing the Nativity and Epiphany, are in the sacristy, and the third of which, depicting St. Anthony Abbot, hangs on the right wall of the church (Fig. 95). The proofs for the attribution are most persuasive in the last example — the analogy to the St. Andrew and to the nobleman kneeling before St. Nicholas in the series in S. Nicolas, Burgos, the short neck characteristic of the St. Nicholas Master's personages, the architectural setting, and the interposed background of a gold tapestry. In the two panels of the Infancy the truth is partially hidden beneath repaint, but the types, architectural backgrounds, and brocades can easily find a place within the St. Nicholas Master's standard. Too much stress must not be laid upon the compositional parallelisms to the versions of the themes in the Burgos triptych and the retable of Presencio, since the eventual source in all instances was Roger van der Weyden, and yet the student should note that the second Magus in the Epiphany almost literally repeats the St. Nicholas Master's modification of this figure in the Burgos triptych. The most likely spot that, with my present information and eyes, I can find for a panel of the Magdalene's ecstasy known to me only in photograph as once in the De Miro Collection,

FIG. 96. THE ST. NICHOLAS MASTER (?).

ECSTASY OF THE MAGDALENE.

DE MIR0 COLLECTION, MADRID (?) (Photo. Arxiu

Mas )

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Madrid (Fig. 96),1 is under the aegis of the St. Nicholas Master, but I should by no means defend the attribution to the last ditch. Of one thing, however, I am certain, and this is that Mayer 2 incorrectly proposes as the author the Budapest Master, misled probably by the compositional analogy to that painter's Assumption of the Virgin in the Munich triptych. 3 The element that argues in favor of the St. Nicholas Master is the impressive parallelism of the angels' faces to his adolescent type, and from this one is led on to see a close resemblance of the Magdalene's countenance to that of Drusiana in the Johannine series, to that of the man at the right of the Evangelist in the incident of the poisoned cup, and to that of the page in the banquet of Herod. The Magdalene's ample robes, as well as those of the angels, are elaborately crumpled like the dress of Salome, and the landscape, with its river, walled city, and cathedral, is in the St. Nicholas Master's mode. The panel is another of the works in the St. Nicholas Master's circle that suggest an acquaintance with Fernando Gallego, to whom indeed I was once mistakenly inclined to ascribe it as a companion-piece to Fernando's Epiphany also formerly in the D e Miro Collection. W e can finally be perfectly dogmatic in assigning, not, to be sure, to the St. Nicholas Master, but to a rather countrified imitator, the panels of a retable of the Virgin built into a later altar at the right of the nave in the parish church of Villasandino, west of Burgos — in the centre, the Nativity of the Virgin and the Visitation (the latter including a dwarfed masculine lay donor), at the sides, in somewhat smaller compartments, the Meeting at the Golden Gate, the Presentation of the Virgin (Fig. 97), her Marriage, and Annunciation, and in the predella six half-lengths of Prophets. It is necessary only to specify some striking instances amidst the universal derivation of the 1 Shown in the Barcelona exposition of 1888 as No. 7 bis. The Album of the exposition confuses the subject with the Assumption of the Virgin, but the non-frontal pose of the woman and the absence of any of the Virgin's glorious symbols manifestly designate the common theme of the Magdalene's levitation in the hands of angels. I do not know why Mayer chooses to think that it is the similar ecstasy of St. Mary of E g y p t , whose questionable iconographic distinctions, in contrast to what we see in this picture, are her haggard age and the supernatural garment of her own hair. 2 Geschichte, 139. 3 See below, p. 320.

Fio. 97. SCHOOL OF T H E ST. NICHOLAS MASTER. PRESENTATION OF T H E VIRGIN, SECTION OF R E T A B L E . PARISH CHURCH, VILLASANDINO (Photo. Photo Club)

PROVINCE OF BURGOS types from the St. Nicholas Master — the Sts. Joachim and Anna in the Presentation, the Gabriel of the Annunciation, and the Prophet at the extreme right, who, for example, reproduces the masculine type employed by the Master for the Herod in the dance of Salome. The shop's predilection for decorative Spottings of gold appears in the fabrics hung behind the Visitation and Annunciation. T h e origins of the St. Nicholas Master in an allegiance to Roger van der Weyden oddly come very visibly to the surface again in this production of one of his disciples. The author has also tangibly aped the Flemings in the multiplication of such domestic detail, in the Nativity of the Virgin, as the lighted fire. T h e same member of the atelier obviously painted a panel of St. Peter's arraignment (Fig. 98) coming from Robredo de Zamanzas (in the extreme northern part of the province near Sedano) and now in the Museo Diocesano of the cathedral at Burgos. In addition to all the other evidence of a copying of the Master's style, the Nero should be compared with St. Andrew's persecutor, Aegeas, at Presencio, and his youthful courtier with the adolescent type everywhere present in the St. Nicholas retable. We should probably ascribe to the school, rather than to the Master himself, a panel of the Monte Gargano episode (Fig. 98A) now forming a part of a conglomerate retable at the left of the nave in the parroquia of Hontoria de la Cantera, just south of Burgos, a church dedicated to the hero of the episode, St. Michael. T h e episcopal procession to the spot of the apparition is represented in the foreground, and, in smaller scope in the background, the bishop's previous vision of the archangel and the actual construction of the shrine about the bull. 6.

THE

MASTER

OF T H E L A R G E

FIGURES

The panels of the Annunciation (Fig. 99) and Massacre of the Innocents (Fig. 100) now set directly above the St. Nicholas pictures in the jumbled retable in S. Nicolas, Burgos, were painfed by a single and different artist who will account for another extensive group of works in the province of Burgos and who has the additional interest of leading us eventually into the

FIG. 98. SCHOOL OF THE ST. NICHOLAS MASTER. CATHEDRAL, BURGOS (Photo. Photo

Club)

TRIAL OF ST. PETER.

FIG. 98A. THE ST. NICHOLAS MASTER OR A PUPIL. MONTE GARGANO EPISODE IN LEGEND OF ST. MICHAEL. PARISH CHURCH, HONTORIA DE LA CANTERA (Photo. Photo Club)

PROVINCE OF BURGOS

279

style of Pedro Diaz de Oviedo. The contemporary headdresses of the two women in the Massacre make them appear at first sight rather diverse in type from the personages in the Annunciation, but it requires only a few minutes of the most superficial examination of each panel as a whole to be convinced of the

FIG. 99.

MASTER OF THE LARGE FIGURES.

ANNUNCIATION.

S. NICOLAS, BURGOS (Photo. Photo

Club)

unity of authorship. The painter now plainly reveals no connection whatsoever with the Gallego circle, and he is perhaps more dependent upon Flemish precedent than the St. Nicholas Master. T h e ultimate source of his inspiration was the school of Tournai. T h e outstanding peculiarity of his manner is a fondness for large figures, after which, in the struggle for a properly descriptive name, I have eventually decided to call

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him. The result of this proclivity in the Massacre of the Innocents is a queer composition. Herod, enthroned at the centre, is so huge and impressive a figure that he occupies an inordinate amount of the space. The two mothers, though still of heroic proportions, are therefore forced into somewhat smaller scale,

FIG. IOO.

MASTER OF T H E LARGE FIGURES. T H E INNOCENTS.

MASSACRE OF

S. NICOLAS, BURGOS

(Photo. Photo Club )

and, since little room is left for the assassins, they have to be reduced to a size such as to have properly caused no anxiety to the robust matrons. Even so, the composition is painfully crowded. The general effect is made still odder by clothing the Innocents at the bottom of the panel, certainly conceived as more mature than "from two years old and under," in the garb

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281

of schoolboys of the fifteenth century. T h e Annunciation, in particular, exhibits another of the painter's idiosyncrasies, an indulgence in decidedly broad expanses of drapery broken into

FIG. ioi. MASTER OF THE LARGE FIGURES. ST. PETER ENTHRONED, SECTION OF RETABLE. DE LA SOTA COLLECTION, BILBAO (Courtesy of Don Ram6n de la Sota )

an unusually tangled mesh of Flemish folds. An anomaly in composition also marks the Annunciation, the presence of a kneeling and reverent woman outside the Virgin's house and behind St. Gabriel. Since the tendency to employ large figures

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in ample Flemish draperies distinguishes in some degree the production of Avila, the painter of the two Burgos panels may have been familiar with that school, and this theory is partly corroborated by the consideration that Pedro Diaz, who almost certainly issued from the same artistic milieu as the Master of the Large Figures, reveals even more tangible associations with the Avila school. The Annunciation and Massacre of the Innocents resort to quite as extensive a decorative use of gold brocade for hangings and costumes as the St. Nicholas panels. Over the baroque shrine at the centre of the retable in S. Nicolas are fragments, on wood, of an Hispano-Flemish Last Judgment, which may have been done as late as the early sixteenth century by an artist who, if the probable repaint were removed, might prove superior to both the St. Nicholas Master and the Master of the Large Figures and who is more closely related than either of them to the Burgos Master. The fragments, in which the scale of proportions is much larger than in the panels below, consist of a frieze following the curve of a pointed arch and depicting the blessing Christ surrounded by trumpeting angels and the twelve Apostles and, just beneath, in the midst of modern clouds, the adoring Virgin and the Baptist (the former still derived in type from Roger van der Weyden). The effigy of the Saviour appears now only as a bust, but the rest of His body is probably hidden amidst the later accretions of the structure, since Huidobro, when he wrote his little book on the church,1 was familiar also with the episode of St. Michael weighing souls. The Master of the Large Figures is shown by incontrovertible internal evidence to have painted also the parts of a retable of unknown provenience that are built into a modern Gothic frame as an altarpiece for the chapel in the residence of Don Ramon de la Sota, Marques de Llano, at Bilbao. The panel now used for the centre depicts St. Peter seated on a throne behind which are ensconced in smaller scale the group of ecclesiastics and laymen who so often accompany his effigy in mediaeval Spanish art (Fig. 101). A t the sides of the throne stand Sts. Andrew and Paul. The predella is constituted by the Last 1

Op. cit., 22.

FIG. IO2. MASTER OF THE LARGE FIGURES. PURIFICATION, SECTION OF RETABLE. DE LA SOTA COLLECTION, BILBAO {Courtesy oj Don Ramön de la Sota J

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BURGOS

Supper. Representations of the Purification (Fig. 102), the Agony in the Garden, Christ before Pilate, and the Entombment make up the lateral sections. The most convincing identities in type are found between the Virgin of the Purification and the feminine interloper in the Burgos Annunciation and between the unsightly profile, with its almost caricatured nose, of the Joseph of Arimathaea or Nicodemus at the foot of the sepulchre in the Entombment and the two uppermost soldiers in the Massacre. Other parallelisms are the very same fulsome, vermiform draperies clothing the St. Andrew and the passion for brilliant gold brocades extended even to the military doublets in both the Burgos Massacre and the Bilbao scene of Christ before Pilate. T h e predilection for a few large figures in each narrative panel leaves little space, as at Burgos, for setting of architecture or landscape. T h e broader survey permitted by the more numerous Bilbao panels makes possible a further definition of the painter's style. He tends to translate the types of the school of Tournai into a Spanish sombreness, which is possibly inspired also by an acquaintance with the severe personages of German art. A respectable professor of his craft, he is more successful in the monumental formality of the central panel with the enthroned St. Peter than, because of his ponderous mind, in the narrative episodes. T h e types in the central panel and in the Last Supper seem to witness to some influence of the St. Nicholas Master, in whose company he had probably worked at Burgos; or some member of that Master's shop, perhaps the assistant of Robredo de Zamanzas, may have collaborated in the De la Sota altarpiece. Of the works in the province certainly by the Master of the Large Figures, four panels have been built into a little altar in the parroquia at Campo, close to Villarcayo. T h e themes are seated figures of St. Andrew, Santiago, and two Evangelists. All of them reiterate the types of the Bilbao retable, particularly the Evangelist at the right who is almost a literal copy of the Simeon in the Purification; and the brocaded garments and hangings have exactly the same sort of closely packed figuration. A Deposition and Entombment by the Master of the Large Figures are inserted in the summits of the two lateral sections in that conglomerate retable on the trascoro of the parish church

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285

at Santa Maria del Campo, southwest of Burgos, which contains also important works of Pedro Berruguete or his immediate following. The Master's voluminous and highly individualized types are crowded into his characteristically close-knit compositions. T h e Deposition reproduces the composition for the subject in the Bilbao altarpiece almost figure by figure. If I am right in thinking that the retable over the high altar of the parish church at Villasante, above Villarcayo, was executed by the Master of the Large Figures, it is his most important and beautiful extant achievement. The subjects in the upper row are the Marriage of the Virgin, Annunciation, Nativity of Christ, and Purification; those of the lower tier, the Epiphany, Pentecost, Burial of the Virgin, and Assumption. T h e predella, in so far as it is preserved, displays half-lengths of St. Lucy, a martyred St. Scholastica (P),1 Sts. Catherine (partly hidden or destroyed by the tabernacle), Margaret, and Rufina (her companion, St. Justa, apparently having been lost from the structure) (Fig. 103). T h e general marks of the Master's manner are everywhere present — the massive and often sober forms stuffed tightly into compositions like sardines and the profusion of gold draperies, including a brocaded background throughout the predella. T h e composition for the Burial of the Virgin follows the arrangement of the Entombment in the Bilbao altarpiece and Santa Maria del Campo panel, and the stone sepulchre itself is of the very same character as in the former example. The Annunciation is conceived in the mode of the panel of S. Nicolas, Burgos. T h e specific elements that argue strongly for an attribution to the Master of the Large Figures rather than to a member of his immediate circle are the emergence of his unmistakable feminine type in the representation of the Virgin in the Nativity, Epiphany, and Purification, and the appearance of his peculiar masculine type in the head of the Apostle at the extreme left in the Burial of the Virgin. T h e figures least easy to parallel exactly in his output are the feminine saints of the predella, although they can readily be reconciled with his canon. In making the attribution, 1 The halo appears to read "Scholastica," and she is represented with the attributes of a martyr; but I can find no virgin-martyr of this name. There is nothing about the figure to indicate an identity with the great St. Scholastica, the sister of St. Benedict.

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one is troubled also by a draughtsmanship superior to that encountered in the rest of his production, with the possible exception of the Massacre of the Innocents at Burgos, but there is no reason for denying to him the ability to attain such dis-

FIG. 103.

MASTER OF THE LARGE FIGURES (?).

SECTION OF RETABLE.

ST. RUFINA,

PARISH CHURCH, VILLASANTE

(Photo. Photo Club J

tinction. The retable of Villasante provides the closest approximation to the style of Pedro Diaz in this division of the school of Burgos, especially, for example, even in the type of the Virgin in the Pentecost, and it is easy to believe that it was after a period of tutelage in this milieu that he carried his highly personal interpretation of the manner to the near-lying Navarre.

PROVINCE OF BURGOS

287

T h e masculine actors in the Epiphany and Pentecost, as not infrequently in the work of the Master of the Large Figures, reveal that even so big and virile an artist could not remain impervious to the insinuating charm of the St. Nicholas Master's personages. T h e orphreys on several of the garments perplex us with the enigmatical inscriptions that are almost customary in the Spanish painting of the period. It is only with slightly less conviction that we may ascribe to the Master of the Large Figures two rather small panels of Sts. Francis 1 (Fig. 104) and Bernardine which have recently been transferred from the parroquia at Santo Domingo de Silos to the great Benedictine church but which originally perhaps decorated the adjacent ruined Franciscan monastery. St. Francis is of the very essence of the Master's types; the folds of St. Bernardine's habit duplicate those of Sts. Peter and Paul in the Bilbao retable; and the Master's distinctive gold brocades once again serve as backgrounds. St. Francis is accompanied by the inscription from Psalms, ii, 12: "Apprehendite disciplinam nequando irascatur Dominus." T h e corresponding scroll of St. Bernardine reads: " I n nomine Iesu omnia verba mea locutus sum." 7.

T H E E A R L Y H I S P A N O - F L E M I S H P A I N T I N G S IN THE P R O V I N C E O F B U R G O S A N D T H O S E I N W H I C H T H E I N F L U E N C E OF THE L o w

COUNTRIES

IS V E R Y

PRONOUNCED

T h e registering of the present category may properly begin with examples in which, as in the works that we have grouped around Jorge Ingles, there are aristocratic donors. T h e Burgos paintings closest to Jorge's manner and yet proved by their inferiority as well as stylistic variations not to be by him are two panels formerly in the sacristy of S. Gil and now in the Museo Diocesano of the cathedral, one displaying a kneeling gentleman and his four young sons under the protection of St. John Baptist (Fig. 105) and the other the wife and three daughters presented by the standing Virgin holding the Child. T h e coat 1 The tradition of the place, probably because of the attribute of the cross, calls him S. John Capistrano, who was not canonized until 1690. But the cross belongs also to St. Francis, and I take it that the three rays beside his book in the picture are conceived as emanating from the mystic wound in his side.

288

P R O V I N C E OF B U R G O S

of arms in the former panel shows the donor to belong to the De Burgos family, several of whose tombs are in the chapel in S. Gil that is now the vestibule of the sacristy. The tombs in question are those of Garcia Lopez, Diego Garcia, Juan Garcia, and Francisco Garcia, who died respectively in 1397, 1439, 1

FIG. 104.

MASTER OF THE LARGE FIGURES (?).

ST. FRANCIS.

SANTO DOMINGO DE SILOS (Photo. Photo Club)

1479, and 1 5 1 1 ; and since Juan Garcia de Burgos is the only one in the line to whom the two panels could possibly correspond in date, the gentleman represented is probably he — an identification with which St. John Baptist as his patron would tally. He was indeed the founder of the chapel, importing into it the 1

I agree with R . Amador de los Rios (Burgos, 651) in reading 1439 ' n 'he sepulchral inscription rather than with Betolaza (Iglesia de San Gil, 81) 1339.

FIG. 105.

SCHOOL OF BURGOS.

ST. JOHN BAPTIST AND DONORS, PANEL FROM

CHURCH OF S. GIL, BURGOS.

CATHEDRAL, BURGOS

(Photo. Photo Club)

290

PROVINCE OF BURGOS

tombstones of some of his ancestors of the fourteenth century. T h e pair of paintings would date in the region of 1479, before or after Juan Garcia's death, and themselves almost certainly once also decorated the chapel. On the rear wall of the interior depicted as a setting for the family group in each panel there is hung a simulated inscription which I cannot read (if indeed they were ever meant to be legible). T h e pictorial manner incorporates the same coalition of influences that make up the style of Jorge Ingles: the foundation is an imitation of Roger van der Weyden, but upon it are superimposed lingering reminiscences of Jan van Eyck. In the type of the Virgin one feels that Roger's precedents are modified by recollections of the Van E y c k Madonnas, and the heavily bearded Baptist more patently reveals the masculine saints of the Van Eycks as a source. T h e scheme of color is not built up on the oranges and blues of the Tournai school but embodies an attempt, however lame, to approximate Jan van Eyck's sober richness. T h e author is more successful as a draughtsman than as a colorist, but even his drawing is far from distinguished. It is in little else than his provincialism that he declares himself a Spaniard, for he clings as closely as he is able to his Flemish prototypes, using merely rays, for instance, as haloes instead of the gold plaques of Spain. A certain stylistic resemblance of the donors to those of the St. Nicholas panels in S. Nicolas is deceptive, since it finds its reason in a joint dependence upon Roger van der Weyden; the pictures in S. Gil in reality belong to an earlier stratum of the Hispano-Flemish manner. Some affection for the attainments of Dierick Bouts seems to unite with the influence of Roger in the painted wings enclosing a statue of St. John Evangelist in the Augustinian convent of S. Miguel de los Angeles at Villadiego, northwest of Burgos. T h e two inner panels of the wings (Fig. 106) contain effigies of Sts. Sebastian and Bonaventura, the latter including among his attributes, as in the great contemporary effigy by Jaime Huguet, the actual tree of the Crucifix, here capped by the symbol of the pelican feeding her young with the blood from her own breast. 1 T h e Baptist and Santiago decorate the interior 1 Probably suggested by St. Bonaventura's treatise, Lignum vitae: for another example of the tree, cf. the section above the Last Supper in Taddeo Gaddi's fresco in the refectory of S. Croce, Florence.

FIG. IO6.

SCHOOL OF BURGOS.

WINGS OF ALTARPIECE.

AUGUSTINIAN CONVENT, VILLADIEGO (Photo. Photo

Club)

PROVINCE OF

BURGOS

surfaces of the two outer panels; the Apostle of Spain presents a kneeling lay donor, who cannot be, of course, as the tradition would have it, the founder of the institution in the middle of the fourteenth century, Alfonso Rodriguez de Santa Cruz. T h e backs of these two panels are also embellished with standing forms, Sts. Peter and Paul, set against a red ground patterned with the repeated motif of a gold chalice, the emblem of St. John Evangelist — the same ground that is used all over the reverses of the other two pieces without any figures of saints. T h e backgrounds of the interiors are gold, diapered with a design of lozenges framing rosettes of dots. T h e reliance upon Flemish example is still very palpable, but the date is perhaps slightly later than that of the S. Gil panels and the craft superior, reaching its height in the delineation of St. Paul's and the donor's heads and in the successful reproduction of the exquisiteness of Flemish brush-work in the painting of St. Paul's green mantle and the Baptist's red cape. T h e St. Sebastian is a lesser counterpart of Bermejo's St. Michael, with which it shares a very faithful allegiance to the precedent of Roger van der Weyden. This is as logical a place as any to study a large altarpiece of St. Anne painted on canvas in the small Museo Provincial housed in the Casa de la Beneficencia at Logrono, for what pictorial production there was in the province of Logrono would naturally be related to that of the adjacent Burgos, and the altarpiece is linked with the group now under consideration by the still very vital indebtedness to the school of Tournai. In the great central compartment (Fig. 107), St. Anne, with the Virgin and Child at her feet, is seated on as elaborately magnificent a Gothic throne as may be found in the whole range of mediaeval Spanish art, including among its rich colonnettes two specimens adorned with the vertical, zigzagged maeander that is a peculiarity of the Master of Flemalle and on its arms simulated reliefs of Cain murdering Abel and Samson worsting the lion. T h e six smaller compartments at left and right depict the Expulsion of St. Joachim from the Temple (together, as usual in Spanish iconography, with St. Anne), the Annunciation of St. Joachim (with the Annunciation of his wife acted in miniature in an open chamber in the background), the Meeting at the Golden Gate, the Nativity of the Virgin, her Presentation,

FIG. 107. ST. ANNE, VIRGIN, AND CHILD, CENTRE OF ALTARPIECE. CASA DE LA BENEFICENCIA, LOGRONO (Photo. Muro)

294

P R O V I N C E O F BURGOS

and the subject which the Germans call die heilige Sippe and which is not so common in Spain, the whole kindred of St. Anne, including here, among the numerous relatives, the Virgin holding her little Son by the hand and the young Sts. John Evangelist and James Major already displaying their respective attributes of the chalice and pilgrim's staff! The types are lifted bodily out of Roger's creations, especially in the majestic central group, and the monumental spread of the Virgin's white (originally blue?) mantle at the bottom of this group beautifully reproduces the Flemish stylization of drapery. The author is so obsessed by the models of the Low Countries that he even olnits the haloes, and yet these models have been translated by an artist who, for the most part, displays no great gifts and who betrays his Spanish race by the ethnic nature of his St. Joachim and by clothing the central St. Anne in a tunic of a characteristically indigenous gold and black brocade (the gold simulated in yellow pigment). The style is not far removed from that of the panels of S. Gil, Burgos. The interest shifts from Roger van der Weyden to a very exact imitation of Dierick Bouts in four panels built into the high altar of the church at Villalonquejar, a suburb of Burgos. The subjects are St. Anthony Abbot undergoing the bastinado of the demons and temptation by the she-devil and St. Blaise first curing the child choked by a fish-bone and then suffering the torture of the wool-combs (Fig. 108). An abler and closer copier of Flemish achievement than the majority of his compatriots, the author is the Spanish counterpart of Dierick's northern follower called the Master of the Tiburtine Sibyl. In three of the compartments he introduces pretty landscapes,, particularly in the vista behind the tempted St. Anthony, with its body of water and the boat; but for the scene of the child's restoration he changes to the carefully wrought perspective of a city square and street animated with inhabitants, giving embodiment to the Master of the Tiburtine Sibyl's concern with elaborate architectural settings. He has even a Flemish sense of color, little contaminated by the Castilian atmosphere. Some of the spectators of St. Blaise's miracle and torments arouse the suspicion that the author may have helped to form the milieu

FIG. IO8.

SCHOOL OF BURGOS. EPISODES FROM LIFE OF ST. BLAISE. PARISH CHURCH, VILLALONQUEJAR (Photo. Photo Club )

ιφ

P R O V I N C E OF B U R G O S

in which the St. Nicholas Master took his first steps, for the date of the panels can hardly be later than 1480. In composition and types the adherence to Roger van der Weyden is very conscientious in panels of the Annunciation and the Nativity of Christ built into the high altar of the parish church at Espinosa del Camino, east of Burgos; but the Flemish precedent is interpreted by a painter of larger abilities working towards the end of the century in a less cramped manner than that of the other specimens which we have considered in the present subdivision of the art of Burgos. An analogous, although not identical, imitation of the achievement of the Low Countries occurs in a baffling Mass of St. Gregory in the Collection of Don Jose Garnelo at Madrid (Fig. 109) which is assigned to the school of Burgos by no more than an unsubstantiated tradition of provenience to the effect that it once graced a town near the great and now ruined monastery of Fres del Val, north of Burgos, and thence passed to the monastery itself before it reached eventually private hands. In any case, it is chronologically almost impossible that the tradition in regard to the donors should be correct. A feminine donor, beautifully executed and beautiful in herself, kneels at the right, and it is said that the panel has lost a piece at the left in which there was the corresponding figure of her husband. 1 The composition is not such that it is absolutely necessary to postulate the loss of a lateral section; but even if this mutilation took place, the style of the painting is too late to permit the traditional recognition of the donors as John I I of Castile and his second wife, Isabella of Portugal, unless they were posthumous portraits. The lady perhaps resembles somewhat the effigy of Isabella of Portugal on the tomb by Gil de Siloe in the near-lying Cartuja de Miraflores, but not sufficiently to enforce the identification, particularly when the style unmistakably places the picture after John II's death in 1454. St. Andrew, who stands behind the lady, would also be a strange patron for a queen named Isabella. We could perhaps take refuge in the hypotheses that the picture was ordered after the death of the King, John I I , possibly, as in the case of the Miraflores tomb, 1 T h e illustration, Fig. 109, includes only about two-thirds of the panel as it now exists — the two-thirds at the right.

FIG. 109.

SCHOOL OF BURGOS (?). DETAIL OF MASS OF ST. GREGORY. GARNELO COLLECTION, MADRID (Photo.

Llad6)

298

PROVINCE OF BURGOS

by his daughter, Isabella the Catholic, or that Isabella of Portugal herself, who lived until 1496, was responsible for the commission after her husband's decease; but such speculation is all much ado about nothing, since the donors' names are supported by no real evidence, and the only important point to establish is that the panel could not have been painted in John II's reign. T h e style is perplexing, for certain passages, such as St. Gregory's head, look almost as if they were early enough to have been done by a contemporary of Jorge Ingles and hence within John II's reign; but these appearances are illusions, and, despite the more than ordinarily faithful dependence upon Flemish precedent, the greater number of the forms, particularly the acolyte at the right in the Mass and the feminine portrait, plainly proclaim a date at least as late as c. 1475. Although here and there one senses analogies to Fernando Gallego, as in the St. Andrew and the attendant cardinal who is so frequent a constituent of the iconography in the Mass of St. Gregory, yet they are not decided enough to place the panel within the Gallego circle and are probably due to the common sources of Fernando Gallego and of the author. The types, indeed, and above all the St. Andrew declare the author's main source to have been Dierick Bouts, but, as with Fernando, this inspiration is colored by hovering reminiscences of Roger van der Weyden and the school of Tournai. I have searched diligently for an Hispano-Flemish master in the province of Burgos or anywhere in northwestern Spain to whom to attach this distinguished picture, even lingering for a time over the Burgos St. Nicholas Master, the painter of the altarpiece of the Visitation in the cathedral at Palencia, and the Valladolid Master of St. Udefonso; but my efforts have remained unrewarded. Both in draughtsmanship and control over color, the painter was one of the outstanding Spanish artists of his epoch. In the rendering of the red-brocaded vestments of St. Gregory and his servers and of the pope's richly jewelled tiara, which lies upon a prieDieu at the left, he rivals the most exquisite Flemish craft. T h e background is gold, whether originally diapered or not it is now impossible to say. If we assign to the Renaissance the painted wings of the

FIG. iio.

SCHOOL OF BURGOS. MADONNA AND ANGELS. HONTORIA DE LA CANTERA (Photo. Photo

Club)

PARISH CHURCH,

3°°

P R O V I N C E OF B U R G O S

sculptured Epiphany in a lateral chapel of the Colegiata at Covarrubias, the only valid relic, in Burgos or the province, of the second wave of Flemish influence 1 is a panel of the enthroned Madonna and child (Fig. n o ) built into the altar at Hontoria de la Cantera that contains the Monte Gargano episode of the school of the St. Nicholas Master as well as two rather negligible pictures of the sixteenth century. The close imitation of the achievement of the Low Countries that defines this revival is here manipulated by a Spaniard of real gifts, whose model is Memling. The panel has been cut at the sides, but the forms of two flanking angels are preserved, engaged in playing upon musical instruments, and one of another pair of smaller, serenading angels is still left in the upper part of the picture. 8.

O T H E R H I S P A N O - F L E M I S H P A I N T I N G S IN T H E

PROVINCE

OF BURGOS

In the abundant pictorial yield of Burgos during the HispanoFlemish period there remain a considerable number of pictures that I cannot as yet attach to any personality or tendency, although some of them exhibit vague affiliations with the several trends in the painting of the province and with one another. Among the earliest examples are three panels, representing the Visitation, St. Lucy with the donor (Fig. H I ) , and the Magdalene, that unite with sculpture to make an altarpiece at the right of the nave in the church of Sto. Tomas at Covarrubias. The types and draperies indicate that the author, a man of average talent, was still thinking in terms of Jan van Eyck quite as much as in those of the school of Tournai, so that, taking into account also the primitive mode in which the diminutive donor is rendered, we can scarcely propose a date later than 1475. The style, however, is pretty well Hispanicized, goldbrocaded hangings already hiding all but small vistas of landscape behind the figures. Certain indecisive resemblances to the St. Nicholas Master and the Master of the Large Figures imply that the panels fit neatly into the early stages of the Hispano-Flemish school at Burgos out of which the manners of these artists were evolved. 1

See above, pp. 22 and 28.

Fio. i n .

SCHOOL OF BURGOS.

ST. LUCY.

STO. TOMAS, COVARRUBIAS

(Photo. Photo Club)

302

P R O V I N C E OF

BURGOS

I wish that the resemblances were sufficiently definite to substantiate an ascription to the same hand of two relics of an altarpiece of St. Anne now built into separate lateral retables in the parish church of Haza, west of Aranda de Duero, an Anna selbdritt (Fig. 112) and an Annunciation of St. Joachim; but the

FIG. 112.

SCHOOL OF BURGOS. ST. ANNE, VIRGIN, AND CHILD. PARISH CHURCH, HAZA (Photo. Photo

Club)

association of the author with Roger van der Weyden seems to be closer than with Jan van Eyck. The connection with the Covarrubias panels is incorporated particularly in the likeness of the St. Anne to the St. Elizabeth of the Visitation. T h e indigenous note is sounded in the lightly tooled gold background behind St. Anne's throne.

P R O V I N C E OF B U R G O S The Virgin and Child sit within a somewhat similar niche-like throne in a large panel in the sacristy of the parish church at Arlanzon, east of Burgos, but there is no other significant relationship with the works at Haza. The competent author has abided very faithfully by the precedent of Dierick Bouts, and despite the lesser tangibility of this influence in a predella of six scroll-enveloped Prophets in half-length (Fig. 1 1 3 ) also in the sacristy, there is enough community of style to suggest that they once belonged to the same retable as the Madonna and

V ; ν·ϊ μ ίμτ . W fr, -·· a m i 1 ' * mi·*' !'· FIG. 1 1 3 .

SCHOOL OF BURGOS.

f T H E PROPHETS ISAIAH, SAMUEL, A N D

(READING FROM LEFT TO RIGHT), S E C T I O N O F PARISH CHURCH,

DAVID

PREDELLA.

ARLANZON

(Photo. Photo Club )

were executed by the same hand. The throne is hung with a gold brocade very similar to that set behind the Prophets, and, moreover, all these fragments in the sacristy are said to have once decorated the now ruined abbey of Foncea near Arlanzon. Over the Virgin's countenance as well as over those of the Prophets, especially David, the third from the left, there hover vague analogies to the personages of the Burgos Master, and it is to be remembered that Foncea was a dependency of the cathedral of Burgos where that Master executed his principal works; but all this is far from equivalent to an attribution to the Burgos Master. The student may perhaps discern reminiscences of Fernando Gallego in the Prophets, but the author probably knew the Salamancan painter only in his Burgos translations.

304

P R O V I N C E OF B U R G O S

Although the types are rather different from those of Arlanζόη, it is perhaps possible to discern some kind of affiliation with the Burgos Master or with the school of Ona that derived from him also in two panels of a predella, each displaying a pair of Prophets in half-length, which are reported to have come from a town near Burgos and now are in the Collection of the Duchess of Parcent at Madrid. They are identified by the usual encircling scrolls as in one instance David and Jeremiah (Fig. 114) and in the other Isaiah and Zechariah. Their bodies are the robust and rather hulking physiques of the Burgos Master, and the expressions have much of his dourness. The resemblance of the David to some of the personages of the painter who did the retable of the Reyes Catolicos said to have Valladolid as its provenience, especially to the man behind the Child in the Purification, furnishes one of many links that partially unite this retable to the school of Burgos. 1 T o the full-blown Hispano-Flemish manner of Burgos, let us say in the eighties and nineties, illustrated by the works at Arlanzon and the predella of the Parcent Collection belongs a panel depicting, against a gold background, the Man of Sorrows between two angels now consigned to the Museum of the Colegiata at Covarrubias (Fig. 1 1 5 ) . The church is said to possess the record that it was a part of the retable above the high altar, and as such it would have accorded with the arrangement of the altarpiece at Espinosa de los Monteros and many another example in constituting the centre of the predella. The affection for the attainments of Roger van der Weyden is more than ordinarily visible, enabling the author to excel in the lovely Flemish fashion of rendering the draperies and admitting even the light and garish tonality of the school of Tournai and its modes of chiaroscuro. The Catalogue of the Retrospective Exhibition at Burgos 2 impossibly assigns the panel to a painter close to the Master of L a Sisla, so that no artistic significance can be extracted from the fact that the Colegiata of Covarrubias strangely depended for a time upon the see of Toledo, 3 for which this Master was active. 1 1 3

See below, pp. 423 and 425. No. 471 of the Catalogue. Amador de los Rios, Burgos, 846.

3O6

PROVINCE OF

BURGOS

T h e church of the Natividad de la Virgen at Villasandino contains a capably executed panel of the Trinity (Fig. 116), set against a gold brocade, which must likewise be relegated to the present nondescript subdivision of the Burgos school. It is also beyond my powers of perception to pigeon-hole in any compartment narrower than the school of Burgos towards the end of the fifteenth century an unexpectedly beautiful panel of St. Francis receiving the stigmata in the sacristy of S. Este-

FIG. IIJ.

SCHOOL OF BURGOS. MAN OF SORROWS. COLEGIATA, COVARRUBIAS (Photo. Photo

Club)

ban at Burgos itself (Fig. 117). T h e head of the seraphic father is painted with great tenderness, and, as a charming example of the mediaeval practice of telescoping two legends, the sermon to the birds is recalled by punctuating the earth round St. Francis, in the midst of an unusually captivating landscape, with pretty feathered creatures, rendered, together with plants, flowers, and even a butterfly in the foreground, in the most delicate Flemish mode of the illuminator's technique. T h e reliance upon the Low Countries is, indeed, still a very vital element in the artist's craft, and there are certain similarities

PROVINCE O F BURGOS to the likewise Flemishized author of the paintings in Sto. Tomas, Covarrubias. One could imagine the Burgos Master or the St. Nicholas Master having painted somewhat like this in his youth. In coming to the last phase of Hispano-Flemish painting in the province of Burgos, in which, as very generally in the rest

FIG. 116.

SCHOOL OF BURGOS. TRINITY. CHURCH OF THE NATIVIDAD DE LA VIRGEN, VILLASANDINO (Photo. Photo

Club)

of the peninsula at this time, the reminiscences of the art of the Low Countries have been absorbed into a somewhat dull and neutral national style, we encounter a group of works which are patently related to one another by very intimate links but which I do not yet quite venture to attribute to a single master. The most interesting and best executed members of the group

3O8

P R O V I N C E OF BURGOS

are perhaps two panels in the parochial church of Belorado, depicting the Nativity of Christ and the Marriage at Cana (Fig. 1x8). The legacy from Roger van der Weyden has been considerably impaired in its descent to the author through two or three generations, but some of the original bequest is still tangible. The emasculation of the Flemish manner has resulted in a pleasant tranquillity. As in the case of the earlier Burgos Master, the first stirrings of the Renaissance have added little except the settings of Italian architecture. Although the composition for the Marriage at Cana is very different, distant analogies in type and in contemporary costumes, especially in the character of the jaunty attendant pages, provide more evidence that the Valladolid retable of the Reyes Catolicos 1 is of Spanish rather than Flemish creation and that it has affiliations with the school of Burgos. Perhaps by the same hand is a predella of an Apostolado in half-lengths built into the upper part of the more recent retable over the high altar of the church of the Redemptionist monastery of El Espino, near Santa Gadea del Cid, on the eastern edge of the province, an institution that was formerly Benedictine and depended upon San Millan de la Cogolla. The attribution is suggested not only by generalities but also by such similarities as that of the heads of Sts. John and James Minor to the Christ of the Marriage at Cana. So far as excellence is possible in this rather vacuous last phase of the Hispano-Flemish manner, the author attains the same superior level embodied in the panels of Belorado, making of each Apostle distinctly an individual (Fig. 119). Sometimes I have thought that I discerned in the series association, of a sort, with the Master of the Large Figures. With somewhat more surety one can assign at least to the hand of El Espino the panels built into the retable over the high altar of the parish church of Buezo, near Briviesca, which is indeed dedicated to San Millan de la Cogolla (St. Emilianus), the patron of the monastery that was the mother-house of El Espino. Since San Millan is the titular of the church, the two large panels that remain from the body of the original altarpiece probably depict scenes from his life, but I cannot positively 1

See below, p. 425.

FIG. 117.

SCHOOL OF BURGOS. STIGMATA.

ST. FRANCIS RECEIVING THE

S. ESTEBAN, BURGOS

(Photo. Photo

Club)

PROVINCE OF BURGOS identify them.1 In one, two angels are digging in his presence, and he is represented again in miniature in the background, engaged in reading while another angel tills the earth. Is this some tale of supernatural intervention in the founding or continuation of the monastery? He stands, in the other scene, before a potentate, who, from the presence of a nude, female statue in the hall, might be supposed a pagan. It scarcely seems, therefore, that we have here San Millan's appearance to exorcise the palace of the nobleman, Honorius, or his prophecy to Abundantius of the latter's death. The extant pieces of the predella enshrine in half-lengths Sts. Peter and Paul and the knightly young patrons of Calahorra, Sts. Emeterius and Celedonius. The former is encircled with a scroll, " San Medel, ruega por nosotros"; the latter has the inscription, "Bienaventurado Senor San Celedron (sic, or perhaps without the r)," and displays as an attribute the ring that was caught up into the clouds at the moment of his martyrdom. The style reaches virtual identity with that of El Espino in the two effigies of St. Peter. Its distant genesis in Flanders still manifests itself in the two delving angels, and the equality in degree of skill with the works at Belorado and El Espino is declared by the successful imitation of Flemish craft in the rendering of such accessories as the pots of flowers. The Buezo panels, however, reveal a distinctive peculiarity in the more liberal resort to gold, accenting the wings of the angels and the border of the saint's Benedictine habit, completely investing the forms of the nude statue and of the man who watches the reading Emilianus at the back of the digging scene, and sometimes even delightfully substituted for high lights. It is not because they have any very tangible associations with the pictures treated in the last paragraphs but merely because they belong to the same ultimate phase of HispanoFlemish art and represent a series of saints in half-lengths that we may include at this point two fragments of a predella, the only panels in the sacristy of the parish church at Gumiel de 1 Sentenach (La Bureia, 21) states, on the other hand, that the church is dedicated to St. Benedict and interprets the scenes as depicting the persecution of monks by the Moors. It is difficult to discover any incidents in the life of St. Benedict that could be reconciled with the stories of the two panels.

FIG. Ι Ι 8. SCHOOL OF BURGOS. MARRIAGE AT CANA. PARISH CHURCH, BELORADO CPhoto. Photo Club )

PROVINCE OF

312

BURGOS

Hizän, north of Aranda de Duero, that are of more than rustic quality. T h e y are said to have been rescued from an Ermita de S. Antonio, and •— anomalously for so tardy a date — are relieved against a gold background that is not diaperedJn any way. T h e worthies chosen for honor are Sts. Benedict, Anthony

FIG. 119.

SCHOOL OF BURGOS.

PREDELLA.

ST. PHILIP, SECTION OF

MONASTIC CHURCH, EL ESPINO (Photo. Photo

Club)

of Padua, John Baptist, Peter (Fig. 120), Paul, Jerome, Stephen, and Blaise. As with the other members of the group, the bonds of attachment are tantalizingly inconclusive in a competently painted retable now in the baptismal chapel of the parroquia at Castil de Peones, near Briviesca and Buezo. T h e subjects of the upper tier are the Assumption, upon which, as so frequently at the

P R O V I N C E OF B U R G O S

313

time, are superimposed suggestions of the Immaculate Conception, and, at the sides, the Visitation and Nativity. In the present condition of the structure, a niche for a statue takes up the centre of the lower tier, flanked by paintings of the Epiphany and Flight into Egypt. The Pieta is set in the middle of the predella, and the lateral themes are half-lengths of Sts. Catherine, Lucy, Apollonia, and another feminine saint defaced beyond recognition. The St. Elizabeth of the Visitation calls up memories of the Virgin in the Belorado Marriage at

FIG. 120.

SCHOOL OF BURGOS. SAINTS, SECTION OF PREDELLA. PARISH CHURCH, GUMIEL DE HIZAN (Photo. Photo Club)

Cana, and the St. Joseph of the Nativity is a fellow of the Sts. Peter and Philip at El Espino; but the study of all these works has not yet progressed far enough to permit the creation of a Belorado Master, to whom the whole group could be ascribed. The styles of the Buezo and Castil de Peones pieces seem, indeed, rather far removed from each other. Some of the types at Castil de Peones edge upon the prettiness of the Renaissance. One is at a loss, furthermore, whether to include in the group a retable of the same general class in the chapel to the left of the high altar in the church of S. Martin at Briviesca itself. The retable was probably a donation of the chapel's founder, Pedro Ruiz, who died in 1 5 1 3 . The painted sections comprise

314

P R O V I N C E OF BURGOS

the Annunciation, Circumcision, Epiphany, Purification, and a predella of half-lengths of feminine saints that, probably at a later date, have been oddly cut out, together with the wood upon which they are painted, and raised like paper-dolls upon brocaded backgrounds. The craft is somewhat inferior to that of the other members of the group, and there are again presentiments of the Renaissance. Indeterminate analogies to the Buezo panels emerge in one of the very latest products of the coterie in the early sixteenth century, the retable of St. John Baptist over the high altar of the church at Salinas de Rosio, northeast of Villarcayo. As so frequently, the centre of the structure consists of sculpture, a statue of the Precursor set above the tabernacle and surmounted by a group of the Coronation. The paintings depict: the Visitation (with the vision of Zacharias in miniature in the background), the nativity of St. John, the baptism of Christ, the preaching of St. John (out of order, for Our Lord as the Lamb of God is approaching in the distance), his arrest (repainted or a more recent substitution), his decollation (with the episode, at the back, of soldiers leading him to martyrdom, Fig. 121), the dance of Salome (out of order), a scene that apparently tells the story, unknown to me, of a search for his relics in a river, and in a partially repainted predella, probably by the same atelier, the Agony in the Garden, Betrayal, and Flagellation within a single frame, the Deposition, the Entombment (both of these partly truncated), the Resurrection, and, again brought together without a partition, the Noli me tangere and the Ascension. Gold brocades are substituted in the predella for landscapes. Despite the bits of Renaissance architecture in the setting and the Italianization of some of the types, the style of the retable is still fundamentally Hispano-Flemish, but the technical merits are not of a very high order. It is difficult to determine whether a well painted head of Christ in the parish church of Montorio, north of Burgos, should be assigned to a late phase of the Hispano-Flemish manner or to the early Renaissance. If the former alternative is the correct one, it should possibly be brought into the proximity of the Burgos Master.

Fio. i n .

SCHOOL OF BURGOS. OF RETABLE.

DECAPITATION OF ST. JOHN BAPTIST, SECTION

PARISH CHURCH, SALINAS DE ROSIO (Photo. Photo Club)

3i6

P R O V I N C E OF BURGOS

Some works border too nearly on the rustic to repay lingering over, as, for instance, the four scenes from the infancy of Christ that constitute a small retable in the Ermita (not in the parish church) at Escalada, west of Villarcayo. The altarpiece in the Ermita at Retuerta, just south of Covarrubias, incorporates a very late, countrified survival of the Hispano-Flemish style; its chief interest is that it adds to seven panels of the infancy and childhood of Christ and to a predella of half-lengths of sacred personages a representation of the sin of Eve, just as episodes from the Old Testament were included by the author's betters in similar ensembles in the retables of Ciudad Rodrigo and Fromista. A little tabernacle for ecclesiastical notices in the church of the Cartuja of Miraflores displays in its tympanum a very small and inferior version of the Last Supper that is likewise one of the last expressions of the Hispano-Flemish movement. It is a hazardous matter to claim with any certitude for the second half of the fifteenth century the frescoes in the Ermita de S. Millän at Puentedura, south of Burgos, the representation of a procession on the north wall, headed by a crucifer and preserving the clearly seen forms of eighteen penitents and parts of others. I have already rejected their assignment to the thirteenth century by Juan Sanz, 1 and their technical knowledge, as exhibited, for instance, in the delineation of the feet and of the folds of their robes just above the girdles, seems to forestall a date before the fifteenth century. In finding the proper stylistic niche in which to place the frescoes, we are not helped by the mode of painting, for, if there ever was any color, it has disappeared, leaving only definition by line without any modelling in light and shade. This is one of the factors that may have suggested to Sanz an early date, but the drawing is far too sophisticated for a Romanesque or even a Franco-Gothic artist and displays none of the trade-marks of those pictorial manners. It must be acknowledged likewise that one can discern none of the peculiarities of Hispano-Flemish draughtsmanship, and the style is perhaps most like that of the international movement in the first half of the fifteenth century, as exhibited, let us say, by the school of Nicolas Frances at Leon. But, as a matter of 1

Vol. II, p. 149, η. i.

P R O V I N C E OF B U R G O S

317

fact, it would be hard to express the particular traits of the Hispano-Flemish or any other manner in the simple and monotonous robes and hooded heads of a row of penitents, and the critic's task is made the harder because the author was little more than a peasant painting according to his own lights without much acquaintance with the artistic fashions of the great centres. I can thus appeal to nothing more definite than a vague feeling in guessing that the fresco belongs to the second half of the fifteenth century. A rural craftsman might perhaps have painted in this way even in the sixteenth century or later, but the gestures betray a certain stiffness that renders it difficult to accept a date subsequent to the fifteenth century. The question of the style is further complicated by a repainting, which results in one place in the actual superimposition, over the first stratum, of a tree and, above it, the winged figure of Faith, with cross and chalice. It is fairly apparent, however, that at least none of the heads in the procession belongs to the second stratum. The Gospel side of the east wall of the Ermita also retains a frescoed passage, all belonging to the second stratum except for a piece of pavement with the foot of a figure and the bottom of another article which have been uncovered from the first layer of pigment. The subject of the second stratum on the east wall I cannot make out: the representation consists of three men, one of whom is a warrior. Although the fresco of the procession will not provide the visitor with much aesthetic delight, the dullness that might have resulted from a long line of figures is rather agreeably avoided by the variation in the postures and activities of the participants. Some of them finger rosaries; a pair bear candles; two others appear to be uniting in the performance of some pious function; and still another is depicted in a mode the significance of which is an enigma to me, his head being encompassed by a circle containing the spaced Roman numerals of a clock's face!

CHAPTER L OTHER W O R K S OF T H E GALLEGO I.

THE

BUDAPEST

SCHOOL

MASTER

I N C O M I N G to those paintings of the Gallego school in public or private collections for which we have hitherto been able to devise no affiliations, we may at once mark off another anonymous artist, for whom it is advisable to create a name because a number of stray works are to be attached to his personality. B y reason of the presence of his cardinal productions in the Museum of Budapest, the most appropriate choice is the title, Budapest Master. His principal extant achievement is a series of five panels now put together as a polyptych in that Museum and displaying in the three central divisions the Crucifixion, Betrayal, and Deposition, and at either end an episcopal saint 1 (Fig. 122). One of his near relatives in the artistic clan of Gallego is, as Mayer has perceived, 2 the painter of Sta. Maria del Castillo at Fromista, but we have already discovered 3 that he is not equal to that painter. The types resemble the gaunt and attenuated forms of Fernando himself, but the impression of the haggard is augmented by the modelling of the faces and the nude bodies in a rather violent and rapid alternation of light and shade that accentuates the bony structure. The rooms in which the episcopal saints stand are of just the sort of architecture that Fernando admires — walls of neatly worked masonry opening by precise little rectangular windows to enchanting bits of landscape. T h e background of the Betrayal contains, in Fernando's mode, the Agony in the Garden acted in miniature amidst the trees and rocks.

Mayer is right in assigning to the same hand three panels that were shown at an exhibition in the Galerie Heinemann at 1 Their names are on their haloes, but neither I nor (so far as I can find) anyone else has yet been able to decipher them. I rather think that the name of the one at the right should be read as Sanctus Martinus. 2 La pintura espanola (Edition Labor), 66. 3 See above, p. 190.

32 ο

OTHER WORKS

Munich in 1 9 1 1 and comprise the Annunciation, the Last Supper, and the Assumption (Fig. 123). One or two aspects of the iconography deserve mention. In the Last Supper, Our Lord is strangely honored, for so late a date in mediaeval painting, by being magnified to a scale twice as large as that of the Apostles. The Assumption, according to the peculiar iconographical scheme of Sta. Maria del Castillo at Fromista of which there are other contemporary examples, is also partly a Coronation and partly an early treatment of the Immaculate Conception: God, at the very top of the panel, receives with a crown the rigidly erect Virgin, as she is borne aloft by an entrancing flight of symmetrically arranged angels, and an outburst of rays behind her is perhaps not a mere nimbus but constitutes an interpretation of the clothing with the sun, one of the attributes of the woman in the Apocalypse with whom the Immaculate Virgin is identified. The most striking analogies, among many, to the Budapest polyptych are: the elongation (particularly in the Annunciation) and the gauntness of the forms, made more evident by the strong light and shade; the brocades of the garments; the delicate painting of the walls of the interiors, with the jointures of the stones perspicuously indicated and, in the Last Supper, with another cleanly made window the embrasure of which is similarly and charmingly touched with light; and the brilliant tapestries hung upon the walls. In the angels of the Assumption the Flemish origins of the Gallego circle have come to the surface more palpably than in the other works of this Master. For the Last Supper he utilizes the Gallego and Fromista composition of the round table and Judas kneeling in the foreground with the money-bag behind his back. The more cramped drawing indicates that the Munich panels belong to an earlier phase of his development than that incorporated in the Budapest polyptych, which can scarcely have been painted much before 1500. An odd turn of the wheel of fortune has endowed the Museum at Budapest with what I am fairly confident is another work of the same artist, a separate panel of the Presentation of the Virgin (Fig. 124), which possesses the additional interest of approximating most closely, in this group of paintings, the manner of the master of Sta. Maria del Castillo. The priest and par-

322

OTHER WORKS

ticularly St. Joachim display the Budapest Master's peculiar bony structure of the face, and the exaggerated elongation of the Munich Annunciation reasserts itself in St. Anne, the Virgin, and the maidens among whom Our Lady is received. It is indeed because of the painter's fondness for original iconography that he introduces into the Presentation these four from the seven maidens who were to be Mary's companions in the Temple and of whom much is made in the scenes from her life in the Catalan retable of Villafranca del Panades. 1 B y recognizing a unity of authorship between this Presentation and a Marriage of the Virgin in the Salas Capitulares of the Barcelona cathedral, Diego Angulo has augmented the legacy of the Budapest Master by another work (Fig. 125). It is one of "those happy and all too rare cases in connoisseurship where the attribution stares the critic in the face. The identical haggard, elongated types look out at us once more, the identical melodramatic chiaroscuro. The Virgin is nearly a repetition of herself as she appears in the Munich Annunciation; the brocade of her tunic is accented with just the same obliquely placed, ostentatiously huge figure of a conventionalized plant as in the Budapest Presentation; for the officiating prelate is used the kind of countenance, almost broader than it is long, that sometimes is encountered in the Budapest Master's output, for instance in the St. John of the Budapest Deposition; and Diego Angulo has detected in the background a feminine attendant in a'high-pointed hat and in profile who exactly duplicates a similarly placed maiden in the Budapest Presentation. The actor most suggestive of the Master's origins in the Gallego shop is the St. Joseph. The supposition would be that the panel, like the other pictures in the Salas Capitulares, at some time decorated an altar in the cathedral or in one of its dependencies and that it therefore involves another example of the phenomenon illustrated by Master Alfonso, Bermejo, and the St. Nicholas Master, the employment in Catalonia of an artist from western Spain; but since its history is not known or at least has not been divulged, it is just possible that it was presented to the cathedral by some private collector who possessed among his treasures Castilian paintings. 1

See vol. II, p. 308.

FIG. 124. THE BUDAPEST MASTER. PRESENTATION OF THE VIRGIN. MUSEUM, BUDAPEST

FIG. 125. THE BUDAPEST MASTER. MARRIAGE OF THE VIRGIN. CATHEDRAL, BARCELONA (Photo. Arxiu

Mas)

FIG. 126.

THE BUDAPEST MASTER. ST. LAWRENCE BAPTIZING ST. HIPPOLYTUS

326

OTHER WORKS

Y e t another work by this hand has come to my notice, a panel depicting St. Lawrence baptizing St. Hippolytus and his household that I know only in photograph and as having been recently in international commerce (Fig. 126). All of the Mas-

FIG. 127. CIRCLE OF T H E BUDAPEST MASTER. DEPOSITION. G A L L E R Y OF THE F I N E ARTS SOCIETY, SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA (Courtesy of the GalleryJ

ter's peculiar types are once more marshalled before us, and the vesture of St. Hippolytus, St. Lawrence's dalmatic, and even the hangings of the room display the characteristic conspicuous patterns of the brocades thrown on the bias. The Gallery of the Fine Arts Society at San Diego, Califor-

FIG. 128. CARILLO (?). MASS OF ST. GREGORY. FITZWILLIAM MUSEUM, CAMBRIDGE, ENGLAND

328

OTHER WORKS

nia, contains a panel of the Deposition 1 (Fig. 127) stylistically related to the Budapest Master but with differences in types sufficiently great to discount a unity of authorship. The general affiliations with his artistic entourage are apparent at first glance, but there are even specific points of contact, as in the pronounced modelling of the faces and of Christ's body in chiaroscuro. In the diminutive kneeling donor the author imitates the manner of Fernando Gallego himself in such figures with amazing closeness. 2.

CARILLO

The bonds that unite a panel of the Mass of St. Gregory in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, England (Fig. 128), with the Gallego strain are not so tangible, and yet the general pictorial atmosphere of the piece and even certain details make the Gallego circle the most plausible pigeon-hole in which, pending further light, to place it. The craftsmanship is slightly below the average of the Gallego circle, but the panel acquires a kind of piquancy from the inscriptions on the pavement in which are stated the names of the kneeling clerical donor at the left and of the town where the picture hung and in which may lie hidden also the name of the painter. The first inscription is fairly legible: " E l cura del Torrico (or Torricos), Alonso Ruyz de Cabala (the parish priest of El Torrico, Alonso Ruiz de Cabala)." This reading of his name is confirmed by a longer legend on the back of the panel which recounts the usual indulgences 2 accruing to the person who shall pray before the picture but which begins: "Esta imagen mando fazer Alonso Ruiz de Cavala, cura desta yglesya (This painting was ordered by Alonso Ruiz de Cavala, 3 parish priest of this church)." The panel would thus seem to be localized at Torrico, west of Talavera de la Reina, though there is the difficulty of the article preceding the word Torrico and of the s at the end, if the character be not merely a sign for the termination of the word like the dots used in other places in the inscription. It does not appear to be Reputed to have come from a private collection in Switzerland. Cf. above, p. 136. 3 The letter ν in Spanish is pronounced in the same way as b and is often interchangeable with it in ancient spelling. 1

3

G A L L E G O SCHOOL

329

possible to wrench the letters so as to read Torrijos, the larger town directly west of Toledo. T o the right, on the step of the elevated piece of pavement in front of St. Gregory's altar, is written what may well be the

Fic. 129.

CARILLO (?).

MADONNA.

KAISER FRIEDRICH

MUSEUM, BERLIN (Courtesy of the Museum)

artist's signature. I agree with Mayer in deciphering a surname, Carillo, but I discover, besides, in front of this, two enigmatical letters that are perhaps A C . Mr. Sydney C. Cockerell, 1 the director of the Museum, prefers to see rather the end of an1 I am indebted to M r . Cockerell's courtesy also for the knowledge of the inscription on the back of the panel.

33°

O T H E R WORKS

other surname, " ossarillo." A reason for interpreting the letters as Carillo and for believing them an artist's signature is the existence of two or three other Spanish panels of about this date inscribed with a word that is clearly Carillo. One of these I have seen in the Depot of the Kaiser Friedrich Museum at Berlin (No. 1215), a small Madonna and Child bearing on the balustrade in front of them a pious inscription and in the left corner of the balustrade the word Carillo (Fig. 129). The difficulty in identifying this Carillo with the name on the Cambridge panel and in thus proving the latter to be a signature is that the style does not seem to be quite the same in the Berlin picture, where the indebtedness to Flanders has been partly obliterated and the manner approximates more the somewhat Italianate mode of which Pedro Berruguete and Juan de Borgona were more distinguished exponents. A unity of authorship, nevertheless, is not absolutely inconceivable, and a new artistic personality might thus be established, for the identical surname occurring on several pictures can hardly be explained as anything else but a painter's signature. Mayer 1 mentions two Madonnas so signed, one shown in the exhibition in the Galerie Heinemann at Munich in 1911 and the other in English private possession, but it is possible that one of these is the same as the Berlin picture. Inasmuch as all these panels, whether or not by a single hand, seem to have Castilian associations, Carillo can scarcely be identical with the Juan Carrillo who is mentioned at Seville in 1513.2 The Berlin panel does exhibit some few, not very prominent elements that would argue for the same hand as the Cambridge picture, and it is to be kept in mind that even in cases of a documented unity of authorship there would not be many points of contact between two such different subjects as a Madonna and a Mass of St. Gregory. Despite the diversity of the physical types, chiaroscuro is developed to about an equal degree and is spread over the faces in a similar fashion. There are an analogous passion for jewelry and an analogous mode of rendering it. The palaeography of Cicerone, I I I (1911), 53. He spells the name with two r's, but he may be merely correcting the inscription to the more usual spelling of this common Spanish surname. * See J . Gestoso y Perez, Ensayo de un diccionario de los artifices que florecieron en Sevilla, I I I , 293-294. 1

FIG. 130. SCHOOL OF FERNANDO GALLEGO. CHRIST AMONG THE DOCTORS. LÄZARO COLLECTION, MADRID f From the Catalogue of the

Collection)

332

OTHER

WORKS

the word Carillo is virtually identical, and although the prayer inscribed on the ledge of the Berlin panel is written in majuscules, the i is made in the same curious way like y as in the minuscule script of the scroll that embodies the pious sentiment of Alonso Ruiz. Even the sentiment is similar: " O mater Dei: memento mei; Domine." The resemblances of the Mass of St. Gregory to the production of the Gallego shop do not consist so much in parallelisms of facial types as in generalities — forms attenuated almost to the point of Bouts's stylization, gesticulating hands, a setting in an ecclesiastical interior, a delight in the ostentatious rendering of the jewels in the saint's tiara and orphreys, the scrupulous and successful treatment of the acolyte's gauze surplice, and the flying scroll of the donor upon which is written, " O fili Dei, miserere mei." In the donor the painter has progressed very little beyond the standards of " international" portraiture, but this is a rather frequent and (in view of the vigor of Flemish portraiture) a strange defect in Hispano-Flemish painting, betrayed, for instance, even in Fernando Gallego's Pieta of the Weibel Collection. T h e acolyte, indeed, is more strongly characterized, and, being a person of mature age, may also embody the likeness of some contemporary. In the features of his countenance he is the closest approximation in the panel to Fernando's types. T h e painter is more loyal to the traditions of the artistic group to which he belonged than Fernando himself, for, in distinction from Fernando's version of the subject in the Schlayer Collection, the Cambridge panel derives its composition from the lost Mass of St. Gregory by the Master of Flemalle or from a copy such as that in the Moreira Collection at Lisbon. 1 T h e tightness of the draughtsmanship would date the panel at a rather early moment in the history of the dissemination of the Gallego models, possibly c. 1480. 3.

OTHER

WORKS

OF THE G A L L E G O

SCHOOL

Among the other isolated panels of the Gallego school that have found their way into public or private possession, we may register first the scene of the young Christ in the Temple in the 1

174.

See above, p. 23, and J. Moreira Freire, Un probleme d'art, Lisbon, 1898, pp. 173-

»smmmmmw·

• · vm

M9KII

Kim*

FIG. 131. SCHOOL OF FERNANDO GALLEGO (THE PALANQUINOS MASTER ?). MADONNA, ANGELS, AND DONOR. PLANDIURA COLLECTION, BARCELONA (Photo.

Serra)

334

OTHER

WORKS

Lazaro Collection, Madrid (Fig. 130), because its author must have come into intimate contact with the founder of the shop. The doctor clasping his hands in cogitation at the upper right is, in physique and physiognomy, a type of Dierick Bouts who in his journey into this picture has passed through Fernando Gallego's atelier. T h e composition resembles somewhat Fernando's version of the theme in the Trujillo retable but more closely the treatment by the master of Sta. Maria del Castillo at Fromista. The panel, in the Plandiura Collection, Barcelona, of an enthroned Madonna of the Milk, crowned by a pair of angels and adored by a diminutive, kneeling, Franciscan donor, would prove, if the modern restorations were removed, to have been produced within the immediate proximity of Fernando Gallego (Fig. 131). T h e factor that gives the first clew is the donor, who is executed exactly in the still half-international mode of the corresponding figures in the Weibel Pieta, so that the picture must belong to the period when Fernando was just entering upon his illustrious career. From this detail one's eye travels next to the Child's gauze drapery which faithfully prophesies the transparent shift that clothes Him in Fernando's great triptych of the New Cathedral at Salamanca. The very type of the Child is almost identical except for the prettifying of the face achieved by repainting. The Virgin herself, with her longflowing Flemish locks, is not very different from Fernando's Bouts-like conceptions of her, as, for instance, in the Salamanca triptych or in the Arcenillas Nativity. Her blue mantle spreads to one of the monumental expanses of multiplied, brittle folds that Fernando, as again in the Weibel Pieta, perhaps learned from Conrad Witz. A scroll flutters over the donor with words similar to those uttered by the man who commissioned the Weibel Pieta and to those employed for his personages by the painter whose name is perhaps Carillo: " O Mater Dei, memento mei." The persistence of such a piece of international genre as the peacock on the arm of the throne combines with other elements that I have mentioned to date the panel contemporary with Fernando Gallego's beginnings; and the picture has the interest of embodying for us a transitional stage between the international and Hispano-Flemish manners. It is

GALLEGO SCHOOL

335

not to be placed beyond the pale of credibility that beneath the repaint lies an original by Fernando himself, but I am content to argue merely for a classification within the group of his first followers. The mudejar pattern of laceria incised in the gold background suggests an artist who was perhaps his follower, the

FIG. 132.

SCHOOL OF FERNANDO GALLEGO (?). PRADO, MADRID

ST. GREGORY.

Master of Palanquinos, and since the Virgin's cast of features recalls this Master's types for adolescents, it may even be that one of his productions is here hidden. The throne is oddly conceived as of wood, but it is glorified by the red and gold tapestry of brocade spread over its back as a setting for Our Lady. The spots where the retouching is most obvious are the faces of the two angels, which, in their insipidness, betray a violent and

336

OTHER WORKS

impossible contrast with their flying skirts of characteristicallypuckered Flemish folds. It is with some trepidation that I include in the Gallego school two rather small but superior panels of Santiago and St. Gregory 1 (Fig. 132) that have entered the Prado in the Castro y Solis bequest, since the stylistic ties with this school are not so strongly marked as to eliminate the possibility that future revelations would uncover another origin for them, even, for instance, in Andalusia. Y e t a classification in the following of Fernando Gallego is not an absurdity. The figures with which to compare them are the half-lengths of saints that are so common a constituent of the retables that emanated from the Gallego atelier; or, since the Prado panels manifestly belong to the very end of the century, a persuasive analogue is Fernando's late and quite as monumental work, the St. Andrew of the triptych in the New Cathedral of Salamanca. The facial type and the physique of St. Gregory fall more readily within the Gallego canon, and his red and jewelled chasuble conforms rather strikingly to Fernando's kind of brush-work. The more thickset Santiago is less similar, and yet his mantle again accords with the technical methods of the Gallego shop. The painter, whoever he was, deserves the title of a real master. The national strain in him has so far triumphed over the Flemish borrowings that he constructs the whole background, in each case, out of a boldly flaring, gold-enhanced brocade. 1 He is so labelled in his halo, but if it is Gregory the Great and not one of the other saints of the same name, it is curious that he should wear only an episcopal mitre instead of a papal tiara.