A History of Spanish Painting: Volume IV–Part 2 A History of Spanish Painting, Volume IV: The Hispano-Flemish Style in North-Western Spain, Part 2 [Reprint 2014 ed.] 9780674600232, 9780674599789

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A HISTORY OF SPANISH PAINTING VOLUME IV—PART II

LONDON : H U M P H R E Y MIL FORD OXFORD U N I V E R S I T Y 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 II THE HISPANO-FLEMISH STYLE IN NORTHWESTERN SPAIN

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS

H A R V A R D U N I V E R S I T Y PRESS 1

93 3

COPYRIGHT,

I933

BY T H E P R E S I D E N T AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE

P R I N T E D A T T H E HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS CAMBRIDGE, MASS., U . S . A .

PART II THE HISPANO-FLEMISH STYLE IN NORTHWESTERN SPAIN (CONTINUED)

CHAPTER LI T H E SCHOOL OF A V I L A Ι.

THE AVILA

MASTER

JUST as the pictorial output of Salamanca and its region in the second half of the fifteenth century constitutes little more than the school of Fernando Gallego, so the Hispano-Flemish production of Avila and its province is almost wholly derived from the style of a painter who was active in the city during the seventies but who unfortunately must still, to relentlessly scientific criticism, remain anonymous, however enticing we shall find the arguments that would identify him with a documented name, Garcia del Barco. Whereas the Gallego style spread from Salamanca and Zamora and conquered a great portion of northern Spain, the manner of the artist whom we may call the Avila Master is largely, though not entirely, confined within the limits of his own district. He is represented by three extant works. T h e best known is a small triptych in the Lázaro Collection, Madrid, reported to have come from a religious institution at Avila, which Mayer cannot be far wrong in assigning to about 1470-1475 (Fig. 133). T h e central panel displays the Nativity of Christ, and the wings the angelic proclamation to the shepherds and the Magi's vision of the star; on the exterior of the wings the Annunciation (Fig. 134) is depicted in the monochrome that the Flemings customarily employed for this section of an altarpiece. In other words, there is no mistaking the fact that we have here a free adaptation of Roger van der Weyden's Bladelin triptych from Middelburg in Brabant, now in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum, Berlin. T h e subjects on the interior and exterior are the same, except that the Spanish imitator, less versed in recondite classical and religious lore, has substituted in the left wing the proclamation to the shepherds for the Bladelin representation of the Sibyl of Tibur exhibiting to the Emperor Augustus the apparition of the Madonna and Child. Despite this one divergence, the thematic coincidence in

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the other four cases, especially in the rare scene of the Magi's vision, is enough to prove the relationship. Supererogatory evidence is provided by analogies in composition. There is a certain general parallelism in the vision of the Magi, but the Spanish painter, as we shall see, has modified the composition and popularized it in the temper of indigenous naturalism. In the Nativity, he has done little else but invert the arrangement and set the donor beneath St. Joseph instead of opposite him. The Virgin here is almost a copy from the Bladelin altar, even in the great spread of her mantle's puckered Flemish drapery upon the ground. In the St. Joseph, he has sought, however unconvincingly, to ape the peculiar posture of Roger's corresponding figure, transitional from standing to kneeling. By exception, the composition for the Annunciation bears only the remotest, if any, relation to the version of this subject on the outside of the Bladelin triptych by a follower of Roger. Since there is little possibility that the Middelburg picture was ever in the Iberian peninsula, the Lázaro triptych supplies one of many instances which impel the belief that at least certain of the Spanish painters actually studied in the Low Countries. Its definite derivation from a known prototype by Roger van der Weyden is a good text upon which to preach about the dogma of its general indebtedness to the school of Tournai and of the preponderant influence of this phase of Flemish painting upon the whole pictorial production of Spain in the second half of the fifteenth century. Since, when the Spaniards attempted the painting of the exterior of the wings in monochrome, they usually clung more tenaciously to Flemish examples, the obligations to Roger and the Master of Flémalle in the types and draperies of the Annunciation are even more tangible despite the compositional difference from the Bladelin rendering. On the interior, with indigenous exaggeration, the bird-like angels of the school of Tournai are multiplied into flocks and in the Nativity are disposed in strict Spanish symmetry. The folds of their garments are less contorted than in the corresponding figures of Jorge Inglés, but the sense of movement is accentuated through the addition to the Flemish prototypes of intricately flying ribbons. The portrait of the clerical donor is better realized in the vivid Flemish mode than the effigies of the San-

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tillana couple by Jorge Inglés and is almost a masterpiece. The aged and deeply furrowed countenance is depicted with the typical realism of the Low Countries, and now the cheek towards the spectator is heavily shadowed in the orthodox Flemish fashion. I t is a kindlier face even than that of the Marquis of Santillana, and the dead stare of Flemish portraits has yielded to a note of Spanish intensity and nervous alertness that is echoed through the whole painting. The scheme of color, as Bertaux suggests, reflects the cold and harsh tonalities of the Master of Flémalle. St. Joseph wears a red coat lined with orange-yellow; the Virgin's mantle is of the bluish white that the school of Tournai liked to substitute for blue, passing in the shadows into real blue. Yet even here, where the reminiscences of the Master of Flémalle are so vital, Spanish sobriety is already beginning to moderate somewhat his garish chromatic effects. The panels are full of the domestic details over which the Flemish brush fondly lingered until they were defined with the utmost perspicacity. Three different vessels sit upon a shelf in the rear of the stable, beneath them hangs a string of beads, St. Joseph holds a decorated candle and a crutch, and the shepherds possess the paraphernalia of their pastoral life, a musical pipe, a crook, a receptacle for water, and dogs. As, in the works of Jorge Inglés, one is glad, after the oppression of the gold of "international" backgrounds, to catch glimpses of landscapes, suggested by Flemish models, opening and stretching to horizons with broad expanses of sky, so here, in the Avila triptych, one steps out into wide valleys bound by hills, gently cut by roads or rivers winding into distant perspectives, and overspread by really illuminated heavens lightly streaked with bits of cloud. The Spanish overlay is so much more pronounced in the scenes on the interior of the wings than in the other sections that we might at first judge them by another hand, and the similarity of the landscape in the central panel is one of the factors that show all parts to be by a single author. Other factors are the identity of the angels, who even in the central panel have very Iberian faces, and the analogous design in the crumpling of the Virgin's and foremost shepherd's draperies and in the peculiar breaking of the folds in ridges rather than

Fig. 134. THE AVILA MASTER. EXTERIOR OF WINGS OF TRIPTYCH. LÁZARO COLLECTION, MADRID (Photo. Ruiz Vertuteci)

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sharp edges. N o t only are the shepherds, the Magi, and particularly the man who points them to the star or to their way (Herod ?) ethnically Spanish, but the three Kings are burdened with the heavy finery under which Spanish royalty had strutted ever since the days of the Visigothic Leovgild. N o better example could be wanted to demonstrate the Hispanicization of the Flemish importations. B u t the personal influence of an original and genially pleasant mind has further modified the prototypes. The vision of the star and the journey of the Wise Men are conceived in a completely novel and dramatic way, though there was Flemish precedent for depicting other episodes of a story in smaller compass in the background, in this instance earlier encounters of the Wise Men with the celestial sign. T h e painter's gentle temper has made St. Joseph into an affable old person instead of the curmudgeon that he often appears in the art of the time, and he has evidently spent much loving care in transforming the rickety Child of the Low Countries (however ill he has succeeded in drawing the form so that it will seem to lie naturally on the ground) into a baby with at least something of the beauty that fitly clothes divinity. Nowhere does his amiable imagination play more delightfully than in painting the flocks of sheep and goats, with the tiny, winsome lambs and the (symbolical ?) episode of the predatory wolf. Mayer has very justly discerned the same hand in a lone fragment of a larger ensemble, a panel of the Meeting at the Golden Gate hung in the north transept of S. Vicente at Avila (Fig. 135). T h e one thing that is different is the elongation of the forms of Sts. Joachim and Anna, but this is not enough to counterbalance the stylistic identity in all other respects which is evident at a glance. T h e first detail to attract the eye to the unity of authorship is St. Joachim's servant, the shepherd carrying a lamb in the mode of the Moscophorus, who is an absolute replica in type of the three pastoral figures in the left wing of the Lázaro triptych. Guided by this detail one is set on the alert to detect other parallelisms: the rugged character of the countenances, with the bony structure made prominent by the newly discovered chiaroscuro of the Flemings; the resulting equation of St. Joachim and the oldest of the Magi; the stiff spread of St. Joachim's garments in the manner of the

FIG. 135. THE AVILA MASTER. MEETING AT THE GOLDEN GATE. S. VICENTE, AVILA (Photo. Arxiu

Mas)

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Wise Men's costumes; the exact similarity of the architectural settings to those of the Lázaro Annunciation and vision of the Magi; the Flemish genre of a towel suspended in an upper loggia; the close analogy in the landscape, with the sky radiantly lit up and the winding road indicated by the same bold sweep of curve that marks the river in the setting of the proclamation to the shepherds; the use of the background for a subordinate incident, the reception by St. Joachim, surrounded with his flocks, of the message from an angel who is the mate of those in the Lázaro triptych; and the reduction of the Master of Flémalle's brilliancy of color here to a light, brownish tonality. It is Tormo's 1 distinction to have recognized the Avila Master's third extant work, three panels built into a later, fragmentary structure in the elevated, west coro of the parish church at El Barco de Ávila, southwest of the capital. T h e subjects are another edition of the Meeting at the Golden Gate, a rather dilapidated representation of the young Christ among the Doctors (Fig. 136), and a well-nigh ruined Dormition. T h e first of the panels almost repeats the composition in S. Vicente at Avila, adding only an attendant of St. Anne in the gateway at the left and removing part of the surrounding architecture, so that there is visible a broader vista of landscape into which the painter, indulging his Flemish proclivity for minor incidents in smaller scale, introduces at the right St. Joachim approaching with a servant and at the left, as also in the S. Vicente version, the annunciation to him of the Virgin's future birth. T h e St. Anne, in type, posture, and costume, is a virtual replica of the corresponding and heroic figure in S. Vicente, except that the Spanish atmosphere has changed the tunic beneath her red mantle into a fabric of gold brocade. The type of the St. Joachim is somewhat altered, although he displays the same broad magnificence of drapery, but behind him stands, now grown to middle age, the identical shepherd with the lamb slung over his shoulders. In the scene of Christ among the Doctors, the St. Joseph, under a separate arch of the Temple at the right, duplicates the foster-father of Our Lord in the Lázaro Nativity. T h e architectural settings are constructed of the Avila Master's highly individual upright rectangles. The excellence of Flemish 1

Boletín de la Sociedad Española de Excursiones, X X X V I (1928), 142.

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345

craft that sometimes illumines his productions finds an expert and utterly delightful expression in the simulation of carved Gothic foliage as a molding over the ogee arch through which we see the young Saviour teaching in the Temple. He reaches interpretative heights for which his other works had not prepared us in the trenchant characterization and differentiation

Fig. 136. THE AVILA MASTER. CHRIST AMONG THE DOCTORS. PARISH CHURCH, EL BARCO DE ÁVILA

of the heads of Our Lord's disputants; and indeed all traits of the panels indicate that we are here in the presence of his later and more sophisticated achievements. As in St. Anne's brocade, he has so far Hispanicized his Flemish heritage as to cultivate gold backgrounds above the Temple and for the whole setting to the Dormition. Although the Avila Master only occasionally rises above the level of moderate technical gifts, he so compensates by an odd

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fusion of virility in his types with his own gentle and fresh way of looking at things that he has piqued the curiosity of historians of art and led them to seek a name for him. We may categorically reject Mayer's pristine attempt to consider this group of paintings as youthful works of Pedro Diaz of Oviedo, and he himself in the second German edition of his Geschichte and in the Spanish edition is less willing to press the attribution. T h e one preserved documented production of Pedro Diaz, the retable of the high altar in the cathedral of Tudela in Navarre, executed about 1490, though probably influenced by the Avila Master, is so different in specific style that its author could not conceivably have painted the Avila pictures at the opening of his career. There is much more to recommend Tormo's choice of Garcia del Barco, who, though not represented by a documented work, has the circumstantial evidence in his favor. This evidence, 1 in a nutshell, is that he enjoyed popularity in Avila at the time when the pictures in question were painted and that his name shows him to have come from El Barco de Ávila, where three of the pictures have actually been found. In at least two documents he is called a citizen of Avila, but it is common in the records for painters to be entitled according to the different towns of their temporary residence.2 He first appears in 1465, together with Sansone Delli 3 (the brother of Dello), Fray Pedro de Salamanca, and other artists, doing merely decorative painting in the cloister of the cathedral at Avila. In 1467 and 1468 he is paid for a non-extant retable in the chapel of S. Andrés in the cathedral. In Fernando Gallego's contract of 1473 with the cathedral of Coria, García and Fray Pedro are entered as the arbitrators in case of any dispute between the parties concerned (though there is no reason to think that they went to Coria). T h e last mention is in 1476 when at Piedrahita (southwest of Avila) he engaged himself, with a Juan Rodriguez of Béjar, to paint with mudejar designs the wood-work in the corridors and their wings in the castle of the Duke of Alba at El Barco de Ávila. B u t saying that Garcia 1 For the known facts about Garcia del Barco, see Ceán Bermúdez, Diccionario, V I , 59-61, and the article on Fernando Gallego by Gómez-Moreno and Sánchez Cantón, Archivo español de arte y arqueología, III (1927), 350, notes i and 2. 2 Cf. the case of Lorenzo Zaragoza, vol. II, p. 379. 3 See vol. I l l , p. 234.

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could have done the group of paintings is not equivalent to asserting that he did do them, and the author may have been one of the other artists who are recorded to have worked with him in the cathedral of Avila, for instance Fray Pedro de Salamanca who is registered as active in the cathedral in 1464 and 1465. Sansone Delli is a less likely candidate because he may be supposed to have painted in the Italian international style of his brother, 1 although it is always possible that he changed and adopted the Hispano-Flemish manner. As a mere guess, Garcia is the best choice by reason of the existence of some of the pictures at El Barco de Ávila, the probable town of his birth. 1.

THE

SCHOOL OF THE A V I L A

MASTER

Of the works of the Avila Master's following rather than of the painter himself, the most capably executed is a retable in the chapel of Nuestra Señora de Gracia in the cathedral of Avila, and yet the technical level is below that of the founder of the school. In the central panel the Madonna and Child are ensconced on a throne at the sides of which stand St. Joseph and four musical angels. The lateral pieces are occupied by the Annunciation and the Nativity (Fig. 137). The middle part of the predella is hidden but is said to represent further serenading angels; 2 there are now visible only four half-lengths of Prophets encircled with scrolls in which the artist has been kinder than his fellows to us by writing not only an appropriate quotation but its author and the number of the chapter! 3 Isaiah displays a part of the sixth verse of his ninth chapter: "Parvulus natus est nobis." Only a section of the next Prophet's scroll is preserved, but he is identified as Micah by the two extant words, "Bethlehem ex . . . . , " and the number of the chapter, ν (verse 1). David is accompanied by the beginning of a verse of the seventy-first Psalm (King James Version, lxxii, 8): "Dominabitur a mari usque ad mare." Daniel holds a bit of the thirty-first (King James, thirty-fourth) verse of the fourth chapter of his prophecy: "Potestas eius 1 Ibid., p. 323, and below, p. 368. * Mayer, Segovia, Avila und El Eskoríal, 82. 3 He uses the abbreviation C for capitulum.

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potestas eterna (Vulgate, sempiterna)." T h e retable was already in existence by 1496.1 Neither this nor the altarpiece of St. Martial in the cathedral has anything whatsoever to do with Pedro Berruguete, to whom M a y e r 2 relates them. Tormo ascribes the retable of Nuestra Señora de Gracia and the other works of the Avila Master's following in the cathedral to an anonymous disciple of Fernando Gallego; but despite the fact that the Avila Master may be Garcia del Barco, who enjoyed Fernando's friendship, I can discern no vital stylistic connection between the two, except in so far as they and their pupils were indebted to a common source, the school of Tournai. The retable of Nuestra Señora de Gracia has its dependence upon the Avila Master written upon it in many places. T h e masculine personages are his strong, bony-faced types. T h e Daniel and Micah should be compared with the younger of the two Caucasian Magi in the Lázaro triptych, and the St. Joseph of the central panel and of the Nativity is plainly suggested by the Avila Master's conception of him. T h e author took not only the Virgin and the disposition of her drapery in the Nativity but the whole composition from the treatment in the Lázaro triptych or some analogous version by the Avila Master. St. Joseph in both, for instance, carries a lighted candle as well as a crutch. T h e Flemish puckering of the draperies everywhere assumes the same shapes as with the Avila Master. T h e strange but captivating combination of a prie-Dieu and book-case at which the Virgin kneels in the Annunciation is littered with the domestic detail a chaster use of which the Avila Master had learned from the Flemings — a breviary, other volumes peeking out from the shelves beneath, a candlestick, vials for liquids, and one of the Avila Master's favorite strings of beads. The outer wall of her bedchamber is charmingly embellished with a turning bracket for another candle. Nevertheless, the author is not only a less trenchant draughtsman than his teacher, the Avila Master, but his acquaintance with the art of the Low Countries appears to be only at second hand, so that the Flemish reminiscences are less vivid. T h e corollary is that the indigenous aesthetic strain has come more to the surface, His1 2

E. Tormo, Ávila, Boletín 157-158.

Geschichte,

de la Sociedad Española de Excursiones,

XXV (1917), 210.

FIG. 137. SCHOOL OF THE AVILA MASTER. NATIVITY, SECTION OF RETABLE OF NUESTRA SEÑORA DE GRACIA. CATHEDRAL, AVILA (Photo. Arxiu

Mas)

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panicizing and prettifying, for instance, the Madonna, giving her, in the central panel, a tunic of gold brocade, and hanging on the back of her throne an ostentatious gold fabric. The Nativity is set before an agreeable landscape at the front of which a faucet pleasantly spouts water into an overflowing trough, but for a background to the Prophets the Spanish feeling gets the better of him and provokes an expanse of lightly diapered gold. Another work of the same hand is the retable of St. Peter formerly in the chapel of S. Pedro (once a sacristy) in the cathedral and now in the cathedral Museum. The structure is the same, a central panel and two lateral sections. The central panel displays the Apostle seated on a throne of the same general character as that of Nuestra Señora de Gracia and flanked by two clerics, one holding a sacred book of gold-illumined cover and the other an altar-crucifix. Above them, two miniature Flemish angels flutter in the air. It is possible that the flanking personages are meant as portraits of donors instead of the generic figures of ecclesiastics that customarily accompany an enthroned bishop in the central panels of mediaeval Spanish retables, but there is little likelihood that critics 1 have been right in recognizing in one of them the dean of the cathedral, Ñuño González del Águila, who is buried in the chapel of S. Pedro but who died in 1467 some twenty years before the altarpiece was painted. The lateral section at the left enshrines the scene of Our Lord's commission to St. Peter to feed His sheep while the other Apostles stand by in a boat on the Sea of Tiberias (Fig. 138). The episode at the right is the decollation of St. Paul in St. Peter's presence. Two smaller pieces, depicting the Annunciation and the Epiphany, were placed over the three principal panels as the retable was set up in the chapel of S. Pedro, but, like the Prophets of the Nuestra Señora de Gracia altar, they may have been originally part of a predella. Although indubitably belonging to the St. Peter retable and in the same style as the principal panels, the Annunciation and Epiphany are marked by a somewhat freer and sketchier draughtsmanship that may indicate the craft of a member of the atelier other than the author of the larger sections. 1

Mayer, Segovia, Avila und El Eskorial, 80.

FIG. 138. SCHOOL OF THE AVILA MASTER. CHRIST AND ST. PETER BY THE SEA OF TIBERIAS, SECTION OF RETABLE. CATHEDRAL, AVILA (Photo. Arxiu

Mas)

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The identity of this atelier with that of the altar of the Madonna is not one of those phenomena that strike the student in the face, but it dawns on him gradually with prolonged study and eventually emerges as a certainty. The St. Joseph of the Epiphany and the cleric at the left in the central panel are soon seen to belong to exactly the same class of old men as the St. Joseph beside the enthroned Virgin and in the Nativity in the retable of Nuestra Señora de Gracia. The countenance of Christ instructing St. Peter inscribes the same oval and possesses the same lines of the features as that of His mother in the Nativity. The Child of the Epiphany is the twin of the Infant held by the enthroned Virgin and adored by her in the Nativity. Although the compositions of the two Annunciations are inventively differentiated, the angels, however varied in pose, are imbued with a similar feeling for elegant sweep of line in body and in grandly crumpled Flemish draperies. St. Gabriel's countenance in the St. Peter retable finds a rather close analogy in the highest angel at the left of the throne of Nuestra Señora de Gracia. Even the identical ox of the Nativity puts in his appearance in the Epiphany of the St. Peter retable. The backs of both thrones are embellished with fabrics, and in each retable the brocades are of gold. From these broader resemblances one is led deeper to such Morellian traits as the thin hands with awkwardly curved fingers and the rather florid epigraphy. A trick of the painter, showing itself in the Nativity of the Gracia retable and in all sections of the St. Peter retable except the central panel, is the peculiar treatment of the distant buildings of the landscape in a rather impressionistic way as if they were somewhat elongated by a distorting mirror, probably his mode of realizing aërial perspective. But looking further into the landscapes we descry the clinching proof of unity of authorship, what amounts almost to a Romanesque stylization of the rocks into clumps of stubby shafts with the high light upon them rendered by a vertical splash of the brush. I t takes a bit of searching to find them in the retable of Nuestra Señora de Gracia, but finally we discover them in the small patches of landscape behind St. Gabriel in the Annunciation and St. Joseph in the central panel. Another distinctive and altogether lovely quality of the painter is his passion for

Fro. 139. SCHOOL OF THE AVILA MASTER. DEPARTURE OF THE ANGEL FROM ST. PETER, SECTION OF RELIQUARY. CATHEDRAL, AVILA (Photo, /irxiu

Mas)

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plants, which he introduces profusely and delineates with an almost Leonardesque union of aesthetic skill and botanical accuracy, as in the foregrounds of the two episodes from St. Peter's life and in the ivy on the wall behind St. Joseph in the N a t i v i t y of the Gracia altar. In the Annunciation of the St. Peter altar it is odd to see him still employing the old Romanesque convention of scallops for clouds round God the Father. T w o further works in the cathedral of Avila, another set of panels from the life of St. Peter and the retable of St. Martial, may be assigned to a second follower of the Avila Master, somewhat inferior to the painter whom we have just been analyzing. T h e St. Peter panels reveal the dependence upon the A v i l a Master a little more clearly than does the St. Martial retable. T h e y are built into the reliquary in the vestibule of the sacristy, in the attic the enthroned Apostle (whom I cannot agree with Mayer 1 in assigning to a different hand) and beneath on the doors four pieces all of which curiously incorporate various stages of the single event of St. Peter's delivery from prison, his awakening in gaol by the angel, the exit from the gaol, the progress through Jerusalem, and the departure of the angel at its gate (Fig. 139). In two instances inscribed scrolls echo the apposite texts from the book of the Acts. St. Peter's sumptuous throne is depicted as if ornamented, in the Flemish mode, with statuettes. T h e Avila Master's heavy-faced, bony-cheeked types reappear in the various representations of the Apostle; his long, ponderous, bejewelled garments (as of the Magi in the Lázaro triptych) encumber St. Peter's body; and the crowded masses of high-rising, disjointed, battlemented architecture are immediately derived from his precedent. But the author is not the equal even of the Master's pupil who did the other retable of St. Peter and that of Nuestra Señora de Gracia. Partly because he is almost a rustic craftsman, he draws the countenances so defectively that he gives them a sour expression. Y e t the very fact that he is unhampered by the disciplinary principles of a great artist allows him to give free play to his unsophisticated imagination and to characterize with varied sprightliness the postures of the angelic guide in the several episodes, particularly as with back towards us and arms and face uplifted in 1

Segovia, Avila und El Eskorial, So.

Fig. 140. SCHOOL OF THE AVILA MASTER. ST. MARTIAL, CENTRAL SECTION OF RETABLE OF ST. MARTIAL. CATHEDRAL, AVILA (Photo. Arxiu

Mas)

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ecstatic flight he jauntily quits St. Peter in the last panel. Into the background of the scene of the journey through the city is introduced the naturalistic episode of masons at work upon a tower. The second monument in the cathedral by this weak but intriguing painter, the retable of St. Martial, is built up on the same scheme as the altarpieces by the Avila Master's other pupil — a standing effigy of the holy bishop of Limoges in the centre (Fig. 140), two scenes from his life at the sides, and a predella of three episodes of the Passion, the Via Dolorosa, the Crucifixion, and the Entombment. In view of the sensational picturesqueness of St. Martial's legend, it is queer that such commonplace episodes should have been chosen for representation as the appearance of Christ prophesying to him his death and the saint's announcement of his approaching departure to his flock (Fig. 141). T h e inscription issuing from Our Lord's mouth in the former scene contains (partly hidden by the scroll's twists) the sentence attributed to Him on this occasion: 1 " P a x tibi, fidelis(s)ime fra ter: quoniam obedisti voci me(a)e, eris iugiter mecum in claritate quae nullo fine clauditur." A second predella by a somewhat later artist, who belongs almost to the full Renaissance, has been added to the structure, consisting of figures of Sts. Lawrence, Christopher, and Martin. T h e strange, ornate throne in front of which St. Martial stands in the central panel is set against a niche of Renaissance architecture, but the style of the retable nevertheless is fundamentally Hispano-Flemish and antedates the added predella. The throne is represented as embellished with statuettes of saints and other figurines, among them two nudes, one of which is Samson rending asunder the lion.2 Mayer again wrongly thinks of Pedro Berruguete. T h e evidence crowds upon us that we have before us another work of the painter responsible for the panels in the reliquary. T h e same doleful faces are seen once more even in personages who are not meant to be sorrow-stricken. T h e foremost mounted trumpeter on the road to Calvary, the two men just at the right of the cross in the Crucifixion, and St. Joseph of Arimathaea in 1 2

See the account of St. Martial under June 30 in Surius, De probatis sanctorum mlis. N o t Hercules strangling the beast.

Fio. 141. SCHOOL OF THE AVILA MASTER. ST. MARTIAL FORETELLING HIS DEATH, SECTION OF RETABLE OF ST. MARTIAL. CATHEDRAL, AVILA (Photo. Arxiu

Mas)

SCHOOL OF AVILA 358 the Entombment again are clad in the heavy, spreading costumes of the Lázaro Magi. The scenes from St. Martial's life take place before the painter's characteristic architecture. But there is even more definite proof. In the panels of St. Peter the walls of the prison and of Jerusalem are partly built of the peculiarly mottled stone so frequently encountered in the actual edifices of Avila, and the painter has imitated this aspect of Avila also in the scene of St. Martial's farewell to his congregation. The thrones of St. Peter and of St. Martial are alike enriched with sculpture. There are many gold brocades and orphreys in the St. Martial retable, but in the central panel, for the throne, vestments, and crosier he lets himself go in a prodigal outburst of monumental splendor that in its infinitely weaker rendering reminds us of the more virile magnificence of Bermejo's Sto. Domingo de Silos. His rather piquant imagination once more crops forth — in a very original composition for the Entombment, in the dog that lurks in the sepulchral garden of St. Joseph of Arimathaea, and somewhat too sportively in the gay costumes and neighing horse of the cavalcade who accompany Our Lord along the Via Dolorosa. The author of the retable of St. Martial may very well have painted the ten panels built into the baroque structure over the high altar of the parish church at Bonilla de la Sierra, west of Avila, but, if he did, he executed them at a moment in his career when he was uniting to his legacy from the Avila Master a vital influence of Fernando Gallego. Such an affiliation was indeed natural in a church that probably harbored already in its chapel of the Chaves family Fernando's Mass of St. Gregory now in the Schlayer Collection, Madrid. Four of the panels are set so high or are so dilapidated that their themes are indistinguishable even in a good light, but at least five of the others, by reason of the church's dedication, relate incidents from the life of St. Martin. In the encounter with the beggar, he is depicted, by exception, as having dismounted from his horse to divide his mantle with the mendicant. He then is consecrated as bishop of Tours, heals a sick man (the Parisian leper ?), distributes alms to the poor, and performs one of his several miracles of resurrection (probably upon the lad to whose mother's prayers he had listened). The sixth panel apparently

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represents the story of St. Martin's other, less familiarly known gift of a coat to a poor man just before he celebrated the mass in which he received the sleeves of gold, for in the right half of the compartment he seems to be bestowing the coat upon the pauper and in the left half receiving from his archdeacon the miserable garment that was to take its place. Among the elements that argue for the hand of the painter of the St. Martial retable are the types in St. Martin's episcopal coronation, the figure of the saint in the scene of resuscitation, and the character of the elaborate architectural setting in the example of his charity before mass. Whether or not there is an identity of authorship, the artist of the Bonilla panels reveals a decided predilection for studying the perspective of street scenes in his backgrounds, for instance in the cities at the gates of which St. Martin divides his coat with the beggar and raises the youth from the dead. The compartments in which his interest in the achievements of Fernando Gallego most obviously manifests itself are those in which are depicted the experiences with the two mendicants. If the six celebrated panels from the life of the Virgin, Nos. 1254-1259 of the Prado, are rightly reported to have come from the (no longer extant) Hieronymite monastery of Sta. María de la Sisla, just south of Toledo, the popularity of the Avila Master's style enjoyed a wider radius than Avila and its province, for they are obviously, at least in part, the creation of a very close follower of his, not identical with either of those pupils whose works in the cathedral of Avila we have studied. The evidence for the provenience is not of the best, for it consists only in the statement of the scholar and director of the Prado in the middle of the nineteenth century, Gregorio Cruzada Villaamil, that the Visitation in the series had belonged to L a Sisla, and in the consequent deduction that the rest of the series must have once been in the same monastery. Cruzada Villaamil based his statement probably on nothing but a slightly earlier list of the Prado's possessions; but there must have been in the beginning some documentary or oral source for the provenience, and it would only create confusion to abandon the traditional designation of the panels. They involve a rather complex problem of connoisseurship. The two that reveal most

360

SCHOOL OF AVILA

clearly the influence of the Avila Master, the Circumcision and the Purification (Fig. 142), are indubitably by a single artist, whom it has become the custom to call the Master of La Sisla. Another pair, the Annunciation and the Death of the Virgin, are also admittedly the work of a single painter, from whom, with much reason, the Master of La Sisla has been generally considered a different personality. The two panels that are therefore the crux are the Visitation and the Epiphany (Fig. I43), and the puzzle is further complicated by the fact that, although the Annunciation, Death, and Epiphany are all more or less freely based upon prints of Schongauer, the Epiphany differs from the two others in resembling more decidedly in style the Master of La Sisla. The Visitation, moreover, partakes of the qualities exhibited both by the Circumcision and Purification on one hand and the Annunciation and Dormition on the other. It has been usual to parcel off the three panels under Schongauer's influence as by a follower of the Master of La Sisla, and the other three as by the Master himself, but the problem is not so simple as that. If we accept the Visitation as the Master's work (and this I am almost willing to do), we must be all the readier to assign to him the Epiphany. The chief obstacles in attributing the Visitation to the Master are the somewhat more facile drawing and the less sharply edged folds of the draperies; but the panel is united to the Circumcision and Purification, as we shall see, by a very pronounced dependence upon the Avila Master, the type of the Virgin is only a somewhat better rendered version of the countenance that she wears in these other two panels, and there emerge in the Sts. Zacharias and Joseph the same fondness for silky, waved beards and success in rendering them as throughout the whole series. The Epiphany has usually been adjudged to the follower rather than the Master because it is connected with the Annunciation and Dormition through the joint derivation from Schongauer; but there is no reason why the Master as well as the assistant should not have used the German compositions, and the possibility that the Epiphany is by a different hand from the Annunciation and Dormition is strengthened by the consideration that it is much more freely adapted from Schongauer, especially in the direction of simplification. It certainly

FIG. I42.

MASTER OF LA SISLA. THE PURIFICATION. PRADO, MADRID (Photo. Ruiz

Vernacci)

3Ó2

SCHOOL OF A V I L A

varies fundamentally in style from the Annunciation and Dormition, and approximates more closely the manner of the Circumcision and Purification even than does the Visitation. T h e Virgin and particularly the St. Joseph reproduce the corresponding figures in these other two scenes; the rather individual Child absolutely equals the Infant of the Circumcision; and the folds of the drapery are similarly sharp-cut. T h e general tonality of color in the Circumcision, Purification, Epiphany, and Visitation is also much the same. T h e first three, then, it seems to me, and somewhat less surely the Visitation should be assigned to a single painter, the Master of L a Sisla. T h e term " m a s t e r " and " p u p i l " are, of course, here only a modus operandi, for the author of the Annunciation and Dormition (and perhaps the Visitation), who is certainly a better artist, may just as well have been the leading spirit in the atelier; but it is less perplexing to retain the established phraseology and to apply the title of Master of L a Sisla to the creator of the other paintings. T h e pictorial mode in the Annunciation and Dormition is rather diverse from that of the Master of La Sisla. T h e types are more Teutonic, although curiously enough, despite the almost slavish indebtedness to Schongauer's compositions, they are not exactly those of the German engraver. T h e tonality of color is less Hispanicized than in the other four panels. Nevertheless, as in the similar problem of the retable of the Reyes Católicos from Valladolid, 1 the idea, however improbable, is not wholly to be scouted that all six panels could have been painted by a single hand. T h e differences of the Annunciation and Dormition from the other four panels are, after all, minor matters, and there is not only a broad, general analogy of style but also such resemblances in detail as the soft and curly treatment of hair and beards. T h e St. John of the Dormition, whose face is not imitated from Schongauer, shares with many of the personages in the other panels a very tangible parallelism to the types of the Avila Master with their emphasized cheek-bones. T h e variations, as in the broader draperies and rounder folds, could perhaps be explained away by the possibility that the 1

See below, pp. 422-423.

Fig. 143.

MASTER OF LA SISLA OR HIS ATELIER. PRADO, MADRID (Photo.

Anderson)

EPIPHANY.

36 4

SCHOOL OF AVILA

artist, in the Annunciation and Dormition, was betrayed into a servile enthusiasm for Schongauer. The resemblances of the Circumcision, Purification, and, in a somewhat less degree, of the Visitation and Epiphany to the production of the Avila Master are such that one could be pardoned for holding that the Master of La Sisla is the same personality in a later phase of his career; but it is safer merely to claim that he is a faithful pupil. The Virgin, St. Joseph, and even the Child of the Circumcision, Purification, and Epiphany are virtual repetitions of the figures in the Lázaro triptych, somewhat further freed from the cramped restrictions of the primitive. Our Lady in the Visitation belongs to the same family, and the Sts. Zacharias and Joseph of this panel, as well as the priest in both the Circumcision and Purification, are further developments from the hardy cast of countenance characterizing the St. Joachim of the Meeting at the Golden Gate in S. Vicente, Avila. The houses at the right in the Visitation are inherited from the Avila Master's clumps of vertical pieces of building, and across the cornice of the chamber of the Annunciation there runs a tier of the battlements with slit-like orifices to which he is so addicted. A comparison with Schongauer's models brings into relief many indigenous traits. Some of the types are decidedly Hispanicized, for instance the second Magus and, in the Dormition, certain of the Apostles at the left. This Magus, indeed, and the priest in the Circumcision suggest that the Master of La Sisla had admired the achievements of Fernando Gallego. Here and there, as in the two outermost youths among the spectators at the left in the Circumcision and in the dapper lad who stands for the third Magus, the facial asperities of German or Flemish prototypes have been so far moderated that one might almost hazard the supposition of familiarity with the art of the Italian Quattrocento; but the countenances of the Virgin and St. John in the Dormition are more drawn and forbidding than in the original German print. In the same contradictory way, the genre of a knitting basket, a book, and windows of stained glass are introduced into the Annunciation, whereas, in the Epiphany, Schongauer's dog and some other objects are expunged. The Spanish environment is still further crystallized in the constant

SCHOOL OF

AVILA

365

substitution of brocades for the plainer German costumes, in the simulation of an Arabic inscription on the edge of the rug upon which the Virgin Annunciate kneels, and in the Musulman costumes and perhaps types employed for the Sts. Zacharias and Joseph of the Visitation. T h e vital north-European influences cannot suppress the national passion for spotting pictures with decorative passages of gold even in the more Teutonic of the panels. T h e cope of Gabriel in the Annunciation, for instance, is thus accented, the edge of the priest's cope in the Circumcision, the Virgin's tunic in the E p i p h a n y , and the vessels of the Wise M e n ' s gifts. On the youngest Wise M a n the two Spanish methods appear in curious juxtaposition, actual gold being used in his coat and the substitute of yellow pigment in his skirt. T h e only place where gold usurps the sky is, strangely enough, in the narrow strip at the top of one of the panels where the dependence upon Schongauer is most absolute, the A n n u n ciation. I t is perhaps far-fetched to interpret as another first inkling of the Italianization of Spanish art the presence of tiny spectators on a kind of overhanging loggia at the back of the Purification, a feature that vaguely suggests the subsidiary figures in architectural settings in the pictorial production of Ferrara and the Marches during the Renaissance. In any case, the technical maturity of the series of L a Sisla scarcely permits a date before c. 1500. 3.

OTHER

HISPANO-FLEMISH OF

WORKS

IN THE

PROVINCE

AVILA

I cannot decide to m y own satisfaction whether any of the parts of the apparently conglomerate retable over the high altar of the church of S. Segundo at A v i l a should be regarded as offshoots of the A v i l a M a s t e r ' s school, nor can I absolutely persuade myself that the retable, if we leave out of account t h e sculpture, is conglomerate and not the production of a single artist or at least workshop, active about 1500. A l l panels e x c e p t the predella are built into a baroque frame. In the upper r o w are depicted a canonized bishop, St. Michael, the m o u n t e d Santiago overcoming the Moors, and (?) St. Benedict; in the second row, two other episcopal saints. T h e predella enshrines

3 66

SCHOOL OF AVILA

half-lengths of further saints, arranged in pairs. It may be credibly maintained that the Santiago and, in the second row, the two episcopal saints were executed by a separate and inferior painter, who betrays a weaker draughtsmanship than appears in the rest of the retable, who uses square panelling in the gold of his backgrounds, and who exercises a style that may be a late and emasculated aspect of the Hispano-Flemish manner or a feeble imitation of the primitive stages of the Spanish Renaissance. It is possible that all the rest, which exhibits somewhat higher artistic talent, is the work of a single painter, but the theory of a divided authorship is likewise tenable. The predella and the canonized bishop at the left of the topmost row seem certainly the production of one hand. The style is more definitely related to Pedro Berruguete's and Juan de Borgoña's Italianism, and all the figures are distinguished by a rather pronounced chiaroscuro. The St. Benedict of the upper row appears to embody a greater indebtedness to the Renaissance and is different in general tonality of color, but once more the possibility is not to be excluded that he is a creation of the painter of the predella. There remains the St. Michael, and he is the only figure who reveals any very tangible reminiscences of Flemish art, as in his coiffure and the red drapery over his shoulders; but even here the claim of Flemish influence cannot be predicated categorically. Is the St. Michael the product of still another hand? At least, the gold background is embossed with better and more ostentatious craft than in any of the other panels. Gold, however, is prodigally used throughout the retable. Tormo, following Gómez-Moreno, would like to relate the retable of S. Segundo and the large panel of St. Anne in the cathedral Museum (formerly in the chapel of S. Vidal) to each other and to connect them with Sansone Delli, of whom no documented works are preserved. It is hard to discover any possible ground for such an identification. In the first place, the only vestige of a possible relationship between the panel of St. Anne and the S. Segundo retable is found in the St. Michael, and the affiliation is far from a surety. In the second place, both monuments are thoroughly Spanish, and exhibit no trace of Italian internationalism, the style in which it is most likely

Fig. 144.

SCHOOL OF A V I L A .

ST. A N N E , VIRGIN, A N D CHILD.

CATHEDRAL, AVILA (Photo. Arxiu Masi

368

SCHOOL OF A V I L A

that Sansone worked. He might conceivably have abandoned the lessons of his youth and of his brother and adopted the Hispano-Flemish manner; but in that case there would be no more reason for assigning these pictures to him than to any other of the several painters mentioned in the documents as active at Avila in the second half of the fifteenth century. In the panel of the cathedral (Fig. 144), St. Anne, holding the Virgin and Child and worshipped by a diminutive donor, is seated on a bench against a landscape in the midst of which, on either side, stand St. Catherine, crushing Maximin beneath her, and St. Christopher, crossing a fishy stream while his mentor, the hermit, lights him on his way. A section of the predella has been erased, but there still may be seen, together with an heraldic escutcheon, the Annunciation of St. Joachim and the Meeting at the Golden Gate, not separated by a partition. The execution is in grey monochrome, itself a Flemish practice, but Spanish hankerings have been too strong to resist and have added golden haloes, golden bands for the Flemish jewels of the borders of the mantles, and even a golden sky. The types are relaxed imitations of those of the Tournai school or of Dierick Bouts, and the draperies are schematized into the characteristic mussed folds of the Low Countries. The St. Christopher seems quite definitely derived from some such Flemish model as the representation by a follower of Bouts in the Johnson Collection, Philadelphia, but it is possible that the painter remembered also Fernando Gallego's version in the Salamanca triptych. There are parallelisms likewise to the German St. Christopher in the Peringsdörffer retable of 1487 in the Museum at Nuremberg, and Schongauer's print is another conceivable source. Any one of these relationships would bring the panel down to a tardy moment in the fifteenth century, a date with which the general style does not disaccord. No grounds exist for supposing that Sansone Delli ever professed this late Hispano-Flemish manner. On the other hand, just this phase of the Hispano-Flemish manner does not occur in the Avila Master or his following, even though in the predella the same scenes are treated as in the Master's own works and despite the presence of the lamb-bearing shepherd at the Golden Gate. So far, therefore, as our present knowledge goes, the panel of St. Anne must be tabulated as an isolated phe-

SCHOOL OF A V I L A

369

nomenon in the school of Avila. The author is a painter of something more than moderate talent. One hesitates either to negative or affirm Tormo's proposal 1 to connect with the authors of the retable in S. Segundo, Avila, an altarpiece of St. Anne (containing in the centre a large Anna selbdritt) at the left of the nave in the parroquia of Piedrahita, southwest of the capital. In any case, the execution so verges upon crass provincialism as not to be worth the bother of laboring the question. Some degree of boorishness mars also a triptych in a nondescript Hispano-Flemish style of c. 1500 that embellishes the baptismal chapel in the church of El Barco de Ávila. The whole central division displays the Baptism of Christ; the Mass of St. Gregory is depicted in the upper compartment of the right wing, and in the lower the donor, labelled Juan Rodriguez, adoring a picture of the Madonna; the two themes of the left wing are the Transfiguration and St. Ildefonso's reception of the chasuble. Could the donor possibly be the painter, Juan Rodriguez de Béjar, who in 1476 arranged to collaborate with Garcia del Barco in the decoration of the castle at El Barco de Ávila, 2 and, if so, did he himself execute the retable? A similar hypothetical case of identity between artist and donor is furnished by Juan de Ayllón at Palencia. Conceivably, though far from certainly, the rustic author of the retable was responsible for an Assumption over an altar in the sacristy, which, however, despite the Flemish character of the angels, betrays some signs of belonging rather to the early Spanish Renaissance. In the same Sala de Comisiones in the Casa de la Diputación, Avila, that contains the large Flemish triptych from the convent of Sta. Teresa, there hangs a half-length of the Man of Sorrows (Fig. 145), a kind of enlarged veronica, that I can classify no more exactly than as a creditable Hispano-Flemish work which exhibits some analogies to the style of Fernando Gallego but which might have been produced by a local master of the city. 1 Boletín de la Sociedad Española de Excursiones, X X V (1917), 220. He speaks of the upper sections of the retable in S. Segundo as related to the Piedrahita altarpiece, but there were probably at least two painters active upon these sections. I take it that he refers to the altarpiece of St. Anne at Piedrahita and not to some miserable panels of the school of Pedro Berruguete (representing the Coronation of the Virgin, the penitent St. Jerome, etc.) built into a later retable on the same side of the nave. 2 See above, p. 346.

CHAPTER LTI HISPANO-FLEMISH PAINTINGS WITH

CONNECTED

TOLEDO

Ι. THE LUNA MASTER

DESPITE the publication of many documents of the cathedral of Toledo by the Centro de Estudios Históricos at Madrid, the research of Ramírez de Arellano in the Toledan archives, and the recent divulgation of the contract for the Luna retable, it is impossible as yet to assign any Hispano-Flemish painting in the city to a known artist with final certitude. When one does light upon an authenticated work of a Toledan artist, Francisco Chacón, it is not at Toledo but at Granada. Study is further complicated by the fact that the majority of Hispano-Flemish retables at Toledo are a result of collaboration and contain sections of the early Renaissance. Our information is not yet sufficient to predicate the existence, or follow the evolution, of a local school. The best known Hispano-Flemish retable of Toledo is that in the chapel of Santiago added to the cathedral by the great Constable of John II's reign, Alvaro de Luna. The contract for the retable has finally come to light and been published by Gonzalez Palencia, 1 but, although it names the artists, it unfortunately does not specify with absolute definiteness which of them was responsible for the painted sections of the structure. Until the publication of the contract the only first-hand evidence for the date and authorship of the retable was a statement made by Juan Loperráez Corvalán in his Descripción Histórica del Obispado de Osma of 1788 2 to the effect that he had seen (though he merely summarizes and does not quote it) a document recording that at Manzanares on December 21, 1448 (sic\), Álvaro's daughter, María de Luna (who, with his wife, deceased in 1488, had persevered in the enterprise of the baronial ' In Archivo español de arte y arqueología, V (1929), ι ι 8 - ΐ 2 ΐ . 2 Vol. I, p. 339, η. 3 (published at Madrid).

TOLEDO

371

chapel after his tragic death upon the scaffold in 1453), made a contract for the retable with the artists Pedro Gumiel, Sancho de Zamora, and Juan de Segovia. Ceán Bermúdez merely repeated the information from Loperráez, apparently without consulting the document, and all subsequent writers who have mentioned the retable, with the exception of scholarly old Cruzada Villaamil, have gone no further in their investigation than to reiterate the sentences of Ceán Bermúdez, changing the impossible date of 1448 that Loperráez and he gave for the altarpiece. The majority of critics interpreted the year as 1498, but Cruzada Villaamil and Bertaux, followed by Lambert, preferred 1488, which was more likely since Loperráez gives January 7, 1489, as the date of a second document seen by him (but not copied by González Palencia) in which María de Luna at Manzanares arranged with Pablo Ortiz for her parents' tombs in the chapel. The recent publication of the contract for the retable confirms the conjecture of December 21, 1488, but in other respects accords with the summary of Loperráez. The contract (in the Archivo Histórico Nacional at Madrid) tantalizes us for the moment with the hope that we can name another personality or other personalities in the evolution of Spanish painting; but the expectation is only a will-o'-the-wisp, since, if Gumiel was the architect, it is not possible to determine whether Sancho de Zamora or Juan de Segovia or both were the painters. We are safe in excluding from the painting Gumiel, who, well known from other sources as an architect, appears in them only in this guise and as a master of works in the cathedral of Toledo. He may have been included in the stipulations as designer of the architecture of the retable or merely as a general inspector of objects of art set up in the church. Of the others one may well have been the author of the sculpture and the second of the painting, but since neither is mentioned elsewhere in Spanish records, no real evidence exists to aid in the decision whether Sancho or Juan is the artist who interests us or whether both may have collaborated in the painting. Loperráez in his index calls them both sculptors, but since he assigns Gumiel to the same profession, his appellations cannot be taken very seriously, and having probably never seen the retable, he perhaps merely guessed that it was all of sculpture, possessing no further

372

TOLEDO

evidence that Sancho and Juan were sculptors. Ceán Bermúdez once more is only the parrot of Loperráez. The probabilities are that Sancho de Zamora was the principal painter, since it is he who makes the contract in the name of the others; but although the only piece of sculpture is the statue of Santiago at the centre and the rest is painting, the statue may have been considered the feature of the retable and thus have been Sancho's production, so that he would have been the sculptor and Juan the painter. The carving of the Gothic pure design on the frames may have been deemed important enough to require the introduction of its author into the document. I t is even conceivable that both artists were painters (the name of the sculptor not being given), Sancho the master and Juan the assistant. They are put down in the contract as citizens of Guadalajara, which, as the residence of Maria de Luna's husband, the second Duke del Infantado, would have been the place where she became acquainted with them. The centre of the retable is occupied by the statue of Santiago, flanked by four painted panels containing standing effigies of Sts. Andrew, John Baptist, John Evangelist, and (?) Bartholomew. The rest also consists of paintings: above the statue, the Madonna enthroned in the midst of six singing angels and at either side of her panels of the standing Sts. Agatha, Catherine, Mary Magdalene, and Agnes; and in the lowest tier, St. Thomas à Becket (kneeling), St. Francis receiving the stigmata and presenting Alvaro de Luna (Fig. ι φ ) , the Deposition (ruthlessly repainted), St. Anthony of Padua presenting Á1varo's wife, Juana Pimentel (Fig. 146), and St. Bonaventura (also kneeling). The three Franciscan saints owe their presence to the Luna family's devotion to the Order of Friars Minor, whereas St. Thomas à Becket is introduced because Alvaro de Luna had to destroy an older shrine dedicated to him in order to construct the chapel of Santiago, 1 of whose great Military Order the Constable was the grand master. The contract specifies all these sections, except that it names only the two panels with the donors and the three central subjects, the Santiago, the Madonna and angels, and the Deposition, leaving the choice 1 See vol. I, p. 1 5 1 , n. I; Palazuelos, Toledo, 239-240; and the original contract for the construction of the chapel published by González Palencia, op. cit., 110.

TOLEDO

373

of the others to María de Luna. The frames for the panels, as so often in mediaeval contracts, consume more attention in the document than the paintings and sculpture, and they are also preserved largely intact. The description of the two portraits is very detailed and, save for the omission of a few minutiae, is

FIG. 145.

SCHOOL OF AVILA (?).

MAN OF SORROWS.

CASA DE LA DIPUTACIÓN, AVILA (Photo.

Arxiu

Mas)

closely followed by the artist: "the Master of Santiago, kneeling at his desk of cushions and brocades, with his book, his robe of Master, his cross and badge (of the Order) on his breast, with a red clamellona (cap ?) 1 on his head, with his robe thrown over his shoulders so as to reveal a trailing gown lined in sable mar1 If the word is connected with the French clame, but it can scarcely have that sense here.

it ought to mean a pilgrim's cloak,

374

TOLEDO

ten, with his brocaded sleeves showing forth from beneath the gown, with golden brassarts at the elbows, with his sword and golden spurs, and, behind, St. Francis holding him and presenting him to Our Lord against a background of brocade; and the Countess of Montalbán (Juana Pimentel) with her decorous headdress, as her ladyship had the custom of wearing, and with a velvet nun's habit and her mantle drawn aside so as to reveal much of the nun's habit, kneeling at a rich desk of brocade on her brocaded pillows and her rug, praying from her book, with her beads on her belt, set against a rich background of brocade, and St. Anthony presenting her to Our Lord." T h e style embodies an adaptation of the compositions and types of the school of Tournai and of Dierick Bouts to rather heavy and stubby forms, and the Hispanicization has proceeded less far than in the majority of pictures done at the very end of the century. The starting-point for the stockier physiques may have been the example of the Master of Flémalle, and yet the nearest analogue for the composition of the Deposition is perhaps Roger van der Weyden's version in the Gallery of T h e Hague. T h e parallel indicated by Diego Angulo, the centre of the triptych by the Master of the St. Lucy Legend, No. 141 of Friedländer's list, does not seem to me quite so close, despite the fact that St. Joseph of Arimathaea, holding Our Lord's body, wears a similar brilliant brocade. T h e relationship would be chronologically possible, since the triptych by the St. L u c y Master is dated by the stage reached in the building of the Belfry of Bruges in the background before the very end of the eighties. 1 For the Luna Master's replica, in the Prado, of the panel of the Madonna and angels, Diego Angulo has pointed out the prototype of Dierick Bouts's rendering in Isabella's collection at Granada. It is not necessary to recapitulate the constantly recurring elements in the Spanish imitations of Flemish art, such as the windows opening upon bits of landscape or the scrupulous care with which the ornaments of the saints' vestments are executed. The Hispanicization consists not only in the almost inevitable note of provincialism — here somewhat more pronounced than with the very best Spanish masters ·—• and in the partial stolidity of the personages, but also in the 1

Friedländer, Die altniederländische Malerei, V I , 70.

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increase of startling brocades. Real gold is woven into their texture when, as frequently, they are spread behind the figures according to the frank Spanish decorative convention, but in the actual garments the gold is rendered by the common Castillan subterfuge of yellow paint. Diego Angulo has perceived that two panels in the Prado, Nos. 1289 and 2425 (Figs. 147 and 148), are nearly identical in composition and other respects with the Virgin and angels and the Deposition of the Luna retable, but, as in the case of the Burgos Master, I am willing to go beyond his prudence and definitely to give them to the Luna Master. Cruzada Villaamil had long ago recognized the resemblance of the Madonna panel in the Prado. 1 The compositional variations from the Toledo examples are insignificant, consisting chiefly of the reduction of the number of angels doing homage to the Virgin and in the removal of one of the actors in the Deposition. The unity of authorship with the retable is incorporated in the equality of the bodily proportions and of the faces, especially in the mode of shading the eyes and in the rendering of tears by little drops of pigment, but at Toledo the master was perhaps stimulated by the importance of the commission to higher technical effort at least in the panel of the Madonna. The same kind of window as appears in the retable looks out upon a landscape at the left of the Virgin, and Angulo himself has indicated the similarity of the pattern in the fabric hung on her throne to the tapestry behind the portraits of Alvaro de Luna and his lady. The pages of this volume reveal that in friendly chats with me Don Diego Angulo has in more than one instance let drop precious hints supplementing what he has consigned to his published articles, and I am thus fortunate to be able to include two further works that he has observed must be brought into connection with the Luna Master. One of these, unmistakably by the Master himself, decorates no less celebrated a spot than the archhead of the great tomb of Martin de Arce in the cathedral of Sigiienza. It consists of two panels set about a wooden cross which may very well have once held, as in the altarpiece of Espinosa de los Monteros, a sculptured corpus of Our Lord. The principal theme of each panel is one of the episodes of the 1

El arte en España, VI (1867), 78.

FIG. 147. THE LUNA MASTER.

MADONNA AND ANGELS.

(Photo. Ruiz Vernacci)

PRADO, MADRID

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Passion leading to the Crucifixion, that at the right Christ before Caiaphas and that at the left a version of the Espolio in which He sits nude upon the ground while the holes are bored in the cross. The exchange of words between the Saviour and the officer who strikes Him in the presence of Caiaphas is materialized in Latin inscriptions from the eighteenth chapter of St. John's Gospel written on the face of the panel: "Answerest thou the high priest so?" and " I f I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil: but if well, why smitest thou me?" But the panels contain also figures whose activity is related to the wooden cross of the Crucifixion at the centre, the right compartment two men accompanied by the legend, "Truly this was the Son of God," and the background of the left compartment the drawing of lots (of straw) and the swoon of the Virgin in the arms of the holy women. The date of the tomb is not definitely established but is now assigned to a period between I491 and 1497, which would set the Sigiienza panels at a later moment in the Master's career than the Luna retable. Angulo is almost certainly right also in his second suggestion, a triptych with folding wings, No. 1678 of the Prado (Fig. I49), and he probably is not guilty of excessive scholarly caution in claiming for it a classification only in the Luna Master's school. The subject of the middle panel is Christ at the Column, with an introduction of the Crucifixion, in miniature, in the landscape. The four compartments of the wings are iconographically singular. In the two lower compartments there kneel in the posture of donors adoring the central Saviour haloed figures with the features and garb of Sts. Peter and John Evangelist, and as such, although they have no attributes, they are probably to be recognized. In the upper parts of the left and right wings an unhaloed bishop (or abbot) is seated at the task of teaching respectively the laity and a group of Cistercian monks. The types most plainly those of the Luna Master are the St. John Evangelist, the bishop in the right wing, and the Cistercian directly in front of him. The characteristic woebegone expression of his personages that perhaps bespeaks his pessimistic outlook on life is often repeated in the triptych, and several of the heads are tilted up in exactly the way of the Alvaro de Luna and the St. Francis beside him. The physique and face of Christ

Fig. 148,

THE LUNA MASTER.

DEPOSITION.

PRADO, MADRID

(From "Dos tablas castellanas en el Museo del Prado " by Diego Angulo Iñiguez)

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should be compared with the corresponding details in the Prado Deposition, and His features, contracted by pain, also with the countenances of Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathaea. The landscapes and the towers that are spread over so large a part of them constitute other items that help to build up the fabric of proof. The outlines of the drawing are softly blurred in his peculiar fashion, and the color is like that of the Luna retable, especially the red of St. Peter's draperies. The principal obstacle to an attribution to the Master is the lower technical level, but, since Homer nods, quality is not always a criterion of authenticity. It is pleasant to be able to add to Angulo's reconstruction of this clearly marked artistic personality several pieces of an important retable last known to me as having passed from the Collection of Don Antonio Gorostiza at Bilbao into the world of dealing. They comprise: a fragment of a Pietà (Fig. 150) preserving only Christ's legs and the Magdalene standing above a kneeling feminine donor, the former embodying the very essence of his feminine type, the latter almost repeating the Countess of Luna; against tapestries set before landscapes, effigies of St. Francis receiving the stigmata and of St. Anthony of Padua that do literally reproduce the corresponding figures in the Luna retable, with only the most minor variations; the centre of the predella displaying, also in front of a brocaded fabric, half-lengths of the Man of Sorrows flanked by two angels and by Sts. Peter and Paul; and two other sections of the predella, one with St. Andrew and Santiago, the other with St. Sebastian and a canonized bishop, the latter an absolute replica of the prelate instructing the monks in the Prado triptych. As in the Luna retable, the painter decorates some of the haloes with Moorish letters, which one Arabic scholar tells me have no meaning and some of which are even garbled imitations of the true Arabic characters. The presence of the same two Franciscan patrons as in the retable of the Toledo cathedral justifies the query whether the altarpiece to which these fragments belonged could also have been a commission of the Luna family.

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I.

OTHER

HISPANO-FLEMISH

PAINTINGS

AT

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The Hispano-Flemish sections of the retable in the chapel of St. Martin in the cathedral are entangled in a desperate puzzle of attribution which is similar to that of the retable of Santiago, and the situation is made worse by accretions of the early Renaissance, with the result that it is excessively difficult to parcel out the divisions among the artists who are known to have worked upon the structure. The retable consists of two tiers of large panels and a predella. T h e central part of the lower tier contains the enthroned St. Martin and is flanked by compartments representing the Visitation, Santiago, St. John Evangelist, and the Magdalene. The Incredulity of St. Thomas occupies the centre of the upper tier, and at the sides are effigies of Sts. Thomas Aquinas, Peter, Paul, and a masculine saint who, probably by reason of one of the donors' names, has been wrongly identified as Thomas of Villanueva (not born until 1488 and canonized in 1658!). The subjects of the predella are correlated with the figures immediately above: with the St. Martin, his mounted encounter with Our Lord in the guise of a beggar; with the Visitation, another scene from the Baptist's life, his nativity; with the Magdalene, the Noli me tangere·, and with Santiago and St. John Evangelist, two other Apostles, Sts. Andrew and Bartholomew. T h e choice of two St. Johns and two St. Thomases for honor may be ascribed to the fact that the retable was the gift of the donors of the chapel, a pair of canons, Juan López de León and Tomás González de Villanueva. The names of both clerics are inscribed upon the guardapolvos of the retable, and the name of the latter also upon the frieze of the chapel. The only date preserved in connection with them is the year of Tomás's death, 1529, but the first sections of the retable are shown by internal evidence to have been painted somewhat earlier, probably c. 1500. T h e retable is plainly the work of two or perhaps three painters; but the later additions continue the general scheme for the structure that had been laid down in the beginning, and their gold backgrounds are incised with the same design (though in lighter lines) as the earlier sections. These Hispano-Flemish

FIG. 150. THE LUNA MASTER. FRAGMENT OF PIETÀ. FORMERLY IN THE GOROSTIZA COLLECTION, BILBAO

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sections comprise the enthroned St. Martin, the Visitation, the Magdalene, and, probably by the same hand, the corresponding pieces of the predella. T h e tradition of the cathedral, perhaps based upon documents in the archives, connects two artists with the retable, the well known Francisco de Amberes and an Andrés Florentino, but the only published documentary reference would, on the face of it, appear pretty definitely to assign the Hispano-Flemish sections to the latter. T h e reference is found in Pérez Sédano's summary 1 of the records in the archives of the cathedral, without the actual quotation of the document in question, to the effect that " o n J u l y 1 5 , 1500, payment was made to Andrés Florentin (sic) for the image of St. Martin that he executed as a trial-piece for the retable." T h e difficulties in the way of accepting the attribution are that the sample of Andrés may not have found favor and he m a y not finally have received the commission, that a Florentine would be expected to work in the Italianate manner of the other parts of the retable and not in the Hispano-Flemish style, and that it is not absolutely established whether the reference is to the retable now in question or to some other in the church which may have included an effigy of St. Martin. Since Andrés Florentino is otherwise an unknown personality, we have no sure grounds for determining in what mode he painted, but, with the evidence at present in our hands, despite the anomaly of an Italian adopting Hispano-Flemish fashions, he is the most likely, though by no means certain, candidate for the honor of the earlier sections in the St. Martin retable. T h e tradition that makes Francisco de Amberes a collaborator or continuer of Andrés is not supported by any published document, though such a document m a y well exist in the cathedral archives; in any case, as an exponent of the style of the early Renaissance, he could not have been responsible for the Hispano-Flemish sections. M a y e r is certainly wrong in assigning to him the whole predella, 2 three panels of which we have seen to be prob1 Notas del archivo de la catedral de "Toledo, published by the Centro de Estudios Históricos, Madrid, 1914, p. 23. 2 His statements in regard to the predella are contradictory. In his monograph on Toledo (p. 116) he ascribes the predella to Francisco de Amberes; in the second German edition of his Geschichte (p. 153) he comes nearer the truth in calling it the work of a pupil or colleague of the painter of the St. Martin; but in the Spanish edition (p. 149)

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ably by the author of the St. Martin, the Visitation, and the Magdalene. Deliberately (and perhaps rightly) disregarding the slight documentary evidence, Mayer ascribes to Andrés Florentino the St. Thomas Aquinas, the unidentified saint in this row, and the St. Andrew of the predella; and the two former figures may indeed be the production of an artist who, though likewise Italianate, is not equal to the painter of the other parts in the manner of the early Renaissance. T h e detailed discussion, however, of whether this painter is Francisco de Amberes and of the Italianate divisions of the retable in general must be postponed to the subsequent volume that will discuss the beginnings of the Renaissance in Spain. Because of his assignments to Andrés Florentino and Francisco de Amberes, Mayer is left in the lurch to find an author for the St. Martin, the Visitation, and the Magdalene, but he comes nobly into the breach and hits upon one of the most enigmatical personalities in the history of Spanish art, Hernando del Rincón, who is known to have done a painting in the cloister of the cathedral at Toledo in 1494 and to have assisted in the coloring of the sculpture upon the high altar from 15001502.1 His other principal reason for selecting Hernando is that he discerns in these panels of the St. Martin retable the influence of the works that Bermejo had left in Aragon and of Bermejo's pupil, the Aragonese Martín Bernât, whose guest at Saragossa Hernando was in 1491 and with whom he then entered upon an agreement for a pictorial partnership. In the absence of any documented or otherwise securely authenticated works of Hernando del Rincón as a starting-point, it is, of course, all a matter of conjecture, but it is hard to grant even Mayer's first premise, the existence of any Aragonese influence in the Hispano-Flemish painter of the St. Martin chapel. T h e nearest approximation to anything like proof is the analogy of the magnificently monumental St. Martin, seated on a richly sculptured Gothic throne, to Bermejo's Sto. Domingo de Silos, but such iconographie conceptions were a commonplace of he has reverted to his old error of an attribution to Francisco de Amberes (although in the garbled sentence the retables of the St. Martin chapel and the chapel of the Three Kings are confused with each other). 1 For the references, see the index at the end of Documentos de la catedral de Toledo, coleccionados por Don Manuel R. Zarco del Valle.

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mediaeval Spanish painting to which B e r m e j o only g a v e the supreme expression. Certain details are worked out with the beautiful Flemish perspicuousness of Bermejo, for instance St. M a r t i n ' s glass crosier and the luxuriant jewelling upon his vestments, upon the Magdalene's tunic, and, in the Visitation, upon the border of the Virgin's mantle; y e t there are no parallelisms sufficiently exact to establish an affiliation. T h e color here and there resembles that of M a r t i n Bernat, such as the deep red of the Magdalene's cloak; but the panels do not reveal his contrasts of blackish shadows and rather decided whites in the countenances nor the peculiar Aragonese stylization o f Flemish drapery. In the attribution to Hernando del Rincón, the burden of proof certainly lies with M a y e r . Since the most likely clues to his artistic personality connect him with the early Spanish Renaissance, we must defer to a later volume our own discussion of the involved problems enwrapping Hernando del Rincón and the possibly m y t h i c a l A n t o n i o del Rincón. B e it said, however, at once that the retable which Hernando is recorded b y d o c u m e n t 1 to h a v e done in 1 5 1 6 - 1 5 1 7 for the high altar of the parish church at Fuentes, northeast of G u a d a l a j a r a , is such an abject ruin as to be of no aid whatsoever in the attempt to recover an idea of his style. T h e panels are daubed over with modern repaint beyond all recognition, or else the present panels are recent, loutish substitutions for originals that have disappeared. T h e retable's frame, which remains, proves to belong entirely to the Renaissance and, so far as its evidence goes, would m a k e of H e r n a n d o an Italianate. Such a classification of him would be corroborated b y the portrait of Francisco Fernández de Córdoba lately acquired b y the Prado, if its inscription is valid and if t h e Rincón therein mentioned is Hernando and not the hypothetical Antonio. If, on the contrary, he did the Crucifixion formerly in the T r a u m a n n Collection, M a d r i d , which is alleged to h a v e once borne the signature, Rincón, he was so thoroughly impregnated with the Flemish style of c. 1500 that the result is indistinguishable from the work of an artist of the L o w Countries. T h e painter of the Hispano-Flemish parts of the St. M a r t i n retable, whoever he is, possesses outstanding gifts. In t h e 1

F. J. Sánchez Cantón, Los pintores de cámara de los reyes de España, 18-19.

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faces of personages, especially of the enthroned St. Martin, through painstaking Flemish elaboration of the delineation he attains incisive characterization. Some of his passages of drawing, such as St. Martin's draperies, are truly memorable. He has the Spanish sense of a sobered harmony of rich color. Although his individuality is somewhat ponderous, he can make a rather charming scene out of St. Martin's charity to the beggar, with the subordinate figure of a Spanish bourgeois honoring Our Lord disguised as the mendicant and with a peasant trudging along the road in front of the future bishop of Tours. This piece of the predella and the Noli me tangere are enhanced by unusually pretty Flemish landscapes; 1 but for his monumental single figures he uses the patterned gold backgrounds the love of which was so ingrained in the Spanish nature, relieving them only by patches of blue at the tops of the panels.2 He provides some slight evidence of the development of a local school at Toledo, for to my eyes his closest associations are with the Luna Master, although the St. Martin painter is an artist of greater talents and particularly a more powerful draughtsman. Some parts of the retable curiously recall also the manner of the Master of La Sisla, who worked so near to Toledo, especially the Visitation and the types and architectural setting in the nativity of the Baptist. An analogously composite retable, both chronological strata of which resemble somewhat the corresponding sections of the altarpiece of St. Martin in the cathedral, adorns the chapel of St. Catherine attached to the southeast end of the church of S. Salvador at Toledo (Fig. 151). The chapel was founded in 1497 3 by Hernando Alvarez de Toledo, secretary, treasurer, notary, and councillor of Ferdinand and Isabella, and is under the patronage of his descendants, the Condes de Cedillo; the retable was probably likewise ordered by him since the style of its principal paintings proclaims it to be contemporary with the architecture of the chapel and to have been begun about 1500, which is the approximate date also of the St. Martin altarpiece. This principal and older stratum comprises twelve panels flank1 2 3

The skies are probably repainted. The gold is perhaps retouched. R . Ramirez de Arellano, Las parroquias de Toledo, 253.

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ing three pieces of sculpture and constituting with them the main body of the retable. The lowest of the three central sculptures, which belong to the same period as the paintings, is a St. Catherine; above it is a standing Madonna holding the Child; and the Crucifixion occupies the summit. The eight upper pictorial sections depict the Annunciation, Nativity, Epiphany, Flight into Egypt, Betrayal, Flagellation, Deposition, and Resurrection; the four lower pieces are half-lengths of Sts. Peter, John Evangelist, John Baptist, and Santiago, larger in scale, as so often happened in Spanish retables of the period, than the actors in the narrative scenes. All this main body of the altar is enclosed by folding canvas wings, the paintings of which, since they are in the Italianate manner of the early Spanish Renaissance, need not now concern us. The twelve panels of the retable itself are all the product of a single atelier, but it is perhaps possible to distinguish more than one hand in the atelier. The half-lengths of saints in the lowest tier incorporate a somewhat more placid and even weaker phase of the general style. The flesh tones in the Betrayal and Flagellation are darker than in the other narrative sections, and the types in both of these panels, as well as the architectural setting of the Flagellation, suggest the influence of Fernando Gallego more than do the other six scenes. The composition for the Scourging is very like that used by Pedro Berruguete in the high altar of the cathedral of Avila, and it must be remembered that he may still have been in Toledo at the time when the retable of the St. Catherine chapel was painted. Yet some of the types in the Betrayal and Flagellation reappear in the other panels; a gold tapestry is hung not only in the Flagellation but also in the Annunciation and as a background for each of the saints in the lowest tier; and the main part of the retable must have been created by a single shop, whether or not several members of the shop collaborated. The general style is that final aspect of the Hispano-Flemish movement in which the reminiscences of the art of the Low Countries have subsided into dying echoes dimly but pleasantly affecting the predominant Iberian harmony. The talents exhibited by the author or authors were no mean ones; among the most impressive qualities is an inherently Spanish cult of monumental serenity. No

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names of artists are connected with the retable by published documents. Supposing Andrés Florentino to have been responsible for at least some of the Italianate parts of the St. Martin altar, Mayer ascribes to him the wings of the St. Catherine retable; but we have seen that Andrés Florentino may

Fio. Iii. LEFT HALF OF RETABLE IN CHAPEL OF ST. CATHERINE, S. SALVADOR, TOLEDO

have painted the Hispano-Flemish parts of the St. Martin altar, and the question of an identity of authorship in the wings of the St. Catherine retable and sections of the St. Martin altar must again be left to the volume that will treat the early Spanish Renaissance. Certainly the Hispano-Flemish sections of the St. Martin and St. Catherine retables, though analogous to each other, were not executed by the same hand.

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The intricate problems created at Toledo through the accumulation of panels by different authors within single ensembles continue with another retable, that of the Mozarabic Chapel in the cathedral. It is the nine uppermost panels that now engage us as being still vaguely Hispano-Flemish. T h e y once constituted the principal altarpiece in the Sinagoga del Tránsito, thence were transported to the church of S. Antonio, and in 1924 were utilized as the upper section of the retable that was assembled from various sources to adorn the Mozarabic Chapel of the cathedral. The three central compartments depict, reading downward, the Crucifixion (Fig. 152.), the standing Virgin with the Child in a rayed nimbus against a starred background censed by two angels (a prototype of the subject of the Immaculate Conception, Fig. 153), and the Mass of St. Gregory. The compartment of the Virgin is flanked by panels containing effigies of Sts. Benedict and Bernard (?), erect against the old Spanish backgrounds of gold brocades, and the Mass of St. Gregory is placed between St. John Baptist and St. Michael overcoming the dragon. Beneath the Baptist are paired halflengths of Sts. Sebastian and Leander, and beneath St. Michael corresponding figures of Sts. Catherine and Barbara. T h e retable has thus been set up again as it was in the Sinagoga del Tránsito, except that in this edifice the space between the panels of the paired half-lengths was occupied by a shrine with a statuette of a Madonna. In the present conglomerate retable of the Mozarabic Chapel this space is used for the upper part of the large eighteenth-century mosaic of the Immaculate Conception that once alone served as the altarpiece of the Chapel. T h e lower halves of the lateral spaces beside this mosaic have been filled by small panels of the enthroned Sts. Eugenius and Leander imported from another source, but these two panels, as well as the upper pieces of the two credences at the sides of the retable, belong to the early Renaissance. T h e Last Supper that makes the predella of the retable is a work of the twentieth century by Pedro González. T h e parts from the Sinagoga del Tránsito can hardly be earlier than 1494, for the edifice continued to serve for the rites of the Jews until the general expulsion of the race by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492, and the probable presence of St. Benedict in the retable would imply that

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it could not have been done before 1494 when the building was bestowed upon the Order of Calatrava and made by them into a church of a priory of S. Benito (St. Benedict). The date indeed is perhaps somewhat after 1500, since the style betrays the Hispano-Flemish manner on its last legs, its sinews weakened probably by incipient Italianism. The descent of the types from the art of the Low Countries is still recognizable in such figures as the central Virgin of the Immaculate Conception, the Sts. Catherine and Barbara, the pope himself and the miniature angels in the Mass of St. Gregory; but as in so many other Spanish paintings of this moment, the Flemish inheritance is flattened into an almost insipid neutralization. This may have happened spontaneously or through Italian influence, but it seems hard to explain on any ground except Italianism the rather Umbrian-looking Sts. Sebastian and Leander, the St. John and the holy women in the Crucifixion, and above all the excessively prettified St. Michael. A further reason for the loss of Flemish incisiveness may have been the manifest artistic inefficiency of the painter. This in itself would contradict Mayer's guess at so distinguished a master as Francisco Chacón for the author, but, as we shall soon see, the discovery of Chacon's real style by the recent recognition of a certainly authentic work also excludes the identification. The agony of the Hispano-Flemish movement at Toledo has left its traces even in fresco. One of the examples is a series of mural paintings recounting the martyrdom of a feminine saint and built up in small compartments with small figures in the form of a retable on the wall to the right of the high altar in the church of S. Lucas. A t least by 1579 the once existing altar over which they stood was dedicated to Sts. Martha and Christina, and Ramirez de Arellano 1 therefore supposes that the frescoes relate their lives, although he had earlier 2 guessed at St. Eulalia of Mérida. He must mean, of course, one of the several virgin martyrs called Martha, 3 such as the maiden of this name who is honored at Astorga, and not the great St. 1

Las parroquias de Toledo, 171. Boletín de la Sociedad Española de Excursiones, X X I I I (1915), 266. J A Martha may be among the saints commemorated in the Romanesque frescoes of El Cristo de la Luz at Toledo (see my vol. I, p. 210). 2

FIG. τ S3.

RETABLE NOW IN THE

(NOT ACCORDING

TO THE

MOZARABIC

CHAPEL, CATHEDRAL,

PRESENT ARRANGEMENT [Photo.

Moreno)

OF T H E

TOLEDO

SECTIONS)

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Martha, the sister of the Magdalene; but I cannot see that the scenes have to do with the martyred St. Marthas or with St. Christina more definitely than with any one of fifty other canonized virgins. The left vertical section has been erased, but Ramirez de Arellano publishes a photograph of the lost topmost compartment in which a holy virgin, as yet unhaloed, visits, in the society of other maidens, the shrine of some saint. The photograph reveals also the upper part of the next lower scene — the head of some personage, the halo of the saint, and the haloed dove that accompanies her in all the other extant episodes except the decollation. In the central section there are preserved the topmost scene of the saint's arraignment before her judge and the next scene of the visit of two men and three women to her in prison. The compartments at the right depict, from the top downward: her flagellation; her appearance, with body disfigured by torture, before a queen accompanied by retainers, one at the right a very jaunty youth and another kneeling before the maiden; and her decapitation in the presence of a pagan tyrant (Fig. 154). The constant presence of the dove proves that the frescoes are concerned not with two saints but with a single saint for whom the bird is a kind of totem. I cannot find that a dove is associated with any of the St. Marthas, with St. Christina, or with St. Eulalia (except that the soul of the last ascended to God in the form of this bird). A dove consoled St. Regina (Ste. Reine) of Alise in Burgundy while in prison and at the moment of her torture in the icy water; but it would be hard to explain in Toledo the cult of so purely a local French saint as Regina, and the episodes of the visit to the shrine and of an encounter with a queen are not related of her. All the other scenes would accord very well with the story of St. Catherine of Alexandria, if we could force the interpretation of the episode of the visit to the shrine into a representation rather of her early vision of the virgins leading her to Our Lady in a church. The queen's resort to her in prison is one of the commonly depicted events of her life, and the kneeling figure would then be the converted Porphyry. The episodes of the disputation and of the wheels could be supposed to have been among those that have been blotted out. I t would still, however, be difficult to explain the almost ubiquitous appearance

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of the dove, though such a bird is said to have miraculously fed her during her incarceration. A celebrated moment in St. Lucy's life is her early pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Agatha, but the other scenes do not correspond with her legend. The problem of the theme of the frescoes, despite the dedication of

FIG. 154. A MARTYRDOM, SECTION OF C Y C L E OF FRESCOES, S. LUCAS, TOLEDO (From " Pinturas murales en San Lucas de "Toledo " by Ramírez de Arellano)

the altar to Sts. Martha and Christina, must thus still be regarded as unsolved. Another problem is created by the conflict between the date of the escutcheon of the Luna family in the upper right corner of the mural assemblage and that of the frescoes themselves. The capping of the escutcheon by a prelate's hat would indicate that the frescoes were done during the episcopate of an archbishop connected with the family, and there was none in the

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see of Toledo after Älvaro de Luna's half-brother, Juan de Cerezuela, who held the office from 1434 to 1442. But this date is patently too early for the paintings, which belong to the first years of the sixteenth century, and even more impossible is the prelate whom Ramirez de Arellano selects for the honor, Pedro de Luna, 1 who ruled the diocese from 1403 to 1414. Some other explanation for the ecclesiastical coat of arms must then be sought, such as a remote affiliation, like that of Juan de Cerezuela, with the great family in the case of a prelate chronologically appropriate, and the painter cannot be identified with the master of the first half of the fifteenth century, Juan Alfonso,2 whose signature Ramirez de Arellano dubiously holds to be concealed in certain hieroglyphics in the scene of the decollation. The nearest analogue to the style is that of the artist of the Miraflores scenes from the life of the Baptist in the Prado, but I do not believe in an identity of authorship. The types are somewhat similar, there is a like revelling in the stiff and elaborate finery of contemporary costume, and the craftsmanship is of the same moderate grade; but in the personages of the S. Lucas painter Flemish asperities are smoothed out into an even greater blandness. In lieu of the Flemish mannerisms, he indulges in another sort of stylization, drawing out his figures into an excessively attenuated elegance, as particularly the magistrate in the scene of the decapitation, and exaggerating the finicky magnificence of the attire of the period until he makes coxcombs of his men. The costumes indeed would point to a moment just after rather than before 1500; and the painter sensed in some way that a new artistic movement was beginning to overspread the peninsula, being one of the first to employ the nude putti of the Italian Renaissance, setting them·— summarily drawn but rather winsome creatures •— upon the majority of the painted arches that frame the episodes, causing them to take a lively interest in what is occurring in the compartments, and depicting one as actually aiming a weapon at the saint's scourgers. His ability as a colorist may no longer be estimated, for the tones have faded into complete invisibility, leaving only the drawing. 1 2

Not, of course, the great antipope, Benedict XIII. See my vol. I l l , p. 233.

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The mural painting in a niche and evidently once above an altar in the chapel of St. Jerome adjoining the church of the Concepción Francisca deserves more than the passing mention that I bestowed upon it in volume III, 1 not so much because of its technical merit, which is not above the mean, as because of the irregularity of the medium of fresco in Spain during the fifteenth century. As in the case of so many other HispanoFlemish works at Toledo, the emphasis should be laid on the first part of the compound adjective, for the Flemish contribution has lapsed into indistinctness. T h e style is perhaps even already lightly touched by the Italianism of the Renaissance (not, of course, Giottesque Italianism, as Mayer would have it). The principal subject is the Virgin holding the dead Christ, with St. John (?) and the Magdalene at either end of the body. Higher up is a small version of the Crucifixion. The most Flemish element is the triangular composition of the group of Mother and Son, but the landscape with its Gothic castles is perhaps also of northern inspiration. In view of the fair ability exhibited in the rest of the fresco, the puerile delineation of Christ's form is possibly witness to Spanish apathy towards the nude. Remnants of gilt indicate that the Magdalene's tunic was originally one of the gold brocades so dear to the native heart. 3.

FRANCISCO

CHACON

All our study of the Hispano-Flemish remains at Toledo has revealed in the city itself no paintings that can certainly be related to a definite, nameable personality, for even in the case of the Alvaro de Luna retable we cannot decide whether Sancho de Zamora or Juan de Segovia was the painter. W e have to travel far from the city to find an authenticated work of a known Hispano-Flemish artist of Toledo, the Pietà by Francisco Chacón in one of the corridors of the Escuelas Pías at Granada (Fig. 155). One by one we have been able to reconstruct in recent years the personalities of Isabella's court-painters, Juan de Flandes, Miguel Sithium, and now the native-born Francisco Chacón. Only a single published document 2 men1 3

P. 229. Zarco del Valle, Documentos inéditos para la historia de las bellas artes en España,

315-317·

398

TOLEDO

tions him, but this is enough to reveal that he was one of the outstanding artists of his day — a royal order of December 2 1 , 1480, by which Isabella constitutes him not merely a courtpainter but "her major painter for his (or her?) whole l i f e " and directs him to see to it that no Jew or Moor dare to paint the forms of Our Lord, Our Lady, or the saints. It must be acknowledged that the Granada picture, at least in the sadly repainted condition in which I studied it, does not quite justify this exalted consideration, and yet it is easily superior to the general Hispano-Flemish average. The panel is authenticated by a signature at the bottom, of which the last two letters had been garbled by the repainting, so that it had hitherto been read Francisco Charv , with the end of the surname considered indecipherable; but I myself, when I examined the signature, doubted whether it should thus be elucidated, and the removal of the repaint has clearly shown the word to be Chacón. The date, of course, must be subsequent to the capture of Granada by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492 and, from the maturity of the style, may be set, like that of so many other paintings at Toledo or connected with Toledo, about 1500. In addition to the Magdalene and aged clerical donor at the right, the central group of the mother with her dead Son upon her lap is accompanied at the left by a figure who, despite the anomalous beard, has usually been interpreted as St. John Evangelist but who might be St. Nicodemus or St. Joseph of Arimathaea. The types and draperies incorporate that more placid nationalization of the borrowings from the Low Countries which marks the turn of the century. It is the head of the donor that is at the same time the most Flemish and the best piece of painting in the panel. The garments of the Virgin and St. John were modernized in the seventeenth century, but the minute folds of the donor's cassock covered by a gauze surplice and the Magdalene's red mantle conform to Flemish modes for rendering draperies. The scrupulous treatment of the pearl edging of the Magdalene's robe and the jewelled clasp that joins it also bespeaks Flemish leanings. The landscape, consisting of low hills, a lake, and the usual romantic bits of architecture (in which I am not sure that Bertaux is right in recognizing the outlines of the Alhambra), has the piecemeal character of the masters of

FIG. 155.

F R A N C I S C O CHACÓN.

D E T A I L OF P I E T À .

ESCUELAS PÍAS, G R A N A D A

(From "Francisco Chacón" by Gómez-Moreno)

400

TOLEDO

the Low Countries and is not unified, like the setting of Bermejo's Barcelona Pietà, into a grander whole. It is impossible, indeed, to follow Mayer in discerning any influence of Bermejo's Pietà upon Chacón. The only similarities are the vaguely analogous arrangement of the central group and the presence of a kneeling clerical donor; but the composition for the Virgin with the dead Christ is a Flemish commonplace to which both Bermejo and Chacón are indebted, and even if both Bermejo's canon Desplá and Chacon's donor hold their doffed caps, there is no other real point of contact between them (not to speak of the fact that the Granada cleric, though the most distinguished part of the picture, is a petty and almost puerile piece of painting compared with Bermejo's superb and largely conceived portrait). In truth, the entire composition of Chacon's panel is more like that of Dierick Bouts's version of the theme in the Louvre than of Bermejo's at Barcelona. For the central group, Mayer might just as well have referred to the rendering by Juan Núñez at Seville. As a matter of fact, it is highly doubtful whether Francisco Chacón of Toledo was familiar with the production of Núñez at Seville or of Bermejo in Aragon and Catalonia (or even in Andalusia, if perchance he had left there any works). His general mode of painting is an inferior aspect of the manner of Master Alfonso and Bermejo, but the reason is that he naturally and independently at this moment in the evolution of Spanish art achieved much the same fusion of Flemish and indigenous traits.

CHAPTER LUI HISPANO-FLEMISH PAINTINGS

CONNECTED

WITH VALLADOLID I.

THE

ST. ILDEFONSO

MASTER

THE extant monuments and the evidence are so scanty that no more than in the case of Toledo can we trace the existence of a school of painting at Valladolid in the second half of the fifteenth century, and since indeed the town did not become an episcopal see until 1595, it is doubtful whether any HispanoFlemish pictorial tradition that transmitted its characteristics from generation to generation and could be called a school was developed. With our present knowledge it is impossible to disentangle the personality of any founder of a school at Valladolid, such as Fernando Gallego or the Avila Master, who would have been the inspiration of the later painters of the city, and certain stylistic traits might be interpreted as indicating that the works produced in Valladolid and the region depended upon the contiguous artistic centres of Avila and Palencia. T h e early retable of St. Jerome in the Museum of Valladolid I have discussed in connection with Jorge Inglés, and the later pictures of the town do not seem to derive from its style. Our task is limited by the conditions to the registration and description of these later Hispano-Flemish paintings preserved from the religious institutions of Valladolid and its environs. Inasmuch as one or two of the monuments are expressions of the second wave of very faithful allegiance to the Flemings that overspread Spain just before the Renaissance, it is likely that Valladolid was a focus of the movement by reason of the growing importance of the town through the favors bestowed upon it by Ferdinand and Isabella, leading to its great days in the second half of the sixteenth century. I t is possible, however, to reconstruct the artistic personality of one painter who enjoyed patronage at Valladolid and to at-

402

VALLADOLID

tach to him several works. We will call him the St. Ildefonso Master because one of his productions depicting this holy bishop's reception of the chasuble has attained a certain celebrity through its presence in the Louvre (Fig. 156). The provenience from Valladolid is only a vague tradition, since the history of the picture cannot be traced before it was acquired by the Louvre from the Bourgeois Collection at Cologne in 1904, but the stylistic analogies to the panels from the monastery of L a Merced in the Museum of Valladolid demonstrate that the tradition is correct, and Agapito 1 adduces the fact that there was a chapel of St. Ildefonso in the old Colegiata of Valladolid. The spectators of the ceremony in the Louvre painting are at the right Sts. Anthony Abbot, Lucy, Catherine, Apollonia, Agatha, and an unrecognizable canonized virgin, and at the left a bevy of angels (since in the orthodox versions of the story angels and holy maidens are said to have attended in Our Lady's train). Mayer, followed eventually by Bertaux, has attributed the panel to the artist whom I have called the Avila Master and who might be expected to have received commissions at the not very distant Valladolid. The types, masculine, feminine, and angelic, are not very far removed from the modifications of Flemish models seen in the Avila Master's works; there is the same stress upon the cheek-bones; in such figures as the Sts. Lucy, Ildefonso, and Anthony Abbot, the same moderate intensity of expression; the draughtsmanship, likewise, is not always equal to the painter's wishes, as in his endeavor to cast an evanescent smile over some of the countenances, which is particularly unsuccessful on the visage of St. Lucy; and the designs in the broken drapery are almost identical. The attempted smiles are only a phase of the general Spanish tendency to smooth away the facial asperities in which the artists of the Low Countries delighted. Yet, in the end, one always feels in the back of one's mind hesitation in adhering to Mayer's hypothesis. The comparison with the Avila Master really brings out greater difference than similarity of types, and the painter of the Louvre panel is a more advanced and sophisticated, if not a better, artist. Mayer, it is to be presumed, would account for 1

La pintura en Valladolid, in the Boletín del Museo Provincial de Bellas Artes de Valladolid, No. 8, April, 1927, p. 58.

FIG. 156.

THE ST. ILDEFONSO MASTER. CHASUBLE. (Photo.

ST. ILDEFONSO'S RECEPTION OF

LOUVRE, PARIS Giraudon)

VALLADOLID the changes by the theory that the St. Ildefonso piece was a late production of the Master, but the diversity seems greater than can be accounted for even by the lapse of time. T h e Valladolid painter may have been influenced by the Avila Master, or the analogies may emanate from their joint debt to the school of Tournai. In any case, the Louvre panel is no more the work of Pedro Diaz, whom Mayer would like to identify with the Avila Master, than is the Lázaro triptych. A comparison with the aggregation of feminine types in the Assumption by Diaz in the Tudela retable is enough to disprove the supposition. It is superfluous to dwell upon such other Flemish elements as the architecture of the canopy over the Virgin before whom St. Ildefonso kneels. Bertaux mentions the domination of yellow and orange, doubtless derived from the Master of Flémalle's affection for these hues, and it is indeed true that more than the majority of Spanish adaptations of models from the Low Countries this picture preserves the bright outburst of Flemish tones and yet amidst these high chromatic values succeeds in obtaining a harmony of color. T h e bold brocade of the dalmatic that St. Ildefonso already wears for a vestment to lie beneath the chasuble that he is to receive sounds a strident Spanish note amidst the simplicity of the other costumes. T h e charm of the work is enhanced by a factor that occasionally contributed much to the appeal of sacred pictures in all the European schools during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, the presence of a galaxy of virgin saints, who make gracious the scene with their girlish beauty. The gentle device manifests itself even as late as Moretto's altarpiece of a santa conversazione of five youthful feminine saints in S. Clemente, Brescia. Diego Angulo 1 has much reason on his side in ascribing to the author of the Louvre picture what are perhaps fragments of a single retable, now in the Valladolid Museum. Reported to have come from the monastery of L a Merced in the city, the four large panels comprise enthroned effigies of St. Athanasius (displaying a scroll with the first words of the Creed named after him) and St. Louis of Toulouse (with his rejected crown at his feet and accompanied by a kneeling donor, Fig. 157) and 1

Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft, X L V I (1925), 39.

Fie. 157. THE ST. ILDEFONSO MASTER (?). ST. LOUIS OF TOULOUSE. MUSEUM, VALLADOLID (Photo. Arxiu

Mas)

4 θ6

VALLADOLID

paired representations of Sts. Peter and Paul and of St. Andrew and Santiago. I t is easier to accept the St. Andrew and Santiago (though the complexion of their faces is darker) as of the same retable with the enthroned prelates than it is the Sts. Peter and Paul. In the latter pair, who alone among the saints in the four panels have haloes, the craft is somewhat inferior, and the types and draperies somewhat less Flemish; but the cast of the countenances and the strange, sad eyes are repeated from the other panels, and the same painter might very well have done these figures in a less vigorous moment of his activity. One of the factors, indeed, that links the fragments with the Louvre picture is the intensity of the gaze in the various personages, and, in particular, the face of St. Louis should be compared with the St. Catherine attendant upon the Virgin and that of Santiago with the St. Lucy. The kneeling donor virtually reiterates the countenance and hands of St. Ildefonso; the several features of St. Andrew's visage are identical with those of many of the actors in the Louvre panel and are put together in exactly the same way; and the Santiago, St. Peter, and St. Paul conform somewhat less only because an artist cannot be expected always absolutely to duplicate himself. The same somewhat tall canon of the human form emerges in the Valladolid panels as at Paris and precisely the same adaptation of the puckered Flemish draperies. The Sts. Athanasius and Louis agree with the established Spanish mode of treating such enthroned bishops as gorgeous idols. Bermejo's Sto. Domingo de Silos is the supreme example. Both of the Valladolid prelates are seated in frontal positions, which, however, are somewhat less rigid than that of the Sto. Domingo, and they are encased in the ponderous splendor of brocaded and bejewelled vestments. In parts of the robes of St. Athanasius the painter has followed Flemish precedent in endeavoring to simulate the texture of velvet. No real gold, however, is anywhere admitted. To a greater degree than the Louvre picture, the Valladolid panels embody a Spanish reduction of Flemish asperity to placidity and to a uniform brownish tonality. Santiago and St. Andrew are even ethnologically unmistakable Iberians. We have already seen 1 that certain anal1

P. I8I.

Fig. IJ8.

THE ST. ILDEFONSO MASTER (?). ST. ANNE, VIRGIN, AND CHILD. MUSEUM, VALLADOLID (Photo. Arxiu

Mas)

4o8

VALLADOLID

ogies in the types justify Mayer in claiming for these panels some kind of a relationship with the altar of the Visitation in the cathedral of Palencia, even if it is necessary to reject the idea of an absolute unity of authorship. T h e St. Ildefonso Master at Valladolid would thus naturally have looked for inspiration to the models of the artistic centres directly north and south of him, Palencia and Avila. The shell-formed niche behind Sts. Peter and Paul may already denote some vague contact of the painter with the Italian Renaissance. It is perhaps the presence of the niche that misled Von Loga 1 and Miss King 2 to search for additional parallelisms to the art of Jacomart in these panels. But the parallelisms are only those that belong to all Spanish painting of the fifteenth century in dealing with the subject of canonized bishops, and the panels are very surely the creation of a Castillan master. Y e t he may have known such Italian fixings as a shell niche through having seen them in Jacomart's pictures, for there is the curious fact that the Museum at Valladolid contains a panel of the Anna selbdritt (Fig. 158) which was possibly executed by the Master of St. Ildefonso and is perhaps based in composition upon the central section of Jacomart's celebrated Borgia triptych in the cathedral of Játiva. T h e principal forms of St. Anne, the Virgin, and Child are built up in an analogous compact, rectangular, Masaccio-like mass, and to the kneeling Sts. Gabriel and Joachim at Játiva correspond, at Valladolid, as donors, a Franciscan friar and a lay woman. T h e whole figure of St. Anne, even her headdress, and the posture of the Virgin recall these elements in the Játiva panel, but the Child •— entrancingly winsome in the Valladolid picture — is rather different, and it is likely that, since all arrangements of this subject in the fifteenth century resemble one another, the other similarities between the Játiva and Valladolid renderings are merely accidental. Certainly a much better case can be made out for an attribution to the Master of St. Ildefonso than for an acquaintance with Jacomart's achievement. It is hard, indeed, to imagine that a painter could have produced a type so close to the Virgin and the St. Lucy of the Louvre picture as is the little Madonna without being equal to the Louvre picture's 1

Die Malerei in Spanien, α8.

2

Sardinian Painting, I, 123.

Fig. 159. THE ST. ILDEFONSO MASTER (?). ST. ANTHONY OF PADUA. MUSEUM, VALLADOLID (Photo. Arxiu Mas)

VALLADOLID author. The type, moreover, is not a generalized one such as might appear in half a hundred other Hispano-Flemish masters, but a peculiar and highly individualized face with extraordinarily salient cheek-bones. Her mantle — unusually chaste for the period in its material of a single, simple fabric, in its comparative scantiness, and in the absence of Flemish puckering— is caught at the neck by two jewelled ornaments in exactly the same fashion as that of Our Lady appearing to St. Ildefonso. St. Anne's left hand is delineated with the sensitive perfection, worthy almost of a Pollaiuolo or Verrocchio, that surprises us in the Santiago, St. Andrew, and St. Paul. It is now the feminine donor who is reminiscent of the kneeling St. Ildefonso. As in so many instances in Hispano-Flemish painting, the tiles of the pavement are inscribed with enigmatical letters. A panel of the standing St. Anthony of Padua in the Museum of Valladolid (Fig. 159) would be placed by its style at least in the immediate proximity of this group of works, and, although its dimensions are somewhat smaller, certain considerations would suggest that it once belonged to the same retable as the St. Anne and was therefore a production of the St. Ildefonso Master. It would not mean so much that the halo is literally the repetition of St. Anne's, unless this halo were rather peculiarly distinctive, marked on its outer edge by two rings of pearls between which at intervals are ranged small crosses of the same jewels. The palaeography of the saints' names written in the haloes is also identical. The two kneeling donors are the counterparts of those who adore St. Anne, another Franciscan friar and, as perhaps a balance to St. Anne's feminine devotee, an elderly layman. The friar carries a scroll upon which is transcribed from the Song of Songs, iii, 4: "Inveni quem diligit anima mea; tenui eum; nec dimittam donee introducam illum in domum matris meae, et in cubiculum genetricis meae." The type of the St. Anthony would not, like the Virgin in the Anna selbdritt, at first sight almost demand an attribution to the St. Ildefonso Master, but, when the idea has been suggested by other elements in the picture, he proves on close inspection to be by no means discordant with the possibility. His left hand is the duplicate of St. Anne's and is executed with the same realization of the expressiveness that may be obtained in this

VALLADOLID

411

part of the body. T h e infant Christ poised as his attribute in front of his waist, though less captivating than the Child of the St. Anne panel, has a similar and analogously delicate sort of head. T h e most persuasive argument, however, is the striking resemblance of the old lay donor's hard-lined but genial upturned countenance to the St. Ildefonso himself. T h e one outstanding difference from the other panels that we have related to the St. Ildefonso Master is a background of solid gold brocade instead of settings of architecture, landscape, or sky. T h e membership of St. Anthony and St. Louis of Toulouse in the Franciscan Order and the presence of Franciscans as donors of the St. Anthony and St. Anne panels justify the surmises that the two latter pictures may have once belonged to the retable from the monastery of L a Merced, which includes the effigy of St. Louis of Toulouse, and that this retable was a commission of the Friars Minor or of one of their admirers; and yet the monastery was controlled by the Order of Our L a d y of Mercy. T h e St. Anne was shown in the Barcelona Exposition as N o . 1594. For want of a better place, I register here another panel that appeared in the Exposition, No. 535, lent by Doña Antonia García de Cabrejo of Madrid. T h e subject is the seated Madonna and Child surrounded by angels. T h e general pictorial manner is not very exciting aesthetically, but it is more or less like that of the Louvre picture. Without further evidence, however, the assignment to the Valladolid group would be a presumption. T o the St. Ildefonso Master or to his immediate entourage I should like to add another work in the region of Valladolid, a somewhat repainted effigy of the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception in what was probably a sepulchral niche at the right of the nave in the church of the monastery of S. Pablo at Peñafiel, east of the capital. The iconography corresponds to the representation in the retable of Sta. María de Arvas at Mayorga, 1 except that at Peñafiel the Child is clearly discernible in the sunburst on the Virgin's abdomen. Our Lady, clad in a gown brocaded with the pattern of a small pomegranate and crowned with stars, stands with crossed hands in a man1

See above, p. 168.

VALLADOLID

412

doria, accompanied by a scroll inscribed with the appropriate Latin verse, the first of the twelfth chapter of Revelation, describing the woman clothed with the sun. 2.

OTHER

HISPANO-FLEMISH AND THE

PAINTINGS

IN

VALLADOLID

REGION

It would be pleasant if we could connect with the St. Ildefonso Master one of the most important and loveliest paintings at Valladolid, the (somewhat restored) Visitation built into the centre of the predella of the retable in the chapel of the archiépiscopal palace (Fig. 160); but although the date must be about the same, c. 1480, and there are some dim points of contact, the style in the main is rather different. The vast retable comes from the church of S. Esteban at Portillo, south of Valladolid, and with the exception of the Visitation is a work of the circle of Pedro Berruguete; but even when the structure was still at Portillo, the alien Visitation may have been inserted in it. 1 The panel is oddly archaic in the exaltation of the Virgin to a slightly larger size than the other actors. It has been partially cut off at both sides. At the lower left, for instance, appear the staff (crosier?) and a bit of the body of what may have been a kneeling clerical donor or the figure of Zacharias to match the St. Joseph who accompanies the Virgin. The two women and especially the St. Joseph incorporate distant resemblances to the types of the Louvre picture, but we cannot postulate more than that the author of the Visitation belonged to the same coterie. The chief peculiarity of the style is found in the draperies — their copiousness, the way in which their Flemish folds are prodigally trailed out behind the wearers, and the use of gold brocades for virtually all the garments, so that the panel becomes one great auric blaze. It is only here and there that the gold is prettily relieved, as in the fur cuffs and blue lining of Our Lady's mantle or as in the lining of St. Elizabeth's sleeves, which is of the shade of red favored by the school of Tournai. The wimples of the two women are also of a Tournai white and rendered with a Flemish deftness. At the right in the landscape 1 A. de Nicolás, La capilla del palacio arzobispal de Valladolid, Boletín de la Sociedad Castellana de Excursiones, II (1905-1906), 49.

Fig. I6O.

HISPANO-FLEMISH P A I N T E R ACTIVE AT VALLADOLID. T H E VISITATION.

ARCHIEPISCOPAL PALACE, VALLADOLID (Photo. Arxiu

Mas)

414

VALLADOLID

background, in the midst of scrupulously laid out fields, are a monastery of the Dominican Order, if we m a y j u d g e b y the habits of the two religious, and next to it, perhaps as its church, an edifice with a cupola that looks like a fantastic adaptation of the dome of the Florentine cathedral, another of the strange hints at some kind of communication with I t a l y in the mediaeval painting of Valladolid. T h e parish church at Megeces de Iscar, south of Valladolid, contains on the north side of the nave a somewhat rustic altarpiece of c. 1500 in a Hispano-Flemish manner that has neutralized the legacy from the L o w Countries into virtual invisibility. Because of the church's dedication to St. James M a j o r , the central panel displays the frequent Spanish iconographical theme of the supernatural appearance of the mounted Santiago at the battle of C l a v i j o , brandishing his sword and trampling upon the severed heads of the infidels. St. Sebastian, subjected to the ordeal of the arrows, occupies the upper compartment in the lateral division at the left, and beneath him is St. A g a t h a . T h e corresponding figures at the right are Sts. Vincent and Bridget. In lieu of a predella, a pair of censing angels are painted about the opening that once held the tabernacle. O n l y the two sections in which there is any action, i. e., those dev o t e d to Santiago and St. Sebastian, substitute landscapes for gold backgrounds. It would cause no surprise if the same hand should sometime prove to h a v e painted a Visitation built into the ceiling of one of the rooms attached to the parish church of L a Seca, a little further west. So far as the poor light permits j u d g m e n t , the panel does not seem to be a creation of the tardy follower of Pedro Berruguete who did two figures of Sts. M a t t h e w and M a r k now utilized in the ceiling of the sacristy; but when we reflect that in a subsequent volume we shall find the churches of the province of Valladolid crammed with pictures of the early Renaissance, we must make the mental reservation that it is easy to mistake a placid production of this Italianate manner for a late Hispano-Flemish work in which the harshness of the style is much relaxed.

VALLADOLID 3.

THE

S E C O N D W A V E OF F L E M I S H I N F L U E N C E AT

415 VALLADOLID

T h e most certain example of this m o v e m e n t 1 at Valladolid is a painting that has been the object of much speculation and debate, the bestowal of the miraculous chasuble upon St. Ildefonso, in the P a c u l l y Collection, Paris. 2 T h e dimensions, archi-

FIG. 161.

HISPANO-FLEMISH PAINTER ACTIVE A T VALLADOLID

C E N T R E IN P A C U L L Y C O L L E C T I O N , PARIS (?); W I N G S I N

(?).

TRIPTYCH:

MUSEUM,

VALLADOLID (From "Der Memling zugeschriebene Hl. Ildejons der Sammlung Pacully " by Diego Angulo)

tectural setting, and pictorial style prove that it was the centre of a triptych, the lateral wings of which, representing St. IldeSee above, pp. 22, 28, and 64. T h e Collection has been largely sold, but the St. Ildefonso picture is said still to remain in the family's hands. Friedländer (Die altniederländische Malerei, Memling und Gerard David, p. 135) catalogues it as at N i c e ; the recent volume on M e m l i n g in the series of the Klassiker der Kunst (p. 153) places it at Paris. 1

2

4I6

VALLADOLID

fonso's predecessors as metropolitans of Spain, Sts. Leander and Isidore, are in the Museum of Valladolid (Fig. 161). It is thought in the Museum that they probably entered the institution from the monastery of L a Merced at Valladolid, but in any case the themes and the existence of the wings in the Valladolid Museum demonstrate the triptych to have a provenience from somewhere in the peninsula. Even the central panel is definitely known to have come from Spain into the Collection of Don Sebastián de Bourbon, who resided for a time in Valladolid. 1 The moot point is, did a Spanish hand execute the triptych? The only conceivable answer seems to me the affirmative. The author is directly under the inspiration of Memling and, in the spirit of the movement of fresh enthusiasm for the art of the Low Countries, sticks more closely to his Flemish models than was the wont of the race-conscious Spaniards. The photographs also flatter the triptych somewhat, but it needs only an examination of the original to realize that the drawing and the brush-work are at least slightly contaminated by the provincial stain that is almost universally inseparable from mediaeval Spanish painting. The technique is not quite worthy even of a secondary Fleming. The provincialism is betrayed especially in the left figure in the group of angels in the central panel and, despite the delightful red brocades of their copes, in the two standing episcopal saints. A further argument for a native author is that this pair of canonized prelates perhaps reveal at least some slight influence of Fernando Gallego. In another connection we shall wish to refer to the heraldic shield (unfortunately not yet identified) 2 set upon the choir-screen in the architectural setting. A Circumcision in the Lázaro Collection at Madrid (Fig. 162) is certainly related to this Valladolid triptych, at least as belonging to the same group of Castilian pictures that scrupulously reproduce Flemish models of about the year 1500. The prototype in this instance is Gerard David instead of Memling, but Diego Angulo perceives David's influence even in the Pacully 1 Cf. Diego Angulo in the Boletín del Museo Provincial de Bellas Artes de Valladolid, July, 1925, p. 47, and the Sale Catalogue of the Pacully Collection, 58. 2 The Sale Catalogue states (p. 57) that one of the clerestory windows contains the escutcheon granted by the emperor Maximilian to Dürer and other painters.

FIG. 162. HISPANO-FLEMISH PAINTER ACTIVE AT VALLADOLID (?). THE CIRCUMCISION. LÁZARO COLLECTION, MADRID (From the Catalogue 0} the Collection)

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VALLADOLID

triptych, where, if at all, I should prefer to discover it in the Sts. Leander and Isidore. The general spirit of the work, the quiet mood, the delicacy of execution, the spacing of the figures in relation to the architectural setting, and even some of the types find their counterparts in the triptych; for example, the faces of the two pages are not unlike that of the angel at the extreme left behind St. Ildefonso. Whoever the author be, he is so convinced a devotee of Flemish painting that he reveals his Spanish nationality in little else than the types of the two pages and of the Child. If Tormo 1 is right in discerning also an indebtedness to David's pupil, Ambrosius Benson, the date would have to be set well on in the sixteenth century. The top of the panel is prettily painted with an ornate ogee arch in the spandrels of which an angel and a Prophet ( ?) spread forth laudatory scrolls. The reader has probably noted that the comparative paucity of the paintings connected with Valladolid finds a compensation in the unusual importance of the majority of those that have been preserved; and our peregrination through the uncharted artistic ways of the city and its province leads us finally, as we linger over the phase of a renewed imitation of northern models, to a work that historically as well as aesthetically takes its place among the most significant productions of the whole HispanoFlemish movement. It consists of eight large panels from a retable: the Annunciation, Visitation, Nativity, and Epiphany (Fig. 163) are now in the possession of Mr. John North Willys at Palm Beach; the Circumcision and Purification still belong to French and Company at New York; and the young Christ among the Doctors and the Marriage at Cana (Fig. 164) grace the Collection of Dr. Preston Pope Satterwhite in the same city. The scientific investigator would certainly desire that the evidence which assigns the series to Valladolid were more tangible and trustworthy. The direct evidence is nothing more than the tradition of the international market of art to the effect that the panels come from a monastery in the town; but the kinship with the triptych of St. Ildefonso and the traces of influences fçom the schools both of Palencia and Burgos suggest Valladolid as a likely place of provenience. The patent association. 1

Boletín de la Sociedad Española de Excursiones, XXXIV (1926), 20.

FIG. 163. HISPANO-FLEMISH PAINTER ACTIVE A T VALLADOLID (?). THE EPIPHANY. WILLYS COLLECTION, PALM BEACH

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of the retable with the court constitutes cumulative proof in view of Ferdinand and Isabella's intimate relations with the city, and for the sake of a convenient term, when referring to the altarpiece in this volume, I have denominated it as the retable of the Reyes Católicos. That the retable was done for the royal family and indeed in connection with the marriages of the children of the Reyes Católicos into the imperial family of Austria and Burgundy in 1496 and 1497, is demonstrated by the nature and conjunction of the heraldic insignia which are introduced into the architectural settings of several of the scenes. The objection could be raised that the heraldry might be employed in honor of the sovereigns upon an altarpiece in any prominent church in the realm, even if it was not under their direct patronage; but the profusion and prominence of the escutcheons argue for the actual intervention of the royal house in the commission. The heraldic insignia are most abundant in the Purification: the shield of Ferdinand and Isabella on the left arch of the choirscreen in the church of the ceremony accompanied by their heraldic devices, the yoke and the bunch of arrows; the arms of Castile and Leon on two of the pendentives of the church, in the glass of the rose, and in a window at the extreme left of the edifice, flanked, in the right of the two pendentives, by the bunch of arrows; the double-headed eagle of the Empire on the central arch of the choir-screen; and the coat of Maximilian on the right arch between two examples'of the device of Burgundy, a flint and steel emitting sparks (since Burgundy and the Low Countries had accrued to Maximilian through his marriage). The cen trai window of the apse in the Temple where Christ debates with the doctors contains similar heraldic tokens of the alliances with the imperial house, the escutcheons of Castile, the Empire, and Flanders. The shields of Brabant, Flanders, the Empire, and Ferdinand and Isabella decorate the frieze in the hall of the Marriage at Cana, and we may well ask ourselves whether the leap in the series from the narrative of Our Lord's childhood to this event may have been occasioned, not only by its importance as His first miracle and as the manifestation or Epiphany of His supernatural power, but also by a desire to include a sacred symbol of the royal nuptials. Would, then, the

FIG. 164. HISPANO-FLEMISH PAINTER ACTIVE AT VALLADOLID (?). MARRIAGE AT CANA. SATTERWHITE COLLECTION, NEW YORK

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bride and groom seated at the right end of the table be in a sense ideal portraits of any of the four contracting parties, the Prince of Asturias, his sister, Philip of B u r g u n d y , or M a r g a r e t o f Austria? T h e escutcheon with the double-headed eagle appears also at the end of the loggia on the mansion in the background of the Visitation. V a n de P u t , in an unpublished note upon the panels, assigns them to a date before 1492 because a pomegranate is not y e t included in the arms of Ferdinand and Isabella to denote the conquest of G r a n a d a , and he picks as the most likely moment the winter of 1488-1489, when the marriages were being negotiated actually at Valladolid; but the pomegranate would not h a v e been universally and consistently employed immediately after the final overthrow of the Moors, the stress upon the heraldry of Maximilian in distinction from that of his father, Frederick I I I , would indicate a date after his accession to the Empire in 1493 (although, to be sure, Frederick before his death in that year had already largely abdicated in his son's favor), and it is hard to place the style earlier than c. 1500, i. e., j u s t subsequent to the royal marriages. Some examiners of the series h a v e wished to see a different hand in the four panels in the W i l l y s Collection. T h e closer dependence upon Roger van der W e y d e n , of whose compositions for the episodes in question the author probably chanced to h a v e accessible models, creates a deceptive divergence from the other quartet, but an overwhelming body of evidence reveals that the same master deserves the honor of having painted the whole set of eight. T h e composition for the Purification belonging to French and C o m p a n y is based upon the wing of R o g e r ' s triptych at M u n i c h , but the m a j o r i t y of the actors are more Hispanicized. T h e types in the other three panels at N e w Y o r k likewise descend from Roger, but the family likeness is slightly less intimate because the author was probably not copying directly from the Fleming's cartoons. T h e curiously stern and glowering Iberian male figures in the Purification and a m o n g the doctors in the T e m p l e reappear in the two foremost M a g i . T h e kneeling and scowling Wise M a n indeed is well-nigh the twin of the man (the governor of the feast?) who stretches out a bowl towards Our L o r d in the Marriage at C a n a . T h e painter's long-bearded, long-nosed types of old men among the spec-

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tators at the Circumcision and directly at Christ's right in the disputation in the Temple and the several long-tressed pages in the background of the Marriage, both aged and young wearing jaunty, feathered caps, are repeated in the Magi's suite. The Flemish architecture of St. Elizabeth's house in the Visitation, with its stepped gables, is seen again and again in those vistas of streets in the settings of the panels at New York which are one of the author's predilections. The parts at Palm Beach are slightly smaller than the other four sections, but such differences in size are a frequent phenomenon in Spanish retables. A still more fundamental question demands an answer. Have we, after all, any right to include the series in the history of Spanish painting, and may not the very pronounced Flemish qualities mean, as the few connoisseurs who know the pictures have very generally held, that they are one of the many examples of northern productions imported into the peninsula or actually executed there? The present writer is strongly convinced that they belong to the indigenous school. If the author was a Fleming by birth (and there is no intrinsic reason for thinking so), he did not, like Juan de Flandes or Miguel Sithium, remain a Fleming in his art, but became so thoroughly naturalized that he should be reckoned a member of the Spanish artistic tradition as much as is El Greco. Amidst the dominant Flemish harmonies of his style, which accord with the vigorous revival of admiration for the art of the Low Countries at the end of the century, the native overtones are unmistakable. The majority of his older masculine personages are severe or even harsh Iberian types closely related to the parrot-faced creations of the Burgos Master. The stylistic associations with the circle likewise of Fernando Gallego and of Palencia imply that his roots were in the Spanish milieu. Mayer and Sir Martin Conway, in letters written to dealers, have emphasized the affiliations with the school of Brussels, the standard of whose aesthetic attainments at this period was not very high; but there is in the series a touch of provincialism about the drawing and the rendering of movement of which the Brussels painters — the Master of the Catherine Legend, the Master of the Barbara Legend, the Master of Ste. Gudule, etc. — despite their quite subordinate talents, would never have been guilty. The second-

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ary Flemings have a facility that is denied even to the best Spaniards of the period. The lover of Spanish art perhaps affectionately welcomes, as the sturdy signposts of the national manner, such awkwardnesses as the delineation of the two foremost doctors disputing with Christ in the Temple, the failure to obtain quite the desired expression in many another countenance, the petrified poses of the youthful retainers about the wine-jars in the Marriage at Cana, and the stiff and heavy articulation of movement in the St. Elizabeth of the Visitation. Another proposal of Mayer in one of his letters, that the author was a Frenchman similar to the Master of St. Giles, makes me balk as obstinately as his attempt to Gallicize the Catalan Master of St. George. 1 It cannot be gainsaid that the panels are as thoroughly saturated in the second wave of Flemish importation as are the other pictures of this Spanish coterie. Nor is there any reason for opposing the contention that they resemble the output of the contemporary school of Brussels, especially in that school's perpetuation of Roger van der Weyden's style. The composition of the Annunciation is inherited from his various renderings of the theme; the Nativity recalls his treatment in the Granada triptych; and the Visitation follows the general outlines of his versions at Lützschena and Turin. But the composition of the Visitation is much more closely analogous to the reinterpretation of Roger's prototypes in the Spanish retable in the cathedral of Palencia and in the Cadiz panels that have been tentatively assigned above to the Palencian school; 2 and since the Annunciation and Nativity likewise conform more faithfully to the versions in the Cadiz series, we are forced, as in the case of certain other Valladolid productions, into the postulation of some relationship to the indigenous works of Palencia. Furthermore, the two Magi at the right in the Epiphany are brothers of those in the corresponding Cadiz picture. The types throughout the eight panels, however, but especially in the four of the Willys Collection, witness also to a direct familiarity with Roger's creations or with their translations in the school of Brussels. Mayer lays too much emphasis upon the influence 1

See vol. II, p. 400, and below, p. 552.

» P. 18a.

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of Hugo van der Goes. The only detail that suggests anything like a sure connection is the parallelism of the negro Magus to this personage in the Monforte Epiphany at Berlin, but the similarity may be accidental, the result of a separate and spontaneous development by the Valladolid master upon the precedents of Roger van der Weyden. Certainly the resemblance of the other two Kings to Hugo's types is not sufficiently persuasive, and these and the many other older and forbiddingly harsh actors in the scenes should rather be explained by an affiliation of the author with the circle of the Burgos Master. Further parallels in the Hispano-Flemish output of Burgos have been noted on earlier pages. The author's collocation in the Spanish rather than the Flemish school is established also by an occasional attraction towards the magnetic models of Fernando Gallego. Although Mayer 1 has abandoned his untenable earlier assignment of the series to Fernando's pupil, the master of Ciudad Rodrigo, from whose flaccid and disjointed creatures those of the Valladolid retable are widely removed, yet his proposition contained a kernel of truth, for many of the types vaguely reveal contact with the Gallego atelier, and when in the Marriage at Cana the author no longer has so much Flemish precedent to which to turn, it becomes impossible to account for the conception of such figures as those of Christ and the bridegroom except by the theory of a heavy debt to the broad stream that Fernando had set in motion in Spanish art. The composition for the Marriage, however, is not the striking arrangement that appears in the Gallego altarpieces of Arcenillas and Ciudad Rodrigo. Although not their equal in the realization of form and movement, the author rivals or even outdoes his teachers, the Flemings, in some of their most characteristic traits. No contemporary in the Low Countries multiplied and imitated with more affectionate skill of the illuminator the familiar domestic genre or the details of architectural setting. The outstanding instances are the Purification and Marriage at Cana. In the former he follows Roger van der Weyden's composition, but he has made his Gothic church even more elaborate than the 1 In the Spanish edition of his Geschichte and in the shorter history of Spanish painting published in the Edition Labor.

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Romanesque edifice of his prototype, ensconcing the sacred event under the bays of vaulting in front of the apse, showing behind them the crossing and a piece of the transept, then carrying the eye backward over the screen of the coro through the divisions of the clerestory in the nave to the rose of the façade, defining with charming perspicuity the baldacchino above the altar and the crystal globe suspended therefrom, the storied glass of the windows, the lacework of the screen with its embellishing statues and escutcheons, the architectural details of the system of vaulting, and even the stilted longitudinal rib! The hall of the palace in which the wedding is celebrated contains an elevated tribune as a lodgment for three youthful trumpeters, and opens at the back into other chambers, at the left a stately apartment decorated with a handsome fireplace, enlivened by a Teniers-like drinking bout of the humbler guests, and looking out upon the careful perspective of a peopled street, at the right a sleeping room with a spick-and-span nuptial bed! With relentless logic, however ignorant of Hebraic iconoclastic inhibitions, he sets up in the hall of the Marriage and in the apse of the church that stands for the Jewish edifice of the Circumcision a statue, not of a Christian saint, but of Moses holding as attributes his rods and the tables of the Law. On the loggia of Zacharias's flowerpot-decked house in the background of the Visitation he depicts two maid-servants cleaning, whose efforts are indeed necessary to keep in order the sumptuousness of a mansion in which Crivelli would have delighted. The Baptist's father sits reading in the porch watched by his dog; and another dog snaps up the morsels that fall from the table at Cana. The representation of complicated interiors involved the artist in hard problems of space and perspective that he solves with Flemish dexterity. He also experiments with the phenomenon of light that the Flemings had newly discovered, representing it as streaming through the doors and windows, playing over walls and vaults, and gliding about the columns and piers, and he even studies its varied intensity in a space within a space or in exterior views as contrasted with interiors, daring sometimes to toy with the difficulties of a greater light in the vista of a nave or of an inner apartment than in the foreground of a panel.

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A negative answer must be given to still another question raised by the series — whether there is an identity of authorship with the Pacully triptych. T h e manners are obviously nearly related in date, in allegiance to Flemish example, in the Gallego touch, in Flemish elaboration of architectural setting, in the character of the architecture, in the staging of narrative in the naves or apses of churches, in the decoration of simulated choir-screens with heraldic shields, and even in some analogies in type, as of the Madonna in the Purification and in the scene of Christ among the Doctors with the St. Ildefonso or of the partly hidden feminine attendant of Our Lady in the Purification and the similarly placed maiden in the Circumcision with the Virgin and angels who assist at the investiture of the chasuble. There are further links also with the author of the Lázaro Circumcision (if he does not equal the Pacully master), such as the liberal introduction of young pages into the stories and the prospects leading into urban streets rather than landscapes. Y e t the painter of the Reyes Católicos is separated from the style of the Pacully triptych and the Lázaro Circumcision in quite as significant ways — by his orientation towards the school of Brussels and Roger van der Weyden instead of towards Memling and David, by his lesser delicacy of handicraft, and by his more Spanish and somewhat more provincial character. He does not, like many of his compatriots and the school of Tournai, resort to speaking scrolls, except, in a way, in the Annunciation, where the words of the angelic salutation fly in the air without attachment to a cloth or paper, but he does tend to plaster garments, fabrics, and architectural features with pious inscriptions. T h e most prodigal example, as for the heraldry, is the Purification. On the outer rim of the baldacchino is written, "Gloria tibi, Domine, qui natus est (sic) a Patre "; and on the interior rim the beginning of Simeon's hymn at the Presentation, " N u n c dimittis servum tuum, Domine." T h e hymn continues with another verse on the cloth over the altar, " Q u o d parasti ante faciem omnium populorum." T h e hem of the garment of the Virgin's attendant carrying the doves is embroidered with a short legend the principal word of which is mulieribus,l and upon the bag of the other woman may be read 1

It does not seem to be a fragment of "Benedicta tu in mulieribus."

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the sacred monogram, I H S. In the Marriage at Cana the neck of Christ's tunic bears an inscription that I cannot decipher, and the border of the table-spread unfolds, not any of the words spoken at the gracious miracle, but once more Gabriel's address to Mary, followed, as in the liturgy, by the beginning of St. Elizabeth's addition, " e t benedictus fructus ven tris tui."

CHAPTER LIV PEDRO DÍAZ A N D

NAVARRE

I. PEDRO DÍAZ OF OVIEDO

WITH one or two not very significant exceptions, which will be treated in the volume that discusses Aragonese painting, Navarre was divorced during the Hispano-Flemish period from the artistic union that it had enjoyed with Aragon in the first half of the fifteenth century. We have reviewed in chapter X L I I I historical considerations bearing upon the change; but the chief reason was the activity in the province of a gifted and virile master from the western part of the peninsula, Pedro Diaz of Oviedo, whose personality was sufficiently powerful to divert the Navarrese stream of painting into the Castilian channel and to make pictorial production in the region largely into little more than his school. Although his one documented work is in Navarre and although his manner as there exhibited is doubtless influenced by the aesthetic environment of the adjacent Aragon (where, we shall find, he was also employed), yet * he is fundamentally Castilian in style and must be classified in that division of the Hispano-Flemish movement. The documented work is the vast retable over the high altar of the cathedral at Tudela, which Pedro Diaz on December 7, 1489, contracted to execute 1 and which must have been complete by the time of its dedication in 1494.2 The contract provides for a sculptured Coronation at the centre, but, although the splendid Gothic canopy that covered this group is still extant and takes up all the rest of the central division, the original Coronation has been replaced in the niche by a later statue of the Virgin crowned by two meretricious putti. The subjects of the painted sections are not specified in the contract but are left 1 T h e contract is published by Altadill in the Boletín de la Comisión de Monumentos Históricos y Artísticos de Navarra, X I V (1923), 266-167. 3 See Madrazo, Navarra y Logroño (in España, sus monumentos y artes), III, 365-368. Madrazo, followed by Altadill, calls Pedro Díaz also an architect, probably from unpublished evidence in the Tudela archives.

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to the discretion of the cathedral chapter, the artist himself, and the parishioners (!). These subjects, in the body of the retable, are twelve, ranged in three rows of four compartments each, on either side of the central niche and canopy: the Birth of the Virgin, her Presentation (Fig. 165), the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Nativity of Christ, the Epiphany, the Massacre of the Innocents, the Flight into Egypt (Fig. 166), the Purification, the young Christ among the Doctors, the (for me) unique scene of St. Peter healing the hands of the Jew, Jephonias, who had interrupted the obsequies of the Virgin, 1 and the Assumption depicted with the curious iconography of Christ, amidst the heavenly host, almost obscured by the form of Our Lady that He receives into His arms. The predella is devoted to the Passion, but it includes again certain iconographie anomalies. The central panel of the Man of Sorrows supported by two angels, the panel at the extreme left depicting Christ before Pilate, and the panel at the extreme right with the Flagellation 2 are perfectly regular, except that in the last instance St. Peter's denial to the maid-servant is introduced into the background; but the mode of treating the Agony in the Garden and the Via Dolorosa in the two intervening panels is very strange. Each of these episodes is relegated in small compass to the right division of the landscape setting, and the foreground is occupied in the former instance by the afflicted Virgin and in the latter by the afflicted Magdalene. In other words, scenes in the series from the Passion are ingeniously telescoped with the large figures of the Virgin and Magdalene regarded, according to a frequent practice in predellas, as accompanying the Man of Sorrows in the middle.3 With a still further observance of the Flemish habit of depicting additional episodes in the backgrounds, be1 Jephonias appears to be touching the poles of the bier that are held by Sts. Peter and Paul, as he is directed to do in some versions of the story, whereas in others he kisses it. Or is Jephonias represented in the very act of stopping the procession of the bier? In the representation of Our Lady's obsequies in the retable of Frómista, the severed hands are depicted as hanging from the coffin, but the cure by St. Peter is not included. 2 The garments of the powerful and impressive figure of the executioner tying Christ's feet are embroidered with one of those enigmatical assemblages of Roman letters so often encountered in mediaeval Spanish painting. The only word that I can make out is Mater. 3 Scenes from the Passion are treated by the Luna Master in somewhat the same way at Sigiienza: cf. above, p. 378.

FIG. 165. PEDRO DÍAZ. PRESENTATION OF VIRGIN, SECTION OF RETABLE. CATHEDRAL, TUDELA (Photo. Jrxiu

Mas)

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hind the walls of Jerusalem, in the Via Dolorosa, the Crucifixion occurs on a hill in yet smaller scale. The ambitious scheme of the retable comprises also a sub-predella of medallions of the Apostles' heads which were so far restored in 1854 that Mayer mistakes them for later additions. Some of the heads are little injured and remain superb examples of the master's abilities. The guardapolvos are adorned with eight Prophets (some of them oddly and fortuitously resembling the almost caricatured corresponding figures on the uprights of Valencian retables in the first half of the century); and even the doors at the sides of the retable are preserved, displaying the usual subjects for these spots, Sts. Peter and Paul. The Tudela document is the only contemporary reference to Pedro Diaz of Oviedo as yet discovered, and we are left to deduce from internal evidence what his antecedents must have been. Even if we set aside for the moment the significance of his connection with Oviedo, it can hardly be doubted that the internal evidence points to a Castilian training and more specifically, in my opinion, to a tutelage under the Avila Master. Some of his types, as we shall see, are perhaps affected by his contact with the Aragonese followers of Bermejo, but in general and essentially his personages belong to the Castilian adaptation of Flemish models. The color does not betray the tendency of one of the most characteristic Aragonese painters of the period, Martin Bernat, to anticipate the sinister affection of such artists of the seventeenth century as Ribera and Murillo for contrasts of very black shadows and white flesh; Pedro Diaz reflects rather the richer and more prismatic tonalities of contemporary Castile. The Aragonese of the period liked to substitute backgrounds of gold brocade for landscape or to treat it in a summary fashion. Because of the Aragonese influence and because of his fondness for completely filling a panel with large figures, Pedro Diaz does not always admit settings of landscape, but, when he does, they are taken from the hills and valleys that he had seen in western Spain, painted in the Castilian rather than in the Aragonese manner, and embody a lovely sensitiveness to the beauties of nature that one does not encounter in Aragon except in the foreigner, Bermejo. We find a predilection

Fig I 66. PEDRO DÍAZ.

FLIGHT INTO EGYPT, SECTION OF RETABLE. CATHEDRAL, TUDELA (Photo. Arxtu Mas)

434 PEDRO DÍAZ for stark and brawny forms in contemporary Aragonese painting, but the elongation of Pedro Diaz's heavy physiques recalls rather the proportions favored by the Avila Master. His proclivity for occupying a considerable portion of a given space with these big forms is foreshadowed in such works of the Avila Master as the Magi's vision and his versions of the Meeting at the Golden Gate. Pedro's education, indeed, in the school of Avila, though not absolutely demonstrable, is capable of rather concrete proof. His men often wear the peculiar, ponderous, rectangular-blocked garments of the Avila Master. Some of them, even in facial type, might almost have walked out of this Master's pictures, the St. Joachim of the Presentation of the Virgin, for instance, or the Sts. Peter and Paul of the doors. The vertically conceived bits of architecture in the Presentation of the Virgin actually recall the Avila Master's settings. The admission, however, of some degree of his influence is far from equivalent to the old and impossible theory that he is Pedro Diaz in an earlier phase or that Diaz could have been responsible for the Louvre delivery of the chasuble to St. Ildefonso. The difference of Pedro's style from that of the Avila Master's pupils at Avila itself is probably to be explained by the hypothesis which has been advanced on a former page, i. e., that he eventually allied himself with the milieu at Burgos which produced the Master of the Large Figures.1 A painter of Oviedo on the northern littoral might easily have been attracted to the artistic centre of northern Castile, Burgos, and the road thence into Navarre •— perhaps the old pilgrimage route — would have been a natural one. The points of contact are an affection for heroic forms much more pronounced than in the Avila Master, a consequent packing of his compositions, an abnormally vermiform wriggling of the folds in the monumental spreads of drapery, and even a kind of basic similarity in the facial types. Whatever expression Pedro Diaz may be guessed to have given to the Avila and Burgos manners in works, now lost, in northwestern Spain, he certainly altered it still further when he reached Navarre through coming into touch with the vital school of adjacent Aragon. There are first the obvious secondary elements so rare in contemporary Castilian art •— the 1

See above, pp. 282 and 286.

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ringed haloes and their embossing, as well as the rendering of the edges of the garments and of small accessories in relief. Brocaded hangings often partially hide the settings of landscape or architecture in the Hispano-Flemish painting of Castile, and in the Cadiz panels by a Palencian master 1 they are quite as extensively and as conventionally employed as here; but in the Tudela retable their profuseness is perhaps to be explained by Aragonese precedent. The queerest instance is the use of one of these ostentatious fabrics to take the place of what should be the landscape of the Flight into Egypt, as in the Cadiz Visitation. In the Purification a huge gold rectangular plaque, embossed, as in Catalonia, with a foliate design, usurps the position of a decorative brocade. The textile in the Nativity of Christ is oddly conceived as translucent, allowing the columns of the room to be seen through it. Now and then Pedro Diaz adopts even types somewhat like those of Martin Bernat, for example the angel of the Annunciation, Herod in the Massacre of the Innocents, Christ in the Assumption, or the Prophet David. The Man of Sorrows and attendant angels at the centre of the predella resemble closely Bernat's creations. The violence of the postures in the Flagellation and scene of Christ before Pilate might also be termed Aragonese, if they were not taken from Schongauer's prints, although in the former instance Diaz adds a contorted, seated figure tying the Saviour's feet. Above all, if some of the feminine faces are destitute of chiaroscuro perhaps in order to give them a pallor proper to the sex (unless this peculiarity be the effect of the injuries of time), yet he has a mode of shadowing other countenances identical with the method that the Aragonese derived from Bermejo (although these shadows are not blackish like those of Bernat but colored). Good examples are Gabriel in the Annunciation and Christ and the angels in the Assumption. The modern mania for the study of art through the search for sources is by no means the whole story: there remains the personal contribution of the artist himself, and in Pedro Diaz it is very significant. In addition to distinguished drawing and manipulation of color, one feels in his work the first requisite of a true master, a trenchant individuality. His women are quite 1

See above, p. 182.

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sui generis, buxom yet imbued with a strangely gentle tenderness that is produced by their small mouths, dreamily closed eyes, and the often unrelieved whiteness of their complexions. No other Spanish painter of the epoch could create such realistically winsome babies, even when in the Massacre of the Innocents he has to depict them mauled and wounded. On the other hand, in his men he inclines towards an asperity of visage that perhaps again betokens the contiguity of Aragon. One does not need to live long with his paintings to get the sure impression that the epic qualities of the Master of the Large Figures found a ready echo in Pedro's own robust nature. So it came about that he was prone to reduce his compositions to a few monumental forms, crowding out any of the supernumeraries that other artists frequently introduce into the time-worn themes and leaving little space for vistas of landscape, pieces of setting, or episodes of genre, to which, indeed, his virile and serious temperament seems to have been alien. The Presentation of the Virgin consists only of her figure, the priest, St. Joachim, and St. Anne, and in the Nativity of Christ no adoring shepherds are admitted but merely the essential actors, St. Joseph, Our Lady, and the Child. Or if, as in the Epiphany, the Massacre of the Innocents, the Purification, and the Assumption, he does include a number of personages, the result is likely to be a composition consisting too largely of an unalleviated block of massive forms. The principal actors and hence the very subject may thus become obscured or pushed to one side in the packed aggregation. The themes of Christ among the Doctors and the interruption of the Virgin's obsequies are not at first easily recognizable, in the latter instance the bier being forced out of the composition altogether. The tendency may indeed account for the singular arrangement of the Assumption, which conceals Christ behind the body of the Virgin. The composition for the Christ before Pilate is copied very literally from Schongauer's print. The Annunciation, Nativity, Epiphany, and Flagellation are freer adaptations, and in the Nativity and Epiphany we can see how his predilection for large forms coerced him into omitting some of the figures in the German prototypes. We may approve Mayer's keen connoisseurship in attributing to Pedro Diaz the painted sections of the retable (restored in

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1898) in the chapel of Santiago in the cathedral of near-lying Tarazona within the boundaries of Aragon itself, but we must at once append the proviso of an acknowledgment that he here relied to a considerable extent upon the assistance of a pupil. An inscription on the structure's base records the facts that the chapel and retable were a donation of Antón Muñoz, "protonotary of the Apostolic See and archdeacon of Tarazona," and that the enterprise was terminated in July, 1497. T h e sculptured parts, in the same general Hispano-Flemish manner as the paintings, consist of the statue of Santiago at the centre, the embellishment of the pedestal upon which he stands, and the ornamentation of the guardapolvos, so that the pictorial sections are restricted to four narrative panels in the body of the altarpiece and to the predella. The narrative scenes depict St. James preaching, delivering his staff to the enchanter, Hermogenes (Fig. 167), enjoying the vision of Our Lady of the Pillar, and slain by the sword. Each of these episodes strangely takes place in an identical architectural interior seen by the spectator through a great door spanned by a massive round arch. T h e predella enshrines busts of the Virgin, St. John, the Magdalene, and three other holy women grief-stricken for the Man of Sorrows whose statuette, accompanied by those of certain Apostles, appears in the middle of the pedestal at the same level as these painted figures. T h e backgrounds in the predella are of gold diapered with a rich but unraised pattern of brocade. The highly individual style of Pedro Diaz so impresses the visitor to Tarazona at first glance that an enumeration of specific points of identity is almost superfluous. T o salve his conscience with concrete proof, however, the critic may note many exact analogies in type to the figures of the Tudela retable, comparing, for example, the snooping-nosed man behind Hermogenes with the Ezekiel or the third Magus in the Epiphany, the somewhat similar face of the most elderly listener to St. James's sermon with the man at the extreme right in the Purification, the glum and elaborately shaded countenance just to the right of the Apostle's executioner with the above-mentioned personage in the Purification or even with the Gabriel of the Annunciation, the magistrate at the decapitation with the first Magus, the St. James kneeling before the pillar with the St.

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PEDRO DÍAZ

Peter at Tudela, the puffy-cheeked boy who watches the consignment of the staff or the martyrdom with certain of the angels in the Assumption, the women in the predella with the St. Elizabeth of the Visitation, the Virgin of the Epiphany, or any of the feminine participants in the Birth of the Virgin, and, above all, the St. John Evangelist of the predella with the most Aragonese of Pedro's figures at Tudela, the angels of the Pietà. Although his characteristic small mouths are encountered everywhere at Tarazona, the unshadowed feminine countenances do not reappear, and this peculiarity may indeed, in the Tudela retable, be due to overcleaning; in any case, it is Pedro's other phase, the intense interest in chiaroscuro, that dominates the Tarazona altarpiece. The compositions are likewise crowded with his big forms, and in the sorrowing personages of the predella there is a rather subtle realization of the striving for varied expressiveness that marks the Prophets and scenes from the Passion at Tudela. The actors are clad in the typical heavy stuffs of Pedro Diaz, puckered to a degree of mannerism beyond that of the Flemish models. Even the alternation of circles of dots and raised rings in the haloes is the same. The two compartments where at least the partial intervention of an assistant is most tangible are the preaching of St. James and the episode of the pillar. The draughtsmanship in the Madonna and Child upon the pillar, in the accompanying angels, and in the whole audience of the sermon is inferior, and the stubby bodies of the youths among the Apostle's hearers are at variance with Pedro's norm. The gold brocades throughout the panels, indeed, are less magnificent and less well executed than at Tudela, possibly because again he handed them over to an apprentice. The decoration extends from the retable to other parts of the chapel, including statues of the Evangelists in the four upper corners in the same late Gothic mode as the carvings of the altarpiece (though wrongly ascribed to the sculptor of the Renaissance, Tudelilla) and dim vestiges of frescoes in which about all that can now be made out is a dour and aged saint on the wall opposite the retable, a figure certainly belonging to the second half of the fifteenth century and conceivably painted by Pedro Diaz.

FIG. 167. PEDRO DÍAZ. ENCOUNTER OF SANTIAGO AND HERMOGENES, SECTION OF RETABLE. CATHEDRAL, TARAZONA (Photo. Arxiu

Mas)

PEDRO

44°

DÍAZ

The cathedral of Tarazona harbors still another work in. this manner, a martyrdom of St. Andrew in the cloister, depicted as taking place within the same kind of round arch as the events from the life of St. James but more obviously, in its rather slovenly drawing, the creation of one of Pedro's pupils (Fig. 168). Since the cathedral contains a chapel dedicated to St. Andrew founded by Andrés Martínez Ferriz, who was bishop of the town from 1478 to 1495,1 the panel may well be the relic of an altarpiece that he there commissioned. Certain further and less distinct reverberations of the art of Pedro Diaz in Aragon must be reserved for the volume that will treat the Aragonese school in the second half of the fifteenth century.

1.

THE

SCHOOL

OF P E D R O

D Í A Z IN

NAVARRE

The Navarrese monument that most unmistakably embodies the direct and immediate influence of Pedro Diaz is the retable over the high altar of S. Saturnino (also called the Iglesia del Cerco) at Artajona, a work that was executed, according to an inscription at the bottom of the structure, between 1497 and 1501 at the order of certain clerics. 2 Our Lord, Our L a d y , and St. Saturninus (St. Sernin) are the recipients of honor in three horizontal tiers, the central compartment of each of which is occupied by sculpture. T h e carved Crucifixion in the highest tier is flanked by the painted panels of the Last Supper, the Betrayal, the Pietà, and the Resurrection. T h e sculpture in the second tier is Nuestra Señora de la Expectación, to whom the church had earlier been dedicated; the lateral paintings are the Annunciation (Fig. 169), an early and most elaborately symbolic representation of the Immaculate Conception, 3 the NativSanz Artibucilla, Historia de ία ciudad de Tarazona, II, 84 and 473. Madrazo, Navarra y Logroño, III, 28. 3 For the sake of those interested in the iconography of the theme, we may stop to describe this little known, primitive, and very detailed version. In the central Virgin the artist has exerted his best powers upon the endeavor to express exalted purity. She is blessed by God the Father at the top of the panel accompanied by the inscription from the Song of Songs traditionally applied to her, " T o t a pulchra es, amica mea, et macula non est in te." T h e rest of the space is crammed with the symbols of the Immaculate Conception, each explained by a scroll the words of which in most instances are taken from the Song of Songs: the sun and moon, with " E l e c t a ut sol, pulchra ut l u n a " ; the star, with "Stella maris"; the gate of a castle, with " P o r t a caeli"; a sprig of lilies, with " S i c u t lilium inter spinas"; a rose-bush, with "Plantario rosae" (Ecclesi1

3

FIG. I68. ATELIER OF PEDRO DÍAZ. MARTYRDOM OF ST. ANDREW CATHEDRAL, TARAZONA (Photo. Arxiu

Mas)

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PEDRO

DÍAZ

ity of Christ, and the Adoration of the Magi. T h e shrine of the sculptured Virgin is framed by two pairs of painted angels. St. Saturninus receives his meed of devotion in the third row, embodied in a statue at the middle and painted scenes from his life at the sides. T h e first scene at the left has been lost, and a modern picture substituted; the other three panels depict him baptizing, 1 ordained deacon by St. Peter, and consecrated bishop. T h e topmost, horizontal piece of the guardapolvos is embellished with figures of the Trinity and the Evangelists; the lateral pieces, with four worthies of the Old Testament encompassed by the grandiose swirls of regal draperies and of scrolls which usually increase the majesty of Prophets in the art of the period and for which Pedro Diaz set a precedent that his pupil exaggerates to a ponderous and mannered ostentation. Whether or not the retable originally included a predella, it is hard to say; but in any case, as in the retable by Pedro Diaz at Tudela, there was finally a sub-predella a bit of which is preserved and inserted vertically at the right of the coronation of St. Saturninus, cutting off a part of this panel. The subjects are masculine and feminine heads which may have passed muster as those of holy personages but which in reality are nothing more than academic studies of different classes of human beings. Virtually all the types are close but less skilful reproductions of Pedro Diaz's creations, the masculine figures of his rugged, stern, and eccentric men and the feminine of his full-faced but captivating women. T h e painter even attempts to repeat Pedro's peculiar and delightful sort of infant. He does not adhere to the compositions of Tudela when there is opportunity; but he does spread over his Gabriel of the Annunciation something of the Aragonese harshness of Bernat with which Diaz asticus, xxiv, 14); a cedar, with "Quasi (?) cedrus exaltata" {Hid., 13); a turreted castle, with " T u r n s David cum propugnaculis"; an olive tree, with " O l i v a speciosa" (Ecclesiasticus, xxiv, 14); two fountains, one with " F o n s hortorum" and the other with "(Puteus) aquarum viventium"; a branch, with "Virga (?) Jesse floruit"; a mirror, with "Speculum sine macula" (Wisdom, vii, 26); the "Hortus conclusus," with the inscription hidden by the Gothic cresting below; and a city, with " C i v i t a s Dei." 1 If this is the subject, it is out of order, for the saint is already vested as a bishop. It is to be noted that the haloed prelate engaged in a wholesale christening does not exhibit the same features of the countenance as in the other two scenes; but it cannot be the baptism of St. Saturninus himself by St. John Baptist, since the officiant is a bishop with none of the familiar attributes of the Precursor.

FIG. 169. SCHOOL OF PEDRO DÍAZ. ANNUNCIATION, SECTION OF RETABLE. S. SATURNINO, ARTAJONA (Photo. Arxiu

Mas)

444

PEDRO

DÍAZ

had endowed his angel, and he often follows him in his imitation of Bernat's chiaroscuro. The fulsome draperies are everywhere present, especially in the prodigal and swollen costumes of the characters from the Old Testament; and yet the folds are perhaps less complicated in their crumplings and reflect, in their sharper angularities, the proximity of Aragon. He has also learned from his master to admit the extensive Aragonese embossings. He stuffs his compositions with large figures, but, since he is distinctly an artist of lesser powers, he is not able to infuse them, like Diaz, with the convincingly heroic strength proportionate to their size. His further stress upon Pedro's tendency to heavy opulence leads him not only into a profusion of gold garments and hangings but also into a weighty richness of architectural settings. T h e architectural motifs are ordinarily Gothic, capriciously and lavishly employed, as upon David's and Jacob's thrones, but in one or two instances, as especially in the Annunciation, the backgrounds of Italian Renaissance architecture are adopted in a whimsical redundance that bespeaks the tyro's unchastened enthusiasm for the new ideas as well as his usual proclivity for cumbersome extravagance. There is a premature baroque feeling about both his Gothic and Renaissance settings. Columns of glass are introduced into the temple of the ordination of St. Saturninus to the diaconate. It is hard to decide in certain instances where the author resorts to blander types of human beings whether he is already indebted to the forms of the Italian Renaissance or is merely indulging in the universal contemporary Spanish process of a dulcification of the Flemish models. Indubitably by the same hand is a fragment in the cathedral of Pamplona depicting the Purification and below it the Epiphany (Fig. 170). Among the most persuasive items of proof are the analogy of the Diaz-derived feminine types and the parallelism of the Simeon in the Purification and of the first Magus with a masculine spectator in the right background of the scene of St. Saturninus baptizing. T h e composition for the Epiphany is not exactly equal to that in the Artajona retable, but the trough for the ox and ass is identical. A painter who is stylistically related to the master of Artajona but in whom the influence of Pedro Diaz is by no means so

FIG. 170. SCHOOL OF PEDRO DÍAZ. FRAGMENT OF RETABLE. CATHEDRAL, PAMPLONA (Photo. Arxiu

Mas)

446

P E D R O DÍAZ

vital executed in a somewhat less competent manner and at a slightly later moment the retable of the Caparroso family over an altar on the south side of the ambulatory in the cathedral of Pamplona. An inscription dates it in 1507 and names as its donor Pedro Marcilla 1 de Caparroso. The centre is again taken up with sculpture, a synchronous group of the Incredulity of St. Thomas, the mystery to which the altar is dedicated. The rest was consigned to the painter's brush. The space above the sculpture is filled by a grandiose composition of the Coronation occurring in the midst of (unhaloed) saints and angels. At the sides are eight large scenes from the lives of Christ and the Virgin, disposed in no very logical order •— the Annunciation (Fig. 171), Visitation, Nativity, Epiphany, Descent into Hell, the appearance of Our Lord to His mother after the Resurrection, the Ascension, and Pentecost (with the seated Virgin moved to the left side and not, as in the usual Spanish iconography, in the middle, and with the kneeling Apostles apparently professing more reverence for her than subjection to the will of the Holy Spirit). The predella unfolds the Passion in seven episodes, one of them the Spanish version of the Espolio in which, as in the panel by the Luna Master at Sigiienza, the already denuded Christ watches the boring of the holes for the nails in the cross; and the themes of the guardapolvos are the veronica girt by angels, the twelve Apostles, and at the bottom portraits of the donor with his son and of his wife with her daughter. The four personages are accompanied by scrolls with pious ejaculations from the Psalms: the donor with "Miserere mei, Domine,2 miserere mei: quoniam in te confidit anima mea" (lvii, i); the youth with the Oxford motto, "Dominus illuminatio mea, et salus mea, quem timebo" (xxvii, 1); the lady with " I n te, Domine, (e)speravi,3 non confundar in aeternum" (xxxi, 1, and lxxi, 1); and the maid with "Vias tuas, Domine, demonstra mihi; et semitas tuas edoce me" (xxv, 4). In degree of dependence as well as in technical prowess the author of the Caparroso retable carries the tradition of Pedro Diaz a peg lower than the master of Artajona. Indeed, the only 1

Madrazo reads here Arcilla. The Vulgate reads Deus. s Sic, with an initial Spanish el 2

Fie. 171. PAINTER INFLUENCED BY PEDRO DÍAZ. ANNUNCIATION, SECTION OF CAPARROSO RETABLE. CATHEDRAL, PAMPLONA (Photo. Arxiu

Mas)

448

P E D R O DÍAZ

respect in which an indebtedness to Diaz is still fairly evident is in the struggle for a trenchant characterization of the Apostolado. A possible affiliation with the Artajona master is established by some of the types in the narrative scenes, in which there is an occasional approximation to the eccentric countenances inherited at Artajona from Diaz; but the author is a decidedly weaker personality, and, even if he does not dally with the settings of the Renaissance, he more frequently appears to turn to the suaver faces of Italian art. He is differentiated further by a more servile homage to Flanders and even, at this tardy date, to the models of Roger van der Weyden, although, despite his failure to use Schongauer's prints, some of the types would suggest that he was acquainted also with German translations of the Flemish precedents. The rendering of the bodies and visages is strongly affected by Roger's creations, and the compositions of the Annunciation and Epiphany seem to be taken, mediately or immediately, from Roger's St. Columba altar in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich. Though some of the garments consist of gold brocades and the Ascension actually has a gold background in distinction from the landscapes or rooms in the other scenes, the proximity of Aragon is no longer betokened by embossings in accordance with the general tendency of the altarpiece to emasculate the ostentatious and powerful style of Pedro Diaz. The retable of the Prophets and Patriarchs that serves as a background for a miraculous sculptured Crucifix over an adjacent altar in the ambulatory, even if the eye which starts with a prejudice in that direction might perhaps uncover some distant analogies to the present group of Navarrese paintings, will more logically find its place in our discussion of the Renaissance. The parochial church at Losarcos, south of Estella, contains a retable almost as directly dependent upon the style that Pedro Diaz had imported into Navarre as the altarpiece of Artajona, although the author is by no means identical. According to the norm for the structure of Navarrese retables at this period, the centre is reserved for a sculptured group, the Visitation. Of the painted compartments, the four lateral sections depict the Annunciation, Nativity, Circumcision, and Epiphany; the large remate, the enthroned St. Blaise; and the

NAVARRE

449

predella, half-lengths of Zechariah, Jeremiah (Fig. 172), Jacob, Habakkuk, David, and Abraham. It is in the partially successful effort for the forceful individualization of these big-boned Prophets that the artist most clearly reveals his admiration for

FIG. 17A. SCHOOL OF PEDRO DÍAZ. JEREMIAH, SECTION OF RETABLE. PARISH CHURCH, LOSARCOS (Photo. Arxiu

Mas)

the achievement of Pedro Diaz. The St. Blaise belongs to the same class of characterizations. The masculine types in the narrative scenes have a scowling sternness and plainness of feature to represent which the painter did not need to exaggerate greatly the precedent that Diaz had set. The closest model

45o

P E D R O DÍAZ

for his feminine type in the production of Diaz is the Virgin of the Pillar in the Tarazona altar, a figure, however, that mayhave been put in by an assistant; but there is a look about his women which suggests that in his conception of them he was perhaps influenced by the near-lying school of Burgos, out of which Diaz himself probably came. A breath of the Avila manner also seems to overhang his work, so that the critic wonders whether as an apprentice he may not have accompanied Diaz in the latter's peregrinations through the artistic coteries of Avila and Burgos. With the precocious baroque tendencies of Diaz and his circle, he seats St. Blaise upon as blatantly fantastic a throne as those of the Prophets at Artajona. In technical merit he is perhaps not quite the equal of the master of Artajona, nor does he possess entirely even that painter's modicum of bigness of personality to accord with the Herculean style that Diaz had bestowed upon both of them.

CHAPTER LV OTHER HISPANO-FLEMISH Ι. SEGOVIA.

PAINTINGS

THE SEGOVIA MASTER

IT IS perhaps possible to add another personality to Castilian painting of the second half of the fifteenth century by attaching a few works to the author of the panel of St. Ildefonso's reception of the chasuble in the right aisle of S. Martin at Segovia. The heavenly scene occurs in the presence of two donors, at the right a lady patronized by St. Anthony of Padua and at the left a gentleman partly destroyed by the loss of a strip of the panel. An inscription at the bottom gives us the surname of the donor, Diaz de Villareal, but unfortunately nothing beyond the initial A of his Christian name, which, however, in view of the theme, was probably Alfonso. His wife's protector would suggest that she was called Antonia. 1 The inscription includes also the date of the picture's completion, which has usually been read as 1470, a moment in the fifteenth century impossibly early for the style. The perplexing thing is that the "seventy" seems clear and that it is the Roman numerals standing for the century out of which it is difficult to get "fourteen hundred." Some solution to the puzzle, however, will have to be found, for this is another instance in which stylistic considerations must prevail over conflicting factual evidence. The style plainly shows that relaxation of the Hispano-Flemish manner into a smoother and more indigenous mode which occurred almost everywhere in Castilian painting at the very end of the century. Slight Flemish reminiscences linger in the troop of angels accompanying the Virgin and here and there in the draperies, as in the vestments of St. Ildefonso and in the chasuble with which he is being presented; but in general the artistic expression has become thoroughly Spanish. The author is not a very highly 1 Mayer (Segovia, Avila und El Eskorial, 11 ) evidently did not observe the fragment of the gentleman at the left and so misinterprets the A of the inscription as referring to Antonia.

452

OTHER HISPANO-FLEMISH

PAINTINGS

gifted exponent of this Hispanicization and tranquillization of the tradition borrowed from the Low Countries, and yet even the moderately endowed Spanish artists of the Middle Ages never fail to delight us with the decorative way in which they spread expanses of gold brocades in their panels, as here both in the miraculous chasuble and in the frontal of the altar upon which the Virgin manifests herself. We are once more the debtors of Diego Angulo's acumen 1 in recognizing a connection of the Segovia picture with a version of the same theme in the Prado, No. 1294 (Fig. 173), and hence with the other three panels of the Prado series, Nos. 1290, 1293, and 1295, respectively the Coronation of the Virgin, St. Ursula surrounded by her virgins, by Pope Cyriacus, and by further ecclesiastics, and St. Anthony tormented by demons.2 The provenience of the series is reported as Toledo. 3 The author is unquestionably identical with the Segovia painter, although he may have produced the panel in S. Martin at a slightly earlier moment in his career. The relationship is embodied not only in the very close parallelism of composition for the two representations of St. Ildefonso's visionary experience but also in exact similarity of types. The Virgin at Segovia, for example, has a cast of countenance that looks forth at us again in Our Lady and particularly in the angel at the left in the Prado rendering and likewise in many of the angels who attend the Coronation. The Flemish traits are about as far expunged or mollified as in the Segovia panel, and the painter emerges in the Prado series as an artist of no greater stature. In general he is a singularly dull composer, although he emphasizes the supernatural atmosphere of the episode of the chasuble by introducing at the lower right two candle-bearing pages struck to the ground with awe (whereas in the ordinary accounts of the event St. Ildefonso's retainers are said to have been scared into flight). I t is possible that for the Coronation and for the trial of St. Anthony he had dimly in mind Schongauer's prints of these themes, although in the latter instance he has turned the holy 1

Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft, X L V I (1925), 39. The Assumption in the Prado that I shall discuss on p. 468 has sometimes been claimed as a member of the series, but if this be true, it is at least by a totally different hand from the rest of the panels. s See Sentenach in Boletín de la Sociedad Española de Excursiones, V I I I (1900), 103. 2

Fio. 173. THE SEGOVIA MASTER. ST. ILDEFONSO'S RECEPTION OF CHASUBLE. PRADO, MADRID (Photo. Ruiz Vernaccì)

454

OTHER HISPANO-FLEMISH PAINTINGS

anchorite over upon his back and with Spanish religiosity added a consoling vision of Christ. Exaggerating the Spanish fondness for monumental masses in a painting, he goes even beyond the contemporary Catalonians in the way in which he encumbers the background with serried throngs of supernumeraries only the tops of whose heads for the most part are visible — a sea of the canonized maidens who attended Our Lady revealing herself to St. Ildefonso and almost the whole assembly of the eleven thousand virgins as a setting to the figure of St. Ursula! As if the feminine bevy were not enough in the St. Ildefonso panel, a group of masculine spectators is crowded in at the right of the altar. The numbers are reduced for the Coronation, yet even here the space above the throne is filled with a burst of red seraphim. The author can sink to rather low levels of draughtsmanship, making his countenances look like masks, lamely delineating the prostrate postures of the terror-stricken pages, and betraying himself at his worst in the panel of St. Ursula, where, for instance, the gloved hands of the prelates are scarcely worthy of a child's craft. Such factors as the types of the pages, the attenuated Christ and Virgin in the Coronation, the folds of St. Anthony's garments, the neatly painted wall of St. Ildefonso's cathedral, and the rather weird chiaroscuro arouse the suspicion that he may have had some contact with the Gallego workshop and particularly with that member of it who was largely responsible for the Ciudad Rodrigo retable; but the affiliations are not sufficiently pronounced to include him within the Gallego orbit. His colors and their juxtapositions (if the effects are not the result of repainting) are somewhat garish. He is especially addicted to a harsh red, as in the robe of Christ appearing to St. Anthony. He scarcely merits a long discussion, and yet, with all his shortcomings, he has the interest of prophesying modernity by occasional impressionistic touches in his brush-work, as in the white fabrics that hang from St. Ursula's sleeves. Two other works at Segovia may be assigned to this Master's circle, although neither seems to be by his own hand. Judgment is much hampered by an accumulation of dirt over the panels in the first example, which consists of the folding wings of a sculptured, wooden relief of the Passion in the Herrera chapel at the

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

455

left of the nave in the very church of S. Martin. T h e Epiphany is depicted in the upper compartment of the left wing, and the lower compartment is reserved for the donor and his patron, St. Sebastian. His wife appears in the corresponding section of the right wing, presented by St. John Baptist, and above her the composition of the theme in the Prado series is almost repeated in a representation of St. Ursula and her companions. T h e exterior of the wings is painted with the instruments of the Passion. T h e second work in question comprises two large paintings on canvas, Nos. 25 and 28 of the Provincial Museum, Segovia, which, to judge by their high and narrow shape, might have been organ-shutters and may be guessed from their Hieronymite themes to have once decorated the monastery of El Parral, close to the city. 1 On one picture, St. Jerome stands holding his staff, with the lion at his feet, against a background of grouped Hieronymite monks. An inscription at the bottom names him and designates him as " o u r father." 2 The most celebrated among his many female devotees, St. Paula, occupies a corresponding position in the companion-piece, surrounded by her daughter, Eustochium, and other nuns of the Order. St. Paula is identified by an inscription beneath her, and her daughter by the words, Eustochio su fija. Both groups are represented in rooms the walls of which are decorated with what was probably meant to simulate patterned leather. The manner is less closely associated with the Segovia Master than are the wings of the altarpiece in S. Martin, and yet the types, some of which recall rather definitely the St. Anthony in the vision of St. Ildefonso in S. Martin, make the classification within the Master's entourage the most appropriate niche for the two canvases. What differences there are from his style prove, in the matter of artistic skill, to be to their advantage. So far as my present knowledge and perception go, proximity to the author of the two canvases is the most reasonable milieu in which to set the panel, in the Lázaro Collection, Madrid, of 1 T o r m o (Boletín de la Sociedad Española de Excursiones, X X V I I , 1919, p. 205) definitely asserts them to have come from E l Parral, I know not on w h a t authority. 2 I am not certain that I am right in interpreting the abbreviations after the saint's name as calling him the father of the Order.

456

OTHER HISPANO-FLEMISH

PAINTINGS

the traditional subject, St. Jerome engaged in writing a book encompassed by other monks of the Order (Fig. 174). It is not only that the saint rejoices in the same odd halo, a sort of jewelled bonnet emitting rays, but there are also points of stylistic contact. A critic, nevertheless, who should wish to maintain rather an affiliation with the school of Avila would have much on his side, for the panel reveals analogies to the manner of the painter who did the retables of Nuestra Señora de Gracia and of St. Peter in the cathedral of that city. T h e countenances are cast almost as much in his general mold as in that of the Segovia Master., and here and there the parallelism is rather close, as between the St. Jerome and the Isaiah of the former retable or between the monk reading from a lectern and the St. Joseph in the Epiphany of the predella in the latter altarpiece. T h e stones and their junctures, in the porch depicted as a part of the setting, recall the materials so peculiarly characteristic of the architecture at Avila and in the region. Except occasionally in the puckered folds of drapery and except perhaps in the careful definition of the paraphernalia on the writing desk, the origins in the art of the Low Countries have largely given way in favor of the generalized national style; and yet some strangely primitive elements remain, such as the unforeshortened tiling in front of the porch. 2.

OTHER

SEGOVIAN

PAINTINGS

OF T H E

PERIOD

Three other Segovian panels, respectable imitations of the art of Tournai, may be grouped together as interrelated, though not associated with the Segovia Master. T w o of them, about equal in size and perhaps once belonging to the same altar, are in the Provincial Museum, Nos. 16 and 7, a Deposition and an Assumption of the kind with which are combined the iconographical suggestions of the Immaculate Conception. 1 Tormo 2 gives the provenience of the Deposition as El Parral, and it may be presumed that the Assumption was once in the same institution. T h e third piece is a large Crucifixion in the Collection of Don Raimundo Ruiz at Madrid, which is reputed to have See above, pp. 188 and 312 and below, p. 470. Op. cit., 205. I cannot believe that he is right in assigning them to so late a date as 1520. 1

2

Fig. 174.

SCHOOL OF SEGOVIA (?). ST. JEROME IN HIS STUDY. LÁZARO COLLECTION, MADRID

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OTHER HISPANO-FLEMISH

PAINTINGS

come from Segovia and is guessed by its owner to have been the remate of a retable over the high altar of the old and no longer extant cathedral. 1 The hugeness of the pattern in the brocaded background certainly implies that the panel was intended for a lofty spot in an edifice in which the vistas were large. A possible connection with the two panels of the Segovia Museum is embodied especially in some degree of similarity between the Virgin at the Crucifixion and her figure in the Assumption. It is hard to descry any affiliation with the Segovian works hitherto mentioned in another panel of the Provincial Museum, No. 22, depicting Nuestra Señora de los Dolores as pierced by seven swords in the hilts of which are represented the scenes of her Sorrows. An achievement of average merit, it incorporates at Segovia that same ultimate phase of the Hispano-Flemish manner which appears about 1500 in the rest of Castile and which sacrifices the Flemish inheritance to an indigenous neutralization. 3.

SIGÜENZA.

THE

M A S T E R OF T H E R E T A B L E OF S T S .

AND C A T H E R I N E

(ANTONIO

MARK

CONTRERAS?)

A distinguished and highly individualized manipulation of the Hispano-Flemish style is incorporated in the retable of Sts. Mark and Catherine in the chapel dedicated to these lights of the Church in the cathedral of Sigiienza (Fig. 175). Their standing effigies occupy the central panel, and St. Mark places his hand upon the head of the vigorously painted, kneeling clerical donor, the founder of the chapel, Juan Ruiz de Pelegrina, precentor of the cathedral, who died at Burgos in 1497 and left his donation of the construction of the chapel to be completed by his nephews in 1 5 1 1 . 2 The Crucifixion appears in its usual position above the principal panel. The two lateral compartments at the left depict St. Mark preaching and martyred through being dragged by horses; those at the right, St. Catherine's disputation with the philosophers and her ordeal of the wheels. A blessing Christ of Sorrows is ensconced in the middle of the predella, flanked at the left by the Virgin, St. John Evan1

If the guess is correct, it must have been the old cathedral, since the present edifice that replaced it was not begun until 1525. 2 M . Pérez-Villamil, La catedral de Sigiienza, 273-276.

OTHER HISPANO-FLEMISH PAINTINGS

459

gelisi, and St. Peter, and at the right by the Magdalene, St. Sebastian, and St. Paul. Similar half-lengths of saints deck the guardapolvos (almost wholly lost at the right), Gregory, Clara,

Fig. 175.

ANTONIO CONTRERAS (?). RETABLE OF STS. MARK AND CATHERINE. CATHEDRAL, SIGÜENZA

Michael, Anthony, an unidentified feminine saint, then Quiteña, and her sister, the virgin-patroness of the cathedral, Liberata (in Spanish, Librada) ; 1 the crowning piece of the 1 Quadrado, Castilla la Nueva (in España, sus monumentos y artes), II, 188; Alonso de Villegas Selvago, Flos sanctorum, edition of Madrid, 1593, vol. I, p. 678.

46O

OTHER HISPANOFLEMISH PAINTINGS

guardapolvos enshrines M a r y Annunciate and Gabriel. I t is particularly the crumpled schematization of the draperies and such details as the miniature angels in the episode of the wheels that reveal the Flemish origins of the style, but the inheritance from the Low Countries is largely disguised beneath personal and national traits. The painter is fond of gaunt forms, like those of Signorelli, and, if we may judge by the expression o f his actors, he must have had a melancholy outlook upon life. In much the same fashion as the Avila Master he stresses the bony structure of the countenance, and he accentuates this emphasis by a more extensive resort to chiaroscuro than was the custom of most Hispano-Flemish artists — a chiaroscuro, moreover, in which the rather violent contrasts between the high and low lights remind one of Pier di Cosimo. T h e Budapest Master exhibits similar qualities, but the Sigiienza painter is a very different and a greater personality. He is endowed with an altogether charming delicacy of draughtsmanship which stops and sketches with a miniaturist's delight the soft, w a v y locks of youths and maidens or the equally fluffy beard of St. Mark. With a Spanish j o y in such things, he turns to rich contemporary costumes and to a lavish spotting with gold in backgrounds, in hangings behind his personages, and in their habiliments. He has an affection for a very brilliant red virtually equivalent to the shade of this color that is one of the most engaging constituents of Valencian painting in the fifteenth century. The altarpiece of Sts. Mark and Catherine was manifestly painted c. χ ξοο, when the Flemish borrowings were everywhere being more definitely translated into the national idiom. T h e year 1511, when Pelegrina's nephews record the completion o f the chapel, would seem to be the latest possible date for the execution, but the retable might have been one of the parts o f the chapel that were finished before the ecclesiastic's death in 1497. It is difficult to follow Mayer in discerning any relationship to the style of the panels of L a Sisla, but there exists a partial confirmation, which he himself has not noted, of his other surmise, that the author was an Antonio Contreras who in 1496 did a non-extant retable of St. Augustine for the cathe-

FIG. 176. ANTONIO CONTRERAS (?). SECTIONS OF RETABLE. THE LAFORA COLLECTION, MADRID (Photo.

Moreno)

FORMERLY IN

462

OTHER HISPANO-FLEMISH

PAINTINGS

dral of Sigüenza. 1 T h e evidence consists in the presence of a signature on the central St. Catherine's sword just beneath the hilt, which is tantalizingly confined to the given name ANTONIUS, so that, if it is the appellation of the artist, we are left to conjecture just how far the theory of chances would admit that there could have been another painter of the same Christian name as Antonio Contreras working for the cathedral at exactly the same time. Tormo 2 guesses that it may have been the signature of a blade-smith, copied by the painter from an actual sword, and the word ANTONIUS is indeed followed by a series of characters, I $ X X O, which are difficult to twist into standing for Contreras and look like the trade-marks of a swordmaker. W e need have little hesitation in assigning to the immediate circle of the author of the Sts. Mark and Catherine retable, if not to the master himself, the fragments of an altarpiece once in the possession of the antiquarian, Don Juan Lafora, at Madrid (Fig. 176). T h e fragments consist of a Pietà and separate standing figures of Sts. Michael, Andrew, Peter, and John Baptist. In addition to the general analogies in the illuminator's delicacy and the mode of puckering the draperies, the doubter should observe the rather exact parallelisms between the Lafora St. Andrew and the St. Mark of the lateral compartments at Sigüenza and between the St. Peter and the central St. Mark. T h e similarity in the latter instance extends even to the sideward droop of the head, which is repeated in the effigy of the Baptist. T h e slender physiques of the Sigüenza retable now take on in certain cases a mannered elegance. T h e countenances of St. Peter and the Baptist likewise reiterate the note of tragic sorrow. T h e hand that did the Lafora altarpiece, whether or not it is identical with that of the Sigüenza retable, surely painted the panel in the Museum of Bilbao with half-lengths of Sts. Paul and Andrew against a gold-brocaded background (Fig. 177). On no other theory can the close kinship of the two figures to the Lafora St. Andrew be explained. Both Apostles at Bilbao are surmounted by the characteristic flying scrolls of the His1 2

Pérez-Villamil, op. cit., 470. Sigüenza, 38.

OTHER HISPANO-FLEMISH PAINTINGS

463

pano-Flemish style, that of St. Paul being inscribed with Our Lord's address to him on the road to Damascus: " S a u l , Saul, why persecutest thou m e ? " The Ayuntamiento of Alcalá de Henares lent to the Pavilion of Castile in the Exposition at Seville a panel of the Madonna which, so far as a fleeting impression may be trusted, appeared

FIG. 177.

ANTONIO CONTRERAS (?). STS. PAUL AND ANDREW. MUSEUM, BILBAO

to me to have some affiliation with the Sigüenza painter. The Virgin, holding the Child and crowned by two Flemish angels, is represented as a bust against a background of diapered gold. 4.

AGREDA

The town of Agreda in the province of Soria during a long period of the Middle Ages was a part of the kingdom of Aragon, and is indeed situated so close to the present Aragonese confines that many of the Gothic pictures that its various sacred edifices have preserved in such amazing numbers belong to the

464

OTHER HISPANO-FLEMISH

PAINTINGS

school of Aragon. Of the two painted retables in the church of Nuestra Señora de los Milagros, the one containing a statue of St. Lawrence in the centre reveals a preponderance of the Castillan characteristics (which might have been expected in the province of Soria) over the Aragonese, but like the vast majority of the mediaeval pictures at Agreda it is so countrified in quality that it would not have been included in our survey unless it chanced that a work by the same hand had found its way to our own country. The companion retable of St. Vincent in Nuestra Señora de los Milagros is similar in structure, rustic awkwardness, and, perhaps through the influence of the St. Lawrence altarpiece, in a few stylistic elements, for instance even in the Castilian kind of architectural setting for the figures and scenes; but the author is not the same and takes his place rather in the Aragonese school. It is, then, only the altarpiece of St. Lawrence that for the present concerns us. His statue is flanked by painted panels with standing effigies of Sts. Jerome and Blaise (Fig. 178), which in turn are capped by representations of the former's penitence and the latter's torture by laceration. A panel of the Crucifixion surmounts the holy deacon's statue, and the predella consists of four scenes from the Passion with a Mass of St. Gregory in the middle. The retable proves that, just as the Gallego style extended as far south as Cabeza del Buey in Estremadura, so it spread its influence as far east as the borders of Aragon. The element that perhaps most convincingly argues for a derivation from Gallego example is the architecture of the rooms in which Sts. Jerome and Blaise stand and in which Our Lord's Flagellation and St. Blaise's martyrdom occur — particularly the plain windows opening to small stretches of landscape. From this analogy one is led to perceive similarities in the draperies and even in the types of personages, who carry the dilution of the forms of Bouts a degree farther than does Fernando Gallego. The same boorish craftsman was unmistakably responsible for a retable of the Virgin in the Hispanic Society at New York (Fig. 179), which the Catalogue of that institution assigns to the Leonese division of the Gallego school on the basis of alleged resemblances to the manner of the Palanquinos Master. As a matter of fact, the Palanquinos Master gives a rather dif-

Fie. 178. HISPANO-FLEMISH SCHOOL OF CASTILE. ST. BLAISE, SECTION OF RETABLE OF ST. LAWRENCE. NUESTRA SEÑORA DE LOS MILAGROS, AGREDA (Photo. Arxiu

Mas)

466

OTHER HISPANO-FLEMISH

PAINTINGS

ferent expression to the general Gallego inheritance. Except for the Flemishized statue of the Virgin and Child occupying the centre of what at least in the present arrangement of the structure is the topmost tier, all the other compartments, as in the Agreda altarpiece, are painting. T h e subjects in this tier are standing figures of Sts. Luke, Giles, Catherine, and an unidentified feminine martyr. T h e attributes of the first two saints, the ox and the hind, are novelly and neatly set as objects in the landscapes glimpsed through the windows. It is only in the three middle panels of the second tier that narrative themes are admitted, beneath the statue the Assumption and at the sides the Annunciation and Epiphany. In the two outermost sections of this tier the single standing saints are continued from above, in this case the Baptist and Lawrence. T h e predella displays the favorite motif of the Gallego circle, paired effigies of the Apostles, here comprising the whole category of twelve and depicted at something over half-length. T h e evidence that the painter is the master of the St. Lawrence retable crowds upon the student: the chambers in which the saints are ensconced and in which the same sort of rectangular windows look out upon the same kind of petty, unreal, and Benozzo-like landscapes; a multiplicity of the bull's-eye windows one of which helps to light the room in which the St. Jerome of Agreda stands; the very similar designs in the pavements of the apartments; the exact analogy of the Sts. Giles and Lawrence in type to the St. Blaise and particularly to the St. Gregory in the Mass; the more general parallelisms to the figures derived from Bouts that are presented to us by the participants in the combing of St. Blaise and in all the episodes of the Passion, especially the Flagellation; the resemblance of the Baptist to the crucified Lord at Agreda, of the angels in the Assumption to the St. John in the same Agreda panel, and of some of the Apostles in the predella to the penitent St. Jerome; the virtual equality in the disposition of the folds of drapery upon the St. Luke and the St. Blaise; and the practical identity of the haloes, so often, amidst the delightful variety with which these symbols were treated in the Spanish Middle Ages, constituting cumulative proof of a unity of authorship. T h e delicate embossing of the haloes' two rings implies some slight homage to the custom of

OTHER HISPANO-FLEMISH PAINTINGS

467

neighboring Aragon. T h e two feminine saints in the retable of the Hispanic Society depend upon the phase of the Gallego shop's output illustrated by the central St. Catherine of the altarpiece at Salamanca. It is particularly in these and the other feminine heads that the painter adapts the Gallego precedents to a square canon for the human countenance in a more

FIG. 179. HISPANO-FLEMISH SCHOOL OF CASTILE. RETABLE PROBABLY FROM THE REGION OF AGREDA. HISPANIC SOCIETY, NEW YORK

evident fashion than in the altarpiece of St. Lawrence. Since a mediaeval Spanish artist's activity is normally confined within a prescribed region, it is likely that the provenience of the retable in the Hispanic Society is the place where the author's other work is found, Agreda — still such a rich mine of primitive paintings — or some near-lying village.

468

OTHER HISPANO-FLEMISH 5.

PAINTINGS

UNCLASSIFIED HISPANO-FLEMISH

PAINTINGS

T w o versions of the Assumption in the Prado must be included among the Hispano-Flemish panels for which I have been unable to perceive with surety any connections with local schools. T h e earlier (Fig. 180) is united by a tradition of the Museum with the series in the same gallery, Nos. 1290, 1293, 1294, and 1295,1 but in any case it is inconceivable that it should have been painted by the same or even a related hand. I t suggests many possibilities, causing the student to think now of the Gallego circle, now of the Budapest Master (particularly in the liberally shadowed faces of the Apostles), or again of the retable of Sts. Mark and Catherine at Sigüenza, but none of these ties is strong enough to carry the picture along with it. One of the outstanding peculiarities is the rather Semitic type used for the angels' countenances. T h e author is a painter of no mean ability. In harmony with the Spanish formality of the composition, he retains the old substitution of scallops for the clouds against the gold background, but in the angels'vestments he reproduces delightfully the Flemish stylization of drapery and limns with affectionate skill the blossoms of iris that issue from Our Lady's tomb. So far as judgment from a rather poor reproduction is legitimate, a panel of the Betrayal included in the sale of the Manzi Collection at Paris in 1919 was painted by the same or a very closely associated artist (Fig. 181). T h e probative data are manifold: the same snub-nosed, bony-cheeked, pleasantly child-like face of Christ as appears in many of the Apostles in the Assumption, particularly the first figure on the left; the virtual identity of the St. Peter engaged with the high priest's servant and the representation of this Apostle in the Assumption; the analogy between the folds of the Saviour's robe and those of St. Thomas receiving the girdle; and the fondness for decorative flights of Flemish drapery on the angels in both pictures. T h e Manzi panel adds another obstacle to the linking of this manner with the Gallego shop •— the divergence of the composition from the Gallego cartoon for the theme. According 1

See above, p. 452.

FIG. i8O.

HISPANO-FLEMISH SCHOOL OF CASTILE. ASSUMPTION.

PRADO, MADRID

(Photo. Ruh

Vernaeci)

47° OTHER HISPANO-FLEMISH PAINTINGS to the frequent practice of Hispano-Flemish art, two other episodes are relegated to smaller scale in the background, the approach of the soldiery and the Agony in the Garden. In the other and lovelier Assumption, a part of the Castro y Solís bequest to the Prado (Fig. 182), the principal theme is combined with the ideas of the Coronation and Immaculate Conception as in the Frómista retable by a disciple of Fernando Gallego and as in the Munich triptych by the Budapest Master; but Miguel Sithium employs much the same composition for his panel in Isabella's polyptych, 1 and no real stylistic parallelisms to the Gallego circle are recognizable in the Prado version. Our Lady's golden tunic and the moon under her feet plainly identify her with the woman of the twelfth chapter of Revelation who is taken by ecclesiastical commentators as a symbol of the Immaculate Conception; and, as in the Frómista version, the detail of the clothing with the sun is extended to a nimbus of tongues of flame upon the gold background (unless, since they are not red, they are rather intended as a specialized form of the hoary convention of scallops for clouds). The Flemish hero of the author is Hugo van der Goes, and, since he apparently belonged to the coterie who were reviving a pronounced devotion to the Low Countries, he is more faithful to his inspirer than was usually true of the relationship between Spaniards and their Flemish sources by the end of the fifteenth century, the moment to which this work must be assigned. It is particularly in the angels that the dependence upon Hugo van der Goes is most tangible, but the enhancement of their prettiness above the standard of his model may indicate that he was affected also by the softer art of Memling and Gerard David. In the varying colors of the eight angels' vestures, each of a single hue, he has also abided by Flemish chromatic precedent, and has not translated them into a Spanish tonality. Because the craft is quite worthy of the Low Countries, I have at times thought that the author might be an actual Fleming resident in Spain, but the Virgin is distinctly an Iberian lady, and a very attractive one. In my speculations in regard to the school, I have floundered all round the peninsula, considering even Valencia 1

See above, p. 35.

Fio. I 8 I .

HISPANO-FLEMISH SCHOOL OF CASTILE. BETRAYAL. THE MANZI COLLECTION, PARIS (From "Les Collections Manzi"

by A.

Alexandre)

FORMERLY IN

Fig. 182.

HISPANO-FLEMISH SCHOOL OF CASTILE (?). ASSUMPTION. PRADO, MADRID (Courtesy of the Prado)

OTHER HISPANO-FLEMISH PAINTINGS

473

and Andalusia as possibilities, but I have decided to rest in northwestern Spain, as the most likely stopping-point. The types both of Virgin and angels are rather closely analogous to

FIG. 183. HISPANO-FLEMISH SCHOOL OF CASTILE (?). ST. MARK. SANTILLANA COLLECTION, MADRID (Photo. Moreno)

those of Frómista, but the evidence is not adequate for a definite attribution. Another puzzling work edging upon the group of Spanish paintings dating from c. 1500 that benefited by the second wave of exact imitation of the Flemings is a distinguished panel of St. Mark, writing at his desk, in the Collection of the Marquis.

474 OTHER HISPANO-FLEMISH PAINTINGS of Santillana at Madrid (Fig. 183). The section that most faithfully reproduces the contemporary manner of the Low Countries is the bit of landscape, in which, probably because the Evangelist has the same attribute, the author has oddly introduced, in miniature, St. Jerome tending his lion; but even so thoroughly Spanish a picture as the Visitation in the Palencian series at Cadiz displays a similar Flemish house of stepped gable in the offing, and the type of St. Mark himself is almost entirely Hispanicized, a superior example of the Iberian kind of mature man represented by the Burgos Master or the painter of the Valladolid retable of the Reyes Católicos. Here again I have finally set aside misgivings that once possessed me in regard to a possible emanation from an Andalusian atelier. Because of its punctilious and skilful fidelity to Flanders, a charming panel of the Dream of Jacob in the Abreu Collection of the Provincial Museum, Seville (Fig. 184), might be included in the assemblage of works affected by the revival of Flemish interest, were it not that the date seems to be as early as c. 1480 and that the model is certainly the more primitive master, Dierick Bouts, rather than Memling, David, or the school of Brussels (which, however, led its Spanish imitators after it into a reversion to Roger van der Weyden). It would be difficult to find another Spanish picture that reproduced so much more exactly even than Fernando Gallego the manner of Bouts. Every component ·— the sleeping Jacob, each of the angels, and the landscape — is a reflection of the Fleming's prototypes, changed only by its passage through a Spanish mirror. The most obvious parallels are the scenes from the Old Testament in Bouts's altarpiece of the Last Supper in St. Pierre, Louvain. An anomalous piece of iconography is the introduction of St. Michael (named on the halo with which he alone of the angels is honored in the picture) ordering the celestial procession up and down the ladder. In a triptych of the Madonna, St. Catherine, and St. Lucy in the Collection of Lord Lee at White Lodge near London (Fig. 185), two qualities as real as they are indefinable, a slight modification of the countenances of the Low Countries in the direction of Iberian types and an almost infinitesimally cruder technique, persuade me that we have to do with a very loyal

FIG. 184.

HISPANO-FLEMISH SCHOOL OF CASTILE (?). PROVINCIAL MUSEUM, SEVILLE (Photo. Arxiu Mas)

DREAM OF JACOB.

476

OTHER HISPANO-FLEMISH PAINTINGS

Spanish imitator of Memling rather than with a secondary Fleming. Every detail cries out the author's allegiance to Memling — the forms and the draperies, the composition of the enthroned Virgin and Child with the two flanking angels, the gentle nature of the pretty landscape in this section and its buildings, such as the mill at the right toward which a man, accompanied by his mount, is bearing a sack of grain. The St. Catherine even suggests that the author was conversant with the achievement of an artist who was influenced by Memling, the Master of the St. Lucy Legend. The delineation of the Child is the element that least bespeaks the skill of a native Fleming. Indecisive resemblances to the Pacully triptych and, in tonality, to the Valladolid retable of the Reyes Católicos hover over Lord Lee's picture, but the most congenial relative is the Madonna of the school of Burgos at Hontoria de la Cantera, 1 which likewise is inspired by the Flemish revival in Spain at the beginning of the sixteenth century. The brocaded tapestries bedecking Our Lady's throne and intervening between the virgin martyrs and the colonnades of the logge in which they stand are lightly touched with gold, but in the frequent Spanish mode yellow paint is substituted in the gorgeous stuffs worn by the several sacred personages. 1

See above, p. 300.

CHAPTER LVI GALI CIAN A N D ASTURIAN

FRESCOES

THE only significant pictorial products of Galicia in the Hispano-Flemish period with which I am familiar are several cycles of frescoes, and even these are of such rustic quality that they would not deserve mention if they did not possess the interest of the anomaly of mural paintings during the fifteenth century in Spain. Some of the Galician frescoes I have already mentioned as mistaken for Romanesque work, 1 but the most celebrated cycle, decorating the exterior stone walls of the coro in the cathedral of Mondoñedo, has never been described, to my knowledge, as anything else but Hispano-Flemish art of the later fifteenth century. It is perhaps because of the remoteness of Mondoñedo from the iconographical tradition of any great centre that the subject of the Massacre of the Innocents is expanded to cover the major part of the choir's north wall. T h e mural decoration on this side is arranged in four zones, of which the two middle ones are largely intact, unfolding the bloody tale in a long succession of brawls between the mothers and the assassins. T h e topmost zone has been truncated by the removal of the upper part of the wall, so that only the lower parts of the bodies are visible, but enough remains to show that the central part was still devoted to a continuation of the sanguinary narrative, flanked at the left by the figure of the directing Herod and at the right by a representation of the Flight into Egypt. T h e lowest of the four zones comprised a row of smaller scenes, only one of which is well enough preserved to be deciphered, the Holy Child held by the Virgin and receiving an apple from a feminine personage who is probably St. Anne since there once may have been a chapel at this point in the cathedral dedicated to her 2 and since in the iconography of the Middle Ages and Renaissance St. Anne is represented beside the MaVol. I, p. 214. See Villa-amil, Pinturas murales de la catedral de Mondoñedo, Museo español de antigüedades, I, 216, η. ι. 1

3

GALICIAN A N D ASTURIAN FRESCOES

479

donna and Child 1 as well as holding them upon her lap. On the south wall of the coro the extant remains are confined to four scenes from the life of St. Peter, who also was honored by a chapel at this spot in the church, a pair of scenes in each of the two zones. The two episodes in the upper zone are: the consignment of the keys, in a composition that would be blasphemous if it were not inspired by mere rural ingenuousness, Our Lord being depicted almost as an ecclesiastical vassal handing a key to St. Peter enthroned and wearing the papal tiara; and St. Peter's resuscitation of a woman whom I cannot follow Villa-amil in thinking to be any other than Tabitha. 2 T h e themes of the lower zone are perfectly clear, the angelic delivery of the Apostle from prison and his crucifixion (not, however, according to the tradition, head downward). T h e frescoes were executed by a backwoodsman who in some way had come into contact with the prevalent style of the peninsula, the HispanoFlemish. T h e costumes would date the cycle at the very end of the fifteenth century, so that, if they were ordered, as Villaamil guesses, by the one episcopal Maecenas of Mondoñedo in the second half of the century, Fadrique de Guzman, who held the see from 1462 to 1493, they must have been among his last artistic commissions. T h e execution is even more untutored in the next most important extant cycle in Galicia, the frescoes that adorn the apsidal end of the church of Sta. María at Mellid, east of Santiago de Compostela (Fig. 186). T h e artistic remoteness and conservatism of the province are betrayed by the fact that the mural paintings are nothing more than a translation of the old Romanesque iconographie repertoire into a rude imitation of the Hispano-Flemish fashions popular in the second half of the fifteenth century. A s the painter had clung to the antiquated iconography of the twelfth century, so in a distant country town of this sort he might even in the sixteenth century have remained faithful to Hispano-Flemish models that elsewhere 1 For Spanish examples, see B. Kleinschmidt, Anna selbstdritt in der spanischen Kunst, Spanische Forschungen der Görresgesellschaft, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Kulturgeschichte Spaniens, Erste Reihe, / Band, Münster in Westfalen, 1928, pp. 149-165. * The letters in the fragmentary inscription under the scene denominating the woman he reads as LA FI(JA) = la hija, the daughter o f . . . ; but I interpret them as the TABI of the beginning of Tabitha's name.

480

GALICIAN AND ASTURIAN

FRESCOES

had been superseded by the Renaissance. A representation of the enthroned Trinity takes the place of the Romanesque Pantocrator or Virgin of the semidome in the apse, but this theme is encompassed in the old way with the signs of the Evangelists. T h e upper edge of the semidome is embellished with a frieze of cherubs' heads. T h e zone beneath the semidome displays the approved Romanesque subject of the Apostles, James Major, John, Peter, Andrew, Philip, and (?) Bartholomew, reduced to half-lengths and each ensconced in a painted architectural compartment. T h e Apostolado appears to have been originally completed along the adjoining sides of the nave. T h e lower part of both the semidome and the zone of Apostles receives the additional adornment of a broad border of pure design in checkers. T h e figured polychromy extends to the barrel vault in front of the semidome, consisting, at either end, in the partially erased forms of a pair of trumpeting angels. T h e backgrounds are usually blue, diapered with red stars. T h e rustic style is so largely nondescript that the evidence of the costumes and particularly the Apostles' garments beneath their capes is needed to arrive at anything like a definite dating, the end of the fifteenth or even the sixteenth century. Practically ruined vestiges of frescoes in the same manner may be seen on a wall, now largely exposed to the weather, at the northeast side of the parish church of S. Pedro at Mellid. Of other frescoes that have, like those of Mellid, falsely been called Romanesque, the specimens in the east end of the parroquia at Fión 1 are so boorish in quality as to render impossible a decision between a classification in the Hispano-Flemish style or in the Renaissance. T h e latter alternative is perhaps the more likely. T h e subject in the centre of the semidome here quite accords with the orthodoxy of Romanesque art — the Pantocrator seated on the rainbow and enveloped by a nimbus; the rest of the semidome is symmetrically occupied by the kneeling Virgin ahd Baptist and by two heralding angels. Since the church is dedicated to St. Lawrence, the barrel vault before the apse is painted at the left with his imprisonment and at the right with his martyrdom on the gridiron. 1

Vol. I, p. 214.

482

GALI CIAN A N D A S T U R I A N FRESCOES

In the case of the likewise countrified frescoes in the church of Sta. Eulalia de Espenuca, 1 the decision has to lie between the fourteenth and the fifteenth century, with the balance tipping again towards the later date. In a style so largely emanating from a peasant-craftsman's self-taught technique and so little related to the various currents of mediaeval painting in Europe, there is little more to reveal the period than the degree of artistic sophistication, which in this case would indicate the fifteenth century; but the evidence does not extend to the point of determining whether the cycle is contemporary with the "international" or the Hispano-Flemish movement. The walls of the nave were apparently all once covered with frescoes, but at my visit to the church in 1928 there had been released from the whitewash on the north side only the Last Supper in a pitiful state of deterioration and on the south what is perhaps an enthroned magistrate possibly representing, if he belongs to another scene from the Passion, Pilate or Caiaphas. The heads of this figure and of a man at the right in the Last Supper (Judas?) are caricatured in the old Romanesque fashion with bulbous noses, but they plainly belong to the Gothic era. The Hispano-Flemish St. Barbara superimposed upon the early Gothic frescoes in the church at San Martin de Mondoñedo has already attracted our attention. 2 Somewhat superior in execution to the Galician norm, she is accompanied by two donors whose inscribed names seem to read Pedro Gómez and Francisco Jondre ( ?). The church of Sta. Maria at Celón in Asturias (six kilometres south of Pola de Allande, near Tineo) harbors a mural aggregation which has also been masked by criticism as the production of an earlier epoch 3 but which Flórez y González 4 had long ago assigned to the fifteenth century. As a matter of fact, the costumes and a few other details indicate that the frescoes can scarcely have been executed before the sixteenth century, although the rustic author still uses what little he knows of the Hispano-Flemish manner. The barrel vault of the apse is 1

Ibid., and vol. II, pp. 139-140. Vol. II, p. 141. 3 Ibid., p. 139. « In Museo español de antigüedades, VI (1875), 62. 2

GALI CIAN A N D ASTURIAN FRESCOES

483

decorated with the Coronation of the Virgin (in which the architecture of God's throne perhaps reveals a knowledge of the Renaissance), but a vestige of misunderstood Romanesque iconography persists in the surrounding of the scene with the Evangelistic symbols. T h e lateral walls of the apse are devoted to episodes of the Passion arranged in a larger upper zone and a smaller lower one, at the left the Betrayal, Flagellation, and Last Supper and at the right the washing of Pilate's hands, the Via Dolorosa, Descent into Hell, and Resurrection (the last embodying the characteristic Hispano-Flemish composition for the theme). T h e two scenes on each side closest in the lower zone to the altar have deteriorated beyond recognition. The present retable hides a continuation of the cycle on the straight apsidal wall. T h e triumphal arch also retains its polychromy, exhibiting on its inner surface the Deposition flanked at a lower level by Adam and the tempting E v e and on the outer surface the Annunciation, the Baptism, and what appears to be, strangely enough, the crucifixion of St. Andrew rather than of Our Lord. All this adornment of the side of the arch towards the nave, however, is an accretion of the seventeenth or even a later century or a subsequent repainting of the original HispanoFlemish stratum. T h e earlier craft appears again on the soffit of the arch, and it is here that we meet with the only piquant passage in the whole cycle. T h e interest comes from the subject, and the painter himself seems to have been stimulated by the thematic freshness to somewhat higher technical attainment. Beneath motifs of pure design that look like arabesques of the Renaissance, on the left curve the spectre of Death as a bowman is in the act of adjusting an arrow, balanced, on the right, by his victim who already carries a shaft in his bosom and is maliciously depicted in the costume of a Moor or Jew futilely grasping his money-bag.

APPENDIX

APPENDIX ADDITIONS TO VOLUMES CATALAN

ROMANESQUE

I-III

FRESCOES

BOTH archaeologically and aesthetically, the most significant addition to the corpus of Catalan Romanesque mural painting, since the publication of the first three volumes of this History, has been the release from whitewash of the frescoes in the parish church of Sorpe, above Esterri de Aneu in the upper valley of the Noguera Pallaresa. Transferred to canvas, they were shown in the Barcelona Exposition during its last months, and it is reported that they will increase the already overflowing treasure of Romanesque painting in the Museo de la Ciudadela of that city. One of the conjectures in which I indulged in my first volume 1 from the evidence of the few bits that peered forth from beneath the whitewash when I visited the church in 1928, the resurrection of the whole cycle of frescoes has disproved; but my other guesses have been confirmed. I t has turned out that there was much more extensive mural decoration preserved than the position of the scanty fragments that were then visible suggested to me; but the discovery has not altered my surmises in regard to date and high artistic merit. T h e frescoes seem to me thoroughly Romanesque works of the second half of the twelfth century, not intimately related to the other cycles from the immediate region, those of Esterri de Aneu and of S. Pedro del Burgal, which belong to c. 1200 or even to a slightly later date, but embodying, rather, a further development from the style that is incorporated in the mural paintings of Sta. Maria de Tahull in what is after all the not very distant valley of Bohi. T h e y were executed by a painter who had been trained in the traditions of the shop that had adorned the walls of Sta. María de Tahull some fifty years before but who had naturally, profiting by the general evolution towards a more sophisticated art, evolved a slightly less primitive, if also a less vigorous, mode of delineating the human form and other objects. Certain sporadic and partial resemblances to the manner of Esterri and Burgal may indicate that the master of Sorpe had acquired this greater proficiency through contact with artists who had taught the painters of Esterri and Burgal their craft but whose mural cycles are now lost; or the Sorpe master, unfolding to maturity the style of Sta. María de Tahull, may himself have been responsible for the pictorial education of the Esterri and Burgal school, whatever other influences also played upon it. 2 T h e more tangible maturity of ' P. 144.

» Ibid.

488

APPENDIX

the Sorpe frescoes must not be taken as implying that they are intrinsically as great as those of Sta. María de Tahull, that they have the same strength and freshness or constitute such monumental and beautiful decoration; and yet the now feasible study of considerable passages of the Sorpe paintings corroborates the evidence from the one head that could be seen in 1928 and demonstrates that they exist on a plane well above the average of the Pyrenean Romanesque frescoes in general artistic achievement. The section that most vividly points to a dependence upon the Tahull tradition is the richly costumed and enthroned Madonna with the Child (Fig. 187), recalling at once the corresponding figures in the semidome of Sta. María. It also provides us immediately with one of the several iconographie novelties in Spanish Romanesque frescoes that the Sorpe cycle has revealed. Above the lateral extensions of Our Lady's throne appears at the left one kind of a tree and at the right another. The specimen at the left is perhaps to be interpreted as the tree of the garden of Eden, which had brought wickedness into the world, for under it may still be read two letters that are possibly the Ev of the name of the mother of sin, eva. 1 The tree at the right, where the inscription sc (Sancta) m a r i a occurs, would then be a symbol of the Virgin as the means by which the fall of E v e had been counteracted, the idea which is often expressed by the consideration that the a v e of the angel of the Annunciation is a mystic reversal of eva. It would be the real tree of life in contrast to that of Eden, which was in actuality a tree of death. I know, however, of no other example of just this arboreal symbolism, and both trees may be emblems of the Virgin, as the rose and olive often are,2 or no more than mere decorative backgrounds, so that the ev, or whatever letters they are, would be left unexplained. This section of the Sorpe frescoes is framed at the top by a band of schematized Romanesque foliage bound by two red borders, and the background of this band consists of blocks of color alternately orange and green. The second large fragment, depicting the Annunciation, is the passage that in its types suggests most tangibly some kind of relationship to the subsequently executed frescoes of Esterri and Burgal. Its novelty is a naturalism unusual in the monumental and hieratic frescoes of Spanish churches in the twelfth century, 3 here embodied in the very faithful rendering of the Virgin's activity of spinning and in the introduction, at the right, of a handmaid drawing aside a curtain to eavesdrop upon the scene. Y e t the composition is coerced into the formality that was customarily cultivated in the solemnity of Romanesque art in general and that continued, in Spain, to be curiously com1

T h e letter that I have suggested is a ν m a y , however, be an χ or a Y. See above, p. 440, n. 3. 3 See vol. I , pp. 77 ff. 3

ADDITIONS TO VOLUMES I-III

489

bined with an increasing naturalism during the Gothic period. The spinning Virgin stands in a strictly frontal position as the central axis of the composition, subjected to the influence of the dove of the Holy Spirit and, for the sake of maintaining the rigidity of the arrangement, not turning to Gabriel who, holding a spear, constitutes the left half of the composition. The pendant on the right is the peeping servant. A bit of drapery preserved further at the left may belong to another figure in the Annunciation or in some other scene, and is balanced on the extreme right by one of the bits of setting so rare in Romanesque art, a wall of the house with a door. The characteristic striped backgrounds are everywhere present in the frescoes of Sorpe; and in the Annunciation, evidently conceived as occurring outside the house into

FIG. 187.

MADONNA, SECTION OF FRESCOES FROM SORPE

which the door leads, the lowest band is still clearly understood as the earth, since it is embellished with the same undulating motif and punctuating, conventionalized flowers as at Esterri de Aneu and S. Pedro del Burgal and is further defined by two charming, stylized Romanesque plants growing up at either side of the Virgin's feet. The narrow frieze above the Annunciation contains the inscription: V I R G O S A N ( C T A ) ( M A ) RIA. Below the framing border at the bottom are the fragments of another inscription probably referring to some episode of the Passion that was once to be seen underneath the Annunciation: -EPENSUS(?)

si(?)

ISTA(?)

COHORS

PLORATO(RUM).

One episode from the Passion is extant in part, a Crucifixion, adding, with the recently discovered example at Mareñá, two more in-

49°

APPENDIX

stances to the single representation of this theme, in Santa A n a de Montrai, that was hitherto known in Catalan Romanesque mural painting. A large section of the figure of Christ upon the cross is preserved; at the left, a woman's head and the soldier piercing His side; and at the right, the head of the man holding up the sponge. T h e maeander border is interrupted under the cross to give place to a skull. Miss King brilliantly suggests to me that, of the bits of legends, the step . . . at beside the man with the sponge may be parts of his traditional name, Stephaton, and that therefore the letters that seem to be n i me under the soldier who opens Christ's side possibly should be read as n i mi, the unbracketed sections of the two words [Longi]ni Mi[litis] (in the genitive). There is also a ρ or an r beneath the figure with the sponge. T h e last preserved narrative episode derives its theme from the dedication of the church to St. Peter, a fragment of the calling of Sts. Peter and Andrew in which they are depicted rowing a boat while between them a youth hauls forth from the sea a catch of fish, all three figures lacking haloes, perhaps because the two saints had not yet achieved their Apostleship. T h e water is represented by violating the regularity of the striped background so far as to carry up a green band, adorned with a delicate design of waves, round about the skiff and above the strict horizontality of the other bands. T h e terrestrial significance of the yellow and blue bands over the green water is emphasized by their dotting with floral motifs. T h e boat naturalistically displays a pennant (looking like a towel), but ecclesiastical seriousness is maintained b y inscribing it with the sacred monogram of Christ. T h e whole scene corresponds to the narrative representations on the lateral walls of Sta. María de Tahull, and, like them, is slightly inferior technically to the devotional figures of the Madonna and Child. The archaeological interest of the pictorial remains from Sorpe lies not only in the peculiar iconography and in the naturalism but also in the evidence that they heap upon already discovered data 1 in substantiation of a theory of some relationship between the Catalan frescoes and Lombard Romanesque painting. This evidence is forthcoming from the last two fragments of the polychromy of Sorpe, in which, together with St. Ambrose of Milan, are represented the peculiarly Lombard saints, Gervasius and Protasius. T h e presence of the universally popular father of the western church, Ambrose, would not have much meaning, but the appearance, in conjunction with him, of the two martyrs, whose cult is largely localized in northern Italy, can hardly be elucidated on any other ground than some kind of ecclesiastic or artistic connection with Lombardy, unless they entered Catalonia via France, where they also enjoyed favor. All three saints are identified b y labels. On one fragment St. Gervasius appears 1

See vol. I, pp. 45-46 and 66 ff.

ADDITIONS TO VOLUMES I-III

491

above, standing, and in the zone below him St. Ambrose is enthroned and strangely depicted as a young man. On the other fragment the standing St. Protasius alone is preserved. In type and costume Gervasius and Protasius are twins, as they actually were in life, except that each displays, in different hands from the other, the attributes of a cross and of the vase so often held by saints in Catalan Romanesque frescoes. Protasius is surmounted by a dove, framed in particolored circles, and the preservation of a piece of one such circle above Gervasius shows that he was honored with a similar capping. The lowest band behind Gervasius is accented with an undulating pattern. A less extensive and interesting Pyrenean mural assemblage has been removed from the apse of S. Román de les Bones, near Encamp in Andorra, and is now in the Plandiura Collection, Barcelona (Fig. 188). Dating, let us say, from the middle of the twelfth century, it resembles most closely the cycle from S. Miguel de Angulasters, which, oddly enough, is also situated in Andorra, and the heads even betray the same very decided lateral projection of the ears. From the semidome there is preserved a part of the effigy of the Pantocrator surrounded by the signs of the Evangelists, and from the zone beneath, St. Paul and Santiago, holding the rolls of manuscripts that are frequent attributes of the Apostles in the Catalan Romanesque frescoes, St. Peter with the keys, and the Virgin uplifting the mysterious cup. 1 The series of frescoes in the region north of Barcelona and south of the Pyrenees has received important augmentations through the uncovering of the polychrome embellishment of two apses in churches east of Gerona. 2 The frescoes in the church at Mareñá, near Verges, obviously of the early thirteenth century, are capably executed specimens of the manner embodied in the group of mural paintings of this period in the district of Vich, and find their nearest stylistic analogue in the cycle of San Saturnino de Osormort. There appears even the same predilection for bestowing beards upon the masculine actors. The principal section of the frescoes that had been revealed at my visit to Mareñá in June, 1930, was the zone on the curving wall beneath the semidome — at the left of the central window the lapidation of St. Stephen (to whom the church is dedicated) and at the right a third Catalan Romanesque mural example of the Crucifixion, 3 in which the cross, the Virgin, the soldier wounding with his spear, and two other figures are extant. The semidome has also been laid bare 1 On pages 9 5 - 9 6 of volume I , I have discussed the theory that the Virgin's cup is the Grail, but the S. Román de les Bones figure seems to provide another example without rays. Miss King writes me that she is soon to publish an article connecting the cup with the tradition that Our L a d y at the Crucifixion gathered and preserved the Precious Blood that flowed from Our Lord's body. 2 T h e frescoes of a third apse, that of Rabós del Terri, I postpone to the heading of 3 Franco-Gothic. See above, p. 489.

49 2

APPENDIX

but proves to have preserved only a few mere vestiges of forms, so that it is impossible to recognize the theme. T h e only other piece of painting that had been uncovered at the time of my visit was a figure standing beside the representation of a door (?) at the level of the zone beneath the semidome but at the very end of this curving wall as it joins the nave on the Epistle side. The gestures of St. Stephen's executioners casting the stones are similar to those of the corresponding personages in the stylistically different antependium of Llanás, and the posture of the martyr, as he succumbs, is rendered by the same rigid contortion, which is the traditional Romanesque mode, indeed, for delineating a falling body. Whether the backgrounds were originally banded, I was unable to determine. The dismounting, for restoration, of the retable of Borrassá's atelier in the old monastic church of S. Miguel at Cruilles (not the parish church, which is dedicated to St. Eulalia) 1 has brought to light fragments of Romanesque mural decoration of the same late period as those of Marena but of some significance iconographically. T h e edifice itself Puig classifies with the churches of the eleventh century but hesitates to specify the date. 2 Except for a patch of the characteristic Romanesque foliate ornamentation in the left of the three windows the Romanesque frescoes are preserved almost solely in the zone under these windows (Fig. 189). T h e semidome has been reconstructed at a much later period and partly painted with the cloud-enveloped forms of meretricious angels, but from beneath this accretion there project the feet and a bit of the drapery of a figure of the Romanesque stratum. T o this earlier stratum probably belongs also a piece of an inscription just under the feet of the figure: RA R É G N Â T S E M PER (abbreviated) V I R G I N E I S GA T h e size of the windows. created a special condition that forestalled at this point under the semidome the habitual theme of the Apostolado, and the interfenestration seems to have been adorned only with painted columns, of which vestiges remain. T h e bottom zone begins at the top with a large maeander; under this is a narrow simulated curtain; and finally, of greater vertical breadth, the section in which the significance chiefly lies, three tiers of confronted lions against a red background, adding another Spanish example of Romanesque beasts, used for monumental polychrome decoration, to those of Bohi and Arlanza. Although the beasts' tails end in conventionalized leaves, they are lessimaginative, less individualized, less powerful, drier, and more monotonous than their fellows from either of the two other places, and yet they possess much of the vigorous charm with which Romanesque artists were able almost invariably to endow the representation of animals, especially when, as here, they are stylized. T h e motif wit1 Vol. I I , p. 332. Under the illustration, I have wrongly stated the parish church as. the resting-place of the retable. * L'arquitectura romànica a Catalunya, I I , 217 and 490.

494

A P P E N D I X

nesses once more to the influence of Byzantine and oriental fabrics. Folch aptly adduces the examples of the impressively similar Byzantine textiles of Siegburg and Deutz and correctly perceives that, like the painted curtain above and in many another Catalan Romanesque cycle of frescoes, the leonine cortège takes the place of the actual tapestries with which the walls of ecclesiastical edifices were often hung. R O M A N E S Q U E F R E S C O E S IN THE W E S T E R N P A R T OF THE P E N I N S U L A

T o this category we may perhaps add the mural paintings that are being uncovered by the restorations that are now taking place in the mudejar church of S. Román at Toledo. Lampérez 1 would like to date the edifice as early as the twelfth century, but even if, according to the traditional year of consecration, 1221, we assign it to the thirteenth century, the frescoes appear still to belong essentially to the Romanesque manner, albeit to a late aspect of that manner, and they betray little or no evidence of an acquaintance with the Gothic style. A t the time of my last visit to the church in the summer of 1931, much of the polychrome decoration that had then been revealed consisted in pure design of mudejar motifs and in Arabic inscriptions round the windows, which, since they are ornamental in purpose, might have been admiringly adopted by Christians and do not necessarily substantiate the old theory that the building was once a mosque. There is no reason, indeed, for believing that this Moorish lettering is not a part of the general scheme of polychromy which includes the undoubtedly Christian paintings of the human figure. These, so far as at my visit they had been disclosed, are largely confined to the west end of the church: on either side of the west wall, forms of Isaiah and Jeremiah, somewhat more rustic in execution than the rest of the decoration; on the soffit of an arch, an episcopal saint, who, since the name of his balancing companion (though the figure is still hidden) may be read as Leander, would probably be his brother, Isidore; in another section of this region of the building, the vestiges of a winged and mounted personage who should perhaps be identified as one of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse; and in the tympanum of a door, two pendant and censing angels. CATALAN ROMANESQUE

Gudiol's second volume on primitius), which is devoted to I was familiar no new examples a mate, in the Rómulo Bosch 1

PANEL

PAINTINGS

Catalan Romanesque painting (Els the panels, adds to those with which that can really be said to exist, except Collection at Barcelona, to the side-

Historia de la arquitectura cristiana española en la Edad Media, II, 546-547.

496

APPENDIX

piece of an altar in the M u s e u m of Vich depicting a standing angel. 1 T h e two panels in the Musée des A r t s Décoratifs at Paris that he discusses (both of them already Gothic, as are a number of other pieces that he treats) I purposely omitted from m y book, the fragment of a frontal or retable of St. A n d r e w because it seemed to me rather insignificant, the retable of St. Michael because it is too countrified. T h e antependium of St. John Baptist in the R ó m u l o Bosch Collection I likewise excluded b y reason of its rudeness; but a renewed examination gives it a certain adventitious importance in m y eyes as a counterpart in panel painting to the strange rustic frescoes of Catalonia, 2 especially those of Marmellá, and as therefore indicating that the clumsiness at Marmellá is not due, as some have thought, to retouching but in v e r y truth to the boorishness of the painter. A l t h o u g h it is v a g u e l y described as of Aragonese provenience, the forms of the Bosch antependium, in which there is no suspicion of repainting, are v e r y like those of Marmellá, despite the slightly superior technical merit of the panel, and the iconography is that of a peasant craftsman who enjoyed little contact with the artistic traditions of the great centres but trusted to the rather naïve and h e a v y wings of his own untutored imagination. T h e wildly staring, halfnude Baptist is enthroned in the central compartment against a burst of symmetrically disposed bunches of foliage that oddly resemble cactus leaves; the two upper lateral compartments are occupied merely b y rows of the members of the audience to the Precursor's sermons; and in the two lower compartments the beasts who were his companions in the desert are aligned in two tiers like the forms on children's charts of animals. W h a t e v e r the date at which the clodhopper of Marmellá daubed the walls of the church, whether in the twelfth or a succeeding century, the better defined and preserved types of St. John's disciples demonstrate that the frontal could not have been executed before at least c. 1250. One of the principal contributions that Gudiol's second volume makes to our knowledge is his revelation of the exact provenience of m a n y of the panels in the Museum at Vich. T h u s it is no longer necessary to describe the celebrated early antependium of St. M a r t i n as coming from a church in the region of the mountain range of M o n t grony, for he definitely denominates the church of S. M a r t i n in the town of Gombreny in this region as its original home. T h e polychrome beam in the Vich Museum, 3 which I had been told he held to be a part of an ensemble with the Tosas ciborium in the Plandiura Collection, he now states to h a v e once been attached to the board-canopy from T o s t in the same Collection, 4 so that it turns out that I was rightly troubled by the apparently later style of the beam in contrast to the 1 See m y vol. I , p. 285. 3 See vol. I, p. 293.

2 4

Ibid., pp. 166 ff. Ibid., p. 296.

ADDITIONS TO VOLUMES I-III

497

earlier manner of the Tosas baldacchino. He furthermore claims, contrary to my former belief, the panel of the Last Supper in the Vich Museum as the crest of this whole Tost monument.

FIG. 190.

SECTION OF FRONTAL. (Photo. Arxiu

PARISH CHURCH, GREIXA Mas)

One or two hitherto unnoted antependia have hove in sight since the publication of Gudiol's book and mine. The well preserved example at Greixa was still on the altar of the church when in June, I930,1 made the arduous climb from All, just southwest of Puigcerdá, to study it. Thoroughly Romanesque in style as well as in composi-

498

APPENDIX

tion but obviously embodying, like so many of the Catalan frontals, a persistence of this earlier tradition in the full thirteenth century, it does not seem to be closely related to any of the other extant specimens. Its nearest parallels are perhaps the Encamp and Feneras antependia, which were probably created by a shop in L a Seo de Urgel, a city fairly close also to Greixa, but the analogies are far from exact. The workmanship suggests a countrified reflection of the fresh wave of Byzantinism that overspread Catalonia at the beginning of the thirteenth century. The central section, magnified to such a size that only small spaces are left for the four lateral compartments, is occupied by the Pantocrator in a circular nimbus the spandrels of which (Fig. 190) contain the Evangelistic signs. A distinctive feature is encountered in the stalks of conventionalized Romanesque foliage that rise from vases and constitute finíais above the throne at either side of the Saviour. The lateral compartments are devoted to the standing figures of the Apostles Peter, Paul (beardless), Santiago, and Andrew. Like the Encamp and Feneras frontals, the Greixa specimen clings to the old Catalan Romanesque affection for a vibration of yellow and red. The backgrounds throughout the panel are red accented by stars, and the garments and all other objects alternate this color with yellow. A t both ends of the frontal are preserved vertical strips that are apparently fragments of other panels, the relics either of the side-pieces of the same altar or of antependia of other altars. In the one at the left a bit of a jewelled mandorla containing a starred blue background can be made out; the partially cut-off object in the right strip might conceivably be an eagle. I am unable likewise to find any close artistic affiliations for a late Catalan Romanesque frontal of unnamed provenience, which at my last knowledge was in dealers' hands. Its principal interest is iconographie, for it is an accommodation of the Ascension to the traditional subdivision of an antependium into a series of formal compartments. The old separation of the space into a large central section and four smaller lateral sections is, to be sure, violated, as in some other late examples, but the arrangement in a number of rigid compartments of a certain kind is nevertheless preserved. The two usual zones are also maintained. The middle of the upper zone is occupied by the ascending Christ, but He is delineated as blessing and set in a mandorla in exactly the same way as the Pantocrator who had reigned from the centre of the frontals of the twelfth century. The two lateral compartments of this upper zone, which are broader than was the wont of earlier days, contain, with the strict symmetrical balance demanded by the stereotyped tradition of the antependia, the censing angels who receive Our Lord and their companions who admonish the Apostles below. The zone beneath is, then, reserved for the Apostles present at the Ascension, with their names written above them, but the persistence of the old subdivision into compartments is again illustrated

ADDITIONS TO VOLUMES I-III

499

by the framing of the Virgin at the centre in a rectangular niche just under the figure of her Son. St. Peter is beardless, and the narrative of the N e w Testament is so far abandoned as to allow Sts. Paul, Barnabas, and Luke to oust certain Apostles from the number of those who beheld the Ascension, St. Luke appearing perhaps because he was the author of the Acts in which the event is described at greatest length. On the border beneath the heavenly vision in the upper zone are inscribed fragments from the words of the angels in the eleventh verse of the account in the first chapter of the Acts (in a Latin translation other than that of the Vulgate): " V i r i Galilaei, quid amiramini (sic — admiramini) aspicientes in coelum? Hie Gesus (sic) (the rest of the verse omitted until) quemmamodum (sic = quemadmodum) vidistis eum." In a way, the frontal is an adaptation of the regular composition for the frescoes of an apse to the requirements of an antependium, the upper zone equivalent to the Pantocrator and angels of the semidome, and the lower zone to the line of Apostles on the curving wall underneath; and it thus suggests that at least in some instances these apsidal themes, as well as the similar sculptured subjects in the tympana of church portals, were still conceived as conventionalized representations of the Ascension, in so far strengthening the theory that the Ascension was the original source of the habitual iconography of apses and doorways. 1 The style, even more rustic than that of Greixa, likewise embodies a survival of the Romanesque mannerisms in the thirteenth or even early fourteenth century. T h e publication of the Catalogue of the Muntadas Collection at Barcelona has brought to my notice two important Romanesque sidepieces of an altar 2 that in my single and hurried visit to the mansion many years ago I did not observe or at least was not allowed time to study. T h e y complete indeed the investiture of the altar of S. Saturnino de Tabernoles, the frontal of which is the celebrated and perplexing panel of the nine bishops in the Museo de la Ciudadela, Barcelona. 3 Each depicts another canonized bishop crowned with the horned mitre of the twelfth century, and in distinction from the problem that envelops the subject of the antependium, inscriptions here come to our aid to identify the prelates, one of them St. Martin and the other probably St. Brice (Fig. 191), for, although the legend seems to read PRICIUS, I can find no saint of this name and therefore suppose that the initial letter was a Β that has lost its lower curve, BRICIUS would be a shorter form of the more usual Latin BRICCIUS; and St. Brice not See vol. I, p. 47. N o . 305 of the Catalogue. 3 See m y vol. I , pp. 229-231. T h e dimensions correspond with sufficient exactness, when we take into account the destruction of the lower piece of the frontal's frame. T h e side-pieces are 1.20 metres high by .95 wide; the frontal, one metre high b y two wide. 1

1

fOO

APPENDIX

only enjoyed a cult in Catalonia 1 but, as also an archbishop of Tours, would constitute a natural pendant to St. Martin. Besides demonstrating that the panel in the Barcelona Museum was a frontal and not a retable or sarcophagus-lid, 2 the publication of the side-pieces of the altar helps to answer the question in regard to the theme of the antependium in favor of an interpretation as merely a series of other canonized bishops. T h e style, the postures, and the draperies are fundamentally the same as those of the frontal, except that the elegant attenuation is somewhat diminished, perhaps for the sake of better filling the broad spaces. Another significant discovery, resulting from the dismounting of the retable in S. Miguel at Cruilles, is a polychrome beam or viga probably once a part of a ciborium and now destined eventually to grace the intended Diocesan Museum of Gerona. Among the many aspects of its importance, not the least is the unusually extensive decoration with human forms. It may be described most effectively by quoting the detailed and lucid account of it courteously sent to me by its finder, the distinguished archaeologist and intelligent restorer at Figueras, Don Juan Sutrá. " O n its front is unfolded the theme of greatest interest. First, on a red background there is a floral ornament in yellow, white, and black. Almost at the centre, occupying one and a quarter metres, may be seen the representation of a procession: two personages with candlesticks, another with a censer, a fourth with a missal, and a fifth with a patriarchal cross (Fig. 192); eighteen singing monks, one with an alms-basin in his hand; again, bearers of candlesticks, a thurifer, and a missal-carrier; and finally, presiding over the procession, a bishop or patriarch, holding his pastoral staff and accompanied by his two assistants spreading before him the processional veil. The subject is completed by a Romanesque church as a background, over the door of which is a Maltese cross. T h e colors are black, white, yellow, green, and bright carmine. T h e floral ornament is repeated at the other end. One extremity of the beam (at right angles with the front — the other extremity not retaining its polychromy) has a floral motif in a very bad state of preservation. T h e back of the beam is also adorned with a floral theme in white, black, red, and green, and a motif of alternating white and red points." Gudiol, in a letter to Don Juan Sutrá, ingeniously discerns in the figured subject the procession of the bishop of Sipontum to Monte Gargano after the miracle of the bull; but it may have no connection with the story of the archangel to whom the church is dedicated and be nothing more than the representation of an ecclesiastical ceremony. If the participants in the procession are really monks rather than secular clerics, they reveal that the ceremony, whether or not that of Monte Gargano, is rendered in terms of the monastery to 1

See my vol. I l l , p. 154, n. 2.

2

Vol. I, p. 218.

FIG. 191. SIDE-PIECE OF ALTAR OF FRONTAL OF BISHOPS. COLLECTION, BARCELONA (Photo. Arxiu

Mas)

MUNTADAS

ζ02

A P P E N D I X

w h i c h the church at Cruilles w a s a t t a c h e d . T h e clerics of the Cruilles b e a m are in t r u t h hard-looking codgers, resembling when in profile (as t h e y all are, except the prelate and his t w o assistants) the longnosed, big-eyed t y p e t h a t the C a t a l a n R o m a n e s q u e artists ordinarily e m p l o y e d to depict the lower classes and the w i c k e d ; and the painter has h a d difficulty in g i v i n g the impression of m o u t h s open to song. T h e undeveloped technique t h a t m a k e s such sorry creatures o u t o f the ecclesiastics m a y be due to the rustic training of the author, b u t it m i g h t also be ascribed to a relatively early d a t e anterior to the frescoes o f the apse, let us say a t the end of the t w e l f t h c e n t u r y . T h e r h y t h m obtained through the w a y in w h i c h one figure almost e x a c t l y repeats another does n o t seem to be a studied arrangement as in the highly sophisticated antependium of the bishops in the B a r c e l o n a M u s e u m , 1 b u t the result of the painter's incompetence as an inventor. THE

FRANCO-GOTHIC

STYLE

T h e recent yield o f discoveries in the F r a n c o - G o t h i c field has been v e r y slight. T h r e e o f them increase the sparse offering o f C a t a l o n i a a t this period, one in m u r a l and the others in panel painting. T h e frescoes h a v e appeared in the apse o f the parish church, once the chapel of a castle, a t R a b ó s del T e r r i , j u s t north of G e r o n a (not San Andrés del T e r r i , as has been usually stated, 2 w h i c h is an a d j a c e n t h a m l e t g i v i n g the name to the m u n i c i p a l i t y in w h i c h R a b ó s lies). I t is a question w h e t h e r t h e y should be catalogued in the R o m a n e s q u e or F r a n c o - G o t h i c group, for t h e y retain m a n y R o m a n e s q u e qualities and belong to the C a t a l a n series o f paintings o f c. 1 2 7 5 - 1 3 0 0 transitional between the t w o manners; b u t certain details, such as the angels' heads, tip the balance in f a v o r of G o t h i c . I t is only the p o l y chrome embellishment of the semidome of the apse t h a t is e x t a n t , d i s p l a y i n g the orthodox s u b j e c t of the enthroned P a n t o c r a t o r ensconced in a nimbus upheld b y two flying angels and encompassed b y the E v a n g e l i s t i c symbols and the sun and moon. T h e nimbus assumes the quatrefoil shape t h a t engirds the M a d o n n a in the frontal o f the first half of the thirteenth c e n t u r y , N o . 4 of the M u s e u m a t V i c h ; the little openings in the P a n t o c r a t o r ' s throne are still R o m a n e s q u e ; and the folds o f H i s g a r m e n t s are B y z a n t i n e in character. T h e angels are bent a t right angles in the conventionalized R o m a n e s q u e posture emp l o y e d to indicate flying. T h e signs o f the E v a n g e l i s t s are a belated example o f the frequent R o m a n e s q u e manner of conceiving them w i t h h u m a n bodies and animals' heads,3 and t h e y are strangely depicted as also seated upon thrones. T h e b a c k g r o u n d is n o t banded. T h e execuVol. I, pp. 229-231. Confusion has been rendered the easier because the church of Rabós is also dedicated to St. Andrew, and the town is sometimes called San Andrés de Rabós del Terri. 3 See vol. I, p. 187. 1

2

ADDITIONS TO VOLUMES I-III

503

tion is of average quality, and the preservation fairly good, save for the loss of the color in all parts except in the case of the yellow paint that takes the place of gold on the border of the nimbus and on the haloes. More significant and intrinsically beautiful is the panel which has been recently added to the small but precious Soler y March Collection at Barcelona and which is quite in accord with the high quality of its other treasures, an antependium coming from a church in the northern mountains of the province of Lérida and dedicated to the Cordovan martyr of the fourth century, St. Victoria, who, with her

FIG. I 92. SECTION OF DECORATION OF ROMANESQUE BEAM. S. MIGUEL, CRUILLES (Courtesy of Don Juan Sutrd)

brother, St. Acisclus, enjoyed in the Middle Ages a cult also in Catalonia 1 and whose relics were said to have been translated to this province. As might be expected from its provenience, it belongs to the group of frontale with raised stucco backgrounds, one of the last specimens of this genre, dating from c. 1300 and already entirely Franco-Gothic in its types. St. Victoria stands at the centre, as a cult-figure, under a Gothic, trefoiled arch. The narrative commences 1 Soler in his article on the antependium (Ciutat, published at Manresa, I I I , 131— 133) enumerates several mediaeval Catalan churches dedicated to them; I may add to his evidence, as an example of their persisting popularity in the fifteenth century, the appearance of St. Acisclus on one of the doors of the retable of Sts. Cosmas and Damian in the Salas Capitulares of the cathedral of Barcelona, a work of the circle of Huguet dating from c. 1450. The lives of the twain and the origin of their Catalan cult are treated at length in the old book by A. V. Domenec, published at Gerona in 1630,

504

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at the upper right with the frequent mediaeval practice of the telescoping of two episodes, the praetor of Baetica directing the incarceration of Sts. Victoria and Acisclus and angels feeding them in prison. T h e latter episode is represented with frank conventionalization: the prison is merely symbolized by a miniature house, the lower part of which consists of two pointed arches each harboring one of the saints and the upper part of which is constituted by two nooks, one above the other, containing the angels with the miraculous food. T h e story then passes to the upper left with the formally symmetrical composition of the angels descending from heaven to rescue the martyrs from the waters of the Guadalquivir into which they had been thrown. Their martyrdom continues at the lower left with their roasting on wheels over a fire, and culminates at the lower right with another telescoping, for beside Victoria, as her tongue is extracted, there lies the decapitated body of her brother, who, according to the ordinary legend, was not slain until after his sister had suffered this torture. T h e pattern of the raised stucco in the lateral compartments is a form of the diamond motif that manifests itself in the Lérida frontals as early as the specimen from Treserra, but in the central division it assumes the more elaborate design of alternating squares marked with bars and with a conventionalized, four-leafed flower. One can see through the necessarily extensive restoration, in this once badly injured panel, to an original execution which was superior to the general run of craftsmanship bestowed upon these antependia and which excels in an imitation of very early Gothic illuminations or glass. We may further swell the rather scant legacy of Franco-Gothic painting in Catalonia by an Annunciation (Fig. 193) on the outer surfaces of the two wings of a triptych in the cathedral of Tortosa, the larger of two triptychs in the archives of this church the inner parts of both of which are reliquaries containing the various venerated objects in numerous small compartments. Each of the compartments is covered with a piece of glass, partly undecorated so as to allow the relic to be seen but adorned in its upper section with a curious kind of painting 1 on the under surface of the glass, calculated, like so many other aspects of Romanesque and Franco-Gothic painting in CataHistoria general de los sanios y varones ilustres en santidad del principado de Cataluña, pp. 212-216. The curious ecclesiologist should consult also Alonso de Villegas Selvago, Flos sanctorum, edition of Madrid, 1593, vol. I, pp. 619-621. Their feast is celebrated on November 17. In view of the paucity of bibliography on Bernard de Traveseras, whose painted wooden casket occupied us when we were considering the works of the circle of the Serras (vol. II, p. 309), it is important to note that Domenec also discusses him (p. 279), actually describing the casket at L a Seo de Urgel but misreading the inscription. 1 J. Gudiol, La pintura sota vidre, in Arts i bells oficis (Barcelona), I (1927-1928), 209-214.

FIG. 193. ANNUNCIATION ON WINGS OF TRIPTYCH. CATHEDRAL, TORTOSA (Photo. Arxiu Mas)

APPENDIX Ionia, as a cheaper imitation of work in enamel. T h e majority of the paintings are figures of the saints whose relics lie behind the glass, but some of them represent angels and, in slightly greater proportions, events from the life of Christ. T h e large Annunciation which, in monochrome, embellishes the exterior of the wooden wings of the bigger triptych appears to have been executed by a different artist from the interior glass-painter, who, however, was likewise trained in the Franco-Gothic school and was probably responsible also for the adornment of the glass in the smaller triptych. T h e still somewhat rigid lines of the Annunciation betray that it was not painted much later than c. 1300, but the draughtsmanship is that of a real master rather than a mere craftsman. T h e superbly conceived wings of Gabriel are coerced with beautiful convention into the given space of the pointed panel. In Aragon, to the already known ample deposit of Franco-Gothic frescoes must be added a series of the fourteenth century in the pilgrimage church of Nuestra Señora de Cabanas, once the parroquia of a vanished town, close to L a Almunia de Doña Godina. Chiefly mortuary, they derive their principal interest from the fact that they illustrate the complete process of translation of a sculptured tomb into paint which may be observed in part accomplished on the sepulchres of S. Miguel de Foces 1 and Mahamud. 2 N o t only is paint substituted for sculpture in the customary themes of the archheads, but the recumbent effigy itself is now rendered in this medium. T w o , at least, of the monuments are feminine, their occupants being identified by inscriptions. On the first, the inscription reads: " D o ñ a Guillerma Pérez muger de Don Miguel de Albero que fué." T h e theme of the tympanum is the transportation of the deceased's soul to heaven b y angels. T h e lady of the second tomb is named b y a similar legend as Doña Oria Pérez, the wife of Don Martin de Doariz, and the Crucifixion is depicted in the archhead. T h e spandrel between the arches of these two adjoining monuments displays a blessing angel. On a third tomb on another wall, the effigy and inscription are not preserved, but only the decoration of the tympanum with the funeral ceremony and again the lifting of the soul to Paradise. T h e theme of the other arch upon this wall is a great surprise, since its whole space is consumed by the spirited figure of a mounted warrior, not a saint and perhaps again a sepulchral motif, the representation of the deceased in the vigor of his life. T h e treasures of Nuestra Señora de Cabanas do not end with the frescoes, for the rector of the parochial church at L a Almunia keeps in his house an object of the same provenience that is once more a pictorial treatment of a theme usually consigned to sculpture, a wooden panel of a-Crucifix which was used both in procession and for 1

Vol. II, p. 59.

a

Ibid., p. 156.

ADDITIONS TO VOLUMES I-III

507

the altar and on which the corpus is rendered in paint without relief. T h e style is Franco-Gothic of the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century, and the technique of a quite unusual exquisiteness, a successful reproduction of the modes of the miniatures. In the second volume of Els primitius,1 Gudiol publishes a similar Franco-Gothic, Catalan Crucifix in the Museum of Vich. T h e same church, under the raised coro at its west end, presents us with another example of the characteristic Aragonese polychrome ceilings of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, from the beams of which the human figures have largely disappeared except for a series of mounted knights. T h e painting is executed in the conventionalized Franco-Gothic manner customary in the decoration of such roofs. I know only in Mas's photographs the antependium of St. Eulalia of Mérida in the parish church of Javierre, near Bielsa, in the Pyrenees of the province of Huesca, 2 but even these patently demonstrate it to have been painted in the Franco-Gothic period probably as late as Gudiol's 3 date, the beginning of the fourteenth century, although the rather countrified craftsman possessed only a distant acquaintance with the new Gothic modes of delineating the figure and was still bound b y an allegiance to many Romanesque mannerisms. In the central section, St. Eulalia stands, crowned and holding a sceptre, under a trilobed, pointed arch, the spandrels of which are filled, according to a regular practice of the later frontals, with pieces of buildings (Fig. 194). She remains almost as much an august princess as the St. Eulalia (of Barcelona?) in the frescoes of the twelfth century from Estahón. T h e delineation of her countenance is but slightly touched b y the Gothic conceptions of pulchritude, and it is principally the characteristic bend of the right arm and the drapery that betray the advent of another artistic epoch. With the license of the Gothic antependia in violating traditional arrangements, the lateral sections consist of three inordinately long narrative zones on either side. T h e topmost scene at the left, the arrival of St. Eulalia and her friend Julia at the town in a cart, shows that we have to do with the Eulalia of Mérida rather than her homonym of Barcelona. 4 T h e next compartment at the left comprises two episodes, Eulalia and Julia proclaiming their faith before the tyrant Calpurnianus and Eulalia's flagellation. T h e lowest zone on both sides is so badly injured that the themes are difficult to decipher, but the scene at the left appears to be the two virgins' enjoyment of a vision of Christ after their tortures. 5 'P.4J6. 2 N o t the Javierre in the same region, near Boltaña, nor the one south of Boltaña, 3 Els primilius, near Castejón de Sobrarbe. II, 346. « See vol. I l l , p. 144, n. 1. I cannot guess the identity of the man who receives them at the gate and appears to be labelled Judes ( = Judex, judge), for he differs widely in physical traits from the tyrant Calpurnianus of the other scenes. s I find no such event recorded in the lives of the St. Eulalias that are accessible to me.

5o8

APPENDIX

In the highest compartment at the right, Eulalia is stretched upon the bed of fire while the boiling water and molten lead are poured upon her. Calpurnianus in this scene is the nearest approximation to a true Gothic form in the whole frontal, but one of the executioners, as in several other instances in the panel, is a survival of the long-nosed Romanesque caricatures of the common people. I cannot interpret the next episode, which depicts Eulalia and two haloed companions in a vaulted chamber at the right and Calpurnianus and a henchman at the left. T h e final scene on this side is composite, including the crucifixion of St. E u l a l i a 1 and the translation of her soul to heaven in a mandorla upheld by angels and amidst the amazement of the onlookers. 2 Some of the inscriptions that identify the several actors are preserved. T h e frame is punctuated with the disks that since the earliest days of the painted antependia had simulated the jewelled inlays of the more costly goldsmith's specimens, but the backgrounds of the compartments, in the way of so many other Gothic examples, look forward, in their pattern of a large, encircled fleur-de-lis originally overlaid with gold or silver, to the ostentatious design that the later painters were to lavish also upon the brocades of the costumes and hangings. In discussing, in m y second volume, 3 the problem raised by the documentary reference to the pictorial activity of Domingo Peñaflor in 1335 o n great ceiling of the cathedral of Teruel, I should have pointed out that in 1329, as a resident of Saragossa, he signed a receipt of payment for a panel that he had executed for the tomb of a certain Ramón Burgos. 4 I have recently discovered that Castile can boast a ceiling in the approved Franco-Gothic mode which in size, quality, and preservation, if not in historical interest, m a y well dispute with the Aragonese Teruel the primacy in this highly specialized kind of painting. I refer to the example that covers almost the whole parish church of Sinovas, j u s t northeast of Aranda de Duero. It is only here and there, in the main portion of the artesonado, that the painter departs from the preponderantly profane repertoire to acknowledge grudgingly the sacred function of the edifice with a few figures of saints. N o other Spanish ceiling comprises a richer variety of the secular themes that so largely continued the grotesquerie of the Romanesque — a complete menagerie of animals, birds, and monsters, including even an elephant with a howdah, huntsmen, wrestlers, a devil tempting a 1 T h i s is the form of m a r t y r d o m ordinarily related of St. Eulalia of Barcelona, b u t there w a s m u c h confusion between the legends of the two like-named virgins. 2 T h i s is not the regular version of the death of either E u l a l i a , since the soul of each is said to h a v e passed to heaven in the form of a d o v e . T h e outlines of this p a r t of the panel are so dim t h a t I m a y h a v e misinterpreted the s u b j e c t , which m i g h t be the miraculous snow-storm said to h a v e protected the bodies of both Eulalias. 3 P . 103. « Resista de archivos, X X X I V (1916), 463·

FIG. 194.

C E N T R E OF F R O N T A L OF ST. EULALIA. (Photo. Arxiu Mas)

PARISH CHURCH, J A V I E R R E

A P P E N D I X

mortal, a siren ( ?) viewing herself in a mirror, and all the rest of the subjects traditional in the Gothic embellishment of roofs. The analogy of the fantastically opulent costumes to those of such a retable as that of St. Helen in S. Miguel, Estella, 1 would date the ceiling at the turn of the fourteenth into the fifteenth century. THE

CIRCLE

OF F E R R E R

BASSA

After many years of hesitation, I have finally ventured to assign to some gifted follower of Ferrer Bassa or in any case to some painter affiliated in various ways with him a small and gently distinguished polyptych of four panels now in the Morgan Library at New York (Fig. 195), which has been credited by Van Marie and certain other critics to France and especially to the nebulous school of Avignon. The subjects of the four lunettes are the instruments of the Passion, the mourning Virgin, a half-length of the dead Saviour (labelled Pietas Christi and thus revealing in Catalonia so early a use of this common term for the theme), and the mourning St. John. Below, in each panel, are four narrative scenes disposed in two rows, making together sixteen, and the subjects are ordered horizontally in each row across all the four panels. The upper row is dedicated to Our Lady and displays in the usual mode from left to right the Annunciation, the Nativity of Christ, the Epiphany, (with a long leap) the appearance of Our Lord to His mother after the Resurrection, the Ascension (in her presence), Pentecost (the usual Catalan composition with the Virgin exalted in the middle), and the Dormition. The eighth scene violates the sequence and will receive our attention forthwith. The Passion occupies the second row and unfolds in the following episodes — the Betrayal, Christ before Pilate, the Via Dolorosa, the offering of the sponge at the Crucifixion, the opening of Christ's side with the spear (the Crucifixion thus, most anomalously, expanded into two incidents), the Deposition, and the Entombment. The last scene in each row is reserved for an eschatological topic, the Harrowing of Hell above and the Last Judgment beneath (the blessed being strangely symbolized only by white-habited monks with their abbot — Cistercians? — and the damned all Benedictines!). There remains at the bottom a third zone, in each panel reserved for two compartments with standing effigies of saints, in the outermost panel at the left, single, in the outermost at the right, paired, and in the two inner panels one compartment with a single figure and the other with double forms. The saints commemorated are Michael (overcoming the dragon), John Baptist, Peter, Paul, John Evangelist (with the unique attribute of a flowering branch), Nicholas, Dominic, Francis, Augustine, the Magdalene, Thecla (at once suggesting a connection 1

See my vol. Ill, p. 180.

Fie. 195. C I R C L E OF F E R R E R BASSA. L E F T SECTION OF POLYPTYCH. MORGAN L I B R A R Y , NEW YORK (Courtesy of the Library )

512

APPENDIX

with Tarragona), and St. Catherine of Alexandria. The gold backgrounds, exceptionally in the Italo-Gothic painting of Spain at a date that can scarcely be later than 1350, are lightly incised with a foliate pattern. The types are plainly related to those of Ferrer Bassa, but the author is a person of finer faculties, so that, unless we are prepared to believe that Ferrer Bassa could be so much better an artist in the smaller compass of panels than on the wall, we must deny to him these rather superior paintings. The compositions for the Via Dolorosa and the Deposition are too exactly parallel to the representations of these scenes in the Pedralbes chapel not to imply some sort of association. In the Deposition there is even reproduced the detail of the peculiar stress upon the extraction of the nail from Christ's feet. The author and Ferrer Bassa must have been members of the same coterie, but it is quite within the range of credibility that the former was the latter's master. There emerge also analogies to the styles of the retables from Estopiñán 1 and Santa Coloma de Queralt 2 but not gripping enough to demand an attribution to either painter. A few compositional similarities to the works of the Serras, as in the Nativity with the two midwives, indicate merely, as was to be expected, that the two brothers often continued an already established tradition of Catalan iconography. As in the general group of Catalan productions to which the picture belongs, the links with Italian art still hold firmly. The inspiration is in this case very tangibly the Sienese school or at least that school as it had been interpreted along the western Italian littoral. The four panels even constitute one of the few examples in Spanish painting that derive rather from the Sienese stratum anterior to Simone Martini, i. e., that of Duccio. The iconography, the types, and the architectural settings are ultimately suggested by Duccio's precedent. The compositions of the Betrayal, the Deposition, and the Entombment, in particular, should be compared with those of the pala of the Sienese cathedral, which in the second instance may be the source of the featuring of the man with the tweezers for Ferrer Bassa as well as for the author of the polyptych. Diego Angulo,3 with the acute perception for which I so often express my respect in this volume, has recognized an intimate stylistic analogy between the fragment from Cardona in the Museo de la Ciudadela, Barcelona, representing the Annunciation and Epiphany, that I have assigned4 to a phase of the Catalan school immediately subsequent to Ferrer Bassa, and a Nativity published by Berenson 5 (without the statement of its present resting-place) as by a Ligurian 1

Vol. II, pp. 207-212. Ibid., pp. 215-217. Archivo español de arte y arqueología, VII (1931), 272. * Vol. II, pp. 214-215. s Dedalo, October, 1930, pp. 278 and 280. 2

3

FIG. 196. CIRCLE OF FERRER BASSA. NATIVITY, SECTION OF RETABLE (From "Quadri senza casa" by Β. Berenson)

514

APPENDIX

follower of Taddeo di Bartolo (Fig. 196). I am willing once more to go beyond Angulo's scholarly circumspection and propose not only a unity of authorship but also a provenience from the same original altarpiece, so that this would constitute another case of a Catalan work mistaken by Berenson for a product of the Riviera. 1 In the Barcelona and Berenson pieces, Angulo has indicated the practical identity in the figuration of the frames and in the decoration of the flanking uprights with standing saints and busts of canonized women in medallions. What gives him hesitation in claiming them as parts of a single retable is that, in the small reproductions accessible to him, the feminine monastic saint in the upper right corner of each fragment looks to be the same and that the exact repetition of the same saint in one altarpiece would be an anomaly; but a close examination of the nun in question, labelled St. Scholastica, in a large photograph of the Barcelona piece reveals that she differs in several details, as in the nature of her crown and the lines of her habit's trimming, from her counterpart in the Berenson example. The Barcelona fragment belonged, as we saw in volume I I , to the left section of a retable at the centre of which must have been ensconced the Madonna and Child; the Nativity of the Berenson fragment, like the Annunciation of Barcelona, was a pinnacle, and, since the narrative ordinarily proceeded from left to right, it must have been at the right of the central Madonna. From the Nativity the sequence would have returned to the Epiphany at the left in the lower tier. Inasmuch, however, as some very slight divergencies exist between the tops of the Barcelona and Berenson pieces, for instance in the number of crockets and the comparative heights of the pinnacles and uprights, there were probably at least two vertical, narrative sections at each side of the central Madonna: the Berenson piece would have stood in the outer of the two sections at the right (with, possibly, the Visitation at the top of the lost inner section at the right corresponding to the Barcelona piece, which was directly at the left), and there would have been another (lost) section further to the left of the Barcelona fragment. The eminent critic, Alejandro Soler y March, once told me that he intended in a future article to group the Barcelona fragment with two or three other bits of Catalan painting of the Trecento and to make for them all a rather surprising but ingenious attribution. I will not steal his thunder, but I must dissociate at least the Cardona (Barcelona) fragment from his prospective group and assign it to the vicinity of Ferrer Bassa. The recognition, indeed, of the Berenson panel as by the same hand increases the number of similarities to the charming polyptych of the Morgan Library that in the immediately preceding paragraphs we have credited to Ferrer Bassa's circle or just conceivably to Bassa himself. The Annunciation is rather different; but the 1

See my vol. II, pp. 448 ff.

ADDITIONS TO VOLUMES I-III

515

types and composition of the three Kings of the Epiphany are somewhat analogous, and the architectural setting of this scene, with its oblique partitions, is significantly cognate. The St. Dominic in the lowest tier of the polyptych is a cousin of the monastic saint placed at the bottom of the left upright in the Barcelona piece, and the St. John Baptist in this tier of the polyptych is literally repeated by the PreUt %

Fig. 197.

J A I M E SERRA. CHRIST AT THE HOUSE OF MARTHA AND M A R Y , SECTION OF R E T A B L E . PARISH CHURCH, IRAVALLS (Photo. Arxiu Mas )

cursor on the left upright of the Berenson Nativity. I am not convinced that the polyptych, which is earlier and fresher, was executed by the author of the Cardona fragments, but the interval between them is certainly not difficult to bridge. The Byzantine traits that Berenson discerns in the Nativity and its uprights are rather to be interpreted as the characteristics derived from Duccio that we have observed in the Morgan picture.

5I6

APPENDIX

JAIME SERRA

It is pleasant to be able to augment the heritage of a painter such as Jaime Serra, whose works have in them a delicate freshness like that of the dawn, even though in one instance the addition be made at the expense of his brother, Pedro. The first accretion, however, comes from the discovery of a production hitherto unknown to the world of criticism, a retable of St. Martha at the left of the nave in the church of the hamlet of Iravalls, on the outskirts of Latour-deCarol, just northwest of Bourg-Madame, in the part of Catalonia that now belongs to France. Internal evidence assigns it indisputably to Jaime Serra, as might have been anticipated from the external fact of the existence of another of his retables in the immediate region, at Palau. 1 T h e saint stands in the central panel in a plain but rich contemporary costume, lined with fur; the pinnacle above her contains a simpler form of the Crucifixion than Jaime ordinarily employed (perhaps because of the comparatively small size of the altarpiece), in which only the Virgin and St. John appear at the sides of the cross. T h e narrative, recounted with the charm of Jaime's gentle mediaeval directness, begins in the upper left pinnacle with St. Martha, girt in an apron, serving Our Lord at meat while her sister St. M a r y Magdalene listens, kneeling, to His words (Fig. 197). D o I imagine that the artist has intended, according to the Biblical story, to set upon St. Martha's face an expression of timid disapproval of the Magdalene's idleness? Instead of omitting figures in order to accommodate the scene to the limited space of the pinnacle, the master has strangely conceived two of the participating Apostles as largely hidden by the frame, and in the case of St. John, whose body is wholly seen, he is obliged to carry the back of the head out over the frame. T h e next compartment depicts both the arrival at Marseilles and the taming of the Tarasque (Fig. 198). T h e lowest scene at the left is the resurrection of Lazarus, out of place chronologically, oddly treated, with accompanying clergy and a crucifer, as if it were a Christian funeral ceremony, and arranged, in all probability by chance, in a composition that is very like Giotto's burial of St. Francis in S. Croce. T h e right pinnacle is devoted to the rescue of the young man of Avignon who vainly tried to swim the Rhone in order to hear St. Martha's eloquent sermon, not represented, however, according to the account in the Golden Legend, where she raises him from the dead after his drowning, but according to some other version in which Our Lord appears at her prayer and saves him while he is still in the river. 2 1 Vol. II, pp. 230 ff. ' It is possible that the representation of Christ as performing the miracle was suggested by the words of St. Martha's prayer in which she supplicates Him to raise the lad as He had raised her brother.

51Β

APPENDIX

Again in the second episode on this side, the arrival of the already deceased Magdalene at her sister's last illness to light the lamps extinguished by the wind and to expel the devils tormenting her, Jaime does not follow exactly the Golden Legend, for he adds the detail of the Magdalene applying one of the tapers that she had brought to Martha's mouth (or is it a spoon?). A t the top of the room an angel banishes a demon in the very act of extinguishing two candles. T h e final scene is the immediately subsequent appearance of Our Lord and the heavenly host, once more, however, not, as in the Golden Legend, j u s t before her death, but evidently after the event. 1 In conformity to Jaime's greater simplicity, only the borders of the gold backgrounds are patterned, the design being a delicate rosette, except the background of the dining-room of St. Martha's house, which is treated as if it were an opulent gold tapestry embellished with his favorite motifs of the i v y and griffins. Certain passages, such as the heads of Sts. Martha and M a r y M a g dalene in the scene with the Tarasque, reveal perhaps better than any of his other productions the extreme technical refinement of which he was capable. I t is with very conscious art that he surrounds St. Martha's bed, in the two compartments in which it appears, with red chests, accented by gold trimmings, which serve as kinds of frames to pick out, by their brilliancy, these scenes and to emphasize them. T h e retable of Iravalls, perhaps because, like that of Palau, it belongs to his early period, is one of those works of Jaime Serra that admonish us of a fact that we are too prone to forget amidst his many indigenous and French qualities, the dependence upon Siena as the fundamental constituent in Catalan painting of this time, a relationship that in his case was particularly immediate. For evidence the student should examine especially the angels at St. Martha's death and the figure of St. John Evangelist wherever he is introduced into the narrative, above all in the scene of the meal at the house of Sts. Martha and Mary. T h e work with which I am now convinced that we must enrich Jaime Serra at the expense of his brother Pedro is the retable of Sts. Julian and L u c y in the clausura of the convent of Santo Sepulcro at Saragossa. In attributing this painting to Pedro in volume II, 2 I acknowledged that m y opinion was based only upon a poor photograph; but the subsequent study of the original, which I was per1 Since the scene occurs in a bedroom, it can scarcely be the actual death, which, according to St. Martha's own lovely desire, took place out of doors under the light of heaven; and the form on the bed seems distinctly a corpse. The subject depicted, however, might be the miraculous appearance of St. Fronto of Périgueux, together with the Saviour, at her obsequies, although the bishop behind the Magdalene is quite as probably their brother, St. Lazarus, who is found, in episcopal costume, in two of the other compartments. 2 Pp. 275-276.

ADDITIONS TO VOLUMES I-III

519

mitted to see, together with other important works of art, through the courtesy and aesthetic interests of the Archbishop of Saragossa in opening the strict enclosure of the convent to me, has definitely persuaded me that the hand is that of Jaime. T h e analogies to Pedro that I noted in my second volume may be due to the possibility that the retable was painted at a time when Jaime was in partnership with his brother; but I already observed in that volume that a closer parallel to the composition for the Crucifixion was provided by the example in the Gualter altarpiece ascribed to Jaime, and I am not now disposed to recognize any essential collaboration of Pedro in the retable of Sts. Julian and L u c y . In making the attribution to Pedro I was partly influenced by what I could see of the gold background of the central panel in the photograph; but although the pattern proves to be the same modification of his usual design as appears in his altarpiece of Pentecost at San Lorenzo de Morúnys, a quatrefoil enclosed in a circle, it is quite possible that Jaime in his later works adopted this mannerism of his brother, and the one detail is not enough to counterbalance the identity of the types with those of Jaime's authenticated productions. T h e gold background of the Crucifixion, moreover, is diapered with a motif that is not the norm either with Pedro or with Jaime, a small, repeated foliate figure framed in an oval. St. Lucy's cope is brocaded in one of the designs of birds and foliage so much affected by the Serra atelier. T h e attribution to Jaime receives some external support from his known execution of two other works for the same institution of the Santo Sepulcro, the Alpartil retable now in the Museum of Saragossa and the panels of the Passion in the church of S. Nicolás belonging to the convent. I find that I had rightly recognized the narrative scenes from the photograph, so that the marks of interrogation that in volume II are placed after St. L u c y ' s trial and the Betrayal of Christ may now be removed. T h e subject of St. Lucy's last communion is combined with the very article of her death. It is now possible to name also the figures on the uprights: on the first a t the left, Sts. Peter, Matthew, and M a r k ; next, David (?), the Baptist, and the Magdalene; on the first at the right, a Prophet, St. John Evangelist, and St. Catherine of Alexandria; and, finally, Sts. Paul, Luke, and (?) Anthony Abbot. In discussing the Italian origins of the type of the Virgin of Humility employed by Jaime and Pedro Serra, 1 I failed to allude to the number of Trecento representations of this theme in the Sienese style of painting at Naples. 2 Of those with which I am familiar, the two Vol. II, pp. 230 ff. For a list, see R . van Marie, Italian Schools of Painting, V , 341-342. One of the versions of the theme in S. Domenico is mentioned as a possible model for the Spanish series in a recent booklet of the Hispanic Society at New Y o r k , Fourteenth-Century Painting in the Kingdom of Aragon beyond the Sea, New Y o r k , 1929, p. 11; but the author does not specify which version is meant. 1

2

ξ ΊΟ

APPENDIX

that resemble most the Catalan treatments of the subject are in S. Domenico Maggiore, the so-called Madonna of the Roses and another version in a lunette; but if Van Marie is right in discerning in them Andrea Vanni's influence, they can scarcely have been executed early enough to have started the Serra series, which began in the sixties of the Trecento, and in any case they appear to have been done subsequent to this decade. Van Marie, however, believes that the nursing Madonna in S. Chiara, which depends directly upon Simone Martini, is the upper part of a composition of the same sort, and there were doubtless other early Neapolitan examples any one of which would have been sufficient to inaugurate the line of Catalan imitations. I should, indeed, have indicated the Trecento school of Naples, so thoroughly subjected to Sienese influences, as, by its geographical situation, one of the most likely spots, together with Pisa and Genoa, 1 from which the Spanish painters of the fourteenth century could have imbibed their familiarity with Sienese art. The brilliant Catalan scholar, Alejandro Soler y March, to whom I owe so much, tells me that he believes Naples to have been the chief source of artistic inspiration for Catalan Italo-Gothic painters, and we should thus have a precedent in the earlier period for the hypothesis of the Neapolitan training of such masters as Alfonso and Bermejo in the second half of the fifteenth century. That, as I have contended in my earlier volumes, an admiration for Italian painting continued to be a determinative, though somewhat less vital, factor among the Spanish masters of the eastern littoral in the first half of the fifteenth century but that this admiration was still directed towards the Italian artists of the Trecento rather than of the early Quattrocento, is proved by an historical fact not generally familiar to critics, the purchase by the great archiépiscopal Maecenas of Saragossa, Dalmacio de Mur, of a Bible illuminated by Barnaba da Modena in 1378 for Charles V of France. 2 Our knowledge of this treasure of Don Dalmacio comes from his eventual bequest of it to the cathedral of Gerona, where it now is; but since he apparently bought it on an embassy to France in the service of Alfonso V during his earlier episcopate at Gerona (1415— 1419) before he was successively elevated to the sees of Tarragona ( 1 4 1 9 - 1 4 3 1 ) and Saragossa ( 1 4 3 1 - 1 4 5 6 ) , he had it in his possession soon enough for it to have acted as a stimulus to Catalan as well as to Aragonese painters. In any case, it is another token, besides Barnaba's great altarpiece in the cathedral of Murcia, of Spanish aesthetic concern with the art of the west Italian coast, where the Modenese master labored, rather than directly with the centres of Florence and Siena. 1

See vol. II, p. 186. See Torino's article on Aragonese painting in the Boletín de la Sociedad Española de Excursiones, X V I I (1909), 70. 2

Fig. 199. PEDRO SERRA OR ATELIER. {Photo.

ANNUNCIATION.

Altnari)

BRERA, Mil.AN"

ζ ΐ ΐ

APPENDIX PEDRO

SERRA

M y keen-eyed friend, D r . Benjamin Rowland, has recognized as a work of Pedro Serra or an immediate pupil an Annunciation in the Brera Gallery at Milan (Fig. 199). I t is virtually a repetition of the rendering of the subject in the Manresa retable, but a certain greater fullness of form and faithfulness to actuality put it in the category of those paintings issuing from Pedro's atelier that might have been executed by the young Borrassá. T h e fragments from the retable of the high altar of S. Pedro at Cubélls in the Collection of Don Rómulo Bosch at Barcelona, which I tentatively assigned to Pedro Serra himself, 1 take on a new significance with the discovery, in the church, of a number of other (badly injured) sections which have eventually passed into the world of dealing. T h e retable was naturally dedicated to St. Peter, and the large panel of the enthroned Apostle, in the Bosch Collection (Fig. 200), was the central piece or one of the central pieces. T h e other sections in the Bosch Collection connected with St. Peter are his calling and his delivery from prison. T h e newly unearthed pieces of the series are: St. Peter preaching (nearly identical with the composition for the subject in the Manresa retable); a fragment with Sts. Peter and Paul kneeling and looking upward amidst an excited crowd, which is proved to be a part of the representation of Simon Magus's fall by comparison with Borrassá's composition for the theme at Tarrasa; the " Q u o V a d i s " episode (Fig. 201), a composition which Borrassá, as a pupil of Pedro Serra, again took over in general outlines at Tarrasa and which persisted in Catalan iconography at least as late as the retable of Púbol belonging to the school of the Master of St. George; and the crucifixion of St. Peter, which Borrassá also broadly followed at Tarrasa. T h e predella evidently consisted of smaller panels recounting the life of Christ, the Ascension, Pentecost, and Coronation in the Bosch Collection and, in the recently discovered set, the N a t i v i t y of Christ, the Epiphany, and the Resurrection. The new discoveries corroborate the opinion that the retable was produced in Pedro Serra's own shop and partly by his own hand, but he had here an assistant who painted somewhat flatter and less vital countenances, as of St. Peter and of Christ in the " Q u o V a d i s " episode. This assistant seems to be the author of St. Peter's raising of Tabitha in the Schiff Collection, Pisa, which m a y also have once been a part of the Cubélls retable. I have suggested 2 that the author of the Schiff panel was responsible for the Pentecost in the retable of Pedro Serra's atelier at San Lorenzo de Morúnys, and he was probably likewise Pedro's assistant at Cubélls. I have further proposed 3 to identify 1 Vol. II, p. 282. i Hid., p. 264.

3

Ibid., p. 280.

Fio. 200. PEDRO SERRA AND ATELIER. ST. PETER ENTHRONED, SECTION OF RETABLE FROM CUBÉLLS. BOSCH COLLECTION, BARCELONA (Courtesy of Don Rómulo Bosch)

APPENDIX the assistant at San Lorenzo de Morúnys with Jaime Cabrera; but he may have been only one of the helpers in that enterprise, and the author of the Schiff panel, who is the collaborator at Cubélls, was perchance a second apprentice. Here and there, however, in the Cubélls series we seem to catch glimpses of types in contemporary garb, similar to those of Cabrera, which tend more to international genre than do Pedro Serra's own personages, for instance Nero's advisor in St. Peter's martyrdom, the members of the crowd who witness the downfall of Simon Magus, and the masculine donor kneeling before the enthroned Apostle in the central panel. But Cabrera's stubby canon of the body and his somewhat looser drawing are not visible, so that, if he was the assistant at Cubélls, he must have still been a subordinate member of the Serra atelier and was allowed to work only on the heads. It is all a complicated and nice problem of connoisseurship that I leave to others to unravel. Among the passages where one may safely predicate Pedro Serra's own hand, he is most captivatingly sensitive in the Madonna and Child of the Epiphany (Fig. 202). T h a t we must not limit his authentic production to the examples in which his peculiar figuration of the gold in quatrefoils appears or judge his practice only by his few extant works, is indicated by the cropping forth, in these panels as well as the Schiff picture, of rather surprisingly complicated and varied treatments of ivy and other foliage in the backgrounds. Behind the Resurrection there actually seems to be introduced a motif of a light vine in low embossing. We have noted an anomalous design also in the background of the Crucifixion of Jaime Serra's retable in Santo Sepulcro, Saragossa. THE

SCHOOL

OF THE

SERRAS

T h e authorship of the Serras' follower, the Master of the Cardona Pentecost, is loudly proclaimed by every detail in a lone pinnacle o f the Meeting at the Golden Gate (Fig. 203) which has entered the Museum of Y i c h from the parish church of Guardia Pilosa, near Pujalt west of Manresa, and which repeats, with minor variations, the composition for the subject in his Cardona altar of St. Anne. A somewhat rustic retable of the school of the Serras (Fig. 204) has recently come to light in the church of Aisina de Ribelles, between Pons and Vilanova de la Aguda (southwest of Solsona), which through a strange concatenation of circumstantial evidence possibly deserves, in m y opinion, a definite attribution. Before the problem can be discussed, it is necessary to describe the altarpiece. O f the central panels, the lowest has been almost wholly cut away, so that the subject is n o t recoverable. A b o v e this, however, a panel of the same size depicts,, because of the dedication of the church to San Salvador, Our Lord as the Pantocrator encompassed b y the Evangelistic symbols, in much the same w a y as Borrassá was later to represent the theme at Guardi-

FIG. 2ΟΙ. PEDRO SERRA AND ATELIER. THE "QUO VADIS" EPISODE, SECTION OF RETABLE FROM CUBÉLLS (Photo. Serra)

FIG. 202. PEDRO SERRA. DETAIL OF EPIPHANY, SECTION OF RETABLE FROM CUBÉLLS (Photo. Serra)

ADDITIONS TO VOLUMES I-III

527

ola. The Crucifixion appears in its usual place, the central pinnacle. The lowest scene at the right, as again the dedication would lead us to expect, is the Transfiguration, and above it are the Ascension and Pentecost. The predella also is devoted to Christ, including the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Madonna and Child seated among

FIG. 203. MASTER OF THE CARDONA PENTECOST. MEETING AT THE GOLDEN GATE. MUSEUM, VICH (Photo. Arxiu d'Arqueología

Catalana)

musical angels, the Epiphany, and the Purification. The curious thing is that the three compartments at the left should abandon the honor of the Saviour to relate the story of St. Mark, his visit to the shop of the shoemaker, Anianus, and his healing of Anianus's wounded hand, the arrest of the Evangelist at the altar, and his martyrdom by being dragged through the streets. The uprights are embellished with

528

APPENDIX

small figures of Prophets, Apostles, and feminine saints; the gold backgrounds are undiapered. A moment's reflection on certain of these facts will suggest that they afford some ground for the attribution of the retable to a Marcos de Vilanova, who is supposed to have been a Catalan painter of the end of the fourteenth century. His name is known because it is said to be inscribed, with the date 1388, on the back of a panel of St. Catherine of Alexandria in the great monastery of M o u n t Sinai in Arabia, 1 a painting that I purposely did not discuss in m y second volume because I thought that it might be Italian rather than Catalan (Fig. 205). A further inscription in Catalan, certainly of the time when the picture was painted since it is incorporated in the front of the bottom of the panel, states that it was presented to the monastery by Bernardo Maresa of Barcelona, Catalan consul at Damascus in 1387.2 T h e first reason for ascribing the retable of Alsina to Marcos de Vilanova is the extraordinary inclusion of a series of scenes from the life of St. M a r k in a retable dedicated to the Saviour, which would constitute a kind of artist's signature on the same principle by which the Valencian retable of Bonifacio Ferrer has been assigned to Juan Esteve because of the alien presence of episodes from the lives of Sts. John Baptist and Stephen. 3 T h e second reason is that Alsina lies close to a town called Vilanova, Vilanova de la Aguda, from which Marcos might have taken his surname, and that a painter of Vilanova de la Aguda would naturally be called upon to work in an adjacent village. Neither of these considerations by itself would have much weight, particularly the latter in view of the number of Catalan places called Vilanova; but the coincidence of both considerations is so striking as to go far towards connecting the Alsina retable with a person called Marcos de Vilanova. N o w this name stands ready at hand on the back of the M o u n t Sinai panel as probably the appellation of a Catalan painter of the period. Since he was not the donor of the Mount Sinai picture, Bernardo Maresa, the likeliest guess is that he was the painter, although it is always just possible that he had some other relationship with the panel, such as that of agent in its purchase or shipping. There is, of course, the added difficulty to be surmounted of the problem of the time when the inscription was placed on the back of the panel and of its contingent credibility. T h e date 1388 appearing in conjunction with the name need cause no trouble, for the donor Bernardo Maresa may have continued as consul at Damascus after the recorded year, 1 Gudiol, Els trescentistes, II, 216-219, and the articles noted in my bibliography from the Anuari de l'Institut d'Estudis Catalans. 2 The language of the inscription makes it hard to interpret whether the meaning is that he was consul in 1387 or presented the picture in that year; but, if the date 1388 on the back has been correctly read and applies to the execution of the panel, the former alternative must be the right one. s Vol. I l l , p. 17.

FIG. 204. MARCOS DE VILANOVA (?). RETABLE. DE RIBELLES

PARISH CHURCH, ALSINA

53°

APPENDIX

1387, and he is known to have held the office already in 1386. 1 The Alsina altarpiece jibes with a date at the end of the fourteenth century, but there remains the capital question of whether the style corresponds with that of the Mount Sinai panel. I am willing to accept the St. Catherine as a very Italianate Catalan work and therefore to admit that Marcos de Vilanova may have been its painter, but I certainly should not have thought of a possible unity of authorship with the Alsina retable, if the circumstances of the latter's execution had not suggested Marcos de Vilanova as the master. Led to a more detailed study of the question, however, by these circumstances, I am not prepared to deny the possibility. The St. Catherine may very well be a more than usually Italianate production of the school of the Serras. It must be remembered that very few large central figures of saints by the Serras or their pupils are extant with which to compare it, that we naturally think of their style in terms of small narrative panels, and that what large figures of theirs have been preserved are likely to be rather different in manner from the actors in the sacred stories. For comparison with the St. Catherine it is necessary to go to the analogues, in miniature, found in the feminine saints on the uprights of the altarpieces by the Serras and their following, and here we discover at once a certain similarity. I must admit that I cannot detect any very exact parallelisms between the Mount Sinai St. Catherine and the St. Catherine and other feminine saints on the Alsina uprights, but I should not presume to assert that Marcos de Vilanova, if he be the painter of Alsina, could not have done a figure as different as the Mount Sinai St. Catherine, when he was working in the large and perhaps at an earlier period in his career more subjected to Sienese influences. There is always also the other possibility that Marcos de Vilanova was merely the agent in the Mount Sinai transaction and the donor of the Alsina retable. It is even conceivable, though I am more and more disposed to believe the St. Catherine to have been painted by a Catalonian, that it is a rea[ Italian picture bought by a Catalan and inscribed in his own idiom. The whole matter is no more than a network of conjecture that I have taken the space to discuss in view of the chance of its confirmation or refutation by subsequent discoveries. It should be pointed out, finally, that the compositions for the scenes from the life of St. Mark are virtually identical with the corresponding ones in the altarpiece of Manresa ascribed, in all probability falsely, to Martorell, except that in the episode of the shop St. Mark's presentation of his shoes for mending is depicted instead of, as at Manresa, the actual wounding of Anianus's hand. The natural conclusion would be that there was a tradition for these compositions in the Serra atelier followed both by 1 Fourteenth-Century Painting in the Kingdom of Aragon beyond the Sea, monograph of the Hispanic Society, New York, 1929, p. 18.

Fig. 205.

MARCOS D E VILANOVA (?). ST. C A T H E R I N E . M O N A S T E R Y , M O U N T SINAI (From "Els trescentistes Catalans" by J. Gudiol)

532

APPENDIX

the Manresa and Alsina painters or that the latter derived his ideas from the former (since the Manresa master is a much greater artist and since we know the date of neither altarpiece). In the parish church of Sena, just southeast of Sariñena in Aragon, I have unearthed two fragments of a retable of St. John Baptist by a very countrified imitator of the Serras. Inasmuch as the town lies close to the border of Catalonia, it is difficult to say whether the painter was Catalan or Aragonese, for Aragon also welcomed enthusiastically the style of the Serra atelier. T h e two fragments are the central figure of the Baptist and a small narrative panel of the Baptism of Christ. BERNARDO

DE

MONTFLORIT

It is indeed a gratification to be able with a fair degree of conviction to dispel in one more instance the mist of anonymity that surrounds the huge following of Pedro Serra. T h e implement of the process is the abbreviated signature on the central panel of a small retable of St. Anne in the Muntadas Collection, Barcelona 1 (Fig. ao6), - " :bñt:mñt:", with which there corresponds, so far as my knowledge goes, the name of only one Catalan painter of the fourteenth century, Bernardo de Montflorit, active at Manresa. A recognized abbreviation for Bernat (Catalan for Bernardo) was " b ñ t " ; 2 and by the law of probabilities, it does not seem likely that there would have been any other Catalan painter of the period with the Christian name of Bernat whose surname could be naturally abbreviated as " m n t . " Certainly the name of no other painter who fits has been published. T h e letters must be a signature, since a more grandiose inscription always accompanies the designation of the donor; and the style quite agrees chronologically with the meagre known dates of Bernardo de Montflorit, who is recorded only from 1390 to 1392, in the latter instance stated to be already dead. 3 One notice, of 1391, refers to a contract for a retable, but inasmuch as the contract has not been published, it is impossible to say whether perchance it might have to do with the actual altarpiece of the Muntadas Collection. The central panel, depicting the seated St. Anne holding the Virgin (without the Child), is capped by the Crucifixion. T h e four lateral scenes are the Expulsion of Sts. Joachim and Anne from the Temple, the Meeting at the Golden Gate, the Birth of the Virgin, and her Presentation. T h e predella is not preserved. I t is a disappointment, after the discovery of a new artistic personality, to find that he is a master of no great parts. A s was to be expected of any Catalan painter No. 227 of the Catalogue. See Sanpere, Los cuatrocentistas, 1 , 1 9 4 , in the case of Bernardo Martorell. Sanpere, however, misinterprets the name as Benet, Catalan for Benito; see my vol. II, p. 370, n. I. Cf. also Duran in Butlletí de la Biblioteca de Catalunya, I V (1917), 71. 3 J. Sarret y Arbós, Art i artistes manresans, 8-9, and Gudiol, Les trescentìstes, ι82. 1

2

534

A P P E N D I X

at the end of the Trecento, particularly in Manresa where the Serras enjoyed so enthusiastic a vogue, Bernardo de Montflorit turns out to be an imitator of the two brothers' style, but he did not possess gifts beyond those of a respectable craftsman. I t must be acknowledged that he fortunately had no ambitions beyond those of a craftsman and of his modest abilities, limiting himself to the simplest and most traditional compositions and achieving in them decorative, narrative, and devotional effects sufficient to satisfy the general run of Catalan taste at the period. So far as he has any distinctive characteristics, his outstanding trait is a modification of the Serra forms in the direction of a further frailty and attenuation. I t is possible that the identification of other and more pretentious works of his might lead to a higher estimate of his talents, but I have not yet come upon any additional panels that I should venture to assign to the same hand.

FIG. 207. SCHOOL OF BORRASSÁ. ENTOMBMENT, SECTION OF RETABLE. PARISH CHURCH, ALL (Photo. Arxiu

THE

CIRCLE

OF

Mas)

BORRASSA

The small retable over an altar at the right of the nave in the parish church of All, just southwest of Puigcerdá, is so rustic in quality that I should not have deemed it worthy of inclusion in this book, were it not that it has the interest of comprising as the middle of the predella (Fig. 207) another long, horizontal adaptation of that Serra cartoon for the Entombment which is so often encountered in Catalan art of the first half of the fifteenth century. 1 T h e presence of this cartoon would at once suggest some kind of affiliation with the Serra atelier, and, as a matter of fact, the types plainly indicate that the retable was painted (probably as late almost as 1450) by a country cousin of Pedro Serra's great pupil, Borrassá. T h e centre is occupied by a niche for a statue which has disappeared and for which has been substituted a modern image of the Madonna. T h e niche is framed by painted 1

Vol. II, pp. 345, 364, 371, and 464.

FIG. 208.

SCHOOL OF BORRASSÁ.

M A D O N N A A N D ANGELS.

MUSEO D E LA C I U D A D E L A , BARCELONA (From "Mittelalterliche Malerei in Spanien " by G. Richert)

536

APPENDIX

figures of the kneeling donor and his wife and above them Sts. Catherine and Ursula; the Crucifixion stands in its habitual spot. The two narrative panels at the left are the Annunciation and Nativity, at the right Pentecost and the Dormition. The Entombment of the predella is flanked at the left by Sts. Cosmas and Damian and at the right by

FIG. 209. BORRASSÁ (?). DETAIL OF PANEL R E P R E S E N T I N G ANGELS B E A R I N G TO HEAVEN SOULS R E L E A S E D FROM PURGATORY B Y REQUIEM MASS, SECTION OF R E T A B L E OF ST. MICHAEL. S. MIGUEL, CRUILLES CCourtesy of Don Juan Sulrd)

St. Michael weighing a soul in one pan against the labels of the deadly sins in the other. The somewhat distant relationship to Borrassá is apparent not only in the types, particularly in the Sts. Cosmas, Damian, and Michael of the predella, but even in the foliate figuration of the haloes and of the incised gold backgrounds and in the kind

ADDITIONS TO VOLUMES I-III

537

of brocade so much used by Borrassá, as on the garments of the Virgin in the N a t i v i t y , the Apostle at the extreme right of the lower row in the Pentecost, and the Apostle at the foot of the bed in the Dormition. A further reason for cataloguing the All retable is that it provides the basis for another attribution, since with much security there m a y be ascribed to the same hand a panel in the Museo de la Ciudadela, Barcelona, for which I was at a loss in my second volume 1 to find a parent, the Madonna with the Child who holds a sheet of music, a

FIG. 210.

BORRASSÁ (?). DETAIL OF PANEL R E P R E S E N T I N G ST. MICHAEL OVERCOMING ANTICHRIST, SECTION OF R E T A B L E OF ST. MICHAEL. S. MIGUEL, CRUILLES (Courtesy of Don Juan Sutrâ)

dissociated pinnacle of an altarpiece that comes from a place not too distant from All, the parish of E n c a m p in Andorra (Fig. 208). T h e proof afforded by comparison is very plentiful: the same lank canon for the human form; the types of countenances and the stare of the eyes; the close analogy of the angel at the upper left of the Barcelona panel to the Gabriel of the Annunciation at All; the old and pinched face of the Virgin repeated in her representations in the Crucifixion and Dormition at All and likewise in the other holy women in the 1

P. 389.

538

APPENDIX

Entombment; the kind of brocade on the Madonna's tunic that has been mentioned in the last paragraph; and exactly the same pattern in the simulated brocade that constituted a setting for the altarpiece to which the Encamp panel belonged as appears behind the retable at All. Through its connection with the All retable, the Encamp pinnacle may now be attached to the Borrassá tradition, although in itself it did not supply enough evidence for definite assignment to any Catalan artistic trend. I am coming more and more to believe that parts of the retable in the monastic church of S. Miguel at Cruilles 1 may be by Borrassá's own hand, and I publish illustrations of two of such parts from Don Juan Sutrá's excellent photographs taken after his recent cleaning of the monument (Figs. 209 and 210). CIRERA

The parallelisms in type to the figures in the retable of Sts. Michael and John the Baptist at San Lorenzo de Morúnys tend to suggest an attribution to Jaime Cirera himself for the panel of St. Anthony of Padua or St. Francis preaching, in the Collection of Don Pedro Milá at Barcelona (Fig. 211); but I should not cavil with one who wished to argue rather for an assignment to his following. In any case, the Catalogue of the Muntadas Collection is right in ascribing to the circle of Cirera a panel of the combat of the angels and demons 3 (Fig. 212), since there is every reason for believing that it is a part of the retable of Sts. Michael and Peter from L a Seo de Urgel the lion's share of which is now in the Museo de la Ciudadela, Barcelona. 3 Don Matías Muntadas once told me that it belonged to an assemblage of which other sections were in the Barcelona Museum; the style combines with the figuration of the carved Gothic frame to demonstrate that this assemblage must be the retable from L a Seo de Urgel; and the subject, which is not included in the portions in the Museum, is a frequent constituent of altarpieces dedicated to St. Michael. I t follows that, like the parts in the Barcelona Museum, it cannot with any conviction be attributed to Cirera himself, but is probably the work of someone who underwent his influence. Our discussion, in volume I I , of the parts in the Barcelona Museum left us in grave doubt whether the retable could be by Cirera, and this doubt is confirmed by the differences of the types in the Muntadas panel from those in the same and similarly composed scene in the altarpiece of Sts. Michael and John the Baptist at San Lorenzo de Morúnys, which is almost certainly one of Cirera's authentic productions. I t is more difficult to choose between Cirera himself and some faithful member See above, p. 492, and vol. II, p. 332. No. 194. 3 See my vol. II, pp. 352-355. 1

3

FIG. H I .

JAIME CIRERA (?). PREACHING.

ST. ANTHONY OF PADUA OR ST. FRANCIS

MILÁ COLLECTION, BARCELONA (Photo. Arxiu Mas)

APPENDIX

54°

of his shop in attributing a pinnacle of the Crucifixion in the possession of Mr. Tomas Harris, London (Fig. 213). The composition and types certainly reveal decided resemblances to those of the version of the subject in the San Lorenzo de Morúnys retable. JAIME

CABRERA

I have already suggested that Jaime Cabrera m a y have been one of Pedro Serra's assistants in the altarpiece of Cubélls. 1 H e was possibly also the author of two small fragments of a Last Judgment now built into the predella of a conglomerate retable at the right of the nave in the Ermita de Nuestra Señora de la Alegría near Monzón, in the province of Huesca on the Catalan frontier. T h e distinguished archivist of Barcelona, Durán y Sanpere, 2 by his discovery of hitherto unpublished documents, has recently increased our knowledge of Cabrera in three ways. A pair of documentary records show that, like all good mediaeval artists, he deemed himself essentially a craftsman and did not disdain to turn his brush to any honest task that presented itself, for in 1401 he is paid for the polychromy of the roof of the Sala de las Elecciones in the Casa Consistorial of Barcelona. An ancient but restored roof preserved in the place where this Sala originally existed is in all probability identical with the ceiling that Jaime decorated, but the polychromy consists only of pure design without the human figure. T h e next item of interest is that in the second record of payment for this work there appears as Jaime's procurator a Luis Borrassá, who, in view of such a relationship, can scarcely be any other than the well known painter of the name. T h e y had grown up together in the Serra atelier, but here for the first time emerges virtually definite proof of their continuing friendship. T h e third w a y in which Durán has enlarged our conception of Cabrera is by extending his life considerably beyond the last previously ascertained date, 1406. In 1425 the artist gave his receipt for the final payment on a non-extant retable that he had done for the town of Alella, and in 1427 he contracted to execute another retable for Guillermo Isalguer of San Juan de las Abadesas, which unfortunately has also perished. THE

MANNER

OF

GUIMERA

I t is an agreeable surprise to discover in the Museum of Vich a Madonna and Child, adored by a diminutive clerical donor (No. 1054), with which to increase our pitifully exiguous legacy from the nervously elegant Master of Guimerá himself (Fig. 214). T h e unity of authorship is embodied in the absolute identity of the Virgin's head with that of the Madonna of Cervera and in the same gloriously billowing 1 2

See above, p. 524. In Estudis universitaris catalans, X I V (1929), 85-86 and 92-93.

ADDITIONS TO VOLUMES I-III

541

masses of Gothic drapery. T h e Vich panel exhibits, however, one or two departures from the norm of Spanish painting at this period. T h e first is the standing position of Our L a d y , which, nevertheless, is duplicated in the Valencian Madonna of the Nicolau-Marzal circle

FIG. 212.

CIRCLE OF J A I M E CIRERA.

COMBAT OF ANGELS AND DEMONS.

MUNTADAS COLLECTION, BARCELONA (Photo. Jrxiu

Mas)

recently acquired by the Boston Museum. 1 In both panels the Child likewise bestows a benediction upon the donor. T h e second peculiarity is the indulgence in light embossings of crown, haloes, and orphreys at a date that can scarcely be later than c. 1420. 1 See below, p. 580. A further example is provided by the Aragonese retable of Oto (vol. III, p. 332).

542

APPENDIX

T h e kindness of Mr. Herbert P. Weissberger enables me to include an illustration of the Madonna that I catalogued in volume I I 1 as perhaps by the Master of Guimerá and Cervera (Fig. 215). I am now willing to delete the word " p e r h a p s " and to risk a definite attribution. T h e angels have fluttered directly out of the Guimerá retable, and the lay donor is literally repeated in the group of the blessed in the Guimerá Last Judgment and in the St. Thomas of the Assumption. T h e Virgin varies somewhat in type from the Cervera and Vich examples, but finds an absolute counterpart in the figure of Our L a d y who, as in the Serra versions of the theme, is introduced into the Guimerá Resurrection. T h e analogies in the Weissberger panel are everywhere nearer, indeed, to the Guimerá retable than to the Cervera Madonna, justifying the supposition that it was painted at least as early as 1412, the probable Guimerá date. 2 T h e hypothetical assignment of the Cervera Madonna to the years between I417 and 1419 3 would be confirmed by its somewhat more mature manner, and the embossings would make the Vich specimen, which closely resembles the Cervera panel, the latest of the series. THE

MASTER

OF

ST.

GEORGE

AND

HIS

SCHOOL

Jeremiads on the losses from the once vast treasure of mediaeval art have become a somewhat wearisome commonplace, but in the case at least of Spain each year brings forth from private collections or from hitherto unexplored churches a number of works that prove the destruction to have been by no means so considerable as had been believed. One of the most welcome recent discoveries of this sort has been the presentation to the Museo de la Ciudadela, Barcelona, of a complete, impeccably preserved, and most lovely retable by the Master of St. George himself. It was bequeathed to the Museum by Don Ignacio Girona and his wife, who had acquired it from the parish church of Menarguens, just north of Lérida, whither it had been transferred from the near-lying Ermita of Sta. Cruz; but the insignia of Pöblet that occur once on each side of the guardapolvos, a pastoral staff flanked by the letters Ρ and O, imply that the retable was originally ordered by this great monastery or one of its dependencies. Since the religious institution had extensive possessions in the region of Menarguens, 4 the Ermita may have been one of these and 1 P. 466. 2 Ibid., p. 378. 3 Ibid., p. 379. * Folch y Torres in Butlleti dels Museus de Barcelona, June, 1931, p. 4. I may as well register at once my disagreement with Folch's endeavor, in this article, to derive the Master of St. George from Valencia. There are superficial resemblances to the Valencian painting of the period, especially, as he asserts, to the triptych of St. Martin in the Provincial Museum at Valencia, but they are nowhere sufficiently exact to justify the theory of a unity of authorship or even of provenience from the same local school, and they are attributable to the fact that both Catalonia and Valencia shared in the bounties of Franco-Flemish internationalism.

FIG. 213.

JAIME CIRERA OR A PUPIL.

CRUCIFIXION.

TOMAS HARRIS COLLECTION, LONDON C Courtesy of Mr. Harris)

544

APPENDIX

perhaps received the altarpiece as a gift from Pöblet itself during the Renaissance or later when the celebrated monastic church was being renovated and was discarding what must have seemed then its oldfashioned mediaeval retables. T h e saint that the painter here delighted to honor is Vincent, who in his deacon's vestments stands in the principal panel (Fig. 216) depicted with all the indescribably tender delicacy which the Master lavishes upon youthful figures and which we have enjoyed in his effigies of St. George and St. Lucy. H e is relieved against his symbol, the cross or eculeus upon which he was racked and raked, constituting a formal and beautiful pattern of diagonals upon the gold background, which not only is diapered with the Master's characteristic light foliate tooling that is used throughout the altarpiece but also, in order to give the central panel its proper dignity, is treated at the borders with an additional design. T h e four narrative scenes at the sides are his appearance, with his bishop, St. Valerian, before Dacian, his laceration upon the cross, his torture upon the gridiron, and his death upon the soft bed that his persecutor had prepared for him in order to preserve him for further torments (Fig. 217). T h e episode of the gridiron might mislead one into thinking that the subject is rather St. Lawrence, but this was also one of the agonies through which St. Vincent passed and is not an infrequent theme in retables dedicated to him, as in that from Estopiñán in the Plandiura Collection. 1 St. Lawrence, moreover, never has the attribute of the eculeus·, his patron was the pope, St. Sixtus, who should be distinguished by a tiara rather than the mitre of St. Vincent's companion in the first narrative scene; St. Lawrence and St. Sixtus were not brought to trial together; nor is it related of St. Lawrence that he was transported from the gridiron to a bed and that from thence his soul took flight to heaven. T h e central pinnacle departs from the usual subject of the Crucifixion and supplies further proof that the retable has some connection with Pöblet. T h e charmingly painted mantle of the seated Madonna of Mercy is stretched by a pair of angels over the kneeling patrons of the Cistercian Order to which Pöblet belonged, St. Benedict at the left at the head of a group comprising a king, nobles, and Cistercian monks and St. Bernard at the right in front of a group of a queen, her ladies, and more Cistercians. T h e date of the picture, c. 1430-1440, would make the royalties Alfonso the Magnanimous and his queen. T h e predella enshrines the Passion. T h e five scenes are the same as those of the Pobla de Ciérvoles predella; but it cannot be said that the latter are derived from the former rather than from the predella of the Barcelona cathedral, for the Ciérvoles compositions of the Betrayal and Christ before Pilate are closer to those of the cathedral than to those of the St. Vincent retable, in which the Master of St. George varies somewhat the ar1

See my vol. II, p. 208.

Fig. 214. MANNER OF GUIMERÁ. MADONNA. MUSEUM, VICH (Pioto. Arxiu d'Arqueología Catalana)

Fig. 21 j .

MANNER OF GUIMERÁ.

MADONNA AND ANGELS.

WEISSBERGER COLLECTION, MADRID (Courtesy of Mr. Herbert P. IVeissberger)

FIG. 216.

MASTER OF ST. GEORGE.

ST. VINCENT, C E N T R E OF R E T A B L E .

MUSEO DE LA CIUDADELA, BARCELONA (Photo. Museo de la Ciudadela)

548

APPENDIX

rangements in the two corresponding compartments of the cathedral example. Although, moreover, the Ciérvoles episode of the Crowning with Thorns virtually repeats that of the St. Vincent retable, the Scourging and the Via Dolorosa are more different. The Ciérvoles painter, therefore, does not seem to have drawn upon any single example of the Master of St. George's shop for his predella but upon the compositional stock of the atelier in general. The overwhelming evidence for the attribution to the Master of St. George is written over the whole retable, so that even a child may read — the reappearance of all his highly individual types, especially in the St. Vincent of the narrative scenes who exhibits to us once more the fair but frail person of the St. George in the tortures of the Louvre panels, the oriental costumes of the mystery plays, the compact crowds that, like the Byzantines, the Catalonians affected as masses in the compositions, the inimitable and captivating delicacy of draughtsmanship, and the general superiority of craft that none of his followers could quite duplicate. In the sinister executioner still grasping a rake of torture behind the bed of the expiring saint, he indulges in one of his extreme instances of the kind of international naturalism that takes the form of the hideous, delineating his nose as eroded by disease. Where, as in the majority of the compartments, since they depict interiors, tiling is used for the ground upon which the figures stand, not only is the pattern delightfully varied from panel to panel, though always of the general type encountered in his other works; but, according to the frequent mediaeval Spanish practice, it is purposely left unforeshortened, in a way often found in the painting of brocaded draperies, so as to constitute a formal decorative expanse. Another indisputable work of the Master of St. George is a likewise beautifully preserved Crucifixion, once the central pinnacle of a retable and now in the Milá Collection at Barcelona (Fig. 218), which has signal importance as possibly a further section of the St. Lucy altarpiece and as the progenitor of the series of Crucifixions by his followers, as at Pobla de Ciérvoles, at Púbol, and in the retable of the Transfiguration, which lead directly into Huguet's great renderings of the theme. The grounds for the definitive attribution in types and technique are so self-evident that it is not necessary to rehearse detail by detail the points of comparison with his other works, particularly, for instance, with the predella of the Passion in the cathedral of Barcelona. Even the gold background displays his usual chaste flecking with the most delicate sort of continuous foliate pattern. The rather wild surmise may be ventured that it was the lost central pinnacle of the St. Lucy altarpiece because the cresting of the frame is identical with that of the two lateral pinnacles of the retable in the Barnola Collection and because the decorated setting against which it is relieved is virtually the same as appears behind the Barnola panels (although it should be remembered that a like frame and setting are

FIG. 217.

MASTER OF ST. GEORGE. DEATH OF ST. VINCENT, SECTION OF RETABLE. MUSEO DE LA CIUDADELA, BARCELONA (Photo. Museo de ¡a

Cindadela)

ζ ζο

APPENDIX

to be seen in the Púbol retable by a follower of the Master or perhaps even by the Master himself at a later moment of his career). I am not able, of course, to compare the measurements of any of these pieces; but is the predella of the Barcelona cathedral the final lost section of the ensemble? It is to be noted that the twisted colonnettes of the frame in the Barcelona cathedral equal those of the body of the retable in the Martin Le Roy Collection, Paris. The different vertical sections of the frames of the Crucifixion and other two pinnacles are a variation that might easily occur at the top of the altarpiece. And, to keep up the game of guessing, was the St. Lucy altarpiece perchance the retable of that secondary altar in her chapel in the cathedral which was already dedicated to her before the whole chapel received her name in the sixteenth century, 1 the predella thus remaining the only part that the cathedral itself has retained? Since the appearance of my second volume, three further panels of the retable 2 dedicated to the St. Johns of which two pieces were noticed by Mayer have come to light, being published by Van Marie 3 as of the school of Avignon. Together with the sections mentioned by Mayer, they were last known to me as in the possession of the dealer, Brimo de Laroussilhe, at Paris. The subjects are the preaching of the Baptist, the Evangelist on Patmos (from a lateral pinnacle, Fig. 219), and (from the central pinnacle) another in the series of Crucifixions that inspired Huguet. The style merely corroborates the evidence of the two parts with which I was previously familiar and demonstrates with absolute certainty that the author of the retable was trained in the workshop of the Catalan Master of St. George. The Gallic qualities that Van Marie discerns are only aspects of the Franco-Flemish international manner that the Master of St. George translated into Catalan terms. The very Magdalene in whom the Dutch critic finds French characteristics is repeated line for line in the series of Crucifixions that emerged from the Master of St. George's atelier. The general composition for the Crucifixion, indeed, reproduces those of Pobla de Ciérvoles, Púbol, the Milá Collection, and the altarpiece of the Transfiguration. The group of the holy women and St. John is even practically identical with the corresponding passage in the Ciérvoles rendering, just as the Milá Crucifixion agrees with that of Púbol. The composition for the Evangelist on Patmos is an adaptation of the established Catalan mode for depicting the theme,4 the clump of rocks being moved from the centre to the right side so as to give space, in the midst of the sea, for a delightfully stylized and internationally grotesque representation of the seven-headed beast of Revelation balancing the Apostle ensconced on the cliffs. The painter even retains the old Serra crescent of blue 1

J. Mas, Guía-itinerario de la catedral de Barcelona, Barcelona, 1916, p. 120. Vol. II, p. 428. > Cicerone, X X I I , I (1930), 189-191. « Vol. Ill, p. 114. Van Marie himself notes the example at San Lorenzo de Morúnys. 2

FIG. 2I 8. MASTER OF ST. GEORGE.

CRUCIFIXION.

(Photo. Jrxiu

Mas)

MILÁ COLLECTION, BARCELONA

552

APPENDIX

in the centre of the golden sky, setting within it the Apocalyptic Christ rising from the scallops that had so long been the Spanish convention for clouds. The locality in which the Baptist is delivering his sermon is one of the loveliest examples of the piecemeal but utterly captivating landscapes of the international movement, with a pastoral episode at the upper left, quite rivalling the backgrounds of the great Chicago panel of St. George and of the French Books of Hours. While admitting a Catalan influence upon southern French painting of this period, Van Marie claims the retable of the two St. Johns for the school of Avignon, and is evidently affected in his judgment by the reputed provenience from Valréas, a considerable distance north of Avignon. One thing is perfectly certain: wherever the author was born or for a time exercised his art, he is to all intents and purposes a Catalan painter, since he was trained in the shop of the Master of St. George, follows most faithfully his teacher's methods, and reveals no qualities which are not already present in that teacher's production. Uncorroborated reports of provenience are notoriously suspicious; but even if the panels do come from Valréas, they were done by a Catalan painter who received a commission thus remote from his artistic hearth, just as we find the school of the Master of St. George stretching forth its arms at least as far north as Perpignan in the retable of St. Andrew now in the Metropolitan Museum. If the author of the St. John panels was perchance a Frenchman by birth, he was as truly a member of the Catalan school as Lo Spagna, though born in the Iberian peninsula, is properly reckoned an Umbrian master, and he was not an exponent of French painting merely influenced by Catalan precedent. Despite, however, the close analogies of the panels to the various productions of the Master of St. George and his circle, it is impossible to recognize in their author with certainty any of the hands in that workshop. The Baptist in the scene of the preaching is girt with a light cincture falling in two points as in the picture of the two St. Johns from Vinaixa in the Tarragona Museum; but the discovery of the three additional panels at Paris does not provide any further and really valid evidence for believing, as I should like to do, 1 that the Vinaixa picture was the centre of the retable of which the Paris pieces were the subordinate sections, although they do not exclude the possibility. Since the alleged provenience from Valréas cannot be regarded as a fact, it is no obstacle to the possibility, and the whole original retable might conceivably have been made for Vinaixa in Catalonia. We are perhaps to recognize as another part of this putative retable a predella in the Muntadas Collection, Barcelona, 2 representing in the centre the dead Christ amidst the symbols of the Passion and at the 1 2

Vol. II, pp. 426-428. No. 126 of the Catalogue.

FIG. 219. SCHOOL OF MASTER OF ST. GEORGE. ST. JOHN EVANGELIST ON PATMOS. BRIMO DE LAROUSSILHE COLLECTION, PARIS (Courtesy of Mr. Brimo de

Laroussilhe)

554

APPENDIX

sides St. John Evangelist in the cauldron of oil, his translation to heaven, St. John the Precursor baptizing Christ, and Salome presenting the Baptist's head (Fig. 220). The style is the same phase of the manner of the Master of St. George's shop as that incorporated in the Paris panels of the two St. Johns, but certain figures, such as the henchman at the right in the episode of the oil, the youth gazing into the tomb in the scene of the translation, and the Baptist's executioner, suggest that after all, as I have several times ventured to guess, this style (which is in general that also of the Ciérvoles, Púbol, and Transfiguration altarpieces) may be a later aspect of the Master's own production rather than the expression of some follower. A s further evidence that we have here the predella of the Vinaixa and Paris retable, it is to be noted that the scenes from the lives of the two St. Johns are not those depicted in the Paris panels, that the Baptist wears exactly the same costume as in the Vinaixa picture and the Paris episode of the sermon, and that the tyrant in the scene of the oil is identical in type and dress with the magistrate in the panel of the Evangelist's resuscitation of the two youths. Our heritage from the author of the retable of the two Sts. John may with great surety be augmented by a panel in our own country, the young Christ in the Temple in the Friedsam Collection bequeathed to the Metropolitan Museum at New Y o r k (Fig. 221). Réau 1 glimpsed the truth when he saw in it some degree of affiliation with the panels of St. George's tortures in the Louvre, but if the painter is the Master of St. George rather than a follower, we have seen that all these works must embody the conclusion of his career. T h e types are identical with those of the Johannine altarpiece: the Virgin who comes to reclaim her Son equals the women who have assisted at St. Elizabeth's parturition, and the doctors who have heard the Boy's discourse are the same men who will listen to the Baptist's sermon or who will watch the Evangelist's resurrection of the poisoned youths. T h e composition is so quaintly original that it is unlikely that the author was familiar with any traditional iconography for the theme. H e has had difficulty in ideating what the interior of the Jewish Temple must have looked like, for (in very inadequate perspective) he represents a long interior that resembles the saloon of a modern steamer and in a desperate attempt at ecclesiastical atmosphere hangs it with sanctuary lamps. A t the centre he places Our Lord in a kind of elevated tribune or pulpit up to which leads a flight of steps. The Virgin and St. Joseph are expostulating with Him at the right, while at the left the discomfited doctors, intensely but vainly consulting their books, are seated on two rows of benches like a j u r y in the courts of the present day. One gets the impression that the painter has adapted the iconography for the Presentation of the Virgin to the exigencies of 1

Gazette des Beaux Arts, 1926,1, 6.

556

APPENDIX

a theme that he had never been asked to do before. T h e nearest approximations to the Master of St. George's own types are the two old codgers at the front in the first tier, and in the robe of the foremost of these the painter calls into service the old Spanish trick of stiffly spreading out the gold brocade in a formal and decorative frontal expanse. Mr. Tomas Harris of London has kindly shown me two fragments in his possession belonging to the predella of the altarpiece that had as its pinnacle the Storrs Crucifixion tentatively assigned by me to the following of the Master of St. George. 1 T h e fragments, representing the dead Christ and St. Catherine of Alexandria seated in a landscape, elucidate no further the problem of the author's origins. The other sections of the altarpiece have disappeared or are at least unknown to me. T h e closest analogue that I can find for the small retable, No. 167 in the Catalogue of the Muntadas Collection, Barcelona (Fig. 222), is the fragmentary altarpiece of the Virgin and St. Catherine in the Museum of Vich, which was executed by a painter brought up under much the same Franco-Flemish influences as the Master of St. George. 2 Sts. John Evangelist and L u c y stand in the central compartment, and in the upper sections of the two lateral compartments are depicted his raising of Drusiana and the futile attempt to drag her to a place of shame with oxen. T h e lower sections of the lateral compartments are strangely devoted to full-length effigies of Sts. Cosmas and Damian, who intrude also into Huguet's retable of Sts. Abdon and Sennen. T h e types resemble very persuasively those of the Vich altarpiece: the doubter should concentrate his attention especially upon the parallelism of the central St. L u c y to the St. Catherine debating with the sages, of the one of the medical saints at the left to the topmost sage at the right, and of the woman at the left of St. John in the miracle of the resurrection to the Virgin in the Dormition. E v e n the grain of the wooden floor upon which Sts. Cosmas and Damian stand (instead of upon the more usual tiling) is painted in much the same way as the wood of the disputing Catherine's seat. A s in the Vich panels, one senses strongly here the fusion of an inheritance from the Serras with the Franco-Flemish strain, and it is this that helps to create a divergence from the more essentially north-European style of the Master of St. George. T h e difference may be brought into vivid relief by a comparison of the St. L u c y and the narrative scene from her life with the corresponding pieces of the Master of St. George's retable dedicated to this martyr in the Martin Le R o y Collection. > Vol. II, p. 466. Ibid., pp. 408-410.

%

FIG. 221. SCHOOL OF MASTER OF ST. GEORGE. CHRIST AMONG THE DOCTORS. FRIEDSAM COLLECTION, METROPOLITAN MUSEUM, NEW YORK

558

A P P E N D I X THE

M A S T E R OF THE

PAHERÍA

Inasmuch as it has always seemed to me odd that no further works should have been preserved by a painter of such eminence that he was commissioned to do the retable of the Pahería, or town-hall, at Lérida, it is gratifying to have been able finally to identify two or three such productions. His skill perhaps did not quite j u s t i f y his renown, but he was nevertheless an artist of gifts above the ordinary and significant as the slightly later counterpart in Lérida and the region (although, naturally, with some stylistic differences) of the great Barcelona representative of Franco-Flemish internationalism, the Master of St. George. T h e first of these new pictures is a retable of St. Blaise, the central panel of which (Fig. 223) is in the Diocesan Museum, Lérida, and the other sections of which still remain (at the left of the nave) in the church for which the work must have been ordered, the parroquia of the town of Algayón, between Binéfar and Tamarite de Litera on the eastern border of the modern province of Huesca. T h e identity of the design in the raised gold background of the enthroned St. Blaise in the Diocesan Museum with that of the Pahería altarpiece should have taught me to examine the types and color in this panel more carefully and to observe that they could have emanated from no other hand; but it was not until I had seen the other sections at Algayón itself (where the gold backgrounds are also the same) that the personality of the author stared me in the face. In the Lérida panel the holy bishop holds his attribute of the comb of his martyrdom, and beside his seat stand two clerics, one with an open book and the other with the pastoral staff. A s in the retable of the Pahers, the embossings of the background extend here to other objects, such as the staff and the mitre. T h e six lateral compartments at Algayón represent: St. Blaise surrounded in the desert by the beasts that the huntsmen of the tyrant could not capture; his arrest; his audience with the tyrant; the widow bringing to him in prison the meat of the pig that he had miraculously recovered for her from the wolf; the carding with combs; and the ultimate decapitation. The Crucifixion is in the central pinnacle, and the predella consists of the dead Christ, flanked b y figures of the Virgin, Sts. John Evangelist, Peter, and Paul. T o the identity of types with those of the narrative panels in the Pahería altarpiece is added the supererogatory proof of the same rather dark red tonality and the same color of flesh. Despite the many specific divergencies from the manner of the Master of St. George, the community of all this international art and its general dependence upon Franco-Flemish illumination are demonstrated by the close analogy of the tyrant, wearing a fur-trimmed costume, in the scene of the audience to the judges of St. George's martyrdom. 1 1 T h e retable of St. Blaise, of course, cannot possibly be the work that it may be deduced that the painter of Saragossa in the early fourteenth century, Ramón Torrent,

ADDITIONS TO VOLUMES I-III

559

T h e same masculine type encountered in many figures of the retable of the Pahers, the same small, bright eyes, the same glumness of expression, and the same gold background appear in another panel of the Diocesan Museum, Lérida, an enthroned Santiago coming from the centre of an otherwise lost altarpiece at Alcoletge, just north of

FIG. 222.

CIRCLE OF MASTER OF ST. GEORGE.

EVANGELIST AND LUCY.

RETABLE OF STS. JOHN

MUNTADAS COLLECTION, BARCELONA (Photo. Arxiu Mas)

the city, thus permitting a further attribution to the master (Fig. 224). We meet the type once more in the central panel (Fig. 225) of a retable of St. Lawrence catalogued in the Museum of Vich under the did for the church of Algayón from the fact that in the list of credits owed to him at his death in 1325 is included a sum from this town (Revista de archivos, X X X V I , 1917, p. 113). The style of the St. Blaise altarpiece indisputably shows it to have been painted over a century after the decease of Ramón Torrent, who, from his dates, must have been a painter of the early Franco-Gothic manner.

FIG. 223. M A S T E R OF T H E PAHERÍA.

ST. BLAISE.

DIOCESAN MUSEUM, L É R I D A (Photo. Arxiu Mas)

FIG. 224.

MASTER OF THE PAHERÍA.

SANTIAGO.

CPhoto. Arxiu

Mas)

DIOCESAN MUSEUM, LÉRIDA

ζβΐ

APPENDIX

numbers 1761 through 1767. T o be convinced of the identity of authorship, we really do not need the additional proof of the parallelism of the angel who at the right holds the tapestry behind St. Lawrence to the angels in the principal compartment or to the St. Michael overcoming Satan in the Paheria altarpiece, of the likeness between the ostentatious and frontal brocades of St. Lawrence and the Paheria Virgin, of the extensive resort to embossings, and of the virtual equality in the patterns of the raised gold backgrounds. T h e surprising thing is that the Master of the Paheria here had a collaborator, who did the lateral, narrative sections and the crowning Crucifixion. T h e continuation of the same peculiar design of the gold backgrounds in these sections proves that they belong to the same retable as the central, standing St. Lawrence, but they reveal the hand of one of those numerous provincial imitators of Jaime Huguet with whom Catalonia and Aragon were encumbered in the second half of the fifteenth century. H e resembles, and is no better than, the rustic follower of Huguet whose name and style we know, Pedro Espalargucs, but he is not identical with Espalargucs. T h e three compartments at the left depict St. Lawrence's arrest and tortures before his execution; those at the right, his martyrdom upon the gridiron, his burial, and the resort of suppliants to his shrine. With the episode in which his tormentors mangle his body by rakes is telescoped his baptism of Lucillus or Hippolytus, and there is also introduced, kneeling at the left of the compartment, the widow Cyriaca whose headache he had cured. T h e predella, consisting of a Pietà and busts of saints, is at least in part, and perhaps as a whole, the production of the painter of the narrative panels and Crucifixion, but the possibility is not to be excluded that some of its pieces are by a third artist, a slightly more gifted follower of Huguet. The pieces that I am willing to ascribe to the painter of the narrative panels are the Christ of the Pietà, the mourning Virgin, the St. Peter, and the St. Paul; those revealing a somewhat more capable technique are the angel supporting the dead Christ, the St. John Evangelist, the St. Ursula, 1 and the St. Barbara. Except in the central compartment of the Pietà, the backgrounds of the predella are gold diapered with a foliate design, but the design is not embossed as in the other sections of the retable, although it is ornamented by the superimposition of small medallions of raised concentric circles, in most instances set in pairs about each saint, and although haloes, attributes, and other accessories are rendered in relief. T h e embossed, ringed haloes throughout the retable, even on the angels beside the central St. Lawrence, and the collabora1 T h e C a t a l o g u e o f the V i c h M u s e u m denominates this figure as St. L u c y because of w h a t m i g h t be interpreted as a tray containing eyes in the lower right corner, b u t I should be at a loss to explain the arrow as an attribute of St. L u c y . St. Christina also sometimes carries an arrow, b u t neither in her case nor in t h a t of St. Ursula could I account for the t r a y , in which the objects are b y no means certainly eyes.

FIG. 22J.

MASTER OF THE PAHERÍA. ST. LAWRENCE, CENTRE OF RETABLE. MUSEUM, VICH {Photo. Arxiu d' Arqueología Catalana)

564

A P P E N D I X

tion with the school of Huguet demonstrate that the Master of the Paheria, who is one of the latest representatives of the international style in Catalonia, was still active in the second half of the fifteenth century. 1 The retable of the Virgin comprised under numbers 1772 to 1783 in the Museum of Vich was produced under the influence of the Master of the Paheria, but, since it is not his own work, its discussion must be postponed to the volume that will treat Catalan Gothic painting in its ultimate phases. OTHER C A T A L A N PAINTINGS IN THE INTERNATIONAL

STYLE

Among the Catalan manipulators of the international style, the painter who did the two retables of Peñafiel 2 was certainly the author of a detached central panel of an altarpiece, depicting the two St. Johns with a diminutive lay donor between them, that Mayer publishes as in an unnamed private collection.3 The student may well find convincing the single factor of the peculiar treatment of the hair in a mass of formalized curls, which, if one may be forgiven the comparison, look like anatomical drawings of sections of the intestines; but there are such additional parallelisms as between the countenance of the Evangelist and the St. Michael of Peñafiel or between the great Gothic sweep of the Baptist's mantle in the shape of the lower half of an oval and the passage of the cape across the body of the St. Lucy of Peñafiel. Mayer notes the analogies to the Peñafiel master but evidently deems that he was a rougher artist than the author of the two St. Johns. In this field of pictures that I am as yet unable to attach to any of the well defined tendencies in the international painting of Catalonia, a further important accretion to our knowledge is the appearance on the market, from Don Antonio Gorostiza's Collection at Bilbao, of four additional panels (Fig. 226) from the St. Ursula retable of which I discussed in volume I I 4 another set of four bequeathed with the rest of the Leverhulme Collection to the gallery at Port Sunlight, near Liverpool. Although grouped together in the illustration, the pinnacles are in reality two separate pieces from the top of the retable, each including a pair of compartments. The four scenes depicted are the reception in Brittany of the English ambassador to ask St. Ursula's hand for the English prince, the return of the ambassador to the English court, the prince's baptism, and a maritime episode representing either the departure of Ursula and her women (including the Sicilian queen of the legend, Gerasina) or their arrival at one of the 1

2 See vol. I I , pp. 442-444. Ibid., p. 446. » Los primitivos españoles, Arte español, V (1920-1921), 236-241, and also the Spanish edition of his Geschichte, Madrid, 1928, p. 44. * Pp. 448 ff.

ADDITIONS TO VOLUMES I-III

565

several ports at which they stopped. Among the principal interests of the Gorostiza panels is the fact that in the figure of the English ambassador they provide a closer parallel to the Sts. Bartholomew and Sebastian of the predella in the Johnson Collection, Philadelphia, than do any of the actors in the Leverhulme pictures and thus substantiate still further the likelihood that the St. Ursula altar and the

FIG. 226. SCENES FROM L I F E OF ST. URSULA. FORMERLY IN THE GOROSTIZA COLLECTION, BILBAO

Johnson pieces are by the same painter. There is much similarity between the productions of this artist and the Aragonese or Castilian master who is perhaps to be localized at S i g ü e n z a ; 1 and although this similarity is not sufficient to establish a unity of authorship, it goes a certain w a y towards solving the problem of the St. Ursula painter's regional school in f a v o r of Aragon or Castile instead of Catalonia. 1

Vol. I l l , pp. 175, 206, and 330; see also below, p. 637.

566

A P P E N D I X

With fair confidence one can assign to a single author two panels of the Meeting at the Golden Gate and the Betrayal (Fig. 227) in the Muntadas Collection 1 and identify that author with the painter of the retable of Sts. John Baptist and Stephen in the Museo de la Ciudadela, Barcelona, which I am still obliged to leave in the class of unticketed Catalan pictures. 2 T h e grim, long-nosed caricatures, into which the artist is betrayed by one of the characteristic traits of the late Gothic style, might easily be mistaken for Valencian productions of the circle of Marzal de Sas, but a careful scrutiny reveals that they are rather of the Catalan cast affected by the painter of the retable of Sts. John and Stephen. One of the obstacles, however, in the way of a definitive attribution is that the caricatures are multiplied to a much greater extent than in that retable, being applied to every one of the participants in the Betrayal and not leaving even the countenance of Christ untouched. The assumption of an identity of authorship luckily does not rest wholly upon these distortions of the visage but receives support from such details as the similarity of the St. Anne in the Meeting at the Golden Gate to St. Elizabeth's attendant in the birth of the Baptist in the retable of the Barcelona Museum. THE

SOURCES

OF T H E

ITALO-GOTHIC

STYLE

AT

VALENCIA

The section of my first three volumes to which I am able to make the most additions is that dealing with the Italo-Gothic and international painting of Valencia, in part by reason of another journey through the extensive territory, on the east coast and in the hinterland, over which the Valencian style was disseminated. If I cannot always agree with Tormo's attributions, I am nevertheless profoundly indebted, for the knowledge of the existence of many works that I saw on this journey, to his excellent and exhaustive book, which is so much more than a mere guide of the region, Levante. Other students who wish to use it, however, should be warned that a certain number of the pictures that he mentions as in situ at the time of its publication in 1923 have since been sold or have found their way into diocesan museums. T h e rather unexpected fact that emerges from m y new investigations and from the manifold Valencian paintings that I recorded in the third volume is that the Valencian school was quite as prolific as its rival in Catalonia, if indeed its production was not even more abundant. It has been possible to trace still further the activity of the master whom I took as proof that the Valencian school owed its genesis to Catalan stimulus, the Serra-trained painter who did the retable of St. Luke for the carpenters' guild at Valencia. We may ascribe to him with much confidence, or at least to a very closely related artist, 1 2

N o s . 121 and 168 of the Catalogue. See m y vol. I I , pp. 455-456.

568

APPENDIX

the retable of St. Agatha that is now joined to three panels of a later altarpiece of St. Ives in a conglomerate ensemble in the sacristy of the church of Castellnovo, near Segorbe. The remains of the altarpiece of St. Ives are somewhat rustic Valencian works of c. 1500, but the rest belongs to the earlier stratum. Not all of the details that are represented from St. Agatha's life occur in the Golden Legend, but, with one possible exception, they are intimated in this source or are found in the various accounts of her assembled by the Bollandists. The governor of Sicily, Quintianus, is first depicted as inflamed by the sight of her walking in the street and as then admonishing her. The next scene is the one for which I find no authority, Quintianus receiving the report of a group of shepherds; but it may be that the figures which in the dim light of the sacristy seemed to me shepherds are in reality the procuress, Aphrodisia, and her daughters, to whose impure tutelage the governor vainly consigned the maiden. In the following compartments she is dragged by the hair (to her incarceration?), visited in prison by an angel,1 led to trial or martyrdom, and suffers the amputation of her breasts. A pair of further scenes from her life the obscurity prevented me from deciphering, nor can I affirm with absolute certainty that the two forms in the upper spandrels are those of the Virgin Annunciate and St. Gabriel. The Crucifixion is in the central pinnacle, and the predella consists of busts of the Madonna with the Child and of feminine saints. The undiapered gold backgrounds combine with the other primitive qualities, as in the retable of St. Luke, to suggest a fairly early date in the second half of the fourteenth century. The fresh examination of the works connected with the painter of the Valencian carpenters' guild, into which I have been led by the discovery of the Castellnovo altarpiece, has caused me to observe what I should have perceived before, that there is a very close relationship between his style and that of the author of the Trecento retables in the Ermita de S. Bartolomé near Villahermosa, who was perhaps Guillermo Ferrer.2 The suspicion that the retables of St. Luke and St. Agatha, the Nativity of the Hispanic Society, and even the Madonna of Torroella de Montgrí in Catalonia might have been painted by the Villahermosa artist was first aroused in me when by the help of the new road to this village and after a subsequent arduous climb on horseback over the mountains to the Ermita I finally was able to study the originals instead of relying on small-scaled photographs. Moreover, Castellnovo and Villahermosa, lying in the same general geographical region, might easily fall within the orbit 1

In the Golden Legend and ordinary accounts it is St. Peter who comes to her in prison and heals her breasts, but in one of the hymns in her honor published by the Bollandists it is, as in the picture, an angel. In any case, this episode should follow, not precede, the scene of the amputation, but it is likely that the original order of the 2 compartments has been disturbed. See vol. I l l , pp. 124-126.

ADDITIONS TO VOLUMES I-III

569

of a single artist. It is especially the feminine faces and the coiffures that are similar, and yet it is impossible quite to convince oneself of the identity of authorship. Although the gold backgrounds of the three Villahermosa altarpieces are still undiapered, the craft (except

FIG. 228. SCHOOL OF VALENCIA OR OF THE MAESTRAZGO. RETABLE OF MADONNA OF HUMILITY. MUNTADAS COLLECTION, BARCELONA (Photo. Arxiu

Mas)

perhaps in the case of the nursing Child in the main panel of the altarpiece of the Virgen de la Leche) has loosened somewhat from the cramped archaism of the retable of St. Luke; and the stylistic parallelisms are not so plain as absolutely to justify even the guess that

57°

A P P E N D I X

the Villahermosa master may be the painter of the carpenters' guild in a later stage of his development. In regard to a modern tampering with the predella of the retable of the Eucharist at Villahermosa, which I suggested at the end of the discussion of the Villahermosa paintings in volume I I I , an inspection of the original shows definitely that, of the four saints at the right of the compartment of the dead Christ, the two central ones have been retouched. The Muntadas Collection at Barcelona contains a retable of the Madonna of H u m i l i t y 1 that was painted either by the Villahermosa master or by a very close imitator (Fig. 228). T h e nursing Virgin in the central panel repeats the well known Serra cartoon for the theme, with types duplicating those of the Villahermosa version of the subj e c t ; the throne is here flanked not by the customary angels but by Sts. Barbara and Lucy. T h e lower and principal sections of the lateral compartments are occupied by effigies of St. Anthony A b b o t and of a feminine saint holding a rosary and a book, and the smaller, upper sections by Gabriel and the Virgin of the Annunciation. T h e Crucifixion, in its usual place, follows the outlines of the renderings in the retables of the deacons and of the Blessed Sacrament at Villahermosa, even in the matter of the enclosing, battlemented wall. T h e delineation of the heads and bodies throughout the altarpiece largely corresponds to the manner of the Villahermosa master, but one of the factors that stands in the way of a categorical attribution to him is that his characteristic elongation of the stature is absent from the Crucifixion. T h e divergence from the style of the painter of the Valencian carpenters' guild is even more marked than in the Villahermosa retables, so that, if the Villahermosa and Muntadas artists are one, the identity with the carpenters' painter becomes still more unlikely. P E D R O N I C O L A U AND A N D R E S M A R Z A L DE

SAS

A stronger light is shed upon the almost inextricable problem of the relationship between Pedro Nicolau and Andrés Marzal de S a s 2 b y the many additional works connected with them that I have come upon, but, although it illumines more clearly the former's style, it casts no limiting shadows which would serve to differentiate his style more sharply from that of his partner. T h e most clarifying evidence is furnished by the gloriously executed and preserved retable of the Virgin n o w 3 over the high altar of the parish church at Albentosa, just off the highroad about half-way between Segorbe and Teruel, a work that demonstrates that we must not overdo humility in granting to Italian painting a technical superiority and that the creations of the Spanish masters of the first rank, when they have chanced to re1 No. 30 of the Catalogue. 2 Vol. I l l , pp. 22-23 and 68-70. J Tormo, in his Levante of 1923 (p. 57), recorded it as still in a lateral chapel.

ADDITIONS TO VOLUMES I-III

571

main to us, quite vie on occasions with the best that the Italians of the period were producing. T h e altarpiece is definitely attached to Pedro Nicolau or to a closely affiliated master by the style and by the employment for the central panel of the cartoon of the Madonna and angels used by him at Sarrión and by him or immediate followers in the panels in the Gualino Collection, Turin, and in the Louvre. 1 In accordance with the grandeur of the retable, the accompanying angels in this principal compartment are increased to sixteen. A further reason may have been the dedication of the parroquia to Nuestra Señora de los Angeles, although the priest kindly informed me of a tradition that the altarpiece was once in an ermita. T h e lateral sections depict the habitual themes of the Nativity of Christ, the Epiphany, the Purification, the Resurrection, the Ascension, and Pentecost, with the Dormition above the panel of the Madonna and angels. A s usual in Valencian retables, the pinnacles are occupied by the Crucifixion and b y the Virgin of the Annunciation and St. Gabriel. T h e only bit of the whole great structure that has been lost is the Pietà that must have been in the middle of the predella, but the other constituents of the predella are preserved, a series of saints seated in landscapes, an unrecognized bishop, a feminine saint with a sword as attribute, Vincent, the Baptist, a canonized pope, Lawrence, L u c y , and Anthony Abbot. T h e guardapolvos are adorned with Prophets, 1 I am delighted to find my judgment (vol. I l l , p. 329) confirmed by the fact that Diego Angulo, independently of me and at the time that my book was issuing from the press, arrived at the conclusion that the figures of Sts. Augustine and Dominic at Burgo de Osma are by the hand that executed the lateral panels of the Madonna in the Louvre, i. e., the Baptist and an episcopal saint (Archivo español de arte y arqueología, V , 1929, pp. 285-286). I believe him to be right in claiming all these panels as parts of the same retable and in discerning what I failed to note, that the discovery of the St. Augustine makes it likely that the second episcopal saint is the other father of the Church who is frequently represented merely as a bishop, without attributes, St. Ambrose. It is perhaps possible to add still another panel to the retable, the Salvator Mundi lent to the Museum of Bilbao by Don Antonio Plasencia, which I have discussed on page 330 of volume I I I and of which, through the courtesy of the director, Don Manuel Losada, I now publish an illustration (Fig. 229). The same gentleman, with the customary kindness with which he facilitates students in their work, has obtained for me from the equally generous Don Antonio Plasencia the information that his panel was bought in Bilbao from an antiquary of Vitoria who declared that it once had a pendant of the Virgin which had been acquired by the Louvre. Since the Louvre possesses no other Spanish primitive Madonna except the one coming from Soria, the Salvator Mundi must have belonged to the same retable if the antiquary was correct in his statement. I t is notorious that dealers do not always prize accuracy in matters of provenience; but the figure of the Saviour quite accords in style with the four saints that are known also to have been parts of the ensemble, and His throne resembles that of the Louvre Virgin. The fact that I previously catalogued the Bilbao panel in the circle of Marzal de Sas and that I said that the Louvre and Burgo de Osma sections might just as well have been placed in this Valencian division demonstrates once again the participation of both the Nicolau and Marzal circles in the same characteristics. Retables capacious enough to have included the Saviour, the Madonna, and the saints we have seen to be no anomaly in Valencian and Aragonese art.

57 2

APPENDIX

busts of angels, figures of Sts. Francis and Dominic, and, at the verytop, heads of seraphim flanking an escutcheon. The gold backgrounds are incised with a pattern only at the edges except in the case of the principal panel where the embellishment is expanded to the customary half-crosses so peculiar to Valencia. The retable also gleams with many superb, gold-brocaded draperies. I have had occasion before 1 to dwell upon the supreme beauty with which mediaeval Spanish painters diapered their gold backgrounds and costumes, a craft in which, because of their passion for such things, they easily excelled the rest of Europe; but I am familiar with no other Spanish retable in which gold of such high quality is so resplendently and exquisitely treated or so marvellously preserved. To determine whether the Albentosa altarpiece should be ascribed to Nicolau himself, is a ticklish problem. The face of the central Virgin perhaps resembles that of the Gualino and Louvre panels more closely than it does the Madonna in his one documented work at Sarrión, and at least the Louvre panel is possibly the production of a follower rather than of the master. The geographical proximity of Albentosa to Sarrión may be taken for what it is worth as an argument in favor of the Nicolau attribution. In any case, the Albentosa retable, if not by Nicolau, was painted by someone in his immediate entourage, and its great interest thus lies in the fact that it now gives us a work by Nicolau or at least connected with him in which there appear also the Germanic types of Marzal de Sas. I had already ventured the guess 2 that the lost lateral sections of the Sarrión retable might have revealed these types, and the Albentosa retable provides almost as good an example of what it was to be expected would be discovered, the union of the Nicolau and Marzal de Sas manners in a single work. The Germanic, half-caricatured countenances stare forth at us from every side, not only from the narrative scenes but especially from the Prophets of the guardapolvos, who are emotionally differentiated from one another like their fellows on Marzal's retable of the Centenar de la Pluma. The emergence of the fact that the Nicolau shop was addicted to the Marzal types offers several possible solutions among which it is difficult to choose. Did all the works that are extant issue from a partnership of Nicolau and Marzal, and would it thus be proper to speak of them as productions of this collaboration rather than to attempt to distinguish the two artists' separate manners ? Or was Nicolau merely influenced by Marzal ? Should we ascribe to Marzal those pictures in which the characterization is most brutal and the Teutonic leanings in other ways most pronounced, such as the panel of the Incredulity of St. Thomas, the retable of the Centenar, and the two small panels in the Johnson Collection, and to Nicolau under his influence the works in which the visages are but 1

Vol. I l l , pp. 52-53.

2

Vol. I l l , p. 23.

ADDITIONS TO VOLUMES I-III

573

slightly touched by the Germanic peculiarities? One of the obstacles in the way of this last solution is that some of the faces in the Albentosa retable are almost, if not quite, as harsh as those in Marzal's documented Incredulity of St. Thomas, and it would be a delicate process to review all the productions affiliated with Nicolau and Marzal and to draw a line round those in which the caricaturing is relaxed to just the point that would allow an attribution to the former. Whatever clew is selected as a way out of this labyrinth, there remains one surety, the absolute beauty of the retable, meriting the distinction of the title of the masterpiece among the extant relics of the Nicolau atelier. I f we adopt the explanation that the works with less decided mannerisms are by Nicolau and his pupils, one of the paintings that would certainly have to be placed in this group would be the retable of the Salvator Mundi in the parish church of Rubielos de Mora. 1 Tormo 2 indeed tentatively ascribes the Albentosa altarpiece to the same hand as that of Rubielos, but I cannot determine to my own satisfaction whether or not to accept the identity of authorship, which would involve assigning the Rubielos retable to Nicolau or a very faithful disciple. In discussing the retable of St. Michael in the cathedral of M u r c i a , 3 1 gave expression to the suspicion that it should perhaps be classified under the works connected with Marzal de Sas rather than with those gathered about Nicolau; and a renewed examination of this monument reveals very definitely the Teutonic peculiarities but in so mild a form that the painting should be comprised in the hypothetical group of the productions of Nicolau and his assistants affected b y Marzal de Sas. T h e nearest analogue to the Murcia retable is possibly the altarpiece of St. Barbara in the Bosch Collection, Barcelona, 4 which thus also should be pulled over into the NicolauMarzal combination; but I feel fairly confident that both the Murcia and Bosch retables should be assigned to a follower of Nicolau under the Teutonic influence rather than to Nicolau himself. I scarcely know whether to include here or to retain under my old classification 5 of the circle of Marzal de Sas the retable in the Aras Collection at Neguri, of which, through the amiability of the owner and of the director of the Bilbao Museum, Don Manuel Losada, I am now able to publish some illustrations (Figs. 230 and 231). T h e style is not far removed from that of either the Rubielos de Mora or Bosch altarpiece, but I must again be an agnostic and decline a categorical assertion that it was executed by one or the other master. For instance, the dependency upon Marzal de Sas is more palpable. Don Ramón Aras kindly informs me also that the retable came from the • Vol. I l l , p. 73. 3 Vol. I l l , p. 37. 5 Ibid., p. 330.

2 1

Levante, 57. Hid., pp. 75 ff.

FIG. 229. WORKSHOP OR CIRCLE OF NICOLAU AND MARZAL DE SAS. SALVATOR MUNDI. MUSEUM, BILBAO f Courtesy of Don Manuel

Losada)

Fio. 230. WORKSHOP OR C I R C L E OF NICOLAU AND MARZAL D E SAS. ANNUNCIATION, SECTION OF R E T A B L E FROM BAÑERAS. ARAS COLLECTION, NEGURI ( Courtesy 0] Don Ramón Aras)

57 6

APPENDIX

old church at Bañeras, west of Alcoy, which was dedicated to the Madonna of Mercy, as one might have anticipated from the themes of the altarpiece, but which I found at my visit to the town has now been degraded into a theatre. I am in as desperate a quandary about another Valencian retable of Our Lady that has been recently added to the Rómulo Bosch Collection at Barcelona, unable to decide whether it is by the same hand as either the St. Barbara or the Neguri altarpiece. Purporting to come from the region of Puertomingalvo or even from Puertomingalvo itself, the original home of the St. Barbara altarpiece, it undoubtedly resembles this very closely in style. In particular, the Virgin and St. John Evangelist in the predella, bowed with highly emotional grief, vividly suggest the sorrowing Mother of the St. Barbara predella. The St. Joseph of the Epiphany (Fig. 232) absolutely repeats an aged type encountered several times in the St. Barbara altarpiece. It is difficult, nevertheless, absolutely to convince oneself of an identity of authorship: for one thing, the craft of the St. Barbara altarpiece is superior to the average of the new Bosch retable. Except for the loss of the central panel and a variation in the persons of the saints seated in landscapes in the predella, the Neguri altarpiece displays exactly the same subjects as the new Bosch retable, and, save for a reversal of the lateral sections from left to right, disposes them in the same fashion; and yet, here again, despite the impressive stylistic parallelisms, one must hesitate to declare one master to equal the other. In any case, I find it hard to believe that the painter who succeeded so gloriously in the large central figure of the St. Barbara altarpiece should have flopped so sadly when he came to do the enthroned Madonna and Child of the principal panel in the new Bosch retable, although it is perhaps possible to reconcile the accompanying musical angels with his norm. As the Virgin and Child of the Ruiz retable by Nicolás Francés and his assistants are curiously inferior to the narrative panels, 1 so the corresponding heavy and clumsy figures in the new Bosch retable are unworthy of the artist who executed the rest of the monument. The gold background of the central compartment is diapered with the characteristically Valencian half-crosses. The painter of the St. Barbara retable, whoever he was, may safely be proclaimed the author of an Entombment in the Abreu Collection of the Museum at Seville (Fig. 233). Sufficient proof is provided by a comparison of the swooning Mother with the mourning Virgin of the Bosch predella, the Nicodemus (or Joseph of Arimathaea) at the foot of the sarcophagus and the man holding the box of ointment with the two companions of the priest who baptizes St. Barbara, and the Magdalene with the Sts. Margaret and Ursula of the predella. 1

Vol. Ill, pp. 289-290·

ADDITIONS TO VOLUMES I-III

577

Of the other paintings in this Nicolau-Marzal group that are to be added to those that I catalogued in volume III, the next place belongs to the dismantled sections of a retable of the Transfiguration in the parish church of Pina, because the village is situated off the highroad just south of Albentosa, because the author is in all probability identi-

FIG. 23I. WORKSHOP OR CIRCLE OF NICOLAU AND MARZAL DE SAS. PENTECOST, SECTION OF RETABLE FROM BAÑERAS. ARAS COLLECTION, NEGURI CCourtesy of Don Ramón Aras)

cal with the master of Albentosa, and because in merit, if not in preservation, it is quite the equal of the Albentosa altarpiece. Since the church is dedicated to San Salvador, the retable must once have adorned the high altar, and, with one or two exceptions, the themes are the same as those of the great retable of the Transfiguration by a

578

APPENDIX

follower of the Master of St. George in the cathedral of Barcelona. T h e m a j o r i t y of the parts are now in the elevated coro at the west end of the church: the magnificent central panel of the actual Transfiguration; the lateral compartments of the Apostles offering to build the

Fio. i32.

WORKSHOP OR CIRCLE OF NICOLAU A N D MARZAL DE SAS. SECTION OF RETABLE.

EPIPHANY,

BOSCH COLLECTION, BARCELONA

( Courtesy of Don Rómuh Bosch) tabernacles (symbolized by a castle), of two other episodes of their conversation with Christ a t the time of the supernatural event, and of His immediately subsequent exorcism of the youth whom H i s Apostles were unable to deliver from a devil (the theme a t the b o t t o m

Fig. 233. WORKSHOP OR CIRCLE OF NICOLAU AND MARZAL DE SAS. ENTOMBMENT. PROVINCIAL MUSEUM, SEVILLE CPhoto. Arxiu

Mas)

58ο

APPENDIX

of R a p h a e l ' s T r a n s f i g u r a t i o n ) ; and the uprights w i t h effigies of the Prophets. T h e large Crucifixion from the top of the retable is over one o f the altars in the church, and above another altar m a y be seen the t w o lateral pinnacles, the M a r r i a g e at C a n a (of surpassing loveliness) and the Resurrection of L a z a r u s (introduced into the retable o f the Saviour as H i s greatest miracle). B u i l t into the s u m m i t of this second altar (which contains also fragments of a Valencian retable o f c. 1500) is another f r a g m e n t of the N i c o l a u - M a r z a l retable, a p p a r e n t l y depicting the angel of the A n n u n c i a t i o n . T h e retable of the high altar in the E r m i t a de S. Sebastián a t P u e b l a de V a l l b o n a , west of V a l e n c i a , consists of t w o strata, both b a d l y repainted, one the production of the N i c o l a u - M a r z a l combination and the other an important Valencian w o r k of the end of the fifteenth or beginning of the sixteenth c e n t u r y , w h i c h will concern us in a later volume. T h e earlier s t r a t u m is found in the three principal panels, their pinnacles, and frames. In the central panel a bearded St. Sebastian is depicted, p r o b a b l y under direct Italian influence, in a n u d i t y t h a t is anomalous in the m e d i a e v a l Spanish t r e a t m e n t of the theme (Fig. 234). H e is set against the favorite Valencian b a c k g r o u n d o f a castellated town, blessed b y a smaller effigy of G o d the F a t h e r hovering in the air at the l e f t and comforted b y the prospect of a crown borne to him b y an angel a t the right. T h e pinnacle contains the Crucifixion. H i s constant iconographie companion, St. F a b i a n , is ensconced in the l e f t lateral c o m p a r t m e n t , and in the corresponding c o m p a r t m e n t a t the right appears an aged canonized nun w i t h a book and rosary, a figure so h e a v i l y retouched as to m a k e the assignment to the earlier s t r a t u m only a guess. T h e lateral pinnacles are occupied b y the Virgin and Gabriel of the A n n u n c i a t i o n (one of those delightfully pert angels w i t h w h i c h N i c o l a u and M a r z a l enhanced the appeal of their pictures), and the uprights, as far as t h e y are preserved, b y nine of the Apostles. T h e types are so h a g g a r d as to j u s t i f y the suspicion t h a t the retable to which they belonged m a y h a v e been executed wholly b y M a r z a l de Sas, but it is more p r u d e n t , until further evidence is forthcoming, to retain the w o r k under the double heading. One o f the capital pieces produced b y the fusion o f the N i c o l a u and M a r z a l manners (whether or n o t b y either of the masters or b y some distinguished artist in their orbit) has recently been added to the several other highly characteristic and beautiful examples t h a t enable an A m e r i c a n student to obtain a v e r y accurate conception of the nature and q u a l i t y of I t a l o - G o t h i c Valencian p a i n t i n g within the limits of his own country. T h e piece in question, d a t i n g from c. 1400 and now in the Boston M u s e u m (Fig. 235), is the large central panel of a retable, representing the standing Virgin holding the C h i l d and worshipped b y an aged masculine donor depicted in the diminutive scale and pinched portraiture o f the international s t y l e and clad in a furlined mantle. A b o v e the M a d o n n a a pointed arch separates the sum-

ADDITIONS TO VOLUMES I-III

581

mit of the panel into a compartment containing at the centre a medallion of the head of David. The framing uprights are fortunately preserved, embellished in their lower subdivisions with four musical angels, in the two upper subdivisions with a pair of adoring angels, and in their pinnacles with busts of Hosea (at the left) and Ezekiel (at the right, apparently somewhat retouched). It requires but slight familiarity with Valencian painting to discern that the types, draw-

FIG. 234.

WORKSHOP OR CIRCLE OF NICOLAU A N D MARZAL DE SAS. STS. FABIAN AND SEBASTIAN, SECTION OF RETABLE. ERMITA DF. S. SEBASTIÁN, PUEBLA DE VALLBONA

ing, draperies, and general technical methods firmly establish the panel in the Nicolau-Marzal circle and perhaps more on the Marzal than the Nicolau side. I t is true that the effigies of the three Prophets, although they present unmistakably the peaked countenances of Marzal de Sas with the snooping noses, yet do not exhibit them in a pronounced form; but the angels are more like those in the panel of the Madonna and on the backgrounds of Marzal's retable of the

582

APPENDIX

Centenar de la Pluma, and the Child resembles the Infant in the Madonna panel of the retable much more closely than He does Nicolau's babies. T h e high aesthetic merit of the Boston picture is concocted of a mingling of the ethereal Valencian religious sensibility and a master's technique not only with the general Spanish mediaeval love of formal design, relieved against the long, elegant undulations of Gothic line, but also with Spanish dexterity in the lavish but delicate manipulation of gold settings and accents. According to the custom of Valencian art of the period, all except the border of the gold background about the Madonna is left plain, but the compartment containing the medallion of D a v i d and the backgrounds of the angels are not only diapered but —• abnormally for Valencian art —• are lightly embossed, together with the orphrey of the Virgin's mantle. T h e tunic of Our L a d y is a gold brocade, now somewhat damaged, and over her maroon-lined, blue mantle, which already contains a brocade of a lighter azure, is spread a gold design of ivy, unusually bold for the period and presented in direct frontality without regard for the natural involutions of the drapery in conformity with the frequent practice of mediaeval Spanish painting that emanated from the joint desire for making the splendor obvious and for casting the composition in a formal pattern. There remain two or three small panels, lone fragments of retables, to add to the Nicolau-Marzal category. One, in good preservation, is built into the attic of the altar of S. Luis Beltrán at the left in the chapel of the Purísima, the first chapel towards the east on the Gospel side of the nave in the cathedral of Valencia. T h e subject is enigmatical. A monk in a white habit is suffering martyrdom through a nail driven into his head, and beside him a ruffian wipes a sword with which he has just slain a haloed woman and a haloed child. T h e gold background is diapered only with a narrow border. Inasmuch as the altar was once devoted to St. Bernard 1 and the habit of the monk appears to be Cistercian, the panel m a y be a relic of a retable of St. Bernard in which was included the tale of some Cistercian martyr. In the visage of one of the persecutors, an old soldier holding a shield with the heraldic emblem of a hand, caricature is carried to the extreme point seen in the Apostles of the Incredulity of St. Thomas and thus would argue for an attribution to Marzal de Sas himself; but in the other figures it is more restrained. In another dissociated piece, a pinnacle depicting the Crucifixion last known to me as in the possession of the Ehrich Galleries, N e w Y o r k (Fig. 236), Teutonic asperity and neurotic agitation are so salient that an ascription to Marzal m a y safely be ventured. T h e panel is disfigured by some repainting, especially in the head of Christ. 1

Sanchis y Sivera, La catedral de Valencia, 335.

Fig. 235.

WORKSHOP OR CIRCLE OF NICOLAU AND MARZAL DE SAS. MADONNA. MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, BOSTON

5

84

APPENDIX

A further pinnacle of the Crucifixion, last recorded by me as in the Collection of P. Jackson Higgs, New York (Fig. 237), is drawn within the Nicolau-Marzal group not only by the types but also by the fact that the composition is a less crowded repetition of the Crucifixion in the retable of the Holy Cross, which I assigned in volume I I I to Marzal. A leaning toward the Marzal rather than the Nicolau interests in the group is likewise embodied in the familiarly eccentric countenances of the good centurion and of St. John; but since the draughtsmanship in these heads appears a little more mature than in the Ehrich Crucifixion, the panel ought possibly to be attributed to some slightly later artist affiliated with the coterie, perhaps the author of the New York retable of Sts. Vincent and Giles. 1 In the sacristy of the church at Penáguila, east of Alcoy, there is a small panel of the Virgin and Child enthroned, accompanied by two angels,2 and capped by a pinnacle of the blessing Saviour, which was executed by a rustic imitator of the general manner popularized at Valencia by Pedro Nicolau and which has the interest of arousing hopes of documentation that unfortunately prove to be fallacious. In 1349 the Valencian painter Vidal Beluga acknowledges payment for a retable at Penáguila, 3 but the extant fragment was done at least a half century later. A second possibility deserves more serious consideration. In 1400 Pedro Nicolau himself contracted to do a retable of Sts. Cosmas, Damian, Michael, Catherine, John Baptist, and Blaise for the rector of the church at Penáguila, and in 1402 gave his receipt for payment. 4 Sanchis y Sivera advances the hypothesis that it may have been ordered for the old chapel of St. Catherine in the cathedral of Valencia, probably because the documents are found in the cathedral archive; 5 but it is not out of the question that the rector of Penáguila should have given the commission for his own church. A small panel of the Madonna and angels might have been included in a retable dedicated to all these saints, but the supposition that the existing panel belonged to such a retable must in the end be abandoned, for it is incredible that Nicolau or even one of his assistants, to whom he might have turned over this piece, could have executed so countrified a work or one so remotely connected with his style. 1

See below, p. 590. Not, of course, the large and distinguished panel of the Madonna and Child in the same sacristy which belongs to the middle of the fifteenth century and will occupy us in a subsequent volume. 3 Sanchis y Sivera's new publication of his Pintores medievales en Valencia in Archivo de arte valenciano, X I V (1928), 13. I must utilize this occasion also to take exception to his attribution to Beluga of a panel of St. Michael overcoming Satan in the cathedral of Valencia (ibid., 18). The ascription is evidently based upon Beluga's receipt of the same year, 1349, for payment for his painting in the chapel of St. Michael in the cathedral (ibid., 1 3 - 1 4 ) , but the preserved picture in this instance is a production of at least a hundred years later. Moreover, the document does not specify a retable but describes the work merely as painting the chapel (perhaps with frescoes). 4 Ibid., 55-56. s Ibid., 56, and La catedral de Valencia, 325, η. ι. 2

FIG. 236. ANDRÉS MARZAL DE SAS (?). CRUCIFIXION. EHRICH GALLERIES, NEW YORK (?)

586

APPENDIX

N o w that we are launched on the sea of hypothesis, we may hazard another and a more logical guess — namely, that the panel of the Salvator Mundi, inscribed with the words Longitudo Domini Nostri Iesu Christi, in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum, Berlin, which I published in volume I I I 1 as of the circle of Nicolau, was done for the altar of the Length of Christ in the cathedral of Valencia or for an adjoining altar or at least was made for some Valencian shrine that derived its devotion from this curious cult in the cathedral. T h e anomalous inscription was a puzzle to me until recently I chanced to thumb over again Sanchis y Sivera's book on the cathedral of Valencia and, lighting upon an altar of this dedication, 2 was immediately struck by the probability that here lay the explanation. T h e legend runs that a Portuguese knight, wishing, on a pious visit to the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem in the middle of the fourteenth century, to take the measurements of the sacred tomb, employed for this purpose the cloth of his Turkish servant's turban, and when he removed it from the stone, beheld to his amazement that the effigy of Our Lord had been miraculously stamped upon the fabric. T h e accounts vary in regard to the manner in which the cloth forthwith reached the hands of the Portuguese princess, Eleanor, the wife of Peter I V of Aragon, and in regard to just when it was presented to the cathedral of Valencia and there became an object of cult. A painting of the Saviour on cloth over the altar in the cathedral purports to be this miraculous image, and seems indeed a true Byzantine (rather than an ItaloByzantine) work of the fourteenth century. One account, embodied in an inscription in the chapel, states that the miraculous image was not bestowed upon the cathedral of Valencia until 1437 by Alfonso V ; but whether or not the cathedral already possessed the image (and another account says that Queen Eleanor at once donated it in the middle of the fourteenth century), it must have been at least honored there much earlier, for a special chapel was made for this devotion in 1404,3 and it may have been at this very time that the retable was painted of which the Berlin picture was the central panel. I f the miraculous image was set over the altar in this year, the retable m a y have been executed for an adjacent wall or for another chapel in Valencian territory which sought to reproduce the cult of the cathedral. T h e Berlin picture is a close translation of the Byzantine painting into the Gothic terms of the early fifteenth century, reproducing even the inscription at the bottom of the canvas, the book with the words, Ego sum via Veritas et vita, and the terrestrial globe at Christ's feet (except that a landscape is substituted for the simpler division of the globe, in the Byzantine work, into three sections labelled Asia, Europe, and Africa). 1 P. 329. * Pp. 288 ff. 3 Sanchis y Sivera, La catedral de Valencia, 289, η. ι .

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587

The popularity of the cult is demonstrated by its spread to Majorca, for the Salvator Mundi in Sta. Eulalia, Palma, that I have tentatively ascribed to Francisco Comes 1 is another version of the Valencian image. The inscription at the bottom of the panel reads: " H i e est longitudo corporis omnis Domini Nostri Jesu Christi ut asseritur per ( ?) 2 fidedignos, et representatur in plenitudine aetatis suae ante passio(nem)." 3 One side of the book held by Our Lord adds further scriptural eulogies of Him to those of the Berlin panel: "Alpha et Omega, primus et novissimus, etc." The other side reveals what I could not read in the Berlin example: " E g o sum qui sum," from Exodus, iii, 14, and continues in the same panegyrical vein. The globe at the feet duplicates the Byzantine original of the Valencian cathedral, not embodying the variations of the Berlin panel. We are not much assisted in distinguishing the different members of the atelier of Nicolau and Marzal de Sas even if we are right in claiming as the work of Gabriel Marti a panel with two scenes from the life of St. Vincent in the first chapel at the left of the nave in the parish church of Albal; for he would turn out to be a close but weaker imitator of Marzal de Sas whose hand I cannot with certainty identify in any of the other extant productions of the shop. The evidence that connects this fragment with Gabriel Marti, whose activity may be traced from 1409 to 1426 and perhaps to 1432, 4 is not of the best. In 1417 he contracted to do a retable of Sts. Vincent and Valerian for the oratory of St. Vincent in the Plaza de la Almoyna adjacent to the cathedral, being paid for the commission a year later; and it has been supposed that the panel is a relic of this altarpiece, deposited in the Albal church, which belonged to the chapter of the Valencian cathedral, when in 1831 the oratory was renovated. 5 In view of the large number of Valencian retables dedicated to Sts. Vincent and Valerian, however, the subjects alone are not enough to make the equation; and until records are forthcoming that definitely prove the Albal fragment to have come from the oratory in the Plaza de la Almoyna, the attribution to Gabriel Marti cannot be regarded as absolutely certain. The two compartments depict (reading upward) the arrest and trial of Sts. Vincent and Valerian, 6 and the presence of St. Gabriel in the pinnacle shows that we have to do with the left section of the retable. The gold backgrounds are tooled only at the borders. St. Valerian in both narrative scenes has the snooping nose of the Marzal de Sas tradition, but the painter, a dryer and looser draughtsman 1

2 Vol. I l l , p. 152. Or apudi a Last three letters lost. Sanchis y Sivera, Pintores medievales en Valencia, Archivo de arte valenciano, X V (1929), 1 2 - 1 3 . 6 Ibid., and L. de Saralegui, El retablo de Gabriel Martí, Boletín de la Sociedad Caste¡lonense de Cultura, Χ (1929), 8ι. • Or, since the scenes usually read downward, is the first subject their arraignment before being sent to Valencia, and the second, their journey to that city, as in the Catalan retable from Estopifián in the Plandiura Collection (vol. II, p. 208) ? 4

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than his master, feebly reproduces Marzal's caricatures. His membership in the shop is again demonstrated by the piquant angle at which the magistrate's face is tilted up in the episode of the trial. T h e affection for brocades in vestments and other costumes reaches perhaps even beyond the Valencian standard of the period.

FIG. 237. SCHOOL OF ANDRES MARZAL DE SAS (?). CRUCIFIXION. COLLECTION OF P. JACKSON HIGGS, NEW YORK (?) W O R K S C O N T E M P O R A R Y WITH N I C O L A U BUT N O T IN THE SAME

STYLE

In this category may be placed a central panel depicting Sts. Michael and M a r y Magdalene that remains from an altarpiece and is now in the sacristy of S. Agustín at Alcira (Fig. 238). A work o f no more than respectable merit, it incorporates that amalgamation

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589

o f Sienese reminiscences w i t h a G a l l i c s t y l e c o r r e s p o n d i n g t o t h e C a t a l a n m a n n e r of G u i m e r á w h i c h is so o f t e n e n c o u n t e r e d in t h e early phases of Valencian internationalism. T h e M a g d a l e n e , envelo p e d in a g r e a t G o t h i c s w e e p o f red d r a p e r y , is m o r e I t a l i a n a t e ;

Fic. 138. SCHOOL OF VALENCIA. STS. MICHAEL AND MARY MAGDALENE S. AGUSTÍN, ALCIRA S t . M i c h a e l , in the i n t e r n a t i o n a l w a y , is so f a r t r a n s f o r m e d i n t o a y o u n g French gallant that T o r m o 1 mistakes him for St. George. T h e g o l d b a c k g r o u n d is u n i n c i s e d , a n d T o r m o ' s d a t e o f c. 1 4 1 0 m u s t be a b o u t r i g h t . 1

Levante, 201.

A P P E N D I X

59° THE

CONTINUERS

OF N I C O L A U ' S A N D M A R Z A L ' S

MANNERS

A persistence of the general pictorial style represented by the Boston Virgin is embodied in a panel of the enthroned Madonna crowned by two angels and serenaded by others (Fig. 239) that has been removed from the Ermita de S. Antonio at Bechi, southwest of Castellón, and stored in a building belonging to the municipality (if one can speak of embodiment in a picture that has been worn away to such a state of deterioration and, because of the careless mode with which it is now kept, threatens complete and immediate disintegration). N o t only does the figure of Our L a d y exhibit a slightly later modification of the feminine type employed b y Nicolau, but the angels retain much of the charming pertness that he and Marzal de Sas lent to them. T h e panel thus belongs to the class of the retable at Jérica, and the date would also be about 1420; but although the personages have the same spidery fingers, there is not enough further evidence to justify the opinion that the author, an artist of no very great distinction, is identical with the Jérica master. If the Bechi panel is to be vaguely connected with the Jérica altarpiece, we may relate to the episcopal saint at Cleveland in the same distant way an enthroned St. Blaise, once the centre of a retable, over the high altar of the hospital church of S. Bias at Burriana, south of Castellón. Executed between 1430 and 1450, it is a more mature work than the Bechi panel, and it is raised high above the Bechi level in its masterly execution. T h e superb technical power and the later date are illustrated not only in the figure of the bishop but also in the two small angels who sit upon the edge of his throne, each holding his attribute of the comb. T h e sureness of the drawing is set in the midst of the enhancing decorative splendor of St. Blaise's vestments, a chasuble of solid gold orphreys over a dalmatic of a gold and red brocade. His countenance is characterized by a certain strength or even severity that makes me wonder whether the painting should not rather be grouped with the works of the detente of the Germanic tendency at Valencia. T h e type of St. Joachim suggests some relation to the shop of Marzal de Sas in two panels of the vision of the Virgin's father and her birth which hang on either side of an arch at the left of the parish church of Albal and which I should assign to the decade of 1420-1430 (Fig. 240). It is sufficient praise to say that their quality quite realizes the average of Valencian pictorial attainment in the first half of the fifteenth century. Did they perchance, like the altar of St. L u c y in the same church, come from the Ermita de Sta. A n a and were they parts of the original retable over its high altar? In discussing the retable of St. Vincent, the Ascension, and St. Giles said to have come from the church of the Knights of St. John

FIG. 239. SCHOOL OF NICOLAU AND MARZAL DE SAS. MADONNA AND ANGELS. BECHI (Photo. Arxtu

Mas)

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APPENDIX

of Jerusalem in Valencia and now at New Y o r k , 1 1 should have noted that there is some documentary, though far from conclusive, evidence for ascribing it to Pedro Nicolau. The evidence is a clause in the Penáguila contract with Nicolau, 2 by which it is required that the retable there ordered shall be as fine as, or better than, " t h e altar of S. Juan del Hospital." Since S. Juan del Hospital 3 was another name for the church of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, the reference might conceivably be to the New York retable; but there are many obstacles in the way of such an identification and in the way of the next step, the attribution to Nicolau. In the first place, the ultimate provenience of the New York retable from the church of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem rests on nothing more solid than a report and is certified by no concretely traceable history of the picture. In the second place, even if it was once in S. Juan del Hospital, it could have been only one of many such retables in the church and is not necessarily the piece mentioned in the Penáguila contract. Or again, although we might grant, for the sake of argument, its identity with this piece, its mention in the document does not absolutely justify an assignment to Nicolau, for it is not explicitly stated that he himself did the retable of S. Juan del Hospital, and there are known instances where artists were asked to use the work of others as a model.4 We derive no aid in our investigation from the themes, which are not mentioned in the clause of the Penáguila contract. There remains the question of the style, and I could imagine Nicolau as painting in this way a decade or two after the period of the works that we have laboriously connected with his name in the vicinity of 1400, although in the New York retable, as in his other productions, it would be necessary to postulate an influence or collaboration of Marzal de Sas. The rub is that we should be obliged to date the New York retable before the Penáguila contract of 1400 in which it may be supposed to have been mentioned, 1. e., at a time when he was painting in a more cramped and primitive manner. The best solution thus still seems to be the one which I proposed in volume I I I — that the retable was executed by a follower of Nicolau and Sas and is not the example mentioned in the contract. In any case, another work by the hand of the New York retable has come to my cognizance, six lateral panels from an altarpiece of St. Michael in the Museum of Lyons and there labelled "school of Avignon" (Fig. 241). The subjects are the war of St. Michael and 1 Vol. I l l , pp. 83-88. The panel of the Flagellation did not, as I thought, accompany the other sections acquired by the Hispanic Society, and I do not know its present resting-place. 2 See above, p. 584. 3 The parish of S. J u a n del Hospital has now been removed to another site and housed in a new church, under the double invocation of St. John and St. Vincent Ferrer. 4 See vol. I I , p. 370, and I I I , p. 270.

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his angels with the demons, St. Michael receiving souls who have escaped the mouth of hell, his presentation of these souls to St. Peter at the gate of heaven, the shooting of the bull on Monte Gargano, the report of the adventure to the bishop, and the ecclesiastical procession to the spot. The identity of authorship is apparent at first glance and is clinched by the equality in composition for the war in heaven in both monuments; but there are even the closest possible resemblances in types and frizzled stylization of the hair, for instance between the angels who expel the demons in the New York retable and their many comrades in the panels at Lyons or between the St. Peter among those commissioned by Our Lord and the same Apostle receiving the redeemed from St. Michael's hands. In both retables trees sprout in the same curious way from the pinnacles of rocks. The light plays as weirdly and poetically over these rocks as in the paintings of Don Lorenzo Monaco at Florence and inspires the question whether there may not be even more of his direct and contemporary influence at Valencia than I have already suggested. 1 It is for little more than the sake of finding some kind of a pigeonhole to receive it that I include under the present designation the Valencian retable of St. Michael and All Saints (Fig. 242) that has passed from the Foulc Collection, Paris, into the New York market, since in reality it reveals almost nothing directly derived from Nicolau and since it is probably the work of an as yet undiscovered master possessing a style largely his own. The closest known analogue is the retable of St. Vincent, the Ascension, and St. Giles in the Metropolitan Museum and Hispanic Society at New York, but it is scarcely possible that the author is the same. The unmistakable dependence upon Marzal de Sas is absent in the Foulc altarpiece, and his eccentric types put in their appearance only sporadically and then in a very diluted form. Since, however, the altarpiece exhibits some slight familiarity with Nicolau's and Marzal's creations, it is better to catalogue it for the time being under the followers of Nicolau who himself owed something to his partner. The artistic quality is of no more than average grade, but the unusual iconographie interest supplies what is lacking in this respect to endow the work with an enduring importance. In the lowest and principal part of the central division St. Michael and his angels cast the dragon and his minions into the mouth of hell — a composition that is an outstanding example of the mediaeval Spanish practice of coercing pictures into formal and symmetrical designs. This practice, however, is oddly violated in the compartment directly above, which depicts the enthroned Trinity adored by the Virgin at the left but with no balancing figure at the right, probably because no sacred personage, not even the Baptist who often, as 1

Vol. I l l , pp. 30 and 86.

Fig. 241. CIRCLE OF NICOLAU AND MARZAL DE SAS. FRAGMENTS OF RETABLE OF ST. MICHAEL. MUSEUM, LYONS (From "Eine Gruppe valencianischer Gemälde" by ÌV. Hugehhofer)

596

APPENDIX

in Dello's fresco at Salamanca, is her pendant, was thought to possess enough religious eminence to be set on an equality with the Mother of God. The spandrels of this compartment are embellished with a pair of escutcheons each containing an heraldic stag. The central pinnacle is devoted to the Crucifixion including the two thieves and, in a symmetrical arrangement, the instruments of the Passion as they are so frequently seen heaped upon wayside crosses. The two great lateral divisions supply us with a Valencian example of the kind of All Saints retable that was produced by the Catalan atelier of the Serras 1 and by Pedro Zuera in Aragon. 2 The saints are arranged in procession in five tiers according to categories, and the same category, at a given level, appears on either side in a group of eight. The name is inscribed above each individual in the Valencian dialect; but the identification is not always easy, since someone seems to have tampered with certain of the inscriptions and in a few instances interchanged them, since the spelling is sometimes incorrect, and since difficult abbreviations are now and then employed. The uppermost tier is assigned to the worthies of the Old Testament: at the left, Joseph (here, as often, considered to belong to the elder covenant and thus given the polygonal halo), Esdras, Daniel, Elijah (?), an unidentified Prophet, 3 Isaac, Abraham, and St. John Baptist (also placed in the older generation but with a circular halo); 4 and at the right, Moses, Joshua, Samuel, David, Solomon, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and (?) Ezekiel. The Apostles and Evangelists dignify the next tier: at the left, Mark, Matthias, Thomas, Simon, Andrew, James Major, John, and Peter; and at the right, Paul, Philip, Bartholomew, James Minor, Jude, Matthew, Barnabas, and Luke. 5 The third tier is assigned to masculine saints who for the most part enjoyed a vogue throughout Christendom and were martyrs: at the left, Honoratus, 6 the royal St. Oswald of England holding as attribute the silver dish that he gave to the poor, George, Narcissus, Clement, Vincent, an unidentified pope (Marcellus?), and Stephen; and at the right, Lawrence, Blaise, Denis, Cosmas, Damian, Protus and Hyacinth (the 1

Vol. I I , pp. 264-265. Vol. I l l , pp. 1 7 7 - 1 7 8 . 3 T h e letters seem to read Β o s A G ο β. ' The precursors of the new dispensation, Joseph and the Baptist, thus frame the group of eight. 6 T h e spelling of the names or abbreviations of the Apostles is in several instances garbled, and in some cases the inscriptions are misplaced or interchanged. Andrew's name, for instance, is written above Philip, who is identified by the small Latin cross, and the name above Andrew, who holds the kind of cross called after him, is a hodgepodge. John's name is written above Peter, and the word above John is illegible. I cannot make out the inscription above Simon (who is identified as the only remaining Apostle not otherwise recognizable and as in the place corresponding on the left to that of his iconographie companion, J u d e , on the right), and Thomas carries an axe instead of either of his ordinary attributes, the builder's rule and the spear. ' Surely the great St. Honoratus of Lérins and Aries. 2

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companions of St. Eugenia), 1 and Christopher. T h e next category is that of the monastic and ascetic saints, to whom are joined the four fathers of the western Church and two patron bishops of Christendom: at the left, Onuphrius, Francis, Benedict, Ambrose, Jerome, Anthony

FIG. 242. SCHOOL OF VALENCIA. RETABLE OF ST. MICHAEL AND ALL SAINTS. FORMERLY IN FOULC COLLECTION, PARIS

Abbot, Louis of Toulouse, and Martin; and at the right, Nicholas, Louis of France (as of the Third Order of St. Francis), Gregory, Augustine, two monks whose names I cannot read but one of whom 1

See vol. II, pp. 90-91.

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ought to be Bernard, Dominic, and ( ?) Ives.1 In the lowest row march the feminine saints: at the left, Eulalia, Apollonia, Agatha, Margaret, Elizabeth of Hungary, Helen, Catherine, and Anne; and at the right, the Magdalene, Ursula, Barbara, Lucy, Clara, Cecilia, Agnes (?),a and Mary of Egypt. The number of the saints connected with the Franciscans might mean that the retable had some kind of affiliation with this mendicant Order; but the execution of the altarpiece for the cathedral of Valencia is plainly indicated by the choice for representation, in the three lower tiers, of saints who for the most part enjoyed cults in that metropolitan church,3 especially saints of such slight general popularity as Narcissus of Gerona and Honoratus. The pinnacles of the lateral divisions display Gabriel and the Virgin of the Annunciation. The pinnacle of Our Lady is quite the most charming section of the retable and one of the spots where the artist has risen above his ordinary abilities. The seat from which she has sunk to her knees at the prie-Dieu is represented as embellished with carved angels, and over it is spread one of the gold and orange-red fabrics that were so much a passion in mediaeval Valencia. From the ground in front of the wall at the right of her house there spring forth flowers delineated with almost the exquisiteness that Gentile da Fabriano was lavishing upon similar details at this time in his Florentine altarpiece. Three pairs of flying angels make music on the background against which the whole retable is set. This background and that of the St. Michael and the Trinity are of blue accented with stars, but the other backgrounds are of the more customary gold, patterned only at the borders. The angels and feminine types vaguely maintain the Nicolau tradition. A few of the masculine countenances, such as that of Santiago, have a touch of the Marzal peculiarities about them, and some relationship to this tendency is incorporated perhaps in a certain German cast in the feminine saints. Would that there were more of this Teutonism, for then we might be able to identify the author with the master of the New York St. Vincent, Ascension, and St. Giles altarpiece or at least bring him into that circle! The most tangible similarity is the luxuriance of curly hair, as especially in the St. Michael, St. Gabriel, and other angels, but a close examination betrays that the coiffures are far from exactly analogous in detail, and 1 The best drawn and most piquantly characterized of all the holy galaxy, he wears a white monastic habit and is reading from a scroll, whereas, as of the Third Order of St. Francis, he ought, if he wears a habit at all, to have one of grey or brown; but the inscription seems to read plainly IBO or ivo. Possibly, what I take to be a white monastic habit may be intended merely for a lawyer's garb, as in the effigy of St. Ives in Borrassá's retable at Vieh. 2 I cannot make any form of "Agnes" out of the inscription above her, but she surely ought to appear in the virginal aggregation. Is the inscription an abbreviation for "Geneviève"? 3 For the many cults in the cathedral, see Sanchis y Sivera's book.

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the faces that they frame are widely different. There are further parallelisms, such as the types of demons in the two representations of the fall of Lucifer or the copious Gothic drapery of Christ commissioning the Apostles repeated in several of the Apostles of the Foulc retable, especially in the two Sts. James. But the divergencies are too prominent. T h e rather mystic type employed for God the Father and Christ is not at all like the conceptions of Our Lord in the retable of the Metropolitan Museum and Hispanic Society, and the Foulc altar is more Italianate not only than this retable but also than the production of Nicolau or Marzal de Sas. Although the date m a y be as late as c. 1420, the Foulc altar, like many other Valencian pictures of the beginning of the fifteenth century, resembles in certain ways the last gasp of Florentine Giottesque painting at the end of the Trecento, particularly in the harsh and garish color, so that one of m y friends has aptly stigmatized the picture, in this respect, as a Valentine. A possibly more tangible influence of Andrés Marzal de Sas may be descried in some of the types of another retable that must still remain anonymous, the altarpiece of St. John Baptist, large both in the number of its parts and in their size, now in the right transept of the new parish church at Puzol, just north of Valencia, but in all probability once the decoration of the high altar of the old, demolished parroquia, of which the Precursor was the patron, as he is of the new edifice. T h e central compartment is occupied by a superbly drawn, ascetic figure of St. John, surmounted by a panel of the Madonna and angels and then by the Crucifixion. T h e four narrative sections at the left depict the annunciation of Zacharias, the visitation, the birth of the Baptist, and his indication of Our Lord as the Lamb of G o d ; those at the right, his preaching, his baptism of Christ, his arrest, and his decapitation together with the dance of Salome. T h e predella, manifestly by a pupil of the principal master, comprises six episodes of the Passion. On the guardapolvos are Sts. Peter and Paul, Sts. Sebastian and Fabian, busts of Sts. Michael and ( ?) Gabriel, 1 busts of two royal saints (Abdon and Sennen?), 2 and at the summit God the Father with 1 Here and in a number of other Spanish mediaeval pictures there appears an angel holding a crown, the attribute of the archangel Jehudiel, but I find it hard to believe that this little known member of the heavenly host enjoyed so popular a cult in the peninsula. Since in some Spanish paintings, as at Puzol, the angel with the crown balances Michael, he would naturally be thought the other great archangel, Gabriel, rather than Raphael, or he is perhaps the guardian angel. 2 A pair of young royal saints are frequently encountered in the art of Valencia and the Maestrazgo, and they have occasioned some wild conjectures. T h e y appear, for instance, in the retable of the school of Valentin Montoliü in the Ermita de S. Onofre at Todolella, in the Valencian retable of the middle of the fifteenth century now in the sacristy of the parroquia at Altura, and again on the guardapolvos of the retable of St. Augustine in the sacristy of S. Agustín at Alcira, dating from c. 1500. I very much suspect that they are meant to represent the Persian martyrs Sts. Abdon and Sennen, who were considered in the hagiography of the eastern Spanish littoral to have been

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the dove of the Holy Spirit; but all figures on the guardapolvos except the two Apostles are either repainted or additions of the early sixteenth century. The ubiquitous gold backgrounds in the retable are patterned only at the edges, and despite the dawn of internationalism implied in the headdresses of the women, the date can scarcely be later than 1410. T H E C A T A L A N I N F L U E N C E AT V A L E N C I A

The long and precipitous climb from Olocau del Rey, west of Morella, to the Ermita de Nuestra Señora de la Naranja is rewarded by the discovery of the remains of a retable that is indisputably proved by internal evidence to be a work of the rather piddling but delightfully childlike imitator of the Serras whom I believe to be Domingo Vails of Tortosa. Because of a possible influence of Marzal de Sas and because of some other Valencian characteristics, I included him in my third volume under the Valencian school, but he should perhaps be credited rather to Catalonia, for, active in the Maestrazgo, he modified his Catalan lessons in the direction of a certain glumness of countenance (as far as so gentle an artist could ever be convincingly glum) in much the same way as another painter of Catalan artistic and perhaps natal origins, Valentin Montoliu, laboring in the same region in the middle of the fifteenth century, was partially to acidify and enervate the forms that he acquired from Huguet. I am no longer so sure that the crabbedness of Vails is derived from Marzal de Sas, for it appears also in the much later Montoliu and may belong to the aesthetic atmosphere of the Maestrazgo. The fragments of the retable are built about the altar of the Ermita. At either side of a niche, from which the statue of Our Lady of the Orange has been removed to the parish church of Olocau but which may have once contained a statue of St. Agnes, who is honored in the painted panels, are six small compartments depicting scenes from the life of this virgin martyr. At the left, the first episode, in which she is conversing with three persons, is her rejection of the offer of marriage or a conversation with her suitor's father. In the next two compartments the fire that had been kindled for her consumes her executioners, and she is slain by the sword as an angel receives her soul. The scenes at the right are her burial, the storm of lightning striking the pagans while her foster-sister, Emerentiana, prays at her tomb, and the apparition of St. Agnes, accompanied by other holy virgins, to those who worship at her sepulchre. The Serra convention of a kings (cf. A. V. Domenec, Historia general de los santos del principado de Cataluña, I40) and who are depicted in Valentin Montoliu's documented retable at Villafranca del Cid and, with royal crowns, in Huguet's celebrated altarpiece at Tarrasa.

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crescent of blue to denote the sky is introduced into the panels of the actual martyrdom and of the Emerentiana episode. On the uprights are preserved the small effigies of eight other virgin saints. Pieces of the predella are now utilized as an antependium, three panels of paired, seated saints, Bartholomew and Peter M a r t y r , James Minor and a canonized bishop, Dominic and Paul, and from a lower molding, medallions of Solomon, Abraham (?), and a king of the Old Testament whose name on his scroll I cannot decipher. B e t i 1 assigns these fragments of a predella to another lost altarpiece and dates them in the fifteenth century, but they are clearly by the same author as the fourteenth-century retable of St. Agnes. Further works of this painter whom we may call Domingo Vails have emerged in private collections at Barcelona. T h e Muntadas Collection contains a piece of a retable with four compartments depicting the Resurrection, Ascension, Heaven, and Hell and with four diminutive saints on the uprights. T h e iconographical interest, as not infrequently with Domingo Vails, compensates for the rather puerile technique. In the Resurrection, the presence of the Virgin betokens his dependence upon the Serra shop; 2 and the Roman soldiers are much increased in number, so that their helmets make pretty decorative accents along the back of the sepulchre. In the Ascension, Christ is still ensconced in a mandorla. Beneath the Pantocrator surrounded by seraphim in the representation of Heaven, the blessed are naively symbolized by six persons (all feminine!) whom angels are seating upon winsome little thrones. In his picture of Hell he has even surpassed the Gothic standard of the grotesque in his eerie characterization of the demons and in the punishments of the condemned. There can be little doubt that two panels of the Burial (Fig. 243) and Coronation of the Virgin in the Dalmau Collection, Barcelona, were once parts of this same retable. The identical figuration of the carved frames is perhaps not enough to prove the point; but it is to be noted that the two feminine saints still extant on the upright of the Coronation stand on exactly the same curious kind of fissured ground as the corresponding figures in the Muntadas fragment. T h e scene of the interment is treated in a new way and with much real feeling. T h e soldiery that are mentioned in the Golden Legend as running together to menace the obsequies are introduced among the rocks in the background; St. John leads the procession with the palm of the Annunciation of Our Lady's death; and in the heads of the other Apostles, In Boletín de la Sociedad Castellonense de Cultura, V I (1925), 263. Miss King suggests to me that the Virgin's presence in the Catalan iconography of the Resurrection is adequately explained by the Byzantine accounts of the event in the sermons of Georgius Nicomediensis (Migne, Patrologia Graeca, C , columns 14951496) and in the writings of the hagiographer, Symeon Metaphrastes {ibid., C X V , columns 555—556), both of whom lay great stress upon the fact that Our Lady was the single eyewitness of the actual stupendous miracle and all its details. 1

2

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shrouded in mourning, the artist, despite his limitations, has expressed deep-seated sorrow. 1 T o the evidence of the influence of the Serras in the Maestrazgo and Valencian territory embodied in Domingo Vails and in the other instances that I have mustered in volume I I I , it is possible to add a small example in the very region where Vails was active, which hitherto has been wrongly attributed. T h e picture in question is placed immediately above the central section of that conglomerate retable in the Ermita de Sta. Lucía, once the parish church of the no longer extant town of Salvasoria, most accessible from Cati (north of Albocácer), which contains three panels of the legend of St. George probably by Valentín Montoliu. 2 Beti, the writer of the standard monograph on Montoliu, impossibly assigns to him also the panel with which we now have to do, and he makes the further error of designating the subject as the Patrocinio de la Virgen. 3 I myself cannot see that it is anything more than a Last Judgment, in which there are left the figure of Christ, two adoring angels, and part of a group of risen mortals including a king, a pope, and another man. Better preserved are the flanking uprights with effigies of Daniel, Solomon, Jeremiah, and Elijah. T h e unincised gold background would almost in itself forestall a date later than c. 1400. T h e author was a follower of the Serras, probably originating in the Maestrazgo or Valencia and decidedly more gifted than Domingo Vails. T h e other parts of the conglomerate altarpiece, with the exception of Montoliu's panels, are peasant daubs of a later date. Three panels of the N a t i v i t y of Christ, the Massacre of the Innocents, and the Crucifixion in the sacristy of the parroquia at L a Iglesuela del Cid, northwest of Villafranca del Cid, are indifferently executed fragments of a single retable which, whether by an imitator of Borrassá from Catalonia, Valencia, or the Maestrazgo itself, betray the persisting Catalan influence in this region after Domingo Vails and before Valentin Montoliu. OTHER VALENCIAN PAINTINGS IN THE INTERNATIONAL STYLE

T h e sacristy of the church of Pego, south of Gandía, contains a retable of about 1425 or 1430 which resembles in style the altarpiece of Puebla Larga, now in the Provincial Museum, Valencia, but which 1 I observe that Elizabeth Trapier (Catalogue of the paintings of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in the Hispanic Society, p. 3) has also recognized the proper affiliations of these two panels. 2 T h e tenses in this paragraph almost certainly ought to be put in the past, because the retable, an abject ruin when I visited the Ermita on June 5,1930, more sadly neglected than any other important Spanish work of art that I know, and more absolutely exposed to the ravages of the weather, is in all probability b y this time entirely destroyed. 3 See below, p. 606.

FIG. 243. DOMINGO VALLS (?). BURIAL OF VIRGIN. DALMAU COLLECTION, BARCELONA (Photo. Arxiu

Mas)

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is not certainly by the same hand. I t also shares with the Puebla Larga picture a familiarity with the Burgundian costumes of the international movement, and in the panel of the N a t i v i t y of Christ the note o î genre obtrudes in the apron worn by the midwife behind the Virgin and (a new iconographie element) in St. Joseph's colloquium with the shepherds. The central section is devoted to the Virgen de la Esperanza, 1 here overshadowed by the dove of the Holy Spirit, crowned by two angels, and adored by another pair, while a fifth presents a vase of flowers and a sixth a book from which she reads the Magnificat. Our L a d y is clad in a gold tunic and a lightly brocaded blue mantle. The upper parts of the central division are occupied by smaller compartments of the Dormition and the Crucifixion. St. Catherine stands in the left lateral section and is surmounted by the representation of the episode of the wheels. She is balanced on the right by St. Bartholomew and above him the flaying. Higher up, at the left and right respectively, are panels of the Annunciation and the N a t i v i t y of Christ. T h e predella now hangs upon another wall of the sacristy, consisting of the dead Saviour flanked by the Virgin, St. John Evangelist, Sts. Bernard, John Baptist, Ursula, and Margaret. T h e gold backgrounds are still diapered only at the borders. In the case of the large central panel of St. Anthony A b b o t from an otherwise lost retable in the sacristy of the church of S. Valero at Valencia, the style is not sufficiently defined to justify attachment to any one of the trends of Valencian painting during the first half of the fifteenth century. Painted by a competent hand about 1430, the hermit stands against a forest of trees dwarfed, as so often in international backgrounds, to diminutive size. T h e gold above the trees has been destroyed or at least is now hidden beneath a coating of paint. Across the top of the panel is written SANT G E N I S , which must be a mistaken later addition or apply to another figure with which the St. Anthony was once joined, for the St. Genesius ordinarily represented in Spanish art was a young martyr, 2 and there is no saint of the name who was an anchorite, except possibly an obscure count of Auvergne who spent a period of his life in the wilds. A lateral chapel in the church of S. Vicente de la Roqueta at Valencia contains another nondescript work belonging to the years just before the rise of Jacomart's art in the middle of the century, a small panel of the Madonna and Child enthroned under a canopy and adored by two angels, which has now become a cult-image and is called the Virgen de la Cerca. It is ruined by repaint, but it could never have been an important painting. I t is pleasant to be able to conclude these accretions to the extant treasure of early Valencian painting by two works that elucidate still 1 2

F o r a definition o f this i c o n o g r a p h i e t h e m e , see v o l . I I , p. 324. See b e l o w , p. 636, n. 1.

Fig. 244.

BERNARDO SERRA (?).

RETABLE OF ST. MICHAEL.

ERMITA DE S.

MIGUEL, LA PUEBLA DE BALLESTAR, NEAR VILLAFRANCA DEL CID (Photo. Arxiu Mas)

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APPENDIX

further the individuality of an artist whom I discussed in volume III, 1 the author of the St. Michael altarpiece in the Ermita de S. Miguel near Villafranca del Cid (Fig. 244). I am confident that two retables, one in the Archivo of the church at Cinctorres, just west of Morella, and the other in the Ermita de la Magdalena at the adjacent Olocau del R e y , are the creation of a single painter, and only less certain that this painter is identical with the master of the Ermita de S. Miguel at Villafranca, so that it is to be hoped that we may some day substantiate the possibility, discussed in the note below, 2 that his name was Bernardo Serra. A t Cinctorres the three preserved panels are now built into a structure of later architecture and later painted predella. T h e central panel is the (blasphemous) subject called the Patrocinio de la Virgen, the Virgin of Mercy sheltering mortals under her mantle against the darts hurled by Christ and handed to Him by armed angels.3 St. Michael overcoming the dragon occupies the left panel, and St. John Baptist the right (Fig. 245). T h e gold backgrounds are not diapered. It is the identity of pose and armor between the Sts. Michael of Cinctorres and Villafranca that at once powerfully suggests a single author (although the countenances are slightly different), and this idea is borne out by other analogies, as between the Virgin at Cinctorres and the Madonna of the central pinnacle at Villafranca, between the angels upholding the Virgin's 1 R

Φ2 Bet! in the Boletín de la Sociedad Castellonense de Cultura, V I (1925), 264, ascribes the Cinctorres retable to a Bernardo Serra, who, like his predecessor in these parts, Domingo Vails, came from Tortosa and labored in the district of Morella and whose activity may be traced from 1423 to his death sometime before 1456; but he does not give his grounds for the attribution. On an earlier page of the same article (261), however, he states that he knows an authentic work of this master, although he does not divulge what work it is; but in all probability it is identical with a retable that in a very recent article A . Sánchez Gozalbo {Boletín de la Sociedad Castellonense de Cultura, X I I I , 1932, p. 128) mentions as a documented production of Bernardo Serra, i.e., the retable of St. Michael at La Puebla de Ballestar, a suburb of Villafranca del Cid. Since La Puebla de Ballestar is the very spot near Villafranca where there exists the Ermita de S. Miguel that contains the retable of St. Michael discussed on p. 135 of volume III and again studied in these pages, it turns out to be this familiar retable that Sánchez Gozalbo declares to be documented. It was, then, in all likelihood, because of their resemblances to the retable of L a Puebla de Ballestar that Betí ascribed the Cinctorres panels to Bernardo Serra, although he did not include the Olocau examples. Until, however, through the publication of the document, we discover how trustworthy it is and how definitely it refers to the retable at La Puebla de Ballestar, the attribution of this group of paintings to Bernardo Serra cannot be regarded as conclusively demonstrated. Cf. also Sanchis y Sivera, Pintores medievales en Valencia, Archivo de arte valenciano, X V (1929), 34. J The subject may well have had its origin in St. Dominic's vision, related in the Golden Legend, of the Virgin restraining the spears of Christ by offering to Him Sts. Dominic and Francis as instruments to recall mankind to virtue. In a subsequent volume we shall meet a version of the theme in which the figures of Sts. Dominic and Francis are actually introduced, a picture by one of the two Andalusian masters called Pedro Sánchez in the Municipal Archaeological Museum of Seville.

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mantle at Cinctorres and those that flank the Madonna at Villafranca, or between the Baptist's head at Cinctorres and the Sts. Peter and Paul of the Villafranca predella. The types of the painter seem to be descended from the pert figures of Pedro Nicolau. The retable at Olocau, which remains intact in structure, likewise consists of three principal panels, the Magdalene clothed in graceful, Gothic red robes in the middle, St. Anthony Abbot at the left, and St. Barbara (the color of whose mantle has largely faded) at the right

FIG. 245. BERNARDO SERRA (?). STS. MICHAEL AND JOHN BAPTIST, SECTION OF RETABLE. PARISH CHURCH, CINCTORRES

(Fig. 246). The altarpiece includes a central pinnacle or remate of the Crucifixion and a predella depicting the dead Christ at the centre upheld by an angel amidst the instruments of the Passion and four episodes of the Magdalene's story, her washing of Christ's feet, her lévitation in the wilds, her last communion, and her interment. Once again the gold backgrounds are without pattern. Even beneath the extensive repainting the unity of authorship with the Cinctorres panels and hence with the Villafranca retable seems to be demonstrated by the parallelism between the feminine types and, above all,

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APPENDIX

by the striking equality between the faces and expressions of the Olocau St. Anthony and the Cinctorres Baptist. T h e geographical proximity of all three towns, Villafranca, Cinctorres, and Olocau del R e y , m a y be once again taken as an argument for a single author. MAJORCA

T h e publication, by the Hispanic Society, of the monograph on Fourteenth-Century Painting in the Kingdom of Aragon beyond the Sea, the pleasure of still another trip to M a j o r c a , and, above all, the enlightened guidance, during this visit, of Don Rafael Ysasi, who generously put both his precious time and his unequalled knowledge of the island's art at m y disposal, enable me to expand considerably m y chapter on Balearic painting. Our further study will result, I trust, in additional attributions, groupings, and clarifications in the confusion that still envelops the numerous but largely anonymous mediaeval panels of the island. T h e earliest accretion to the chapter is the central panel of a retable dedicated to an unidentified papal saint in a chapel at the left of the nave in the cathedral of Palma, executed in a style similar to that of the altarpiece of St. Eulalia in the same edifice 1 and therefore to be dated about 1375. T h e canonized pope is seated in idol-like frontality upon an inlaid throne decked with a brocaded textile of delicate pattern. T h e red of his gold-edged cope is echoed in his tiara. T h e design of small rosettes in the fabric of the cope is presented to the spectator in unforeshortened flatness in very much the same w a y as on the Madonna's mantle in the Serra retable of San C u g a t del Vallès. T h e book or square plaque that he holds, ornamented with figures of Sts. Peter and Paul, is perhaps meant to simulate leather. T h e panel preserves also its pinnacle of the Crucifixion, limited to the forms of Christ, the Virgin, and St. John set against a balustrade. T h e gold backgrounds in the panel are untooled except at the borders. T h e fine draughtsmanship is superior to that of the St. Eulalia retable. T h e Sienese influence is already tangible, for instance in the drawing of the pontiff's eyes and in the whole person of St. John. T h e manner of the figures in the Crucifixion precludes a date before the beginning of the last quarter of the Trecento. O f the personalities already known to me in the fully developed Italo-Gothic art of M a j o r c a at the end of the fourteenth and beginning of the fifteenth century, Juan Daurer has become no more clearly outlined a figure, since I have now definitely ascertained that his second documented work, the St. Michael, has disappeared from the church at Muro. Don Rafael Y s a s i 2 has recently ascribed to him, 1

Vol. I l l , pp. 142-144.

" Bolleti de la Societal Arqueológica Luliana, XXI (1926-1927), 337-338.

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with all due reservations, an Annunciation in the Museo de la L o n j a , Palma (Fig. 247), which I consciously omitted from the chapter in volume I I I because I was puzzled by certain rather advanced passages of drawing and painting that might indicate a somewhat rustic hand at work in the second half of the fifteenth century. What seems rusticity, however, is due apparently to a more primitive date, and I am now about persuaded that the picture belongs to the very end of the Trecento or beginning of the Quattrocento, although I am much less decidedly convinced of the attribution to Daurer. T h e types of the Virgin and angel, for instance, resemble quite as strongly those of the painter of the St. George in the Museo Arqueológico. T h e

Fig. 146.

BERNARDO SERRA (?). SECTION OF RETABLE OF MAGDALENE. ERMITA DE LA MAGDALENA, OLOCAU DEL REY

principal interest of the Annunciation indeed is that, like the St. George, it provides one of the rare Majorcan examples of a delight in the multiplication of the pretty details cultivated by the international movement. T h e setting concerns the author as much as the sacred theme — a kind of Gothic arbor surmounted by a charming trellis of grapevines. I t is one of the few instances in the history of art in which, as in the episode of the holy women at the tomb on one of Donatello's pulpits in S. Lorenzo, Florence, for the sake of illusory effect the columns of an apartment are represented in front of as well as behind the actors. T h e Gothic openings at the back look out upon what would be a curious scenic property in any other than an international

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conception of the Annunciation —• an elaborate fountain in the midst of a park. T h e Christ Child descending to His mother's womb is relegated to a quatrefoil in the pinnacle of the panel. I have finally been able to study thoroughly the panels in the raised coro at the west end of the parroquia in the town of Santa Margarita that pass as authenticated paintings of an artist who was perhaps Daurer's brother-in-law, Martin M a y o l ; 1 and through the courtesy of Don Rafael Ysasi I am permitted to publish excellent photographs of these works made by the young M a j orean scholar, Don Bernardo Ribot (Figs. 248 and 249). It must be acknowledged that the evidence for the attribution, at least so far as it has been divulged, is very slim, merely a statement of the Majorcan archaeologist, Gabriel Llabrés, 2 who does not allege any other proof than an anagram of the word M A i o L on a part of the retable depicting St. Anthony Abbot. Since this part of the retable has now disappeared from the church, leaving only the Sts. Margaret and Peter, it is no longer possible to control the assertion of Llabrés. We ask ourselves how, on such slight grounds, he chose a Martin Mayol as the author rather than one of the other Majorcan painters in the fourteenth century who had the same surname; and unless we surmise that he was only putting down a guess as a fact, we must take refuge in the assumption that he knew of a document which he does not mention. Providing this, however, was true, we should expect him to give the actual date of the retable and not merely declare that it is a work of the end of the fourteenth century. If, for the sake of argument, we admit the justice of the ascription to Martin Mayol, the style of the panels, which prevents a date before c. 1375, almost makes it necessary to suppose that the author must be the second of this name, the son of the painter Martin M a y o l who, since he appears in the documents as early as 1321, could scarcely have been still active in his profession in the seventies. 3 Martin Mayol II is first mentioned in 1346, when with his two brothers, also artists, he was absolved by Peter the Ceremonious from a true or false charge of murder. His second date is that of his will, 1374, and he may have died shortly thereafter. In the records he is dubbed a gilder, but like the rest of the family, if he is the author of the Santa Margarita retable, he must have followed also the career of a painter. The Crucifixion in the pinnacle above the St. Margaret demonstrates that this panel, as was natural in consideration of the name of the town, was the centre of the retable. T h e direction in which St. Peter faces and the Virgin of the Annunciation in the pinnacle See m y vol. I l l , pp. 150 and 330. ' Bollet't de la Societal Arqueológica Luliana, X V I ( 1 9 1 6 - 1 9 1 7 ) , 331. 3 Llabrés {op. cit.) says that it " a p p e a r s " that the elder M a r t i n was already dead in 1348; but this cannot be, since a M a r t i n M a y o l , definitely denominated as senior, took a Pedro M a y o l as apprentice in 135a (Bolletí de la Societat Arqueológica Luliana, X I , 1905-1907, p. 5). Llabrés confuses this M a r t i n M a y o l senior with a Pedro M a y o l the elder. Cf. also Gudiol, Les trescentistes, 180-181. 1

Fig. 247. ANNUNCIATION.

MUSEO DE LA LONJA, PALMA

(Photo. Arxiu

Mas)

Fio. 248.

MARTIN MAYOL (?).

SECTION OF R E T A B L E .

DETAIL OF F I G U R E OF ST. MARGARET,

PARISH CHURCH, SANTA MARGARITA

( Courtesy of Don Rafael Ysasi)

ADDITIONS TO VOLUMES I-III

613

above him indicate that he was the figure at the right. The St. Anthony must therefore have been at the left, and since Llabrés speaks of an Annunciation at the top of the structure, the pinnacle would

FIG. 249.

MARTIN MAYOL (?). ST. PETER, SECTION OF RETABLE. PARISH CHURCH, SANTA MARGARITA (Courtesy of Don Rafael Ytasi)

have contained St. Gabriel. One of the uprights at the side of St. Peter is also preserved with two small figures of saints. The gold backgrounds are patterned only at the borders, but here, as well as in

614

APPENDIX

the haloes and as when gold is employed to accent the edges of the garments, its tooling quite realizes the high standard that the Majorcans usually set in this phase of their craft. 1 If Martin Mayol I I was the creator of these panels, he surpasses in other respects the majority of his rivals in the island. He vies with the Sienese of the Trecento, whom he so closely imitates. He maintains the Sienese elegance of Gothic line and mysticism, while endowing his personages with a gentle frailty that is so ubiquitous a note in Maj orean painting. It is also with a Sienese feeling for luxury and prettiness that he lines the mantles of both St. Margaret and St. Peter with fur and with considerable success simulates its texture. Two other representations of St. Peter in the island have come to my attention which I wish that I might honestly relate to the effigy by Mayol but which, though similar to the panel at Santa Margarita, have no peculiar traits in common with it and so must be relegated to the extensive and unhappy Majorcan class of the anonymous. The similarity is occasioned merely by the general stylistic analogy of all Italo-Gothic Majorcan paintings at the end of the fourteenth century and by the established iconographical tradition for all representations of St. Peter. One example, together with a pendant figure of St. Anthony Abbot, is built into a conglomerate retable df several epochs over an altar at the right of the nave in the church of the Hospital at Palma. Robustly monumental forms in the intensely Italianate manner of Majorca, they seem more Giottesque than Sienese. The monumentality of the St. Peter is enhanced by the broadly magnificent and Gothic sweep of red drapery in which he is clad. The other representation of the Apostle is a section of the retable over the high altar of the church at Castellig, a small settlement south of Algaida. Although again a characteristic Majorcan work of the last years of the Trecento, the retable, so far as I can see, was executed neither by Mayol nor by the painter of the Hospital. Its two halves were pushed to the sides in the seventeenth century to give place at the centre to a niche for a statue of the Madonna. The large effigy of St. Peter stands at the left (Fig. 250) flanked by the usual narrative compartments, here depicting his resuscitation of a corpse,2 his angelic delivery from prison, and the "Quo V a d i s " episode. The retable was one of those that united two saints in honor: Peter's natural companion, Paul, has been correspondingly shoved over to the right, and the three scenes from his life are his conversion, one of his sermons, and his decapitation. The trefoils in the pinnacles above the large figures of the Apostles are occupied by the two participants in the Annunciation. The gold backgrounds are absolutely un tooled. The retable, as it now stands, comprises paintings of other epochs, 1

Vol. I l l , p. 1 3 7 . Evidently a male and so not Tabitha; nor, since St. Paul is absent, can it be the man upon whom the incantations of Simon Magus had failed. 2

ADDITIONS TO VOLUMES I-III

615

some of which are of immediate interest to us as of only a slightly later date than the altarpiece of Sts. Peter and Paul. These panels of the early fifteenth century serve as a predella to the conglomeration, busts of the same two Apostles who are depicted above, the right half of a full-length figure of St. Sebastian, the half of a corresponding figure of St. Anthony Abbot (all these pieces being repainted), and,

FIG. 250. ST. PETER, SECTION OF RETABLE. PARISH CHURCH, CASTELLIG

according to the same barbarous dismemberment that some of the other pieces have suffered, the now separated halves of an Ascension. Two further mutilated bits of the single original assemblage to which the predella once belonged have found a hospital in the Museo Arqueológico, Palma, the upper halves of a Resurrection and of a Pentecost. Four works of the turn of the fourteenth into the fifteenth century may be grouped together as possessing some traits in common, but

6ι6

APPENDIX

with my present knowledge and in view of the almost intangible shades of difference between the Maj orean masters of the period, I am far from presuming to ascribe them to a single hand. One is a retable at the right of the nave in the Ermita of S. Bias near Campos, east of Palma. The central panel is occupied by a Virgen de la Leche, over whom hover two music-making angels, surmounted by the usual remate of the Crucifixion. The two lateral sections display the scenes of the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Epiphany, and the Resurrection, and each section is capped by a pinnacle embellished with a medallion of a Prophet. The decoration of the outer uprights consists in winged heads of seraphim. The gold backgrounds are lightly incised at the borders, and the panels themselves are relieved upon a setting that imitates a mild-toned brocade. An original element in the Nativity is the device for symbolizing the Trinity, a crescent of three colors in the midst of the golden sky from which a triad of shafts of the same colors, containing angelic heads, descend upon the Child. The Virgin graces the Resurrection, as in the Serra iconography of the theme, but the retable exhibits no other very tangible grounds for the theory of an influence of this Barcelona atelier. Even if S. Bias was once the parish church of Campos (and this Quadrado denies '), both the date and the subjects of the retable gainsay the possibility that it was the altarpiece of the Virgin, St. Anthony Abbot, and St. Michael ordered from Gabriel Moger in 1438 for the parroquia,2 Of the mediaeval paintings in the Ermita of Roser Veil close to Pollensa, a figure of St. Nicholas in a chapel at the right of the nave has the same kind of brocade for a background instead of gold as appears on the general setting for the Campos retable. The style suggests in some ways Juan Daurer and in others the Campos painter but in neither instance decidedly enough to impose the attribution. One may, if he will, descry also resemblances to the St. Nicholas from Portopi in the Museo Arqueológico, Palma, which, however, is probably some twenty-five years later in date.3 Beneath the large effigy of the patron of children are two small scenes of his miracles, the restoration to his father's house of the lad that the pagans held as cupbearer and, in a single compartment, the murder of the scholars and the resuscitation of their remains from the tub. Both these tales are related in the narrative sections of the Portopi retable, the former carried through two compartments, but at Roser Veil the story of the tub conforms to the version that tells of a pair of assassinated boys instead of three.4 The writer of the monograph of the Hispanic Society, FourteenthCentury Painting in the Kingdom of Aragon beyond the Sea,s rightly 1 2

Islas Baleares, 1138, Bolletí de la Societat Arqueológica Luliana, X I (1905-1907), 27.

3 Vol. Ill, p. 160.

4 See my vol. II, p. 82.

6

Pp. 7-9.

FIG. 251. EPISCOPAL SAINT, SECTION OF RETABLE OF ST. BERNARD. MUSEO DE LA LONJA, PALMA (Photo. Rul-lan)

6ι8

APPENDIX

discerns certain similarities between the St. Nicholas of Roser Veil and the fragments, in the Museo de la Lonja, Palma, of a retable of St. Bernard from the chapel of the Oleza family dedicated to this patriarch of the Cistercians in the ruined cloister of the church of Sto. Domingo. 1 T h e central panel (No. 30 of the Museum) enshrines a standing effigy of St. Bernard adored by a kneeling lay donor; its now separated remate (No. 25) depicts the familiar theme of St. Bernard's vision. T h e two lateral figures are St. Anthony A b b o t (No. 21) and a canonized bishop (No. 27) (Fig. 251), with the Virgin and angel of the Annunciation in the pinnacles. T h e sadly injured predella contains the small standing forms of Sts. Peter, Paul, Cosmas, and Damian, punctuated with the scene of the encounter of St. Anthony with St. Paul the Hermit, an episode in the lives of Sts. Cosmas and Damian that I cannot decipher, and a story in which the unidentified episcopal saint is depicted in bed. T h e gold backgrounds are softly incised with a light foliate pattern in harmony with the delicate Majorcan sensitiveness of the color and drawing. T h e fourth altarpiece that may be included in this group is dispersed about the church and attached monastery of Sta. María del Puig on the mountain above Pollensa. I t must have been dedicated to St. Michael and the other archangels, but, of the large, principal figures, only the St. Gabriel and the St. Raphael (with Tobias) are preserved, now placed, in a very dilapidated condition, in a corridor of the monastery. T h e style, the winged heads of seraphim on the uprights, and the whole setting of a simulated brocade create a rather persuasive analogy to the Campos retable. T h e predella is in the sacristy of the church, displaying the appearance of St. Michael on the Castel Sant' Angelo, the Monte Gargano episode, and a scene that probably depicts St. Michael and another angel taking the body of Moses for burial under divine direction, a theme that the Catalan example of Castellón de Ampurias 2 demonstrates to have been sometimes introduced into altarpieces erected in honor of the archangel. These three compartments are flanked by busts of St. Sebastian and of either St. Cosmas or St. Damian. The present place is as suitable as any to catalogue the other paintings of the same period in Sta. María del Puig, besides the picture of the Madonna and angels mentioned in volume III. 3 One of the chapels in the church harbors the two huge central panels of a retable of the two St. Johns. T h e Evangelist is a solemn and capably painted figure, wearing an unusually conspicuous brocade and very clearly betraying his Sienese origins. T h e Baptist looks as if he had been a victim of 1

Bolleti de la Societal Arqueológica Luliana, XXIII (1930-1931), 495: this article

reveals another chapel of the cloister as the place of provenience for the Dominican retable in the Museo de la Lonja discussed in my vol. I l l , pp. 154-156. 2 Vol. II, p. 430. ' Pp. 150-152.

ADDITIONS

TO

VOLUMES

I-III

619

repaint, especially in his red mantle. The tiling upon which they stand is very different from that which supports the Gabriel and Raphael of the other altar. T h e backgrounds are of gold, diapered with a small

Fig. 2J2. FRAGMENT OF RETABLE. AYUNTAMIENTO, SANTA MARÍA (MAJORCA)

foliate design. I t is difficult to determine whether pieces of another predella, distributed about the sacristy, belong to the retable of the Madonna and angels or to that of the two St. Johns. T h e predella

Ó20

APPENDIX

incorporates the Passion, and the pieces comprise the scene of Christ washing the Apostles' feet, a fragment of the Agony in the Garden preserving only the forms of the three sleeping Apostles, the part of the Betrayal in which St. Peter cuts off the ear of the high priest's servant, and a bit of the scene of Christ before Pilate. A section of an upright with the figure of a standing saint may also be seen in the sacristy. One is at a loss likewise to say whether a piece of a lower frieze with medallions of three Apostles should be assigned to the space beneath the predella of the angels or beneath that of the Passion. T w o Madonnas would be more significant additions to the art of the island at the end of the fourteenth century, if they were not, like many of the M a j orean cult-images of Our L a d y in the second half of the Quattrocento, so nearly ruined by subsequent pious renovation. In the church of Sta. Cruz at Palma, besides the well known Nuestra Señora del Buen Camino belonging to the late fifteenth century, there exists over an altar at the left of the nave a completely repainted panel of the Trecento which depicts the Virgin, with the Child, under the title, I believe, of Nuestra Señora de la Paz. She is represented, at least in the present condition of the work, at halflength, and displays a sprig of lilies. A Crucifixion in the pinnacle reveals that the second example, now in the Ayuntamiento of the town of Santa Maria, was once the centre of a retable (Fig. 252). Only somewhat less ruthlessly " r e s t o r e d " than Our L a d y of Peace, the Virgin is seated upon a cushion placed upon a Gothic throne. T h e Child is made piquant b y the frequent motif of toying with a bird. The retouching is most barbarous in the case of the feminine saints on the uprights, one of the six being in appearance entirely modern. T h e gold background is diapered throughout. In both Madonnas the overlay of repaint effectually stultifies any guesses in regard to authorship. I t is not until we come to an artist who belongs to the opening years of the fifteenth century rather than to the fourteenth, the master of the retable in the church of Montesión, Palma, that we can make new attributions with any degree of surety. Certainly he is the most likely guess for the author of some terribly battered fragments of a retable that only recently have come to light in the Museo de la Lonja (Fig. 253). One fragment depicts the ecstasy of the Magdalene and beneath, partly broken away, her last communion. In the pinnacle is a trefoil of St. Catherine of Alexandria. T h e other piece contains the scene of St. Lucy's distribution of her dowry to the poor in the presence of her mother, the upper half of her trial before Paschasius, and a pinnacle of St. Clara. T h e gold backgrounds are plain. T h e basis of the attribution is particularly the similarity of St. L u c y to the feminine personages of the Montesión altarpiece and of the two most prominent and rather severe recipients of her charity to the St. Blaise. T h e whole group of the indigent, however, is superior in draughtsmanship to the norm embodied in the Montesión altarpiece.

622

APPENDIX

T w o pinnacles long familiar in the Museo de la Lonja, deriving from a single retable and representing the Resurrection and Pentecost (Nos. i l and 13), seem to be related to the Montesión master, if they are not indeed his own work. Another picture for which I should like to propose an attribution to the same artist is a panel of the Madonna and Child serenaded b y six angels, once the centre of a retable, in the Collection of Don Raimundo Ruiz, Madrid (Fig. 254). As in the St. L u c y and Magdalene fragments, the gold background is unincised. T h e nudeness of the Child, except for a gauze about the loins, is one of several Spanish instances which I have recently found, indicating that this peculiarity in the triptych of the Gardner Collection, Boston, is not an obstacle to a belief in a Catalan authorship. 1 T o the evidence for the vogue of Borrassá's manner in M a j o r c a 2 we may add a repainted Deposition over an altar at the left of the nave in the church of Roser Veil. Indeed the style, though somewhat rustic, is sufficiently close to that of Borrassá to legitimatize the question whether we may not have here a production of his slave, Lucas Borrassá, who is known eventually to have painted in the island and to have there died. If perchance the Deposition represents the achievement of Lucas Borrassá, we should have to renounce the theory that he was responsible for the very different " m a n n e r of Guimerá." 3 T w o panels that I was courteously shown in the Rectory of the town of Alcudia, depicting the death of the Virgin and, as a separate episode, her gift of the girdle to St. Thomas, should be registered as international works of c. 1425 in a Franco-Flemish mode somewhat similar to that more gloriously manipulated in Catalonia by the Master of St. George. 1 See my vol. II, p. 314. With much persuasiveness Van de Put (Art in America, X X , 1932, pp. 51-59), by a brilliant interpretation of the heraldry and lettering on the Gardner donor's coat, has identified him as Frederic, the illegitimate son of Martin the Younger of Sicily and therefore the grandson of Martin the Elder, who was also Martin I (the Humane) of Aragon. Since Frederic was born about 1402 and the donor of the triptych seems to be in his late teens, the picture would be placed about 1420, a not impossible date for a follower of Jaime Serra, although I should naturally have guessed, from the style, at a somewhat earlier year. Frederic was in Spain at least by I412 when at Saragossa he did homage to the newly elected sovereign, Ferdinand, so that the triptych, if he is indeed therein depicted, must have been executed in the peninsula. I am familiar with no Sicilian painting so close to the manner of the Serras — certainly not the altarpiece of 1414 in the Museum of Palermo adduced by Van de Put in his tentative suggestion that the Gardner panels may be the production of a Sicilian artist resident in Catalonia. 2

Vol. I l l , pp. 160-162.

3 Vol. II, pp. 379-380.

FIG. 1J4.

SCHOOL OF MAJORCA.

MADONNA.

RUIZ COLLECTION, M A D R I D (Photo.

Moreno)

RAIMUNDO

624

A P P E N D I X

THE

CATALAN

INFLUENCE

IN

ARAGON

The laborious journey over a rough river-bed in lieu of a road to the hamlet of Anento, just southeast of Daroca, is repaid by the discovery of the hugest extant retable that I know of in Spain, covering the whole east end of the church. For the sake of convenience it m a y be catalogued under the above heading because its nearest analogue is the Villaespesa altarpiece in the cathedral of Tudela, which was produced under the influence of Borrassá. In the Anento specimen, however, the craftsmanship is inferior, the reminiscences of Borrassá are very indistinct, and the resemblances to the Villaespesa altarpiece are not close, such mannerisms, for instance, as the stylized trees being absent. I t can hardly be described more definitely than as a nondescript, rather countrified international work of c. 1430. Its chief distinction thus remains its size, for it is vaster even than its already capacious counterpart, the Villaespesa altarpiece. Like the Villaespesa example, the Anento altarpiece really consists of three retables joined together. Since the church is dedicated to St. Blaise, he is enthroned in the central panel and surrounded by five compartments with scenes from his life, his consecration as bishop of Sebaste at the top and at the sides the huntsmen finding him in communion with the beasts, his cure of the child strangled by a fish-bone, the child's mother feeding him in prison, and his torture by combing. Above the consecration of St. Blaise is the customary Crucifixion. T h e corresponding division at the left is assigned to Our L a d y , represented as the Virgin of Mercy in the principal panel and commemorated in the narrative scenes round about by the Epiphany at the top and by the N a t i v i t y of Christ, the Purification, Pentecost, and the Dormition at the sides. The pinnacle of this section is the Annunciation. T h e balancing division on the right honors an episcopal saint the episodes from whose life are not sufficiently unique to make possible his recognition. He is depicted standing in the chief panel; above is his consecration, conforming in subject and place to the analogous scene in the St. Blaise division; and the other four episodes are his intercourse with a group of people, his death by the sword, his obsequies, and the resort of worshippers to his shrine. T h e pinnacle of this division, over the consecration, displays the two young martyrs St. Sebastian and St. Genesius, the latter with the attribute of his martyrdom, the same as that of St. Blaise, a comb. 1 A t the sides of the Crucifixion and the consecration of St. Blaise in the central section the retable expands to include four large panels of the standing Sts. Michael, Catherine, Agatha, and Barbara. T w o smaller panels, each of a Prophet ( ?) kneeling in the wilderness, fill in the curving portions in the upper 1

See below, p. 636, n. I.

APPENDIX

626

parts of the sides. T h e inordinately large predella tells the story of the Passion (Fig. 255), and on the guardapolvos angels hold the instruments of that tragedy. THE

ARAGONESE

COUNTERPART

OF T H E

MANNER

or

GUIMERA

T h e remains of a retable of the Virgin, built into a modern frame over an altar at the left of the nave in the parish church of Sádaba, in the northern part of the province of Saragossa, resemble in style the altarpiece by Pedro Zuera in the cathedral of Huesca, but the craftsmanship is a little better and the date somewhat posterior, perhaps c. 1410, so that, with my present knowledge, I should hesitate to make a dogmatic attribution to Zuera or even leave myself the loophole of designating it as one of his later productions. T h e summit of the altar is occupied by a panel of the enthroned Madonna with a Child who is curiously and perhaps purposely Byzantine in appearance. A left pinnacle contains the Annunciation, but the corresponding pinnacle on the right is so ruined or covered with dirt that the subject cannot be made out. T h e lower part of the structure comprises eight jumbled narrative compartments: at the left, the Epiphany, Pentecost, the Purification, and the Dormition; and at the right, the Presentation of the Virgin, the Visitation, the Marriage of the Virgin, and the very unusual theme of angels playing with the Christ Child in the presence of Sts. M a r y and Joseph. T h e angelic entertainment of the young Saviour, overwatched by His mother, is encountered with relative frequency, as in the Liria retable of Sts. Vincent and Stephen, in panels in the Salas Capitulares of the cathedral at Barcelona, and in the altarpiece of Nicolás Frances at Tordesillas; but the inclusion of St. Joseph transforms the subject very definitely into an episode of Our Lord's domestic life in His infancy. A further piece of the retable, the Coronation, is built into the middle of the predella. T h e gold backgrounds receive a design only at the edges. If the Sádaba panels are by chance the work of Pedro Zuera, they furnished him an opportunity to reveal a quality of tenderness for which the representation of the rows of saints at Huesca could give no outlet. This note is touched in the very choice of the scene from the infancy at Nazareth, in the manner in which Simeon holds the Child in the Purification, and in the gesture with which Christ receives the soul of His mother (painted as if it were a realistic baby) at her falling asleep. Another set of paintings in this group of Aragonese and Navarrese works that resemble the Catalan manner of Guimerá I now feel may be linked more closely together so as to form the artistic personality of a man who I am more and more convinced is Juan de Levi. In other words, further study, both on the spot and in Mas's excellent new photographs, of the retable of Sts. Lawrence, Prudentius, and Catherine in the cathedral of Tarazona (Figs. 256, 257, and 258) re-

Fie. 2J6.

JUAN D E L E V I .

ST. C A T H E R I N E , SECTION OF R E T A B L E .

CATHEDRAL, TARAZONA CPhoto. Arxiu

Mas)

6α8

APPENDIX

moves the doubt that I expressed 1 and definitely persuades me that Mayer is right in claiming for it a unity of authorship with the retable of St. Catherine in the cathedral of Tudela. We thus obtain three retables that are to be attributed to a single master, the two that have just been mentioned and the altarpiece of St. Helen at Estella. T h e only difference is that the Tarazona example presents us with a slightly more serious aspect of the master's art when he does not indulge himself so much in a stylized elaboration of contemporary costume. 2 In the mystic marriage of St. Catherine he uses his brush with more care than he ordinarily expends upon narrative scenes. A review of the facts 3 now inclines me to believe also that the Tarazona altarpiece might well have been described in a document as a retable of St. Catherine and that the body of evidence points to Juan de Levi as the author and therefore as the painter of the other two altarpieces. T h e escutcheon of Fernando Pérez Calvillo repeated several times on the Tarazona altarpiece proves that it must have been executed for this prelate for whom we know that Juan de Levi did a retable of St. Catherine, and the only escape from the evidence would be the forlorn hope that the documentary reference might be to another altarpiece of St. Catherine done by Juan for Calvillo in some other place than the cathedral or even in the cathedral itself! T h e closely related but better executed panel of St. Ursula in the Plandiura Collection 4 cannot be ascribed to Juan de Levi because it is signed by an artist named Jacobus; and I am unable to determine for my own satisfaction Vol. I l l , p. 186. The master reveals a good deal of elasticity not only in a very different and more robust, though scarcely less charming, representation of the standing effigy of St. Catherine in comparison with the version at Tudela, but also in variations of composition for narrative episodes that are the same in both retables, as in the burning of the sages (coerced into a characteristically Spanish symmetry of arrangement at Tarazona), in the incarceration of St. Catherine (at Tudela, led to prison and, at Tarazona, left there by her jailor), in the dispute with the sages (evidently conceived, at Tarazona, as occurring in prison), and finally in the story of the wheels. A more buxom type of St. Catherine, however, similar to that of the Tarazona central panel, puts in its appearance in the lateral sections of the Tudela altar. In the iconography of St. Lawrence's life, the only factors that need passing notice are the introduction of the rarely depicted episodes, his baptism of the prisoner, Lucillus, his conversion of his jailor, St. Hippolytus, and his cures of the blind, and, as in the retable dedicated to him in the Museum of Vich (see above, p. 559), the protraction of the tortures preceding the martyrdom upon the gridiron through two other panels. Some of the events represented from the life of St. Prudentius (whose Acta may be found in the Bollandists under April 28) are: his youthful and miraculous crossing of the river Duero, with dry feet, to the hermit Saturius; his sermon to the renegades at Calahorra; his episcopal consecration (the book that he holds being inscribed with the first words of the Te Deum); the mule starting forth with his dead body; the beast supernaturally kneeling at the cave where it is divinely decreed that he shall be buried; and his obsequies (with one of the attendant clerics reading from a book the first words of the Gospel of a requiem mass and another from a book on which is written the beginning of a prayer). 1

1

3 Vol. I l l , pp. 188-189. « Vol. I l l , pp. 180-184.

ADDITIONS TO VOLUMES I-III

629

whether the Madonna in the Bosch Collection of the Prado 1 should be claimed for the former or the latter. A s in the case of the Catalan Bernardo de Montflorit, I regret that an Aragonese painter of whom I have recently discovered the name and artistic personality has proved to be a master of quite minor importance. His name, Benito Arnaldin, appears as a signature on a retable of St. Martin at the southwest end of the parish church of Torralba de Ribota, just north of Calatayud, and his achievement, as embodied in the retable, entitles him to no higher distinction than

FIG. 257.

JUAN DE LEVf.

M A R R I A G E O F ST. C A T H E R I N E ,

SECTION OF R E T A B L E .

CATHEDRAL, TARAZONA

C Photo. Arxiu Mas J

that of a secondary follower of Juan de Levi. The great episcopal saint stands in the central panel upon decoratively unforeshortened tiling and against a brocaded hanging (Fig. 259), and he is, of course, surmounted by the Crucifixion. T h e narrative scenes have an adventitious significance as including certain episodes in St. Martin's life that are not commonly represented. Such is the first, in which as a boy of twelve years, against his parents' will, he repairs to a church to be made a catechumen. T h e second scene is depicted by Simone Martini at Assisi, his reception of knighthood. Then follow the reg1

Ibid.,

pp. 184-186.

Fig. 258.

JUAN DE LEVI. ST. PRUDENTIUS CROSSING THE DUERO, SECTION OF RETABLE. CATHEDRAL, TARAZONA (Photo. Arxiu

Mas)

ADDITIONS TO VOLUMES I-III

631

ular subjects of his encounter with the beggar and his baptism, but I have never met elsewhere the last two scenes, which have to do with the dispute of the monks of Poitiers and of Tours over his body immediately after his death. In one compartment the party of Tours

Fic. 259. BENITO ARNALDÍN. ST. MARTIN, CENTRE OF RETABLE. PARISH CHURCH, TORRALBA DE RIBOTA (Photo.

Mora)

steal the body out of a window, and in the other they are seen transporting it in a boat on the Loire. In the predella are half-lengths of the dead Christ, the mourning Virgin and St. John, the Magdalene and St. Andrew, and it is on the bottom of the panel of the dead

632

APPENDIX

Christ that the signature appears in Latin, Benedictus (abbreviated as Benditus) Arnaldin depinxit me. In the principal compartment and in the predella the pattern of the gold backgrounds is a lozenge. I have been able to find no reference to the artist in the published documents, but two painters of the same surname, probably relatives of his, are mentioned in 1433, when at Saragossa Juan Arnaldin arranges that his brother, Jaime, become an apprentice to the master, Pascual Ortoneda.1 The nearest stylistic analogue by Juan de Levi is the retable of St. Helen at Estella, and the costumes in the narrative scenes display the same extravagant elaboration of contemporary fashions. When I first came upon the retable in the church of To-

FIG. 260. ST. ANDREW, CENTRE OF RETABLE. PARISH CHURCH, TORRALBA DE RIBOTA (Photo. Mora)

rralba de Ribota, I was very much excited, for the type of the central figure aroused in me the hope that I had at last found the name of the Master of Sigüenza,2 but closer examination crushed my expectations. The personages in the lateral panels do not conform to the highly individualized and easily recognizable types of the Master of Sigüenza, and the resemblance of the central St. Martin comes from the fact that the types derived by Benito Arnaldin from Juan de Levi possess certain traits in common with those of the Sigüenza painter. The St. Martin, however, does not exhibit this painter's curiously spotty eyes. I was led to jump at the conclusion that Benito Arnaldin might 1 3

Revista de archivos, X X X V I (1917), 447. See below, p. 637.

ADDITIONS TO VOLUMES I-III

633

be the Master of Sigiienza because the latter may have had some connection with the region of Calatayud. 1 Like Daroca and Maluenda, Torralba de Ribota constitutes a treasure-house of mediaeval Aragonese painting. Besides works of the second half of the fifteenth century, the church contains two altarpieces by a single, rather rustic painter who embodies an aspect of the Aragonese counterpart of the manner of Guimerá that is simpler and less affected than that of Benito Arnaldin. One of these altarpieces remains to us only in part, sixteen scenes from the life of St. Felix now in the sacristy. They once constituted a section of the retable over the high altar of the church, which is dedicated to St. Felix. The other retable by the same hand honors St. Andrew and is placed in the church close to that by Benito Arnaldin. The enthroned Apostle (Fig. 260) and the Crucifixion occupy the central division, and in the narrative scenes the iconographie interest once more bolsters up the defective technique. Four of the scenes are of frequent occurrence, the calling of Sts. Peter and Andrew, the crucifixion of the latter, his burial, and his rescue of the bishop tempted by the she-devil; but the two others are almost unique, St. Andrew directed by an angel to betake himself to Murgundia and, after his arrival, his restoration of sight to St. Matthew. By an odd exception to the usual practice, the whole predella is devoted to St. Francis of Assisi. The first four compartments depict his birth, his capture by the Perugians (in which he is wrongly represented as already wearing the Franciscan habit), the reception of the stigmata, and his death upon the bare ground; but the fifth scene is unparalleled, his posthumous cure of the leg of the man upon whose ass he had ridden. In both retables the gold backgrounds are prettily patterned with a motif of ivy. It is in the immediate proximity of the author of the St. Felix and St. Andrew retables that we should look for the artist who painted an altarpiece of St. John Baptist recently acquired by the Gallery of the Fine Arts Society at San Diego, California (Fig. 261). The effigy of the Precursor at the centre stands between four narrative compartments, incorporating the representations of his birth, preaching, denunciation of Herod, and decollation at the royal banquet. The Aragonese and Catalan manifestations of the international movement often approach each other so closely that it is a ticklish business to determine to which school to assign a given work; and the San Diego retable is a case in point. The principal negative argument against a Catalan alignment for it is that it relates itself to none of the very definite phases into which Catalan painting of the period is clearly divided. Its resemblance to the style of Borrassá is general and superficial, occasioned merely by a joint membership in the eastSpanish aspect of the international movement; in reality it reveals 1

Vol. I l l , p. 332.

¿34

APPENDIX

none of the specific and easily recognizable types and peculiarities of the Borrassá shop or of the other ateliers inspired by the Serras' teaching. The other great Catalan group that surrounded the Master of St. George affords nearer analogies, especially in the retable of St. Andrew in the Metropolitan Museum, New York; but even in these instances the similarities are embodied in little else than the constant resort to the international stock-in-trade, the Burgundian costumes, and they are quite counterbalanced by the positive considerations that may be urged for an Aragonese provenience. The central Baptist exhibits significant parallelisms to the corresponding figure of St. Andrew at Torralba de Ribota, and the resemblances extend to the types and contemporary international costumes of the narrative compartments in these two altarpieces as well as in the relics of the St. Felix retable. The probability that the Baptist altarpiece was ordered for a church in this western region of Aragon is increased by its stylistic associations also with the paintings at Anento, which lies not far distant to the south of Torralba. Other factors that would suggest an Aragonese rather than a Catalan atelier are the accenting of the panel of the central St. John by embossings and the large and conspicuous patterns in the brocade of his mantle and in the tooling of the gold backgrounds, elements that practically reproduce distinctive traits of that more indigenous subdivision of Aragonese international art at the head of which stands the Sperandeo de Santa Fe Madonna. The San Diego retable is so much less contaminated by rusticity than the small scenes of the St. Andrew and St. Felix altarpieces at Torralba that it would be futile to claim anything more than manufacture by the same Aragonese coterie. In a retable of St. Lucy in the Ermita de Sta. Lucía at Tamarite de Litera, some repainter has made such a thorough job of his work that he has effectually hidden the truth from future investigators; and it is catalogued here merely because there is no other place where it would be so naturally mentioned. One gets the impression that the original was a Valencian painting of the end of the fourteenth or beginning of the fifteenth century, but, although Juan Reixach later worked at Cubélls further east, the activity of a Valencian master in the region would be somewhat of an anomaly. At Tamarite on the confines of Aragon and Catalonia, an artist of either province might be expected, but since the altarpiece of St. Lucy reveals no Catalan affiliations of any kind, it is probably Aragonese. A R A G O N E S E P A I N T I N G S IN THE F R A N C O - F L E M I S H

MANNER

To this category I am able to add two important retables which may conceivably, though far from surely, be by a single master. Both retables were already familiar to me, but for certain reasons I did not venture as yet to place them with confidence in the first half of the

ADDITIONS TO VOLUMES I-III

635

fifteenth century. One is an altarpiece of Sts. Fabian, Sebastian, and Genesius in the convent of the Holy Sepulchre at Saragossa, and the reason for my doubt was that I knew it only in an old and dim photograph. The generous courtesy of the Archbishop of Saragossa in recently admitting me to study the original in the clausura of the con-

Fio. 261. SCHOOL OF ARAGON. RETABLE OF ST. JOHN BAPTIST. GALLERY OF THE FINE ARTS SOCIETY, SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA ( Courtesy of the Gallery )

vent opened my eyes to its real affiliations. St. Fabian is enthroned as pope in the central panel, and the pinnacle above him is occupied, not by the Crucifixion, but by a representation of the Trinity. St. Sebastian stands in the left division, surmounted by a pinnacle of the arrow scene, and in the corresponding section at the right appears

636

APPENDIX

the actor saint, Genesius, holding the attribute of his suffering, the comb, while in the capping pinnacle this torture of his body upon a cross is depicted as taking place. 1 T h e subjects of the predella, from left to right, are the Annunciation, St. Catherine, the Virgin, the dead Christ, St. John Evangelist, St. Barbara, and a canonized bishop. With the effects of richness that the Aragonese of the fifteenth century liked in their pictures, tapestries are hung behind Sts. Sebastian and Genesius and the standing saints of the predella. T h e embossings of the gold backgrounds and of the haloes and other accessories in the three principal panels and the Trinity proclaim the work as one of the latest productions of the Aragonese international style, perhaps dating from c. 1450. T h e Burgundian costumes of the Franco-Flemish aspect of the style are employed in the large effigies of Sts. Sebastian and Genesius and on their executioners in the scenes of the martyrdoms. The technique exhibits the same beginning of the use of oil that occurs in the output of the Aragonese Master of Arguis 2 and in the last Catalan 3 and Valencian 4 paintings of the international movement. T h e retable of St. Quiteña in the right aisle of the church of S. Miguel at Saragossa, said to have been ordered by a confraternity of the virgin martyr, appears to be somewhat inferior in craft, but here we have to reckon with an extensive repainting, especially in the predella. Originally, it may have looked more like the Santo Sepulcro altarpiece; it certainly belongs to the same general late phase of Franco-Flemish internationalism in Aragon and resorts plentifully to the Burgundian fashions of dress; and the possibility is not to be excluded that it is by the same hand. I had always suspected that it was a late international work, but I was discouraged from studying it carefully and from entering it as such in my third volume by the deceptive repaint and by the false attribution to Pedro P e r t ú s 5 of the sixteenth century that had been foisted upon it. A recent and thorough examination has conclusively persuaded me that it must be classified in the international movement, and the ascription to Pertús is thus an utter impossibility. A statue of St. Quiteria occupies the centre of the more modern structure into which the painted, narrative panels, in a disturbed order, have been built. T h e topmost compart1 There were two martyrs of this name both honored in Spain, one a Roman mime and the other a young notary of Aries, but in the accounts in the Bollandists (both under August 25) I find the combing upon a cross related only of the actor. He may have been chosen for honor in this retable because his attribute of the comb, in his right hand, is the same as that of St. Fabian and because, as a young masculine martyr, he would be a natural pendant to St. Sebastian. I do not know the meaning of the sprig of leaves in his left hand. 2 Vol. I l l , p. 199. 3 Vol. II, pp. 415 and 430. 4 Vol. I l l , p. 104. s M . Abizanda, Documentos para la historia artística y literaria de Aragon, siglo XVI, vol. II (1917), 65.

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637

ment at the left depicts her either as a young girl praying on Mount Orianus or, since she is accompanied in her orisons by others who have issued from a town, later in her career practising with her friends on Mount Columbanus her healing of the demented. The next panel, in the jumbled arrangement, leaps to the episodes at her tomb, a group of personages at the left being engaged in reverencing her relics and a group at the right, afflicted with rabies and other forms of madness (the diseases for which St. Quiteria is especially invoked ')> beseeching her aid in their suffering. Two of the victims of hydrophobia, with the customary mediaeval directness, are represented in convulsions as biting their arms. The lowest scene at the left is her decapitation. Of the uppermost subject at the right I can find no account in my only source, the summary of her fabulous Acta in the Bollandists: she blesses a queen (her mother?), and at the left in the same compartment the queen dispenses alms. In the next scene she vanquishes the dragon of Mount Galganus to the wonderment of spectators on the wall of a town, and she is finally seen in dispute with a king, evidently the same person who presides at her martyrdom whether he be her father or Dormitianus who according to the Acta was commissioned to despatch her. The predella, which the repaint wrongly makes appear to be by a different hand, consists of the Pietà flanked by the seated figures of Sts. Sebastian, Lucy, Catherine, Barbara, Agatha, and Blaise. We have been struck, in the appendix to volume III, 2 by the rapidly increasing number of works attributable to the painter who did the retable of Sts. Andrew and Vincent in the cathedral of Sigüenza and the retable of Sts. John Baptist and Catherine sections of which belong to the same cathedral 3 but the main part of which has now passed from the Linares firm at Madrid to the Prado. Although we do not know whether he was by birth or training an Aragonese or a Castilian member of the international movement, for the sake of convenience we shall henceforth call him the Master of Sigüenza because the one place where his activity may be localized, at least for a certain period of his life, is that city." Since the publication of volume III, I have chanced upon two more of his productions, one a large panel, from an altarpiece, depicting the Coronation and preserving also the framing sections of the uprights with small effigies of four saints 1

feet. 2

I t is because of her efficacy against rabies that her attribute is a mad dog at her

Pp· 330-332·

3 T h e retable must have once decorated the chapel that is dedicated to these two saints in the cathedral of Sigüenza, the chapel of Sts. John and Catherine. T h e remains of the retable, so f a r as the cathedral possesses them, are now in the sacristy of the chapel, among them two bits not exhibited at Barcelona and not yet mentioned by me, fragments from the vision of Zacharias and the dispute of St. Catherine. 4 For an improbable identification of the Master of Sigüenza with Benito Arnaldin, see above, p. 632.

APPENDIX

63B

(Fig. 262). T h e picture belonged to the Van Stolk Collection at T h e Hague and appears as No. 348 in the Catalogue of the sale of that Collection by Frederik Muller and Company of Amsterdam in 1928. T h e Catalogue wrongly jumbles it into that convenient but fallacious dump for international paintings of unknown antecedents, the "school of A v i g n o n , " in the confused mass of which so many Spanish pictures have long been concealed; but its right to a place in the canon of the Master of Sigiienza is obvious even to the student who has only the most superficial acquaintance with his output. A n d the place that it occupies in his canon is an honorable one, for he rises to greater heights of technique, charm of physical type, and controlled expressiveness than in any of his other works that have been recognized, except the central compartment of the retable of the Baptist and St. Catherine. He enhances and exalts particularly the hackneyed motif of the music-making angels. T h e copes of Christ and the Virgin are very strangely brocaded with a repeated pattern of a dog holding a scroll, in the case of the former inscribed with the name of Jesus and in that of the latter with the name of M a r y . The dog has perhaps some heraldic significance, and if we could discover the affiliations of the escutcheons 1 in the spandrels of the compartment, we might be able to fix the provenience of the retable to which the panel belonged. T h e other example appeared in the Seville Exhibition as a loan from private hands, a panel of the Via Dolorosa flanked by uprights adorned with four Apostles (Fig. 263). The pattern of the gold background is formally and pleasantly accommodated to the subdivisions of the framing arch. THE

INDIGENOUS

GROUP

IN

ARAGON

I have been led into certain suggestive speculations by the addition of another huge retable to the canon of the painter of the Sperandeo de Santa Fe and Albalate Madonnas, whom I will call the Master of Lanaja because the altarpiece of Lanaja was the first comprehensive work of his that I found. 3 T h e retable in question, the existence of which I recently discovered, is still over the high altar of the parish church at Ontiñena, southeast of Sariñena and not far distant from Lanaja. T h e first significant fact is that it is virtually a repetition of the Lanaja example (except that it preserves more panels) and thus enables us to reconstruct in our minds the altarpiece of L a n a j a with the now disarranged panels in their proper positions. T h e centre of the Ontiñena retable is occupied by another instance of the painter's well known cartoon for the subject of the Madonna and angels, with 1 The escutcheon at the left is sown with fleurs-de-lis; that at the right shows the arms of Portugal, ancient, quartered with a shield the main charge of which appears to be a quatrefoil formed of four crescents. 1 Vol. I l l , pp. 333-334·

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the lilies in her hand, the stars around her halo, and his customary embossings, a panel that has been either partially cut away to give place to a modern tabernacle or is at least partially hidden by this object. Above this panel, in the middle section, towers another grandiose representation of the Coronation, and finally comes the Crucifixion. The narrative compartments at the left comprise the Expulsion of Sts. Joachim and Anne from the Temple, the Annunciation of Joachim, the Annunciation of Anne, the Meeting at the Golden Gate, the Nativity of the Virgin, her Presentation, Marriage, Annunciation, and the Visitation; the scenes at the right are the Nativity of Christ, the Epiphany, the Purification, the young Christ in the Temple, the Flight into Egypt, the Annunciation of the Virgin's Death, the Virgin giving to St. John the mortuary palm that the angel had brought her, the Dormition, and Our Lady's Burial. The predella enshrines the story of the Passion and is raised upon an additional painted frieze of figures of the Prophets and Apostles. The guardapolvos are decorated with feminine saints and with angels holding the instruments of the Passion, and the original frames and Gothic canopies over the compartments are also preserved. As in the other works of the Master, the backgrounds simulate gold brocades. The narrative scenes, in which there is much resort to the Burgundian costumes of the international movement, betray, like those of Lanaja, that the painter excelled in monumental decoration rather than as a story-teller or piquant composer, except that the long gown of the young Virgin (conceived as a miniature woman), in the episode of her Presentation, is trailed down the steps of the Temple with pretty effectiveness. The speculations aroused by this retable have to do with its relations to the fragments of an altarpiece from Estopiñán in the Plandiura Collection, Barcelona, which I have classified as associated with the Catalan Master of the Solsona Last Supper. I have already pointed o u t 1 the resemblance of the large panel of the Madonna, among these fragments from Estopiñán, to the series of Aragonese Madonnas, some of them by the Master of Lanaja, and the discovery of the Lanaja and Ontiñena retables now provides us with narrative panels belonging to this Aragonese group, which, with their crabbed types, likewise turn out to be very similar to the smaller compartments of the Death and Burial of the Virgin from Estopiñán. I had questioned whether the lateral panels from Estopiñán could be by the same Jiand as the central Madonna, but their unity of authorship is demonstrated by their joint analogy to the productions of the Master of Lanaja. I cannot, however, bring myself to believe that the painter of Estopiñán is identical with the Master of Lanaja or with the artist who did the Madonna at Frankfurt and the Plandiura Virgin of Mercy from Blancas, and I still prefer to think of him merely as strongly influenced by the Aragonese tendency. If the identity could ever be 1

Vol. II, pp. 342-345·

FIG. 263. THE MASTER OF SIGÜENZA. VIA DOLOROSA. COLLECTION, SEVILLE CPhoto. Arxiu

Mas)

PRIVATE

642

APPENDIX

proved, we should then be confronted with the task of deciding which of the other works in the circle of the Master of the Solsona L a s t Supper should be attributed to the same hand. A further study of the Virgen del Pópulo in the cathedral of Teruel, for which I could previously find no exact Aragonese classification, 1 has almost persuaded me that it is a production of the painter of the Frankfurt and Blancas Virgins that hail from the same region. Although there are no embossings and the gold background is diapered only at the borders, the same glum facial types appear in the Madonna, Child, and the personages gathered under her mantle. The Collection of Martin Beck at New York contains as one of its principal treasures another important member of the peculiarly Aragonese series of enthroned Madonnas encompassed by angels (Fig. 264). Its chief historical interest is that it reveals the Lanaja Master's kind of composition and general style at an earlier moment than in his versions of the theme. The style, indeed, is not far removed from the Aragonese counterpart of the manner of Guimerá in its beginnings at the end of the fourteenth or opening years of the fifteenth century in such a painter as Pedro Zuera. M y first superficial impression of the picture, as a matter of fact, was that it might embody Pedro's craft; but further study has shown me that the resemblances, although in places very close, do not justify the opinion even that the panel is one of his later productions, done subsequently to his surely authenticated work, the retable in the cathedral at Huesca. Nor does it seem possible, despite the analogously winsome but rather ill-favored Child, to designate the picture as an early work of the Lanaja Master. Y e t it already prophesies the opulent traits of this Master's renderings of the theme in the brilliant diapered design of the solid gold background, in the embossing of the orphreys and of the ostentatious rosette pattern in the Virgin's blue mantle, of her crown and beads, and in the general richness of costume as even in the case of the Child, whose religious ascendancy is emphasized b y the garb of an adult plutocrat, a cloak of gold brocade lined and trimmed with fur. The composition and some of the details are strikingly reproduced in the Leverhulme Madonna now in the Gallery at Port Sunlight, near Liverpool, that I have guessed may have been executed under Aragonese influence in the border region between Aragon and Catalonia. 2 The Beck Virgin holds an identical string of beads, and her mantle is lined with a stuff displaying much the same foliate pattern. Of the four angels, the one at the lower left is likewise presenting a bird to the Child, and his companion at the right casts, aloft a scroll that bears exactly the inscription shown by the similarly placed angel in the Leverhulme picture: " A v e regina celorum; ave domina angelorum." Another member of the celestial host in the - Vol. Ill, p. 333.

2

Vol. Ill, pp. 218-220.

FIG. 264. SCHOOL OF ARAGON. MADONNA AND ANGELS. BECK COLLECTION, NEW YORK (Courtesy oj Mr. Martin Beck )

A P P E N D I X

644

Leverhulme picture carries, at the left, almost a repetition of the pious ejaculation, the variation occurring only in the second phrase, " M a t e r D e i . " Y e t the types are too different to admit the hypothesis of a single authorship or anything more than that one of the painters was familiar with the other's cartoon or that both derived their inspiration from some one earlier model. T h e Port Sunlight picture has a less conspicuous motif in the gold background and adds to the composition two delightfully stylized plants at the lower sides of the throne. T h e Beck panel is more derb and so more obviously Aragonese. T h e greater simplicity resulting from the smaller number of angels makes it possible to pull the composition in a greater degree into one of the formal designs relished by the mediaeval Spaniard, the lovely Gothic curves of the crowning angels' wings being continued by the wings of their brothers beneath, so that the Madonna and Child are framed as if in an alar arch. I should finally like to assign to the indigenous group in international Aragonese painting, though not necessarily to any of the artists that I have mentioned in the group, three pictures in the Muntadas Collection, Barcelona — a panel of the enthroned St. Augustine (?) served by two angels 1 and two smaller panels, pendants one to the other, of Sts. V i n c e n t 2 and Lawrence (?) 3 kneeling in rocky landscapes. T h e typical forbidding types and extensive embossings are present in all three instances, and St. Augustine (Fig. 265) adds the evidence of a cope brocaded with a bold pattern like that of the Lázaro Madonna's mantle and lined with a stuff that the Master of Lanaja uses for a corresponding purpose. In his heavy magnificence, indeed, the St. Augustine is a direct precursor of the ultimate embodiment of Aragonese aesthetic ideals that Bermejo was to achieve in the region in his Sto. Domingo de Silos. ITALO-GOTHIC

P A I N T I N G IN

CASTILE

T h e definite proof of Stamina's visit to Toledo has at last come to light. In the Academia de la Historia at Madrid there is preserved the first part, in manuscript, of an unpublished and incomplete work, Memorias i disertaciones que podrán servir al que escriba la historia de la Iglesia de Îoledo, written by the episcopal scholar of the end of the eighteenth century, Felipe Antonio Fernández Vallejo; and to the mention of the chapel of S. Salvador, now of the Epiphany, in the cathedral of Toledo Vallejo adds in his own hand the note that among the documents regarded then (at the end of the eighteenth century) as " u s e l e s s " possessions of the cathedral was a "receipt given by Girardo Jacobo, painter of Florence." T h e note conclusively demonstrates what internal evidence had already suggested to all critics, 1 No. ι of the Catalogue. 3 No. 371.

2

No. 372.

Fio. 265. SCHOOL OF ARAGON. ST. AUGUSTINE (?). MUNTADAS COLLECTION, BARCELONA (Photo. Arxiu

Mas)

646

APPENDIX

that the Italianate style at T o l e d o at the end of the fourteenth and beginning of the fifteenth century had its origin in S t a m i n a ' s sojourn in the c i t y ; but unfortunately the actual date of the receipt is n o t specified, and since there is nothing in the present chapel of the E p i p h a n y that could conceivably be identified with his style, we h a v e not y e t found a documented work to use as a criterion for j u d g i n g whether the panels in the chapels of S. Eugenio, of the Baptism, and of the T r i n i t y might be his productions. Inasmuch as a Pedro Fernández de Burgos, supervisor of works in the cathedral, endowed in 1393 two chaplaincies in the chapel of the E p i p h a n y , it has been guessed that S t a m i n a ' s activity in the chapel m a y have been connected with the donation, 1 and we should then have to admit the possibility which I have suggested, 2 that the Italian painter found employment in Castile as well as at Valencia even during his second journey to Spain subsequent to 1387; but the rub is that there is no definite authority for linking S t a m i n a with Pedro Fernández as a patron and that someone else might have commissioned his works in the chapel. Diego A n g u l o 3 advances the tentative hypothesis that the panels in the chapel of S. Eugenio m a y , because of the subjects from the life of Christ, have once constituted a retable in the chapel of the Saviour and thus be the works by S t a m i n a of which Fernández Vallejo speaks. T h e paintings in the cathedral of Toledo, however, in which I should be most willing to recognize S t a m i n a ' s hand h a v e but recently come either to m y attention or to that of anyone else, 4 t w o large and well preserved panels representing each a saint of apostolic times, built into the sides of the retable over the altar of St. Julian (sometimes called the altar of St. Blaise) in the chapel of S a n t o Sepulcro in the c r y p t beneath the Capilla M a y o r (Fig. 266). T h e figure who holds a pen and a book has been called St. P a u l , b u t I should prefer to recognize in him one of the Evangelists. T h e dagger and book of the other figure are not the attributes of St. P e t e r : the dagger might be meant as either St. Paul's sword or St. Bartholomew's knife. T h e y stand against backgrounds of gold brocade, which seem too ostentatious in pattern for the fourteenth century and m a y embody a later repainting. T h e figures themselves are intact, and whereas in the other works of the Trecento in the cathedral one m a y j u s t l y entertain the suspicion of a Spaniard imitating the contemporary Italians, in this instance there can be no doubt that the author was an actual Florentine of considerable merit. H e still oddly conserves at the end of the century Giotto's solid monumentality, and D i e g o A n g u l o rightly discerns in him the influence of Orcagna. T h e 1

Vegue y Goldoni, in Archivo español de arte y arqueología, V I (193°), 2 7 7 - 2 7 9 ·

V o l . I I I , p p . 8-9 a n d 221-222. 3 La pintura trecentista en Toledo, Archivo español de arte y arqueología, V I I (1931), 29, 2

4

Vegue y Goldoni, op. cit., 279, and Angulo, op. cit., 27-28.

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absolutely Florentine characteristics constitute a potent argument for here discovering the long-lost Stamina, who is the only Italian known to have labored at this period in Toledo. The arresting similarity of the types to those of the Castellani chapel in S. Croce, Florence, ascribed by Vasari to Stamina, by suggesting an identity of authorship, strengthens the attribution to him of both monuments and may well provide another of many instances where, after the modern connoisseurs have had their fling, the old Italian biographer is eventually demonstrated to have been accurate. Even though we take into account the extensive repainting of the panels in the chapel of S. Eugenio, it is difficult to agree with Angulo in assigning them to the creator of the two saints in the chapel of Santo Sepulcro, so that, if the latter are Stamina's, the former cannot be, and Angulo's hypothesis of his activity upon the S. Eugenio panels would fall to the ground. Much less can we ascribe to the Santo Sepulcro master the predella of the baptismal chapel or the frescoes in the chapel of S. Bias. The stubby canon for the human form in the predella is far removed from the majestic and Orcagna-like stature of the two saints probably executed by Stamina. It is indeed passing strange that all of the Italianate paintings of the Trecento in the cathedral of Toledo appear to be by different hands. The now generally accepted opinion that at least the lower tier of mural paintings in the chapel of S. Bias was executed by Rodriguez de Toledo (to whom I ascribe also the upper tier) and not by Stamina receives some further slight support from another item divulged by Vegue y Goldoni, who has published the new information about Starnina. 1 Juan Bravo de Acuña, in his Libro de la fundación de la S. Iglesia de Toledo of 1604, still in manuscript in the Provincial Library of the city, states that a Last Judgment is painted in the chapel of S. Bias and that, in addition to a pair of Latin verses under it describing the fate of a negligent priest in the future life, Satan, in the fresco itself, bears a scroll in Spanish threatening the various categories of sinners with infernal punishment. Since neither the devil nor the Latin inscription appears in the Resurrection of the Dead in the upper tier of frescoes, Bravo de Acuña must refer to the west section of the lower tier, where some of the outlines of a Last Judgment may still dimly be descried; 2 and the former existence of a Spanish inscription here may be taken for what it is worth to indicate that the author was not an Italian but a Spaniard and so probably Master Rodriguez. It must be remembered that Dello Delli still clung to Italian legends in the retable of Salamanca. 3 Archivo español de arte y arqueología, V I (1930), 199-203. Vol. III, p. 224. Diego Angulo [op. cit., 24-25) has been able to identify more figures than any preceding critic. s Vol. I l l , p. 236. 1

2

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1

Sánchez Cantón has ingeniously and perhaps rightly surmised that Stamina may be the "Jacome, italiano pintor d'el-rei D. Joä de boa memoria" whom the Portuguese artist and critic, Francisco de Hollanda, includes in his list of the "eagles" of painting in his treatise Da pintura antiga of 1548. If the identification is correct, Portugal would have to be added to Spain and possibly to France as a locality of Stamina's Wanderjahre. Francisco de Holianda does not explicitly state which of the Johns of Portugal Jacome served, and his translator into Castilian in the sixteenth century, Manuel Denis, guesses that it was John II (1481-1495); but since only John I (1385-1433) was honored with the epithet "de boa memoria," he would be a more likely choice, and his dates would correspond with those of Stamina. On this basis Vegue 2 indulges in a further clever guess — that Starnina picked up Alvaro Pires 3 in Portugal and took him back to Italy with him. A country cousin of the Giottesque painters at Toledo executed a panel in a chapel at the left of the nave in the parish church of Illescas, just north of the city, a work the knowledge of the existence of which is one of the many things that I owe to conversations with Don Diego Angulo. The subject is the Virgin and St. Ildefonso, with the addition at the right of the donor presented by St. Francis. The donor himself is a Franciscan and is denominated by a Latin inscription on the lower part of his habit as Frater Fernando, Confessor, but the evident date of the panel, the very beginning of the fifteenth century, contradicts the tradition of the town 4 that he is the famous Fray Fernando de Talavera, the confessor of Isabella the Catholic, who indeed was a Hieronymite and not a Franciscan. The Franciscan habit also precludes an identification with the Dominican Fernando de Illescas, the advisor of John I of Castile. The Giottesque influence is very potent, especially in the figures of St. Ildefonso, St. Francis, and the donor. The gold background is lightly diapered. I have recently become familiar with two other works that partially dispel what had hitherto been the strange phenomenon that the Castilian adaptations of the Giottesque style at the end of the fourteenth and in the early fifteenth century seemed not to have spread beyond the confines of the city of Toledo. The better known of these, because it happens to have been wisely acquired by the Prado, is a huge retable from the church of San Román de la Hornija, on the western edge of the province of Valladolid just southeast of Toro but belong1 In his notes to the Castilian translation of 1563 by Manuel Denis entitled De la pintura antigua, published at Madrid in 1921, p. 233. * Archivo español de arte y arqueología, V I (1930), p. 199, η. ι. 3 See my vol. III, pp. 54-56. * The inscription may indeed be an ex post Jacto addition. Tormo {Toledo, tesoro y museos, II, 53) impossibly sets the panel in the early fourteenth century and cryptically calls the donor a Don Gonzalo de Illescas who eventually achieved the episcopal dignity.

APPENDIX ing to the diocese of Zamora, and it appears to be securely dated between 1 4 1 5 and 1422, the years when the archbishopric of Toledo was •occupied by Don Sancho de Rojas, whose escutcheon is four times repeated on the background between the pinnacles. It is true that he had before been bishop of Palencia, from I403 to 1 4 1 5 , but since in his portrait as donor in the retable he wears the pallium, the picture must have been ordered after his elevation to Toledo. 1 The Madonna and Child are enthroned in the chief panel, accompanied by four angels, who, as they sing, hold a textile behind the sacred pair, and by another celestial quartet whose only task is to make music (Fig. 267). •Gorgeous in her blue mantle brocaded with a pattern somewhat like those of the Serras, a bird holding a branch in his beak, Our Lady is •engaged in placing a mitre upon the kneeling archiépiscopal donor, presented at the left by St. Benedict, and the Child grants a similar boon at the right, crowning a sovereign who, from the dates, must be John I I and who is presented by St. Dominic. The Crucifixion is set in its usual position above, and God the Father, blessing, occupies the central pinnacle. The twelve narrative scenes at the sides are arranged in two tiers, and generally read from left to right, those in the upper tier belonging before those in the lower and the set of six at the left of the central Madonna chronologically preceding the corresponding series at the right: the Purification (decidedly Giottesque in composition), the Nativity of Christ (largely erased and out of place), the Epiphany, the Mocking of Christ, the Flagellation, the Via Dolorosa, the Deposition, the Entombment, the Harrowing of Hell (partly blotted out), the Ascension, Pentecost, and the Mass of St. Gregory. As in the chapel of S. Bias at Toledo, Pentecost, although it includes Our L a d y , is not depicted according to the Spanish mode with her form exalted at the middle; but both the compositions, with and without the centring of the Virgin, are equally common in Italy of the Trecento. T h e predella consists of heads of the twelve Apostles and of six feminine saints. 2 In the two pinnacles immediately adjoining the Crucifixion appear Gabriel and the Virgin of the Annunciation. In the right outer pinnacle is Abraham, identified by a scroll bearing .his name and the beginning of a Latin version of the celebrated prophecy to him, " A n d in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed" (Gen., xxii, 18). David is similarly recognized in the left outer pinnacle, and his scroll contains the prophecy vouchsafed to him, " O f the fruit of thy body will I set upon thy throne" (Ps., cxxxii, 1 1 ) . The gold backgrounds are patterned only at the borders. The style embodies a rather heavy, dull, and provincial manipulation of the ultimate phases of Giottesque painting at Florence, i. e., of the pictorial manner which Stamina displayed at Toledo and which 1 It cannot be the prelate of the same name, who, beginning in 1 4 2 3 , was successively bishop of Astorga and Cordova, for this Sancho de R o j as was never an archbishop. 3 T w o of these six heads may be intended as those of youthful masculine saints.

Fig. 267. ITALO-GOTHIC SCHOOL OF CASTILE. CENTRAL SECTION OF RETABLE OF SAN ROMÁN DE LA HORNIJA. PRADO, MADRID (Photo. Ruiz

Virnacci)

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Master Rodríguez better imitated in the chapel of S. Bias. There is a certain similarity to the Illescas panel, not, however, sufficiently pronounced to corroborate the theory of a single authorship. T h e retable of San Román de la Hornija exhibits few, if any, omens of the international movement or of the new Italian fashions that Dello Delli was so soon to unfold to Castilian eyes at the near-lying Salamanca. N o w and then it strangely recalls the productions of the Serra atelier, especially those of the Master of the Cardona Pentecost, but it is more Giottesque and less Sienese. T h e other example of the diffusion of the Giottesque manner beyond the confines of Toledo is the important retable over the high altar of the parish church at Torres de Medina, near Villarcayo in the northern part of the province of Burgos. T h e centre of the structure is now occupied by a statue of St. Andrew, and the panel of the Madonna and Child that originally filled this place hangs in the sacristy. T h e other subjects, for the most part, reveal no apparent relation to one another and (unless the order has been disturbed) are scattered through the altarpiece helter-skelter. T h e upper row comprises in separate compartments a St. Dominic, St. Francis's reception of the stigmata, the Noli me tangere, the Crucifixion (not, it is to be observed, at the centre), an enthroned St. Peter, the Incredulity of St. Thomas (a composition limited to the two chief actors), and St. Jerome in his study. T h e themes of the lower row are the Baptist, St. Anne holding the Virgin and Child, a seated St. Catherine of Alexandria (Fig. 268), St. Christopher, a seated Santiago, and a standing St. John Evangelist, conceived, by a rare exception in mediaeval art, as an old man and in this case properly placed as a pendant to St. John the Precursor. T h e Passion depicted in the predella includes the episodes of the Betrayal, Christ before Pilate, the Flagellation, the Via Dolorosa, the Deposition, and the Entombment. In addition to the ubiquitous gold backgrounds, lightly tooled with a foliate motif, magnificent brocades, unusually conspicuous for the epoch, are hung behind the Madonna and the seated saints. T h e whole background of the Crucifixion is such a brocade, and I have sometimes thought that this panel might be a later, Hispano-Flemish addition to the ensemble in which what seem like certain primitive qualities might be due to rusticity; but the Hispano-Flemish look is probably deceptive, and the Crucifixion m a y very well belong to the original retable. T h e carving of its Gothic frame is the same, and the panel fits well into the space. T h e figures of the retable in which the author has best realized the Giottesque ideal of solidity are the St. John Evangelist and the attendant friar in the reception of the stigmata, which is directly copied from the Italian composition for the theme in the Trecento. B u t he was conversant also with the Sienese manner or at least with this manner as it had been interpreted in Florence in the latter half of the fourteenth century, and he produces

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many types with a distinctly Sienese cast of countenance. T h e Madonna has almost an Umbrian look. T h e fashions of dress in the scenes of the predella indicate a date in the early fifteenth century, but, except for these and for a few of the types, the artist is as unconscious of the dawning international movement as is the master of San Román de la Hornija. N o further paintings of Dello Delli have come to my attention.

FIG. 268. ITALO-GOTHIC SCHOOL OF CASTILE.

SECTION OF RETABLE.

PARISH CHURCH, TORRES DE MEDINA CPhoto. Photo Club)

The absence of any analogies in types of men and horses to Dello's documented works definitely nullifies Salmi's 1 ascription to him of a cassone panel, depicting a battle of orientals, No. 41 of the Museum at Altenburg. Since the panel is Italian and was obviously executed at the end of the fourteenth or beginning of the fifteenth century, its subject would naturally suggest for author an Italian painter who 1

Rivista d'arte, X I (1929), 104-110.

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had been in Spain, such as Dello or Stamina, to the latter of whom it was indeed tentatively attributed in the Altenburg Catalogue of 1898. Salmi, however, assigns it to Dello's early period before he visited the Iberian peninsula, and, as a matter of fact, it has more in it of the manner of the late Florentine Trecento than of the international style of the Quattrocento, so that, if we are to indulge in guessing, Stamina would have really been a better shot. The ascription to Dello has as little in its favor as Schmarsow's attribution to him of the panel of the six Apostles in the same Museum. 1 Nevertheless, Salmi might have backed up his opinion with the fact that Dello later in life probably had a reputation for his battle-scenes, though of Moors with Christians rather than of orientals among themselves. 2 Nor can I concur in Fiocco's recent attribution 3 to Dello of the sculptured group of the Coronation in terra cotta in the tympanum of the portal of S. Egidio at Florence, the church of the hospital of S. Maria Nuova. It has been hitherto generally ascribed to Bicci di Lorenzo on the basis of Milanesi's publication of an excerpt from a document of 1424 recording payment to him for work on this piece of sculpture; but the truth is that we have here only another instance of Milanesi's fragmentary quotation and insufficiently grounded interpretation of documents/ and Fiocco, by an examination of all the many entries in the books of accounts of the hospital, from which Milanesi's excerpt is taken, has conclusively shown that the reference is to Bicci di Lorenzo's activity in gilding and painting the sculptured group and not to its actual execution. The documents, of course, do not specifically state that he was not the sculptor; but, if he had been, it is surprising that there should not have been some direct mention of it, and I am ready to agree with Fiocco that the craft is too advanced for his retrogressive style. Y e t it is quite another matter to take the broad step from a denial of Bicci di Lorenzo's authorship to an ascription to Dello. Fiocco finds his authority in Vasari's assertion that Dello was also a sculptor and in Vasari's explicit attribution to him of the Coronation in the lunette of the door of S. Egidio, but Fiocco omits altogether what should have been the next and most essential part of his argument, a comparison with the only adequately preserved works of Dello, the paintings at Salamanca and Valencia. It is this comparison, in my mind, that invalidates the attribution. The mere lineaments of Christ's and the Virgin's countenances, espe1

See my vol. I l l , p. 260, n. 1. Ibid., p. 259. That John II caused the battle of Higueruela to be painted, whether or not by Dello, seems to be confirmed by Colmenares, who, writing his Historia de Segovia between 1620 and 1635, s a y s 'hat the picture still existed in his day, though in a ruinous condition: cf. Archivo español de arte y arqueología, III (1927), 32, and also José de Sigüenza, Historia del Monasterio del Escorial, edition of Madrid, l88i, p. 363. i In Rivista d'arte, X I (1929), 25-42. « See my vol. I l l , p. 235, n. 3. 2

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cially the noses, might, albeit with difficulty, find a place in Dello's canons, but, although he may have been influenced by Ghiberti, the somewhat heavy and smooth draperies, concealing rather than revealing the bodies, in his paintings in Spain, are totally different from the sinuous and clinging Gothic garments that the sculptor of the lunette has derived from Ghiberti. The bodies themselves are more correctly and beautifully proportioned than Dello's forms, and the capably modelled locks of the Saviour's head do not accord with his conven-

FIG. 169.

NICOLÁS FRANCÉS (?).

ST. HELEN.

CATHEDRAL, LEON

(Photo. Winocio)

tion of treating the hair in a largely undivided mass. But there is even more that Fiocco might have done, for the Salamanca retable actually ihcludes a panel of the Coronation, which does not resemble the group of S. Egidio at all in composition or in types and, despite its charm, is childlike in technique in contrast to the masterly workmanship of the sculpture. Nor can one find refuge in the possibility that the sculpture is a more mature creation of his, since it is dated in 1424 long before he began the Salamanca retable, nor in the supposition

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APPENDIX

that, when he left the more stimulating atmosphere of Italy for Spain, he degenerated, inasmuch as it is incredible that an artist of the abilities exhibited at Salamanca should ever have risen to so distinguished an effort as the group of S. Egidio. The terra cotta Coronation, therefore, being neither by Bicci di Lorenzo nor Dello Delli, must be transferred to the category of the anonymous; indeed, were it not dated in 1424, its sophistication would have inclined one to set it later in the Quattrocento. A few more pieces may be added to the count of Nicolás Francés. Don J u a n Torbado Flórez, who is in charge of the restorations of works of art in the cathedral of Leon, possesses in his shop four small figures of saints that in all probability once decorated the uprights of the retable over the high altar of the cathedral and so would belong to the series now built into the episcopal throne. 1 All four have suffered badly, but two holy warriors and St. Scholastica can still be distinguished. The fourth figure is too far erased for recognition. I t is the St. Scholastica that most unmistakably reveals the hand of Nicolás Francés. Beneath the repaint of a rather large panel of St. Helen now placed in the Capilla del Carmen in the cathedral of Leon (Fig. 269) may be almost certainly discerned a work of the master or of his immediate following. An inscription under the St. Helen tells of a bequest to the cathedral by one of its staff, Alvaro Peres, probably the donor of the picture, but there is, unfortunately, no accompanying date. The pervasive influence of Nicolás Francés, especially of such single figures of his as those now in the episcopal throne, inspired the moderately gifted author of the two fragments of a predella in the parish church of Mansilla la M a y o r , southeast of Leon, depicting half-lengths of Sts. Peter, Thomas (with the builder's rule), Andrew, James Major, and Thaddaeus (with the halberd, Fig. 270). The panel of the ecstasy of the Magdalene in the cathedral of Palencia (Fig. 2 7 1 ) , which I classified in the school of Nicolás Francés, 2 is stated in the third edition of the Catalogue of the Barcelona Exposition (where the picture was shown under the number 1545) to be inscribed with the date 1456. There are several other works in the province of Palencia executed in an aspect of the international style somewhat like that of Nicolás Francés and apparently influenced by him. The high altar of the church of S. Pedro at Astudillo, northeast of Palencia, is embellished with an Italo-Gothic frontal which m a y have once been a predella such as Nicolás's pupil made at Mansilla la M a y o r but which is j u s t as likely to have been done originally as an antependium for this spot. The subjects, set against diapered gold backgrounds, are, reading from left to right, Santiago, St. Matthias (with the axe?), St. Andrew 1

Vol. Ill, p. 263.

2

Ibid., p. 292.

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(Fig. 272), St. Peter, St. Thomas (with the spear), 1 and St. Bartholomew. St. Peter, the patron of the church, is depicted as enthroned in a cope of solid cloth of gold; the other Apostles stand at half-length. T h e style is obviously based directly upon Nicolás Francés, and the St. Bartholomew even reproduces the profile posture occasionally encountered, for the sake of variation, in the figures of the episcopal throne at Leon. There are, furthermore, some indications that the author had himself come into immediate contact with Sienese art.

FIG. 270.

SCHOOL OF NICOLÁS F R A N C E S .

STS. A N D R E W , JAMES

MAJOR, A N D T H A D D A E U S , F R A G M E N T OF P R E D E L L A . PARISH CHURCH, MANSILLA LA M A Y O R (Photo.

Winocio)

Capably painted relics of the school of Nicolás Francés are also built, together with panels of the Gallego circle, into the conglomerate retable over the high altar of the parish church at Villamediana, east of Palencia. Some of the earlier fragments are so far mutilated as to render the themes undecipherable, but four of them, set in behind groups of Renaissance sculpture at both ends of the lowest tier of the retable, narrate the story of St. Columba, to whom the church is dedicated. T h e episodes depicted are her arrest, trial, torture upon the 1 W h a t I take to be the axe of St. Matthias may be meant as the builder's rule of St. T h o m a s : in that case the figure that I have called St. T h o m a s may be St. Matthias with his other attribute of the spear or lance.

Fig. 271.

SCHOOL OF NICOLÁS FRANCÉS. ECSTASY OF MAGDALENE. CATHEDRAL, PALENCIA (Photo.

Alonso)

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cross, and decapitation. The gold backgrounds are lightly tooled. T h e scene of the cross is placed in front of one of those elaborate Gothic castles that the Franco-Flemish international painters liked to erect in painstaking detail in their settings. The general style of the panels is not far removed from that of the Palencia Magdalene. In the more rustic paintings in the church of Vertavillo, southeast of Palencia, the relationship to Nicolás Francés is less tangible. Since the church is under St. Michael's aegis, two mutilated fragments from his story now set into a subordinate altar would have been parts of the original main retable. Only the upper sections of both compartments are preserved, so that the subjects can no longer be specified.

FIG. 272. SCHOOL OF NICOLAS FRANCÉS. SANTIAGO, ST. MATTHIAS, AND ST. ANDREW, SECTION OF FRONTAL. S. PEDRO, ASTUDILLO

T h e principal figure that is recognizable in each is the archangel wearing a peacock plume in his helmet. W h a t was probably the predella of this retable is now in the sacristy, consisting of the dead Christ and eight half-lengths of Apostles. T h e Santiago is the nearest approximation to any definite similarity to the manner of Nicolás Francés. Possibly by the same hand is an artesanado at the west end of the church, decorated chiefly in pure design but containing one viga painted with quatrefoils framing the Pietà and figures of the Virgin, Sts. John Evangelist, Peter, and Paul. I t is with much hesitation that I put down as a very late and fairly countrified survival of the Castilian international style a retable of

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St. Peter that, with another painted altarpiece so loutish as not to deserve consideration at all, decorates the church of the hamlet of Terradillos de Esgueva, northwest of Aranda de Duero, in the province of Burgos. The reason for the hesitation is that a few passages might indicate a knowledge of the Hispano-Flemish manner and that therefore what appears in the rest of the retable to be international may in reality be the result of the rustic craftsman's inability to reproduce the qualities of the painting of the Low Countries. Or the little acquaintance that the author had with the art of the great centres may have been contact with some international studio in his youth, and in such a remote and rural district he may have continued with this antiquated manner as late as c. 1470, a possible date for the retable, touching his work up here and there with what he could acquire of the new Hispano-Flemish aesthetic fashions. St. Peter in the central panel is worshipped by a masculine donor, and above him is the usual Crucifixion. The four narrative scenes incorporate the calling of Sts. Peter and Andrew, St. Peter's denial of Our Lord to the maid by the fire, the "Quo V a d i s " episode, and his martyrdom. Since the death is by decapitation, it might be thought that the painter had suddenly introduced here the execution of St. Paul, who is so closely linked with St. Peter; but such an unheralded exception would be unlikely in a retable otherwise wholly devoted to the leader of the Apostles, and the painter's ignorance of St. Peter's martyrdom by crucifixion would only be another betrayal of his lack of sophistication. Moreover, the masculine type employed in this scene for the victim is identical with that of St. Peter in the other compartments. 1 The passages that could be interpreted as revealing some familiarity with Hispano-Flemish art are the maid in the episode of the denial, those of the figures who look as if they might be distantly derived from Dierick Bouts, and the drapery of the angels placing the tiara upon St. Peter's head in the central panel. But late international types often resemble deceptively those of Bouts, and it is hard to reconcile the gaunt Christ of the Crucifixion with anything but the haggard Gothic style that preceded the introduction of the Flemish influence. The altarpiece once bore an inscription all of which has been destroyed except the colorless words, Este retablo. T H E ITALO-GOTHIC AND INTERNATIONAL S T Y L E S IN ANDALUSIA

Under this heading I have to add, and then not with the greatest confidence, only the fragments of three cycles of frescoes at Cordova all of which seem to me products of one atelier active in the second quarter of the fifteenth century and closely related, artistically, with 1

For the rustic ignorance, at Mondoñedo, of the nature of St. Peter's martyrdom, see above, p. 479.

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the workshop responsible for the mural paintings in the Patio de los Evangelistas in S. Isidoro del Campo at Santiponce. T h e most extensive remnants are found in the church of S. Lorenzo. On the central bay of the wall behind the high altar the patron of the church, St. Lawrence, stands, holding his gridiron, in the middle (Fig. 273),

FIG. 273. HEAD OF ST. LAWRENCE, SECTION OF FRESCOES IN S. LORENZO, CORDOVA (From "ElMonasterio

de Nuestra Señora de la Ràbida" by R. Velizquez Bosco)

and he is flanked at the left by another deacon-saint clad in an ostentatiously brocaded dalmatic (Stephen or Vincent?) and at the right b y a canonized young seigneur dressed in fashionable contemporary attire (Sebastian or Lawrence's converted jailor, Hippolytus?). T h e polychromy of the adjacent lateral bays has vanished, except for an old saint at the left whose scroll I cannot read but who has the facial

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traits that had become conventionally associated with St. Peter, and another aged worthy at the right, who, if the former figure is St. Peter, would be St. Paul. The head of God the Father that is said to exist at the top of the arch of entrance to the principal apse, I have not seen because it is hidden by the construction of the more modern roof; but on the soffit of the arch of the door leading from the principal apse to the chapel at the east end on the Gospel side there is preserved the upper part of the body of a saint who is probably rather a woman than a young man. The background to this figure is a simulated rich brocade, and it is set, like the forms in thè main apse, under a painted polylobed arch. The saints in the main apse, however, are placed against backgrounds that imitate in paint those mosaics influenced by Italian examples which became popular in Andalusia in the fifteenth century and possibly as early as the fourteenth. 1 We are thus provided with a fairly secure method of dating the frescoes not before the fourteenth century and more probably at the period of the greater vogue of the Italianate mosaics in the fifteenth century. With the latter date the style accords, and because of its Italianate qualities and the absence of Flemish traits assigns the frescoes to the first rather than the second half of the century. The almond-shaped eyes are still Sienese, and the general drawing of the countenances thoroughly Italian, but the maturity of the craft indicates the second quarter of the century as the likelihood. Although the contemporary frescoes at Santiponce are less Italianate and more "international," the styles are related. The original countenances at Santiponce have been largely effaced, but the eyes, so far as they are preserved, resemble in treatment those of Cordova. The St. Lawrence of the Santiponce cycle in the drawing of the head and its position is not unlike the figure of the patron of the Cordovan church, and it is to be noted that the pattern of the orphreys on the shoulders of the dalmatic is almost identical. One of the Santiponce master's peculiar, divided beards is paraded by the St. Paul at Cordova. In the manner of the Santiponce saints, the figure on the door between the two apses in S. Lorenzo stands against a brocaded background. If it could be definitely proved that the painter of Santiponce equals the illuminator, the Master of the Cypresses (whose name was probably Pedro de Toledo),2 further analogies would emerge, for the heads and coiffures of the deaconsaints are recalled in the figures of young men in those illustrations in a Bible of the Escorial which have been recently attributed to the Master of the Cypresses by Diego Angulo.3 The more fragmentary frescoes on the flat wall behind the high altar in S. Nicolás de la Villa at Cordova, which it takes more perilous 1 See R. Velázquez Bosco, El monasterio de Nuestra Señora de la Rábida, 1914, pp. 96 ff., and especially the illustrations. ' See vol. I l l , pp. 322-323. 3 Archivo español de arte y arqueología, V (1929), 225-231.

Madrid,

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feats of ladder-climbing to study, are undoubtedly products of the same workshop as the mural paintings of S. Lorenzo. Beneath a molding inscribed with the date, of which, unfortunately, I have not been able to decipher the significant part or anything more than SEÑOR DE MIL E [(year of Our) Lord thousand and ], the Cor-

FIG. 274. HEAD OF CHRIST (?). FRAGMENT OF FRESCO. SEMINARY OF S. PELAGIO, CORDOVA (From " Antiguas pinturas murales en las iglesias de Córdoba" by R. Castejón)

onation of the Virgin can be dimly made out as taking place in a mandorla, and under this, still further erased, the Assumption. 1 The gilt background of the mandorla bears the mosaic design that appears behind the deacon-saint at the left in S. Lorenzo. 1 I am glad to find my identification of these subjects, so difficult to see, confirmed by Diego Angulo: cf. Archivo español de arte y arqueología, IV (1928), 152.

66 4

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Of a third Cordovan fresco, in the Capilla de Villaviciosa in the cathedral, only the merest bits are extant, two heads now kept in the seminary of S. Pelagio, one fine in execution and probably representing Christ (Fig. 274) and the other, in a more ruinous state, the Virgin, so that they perhaps were parts of a composition depicting the Coronation. It has been thought that they may have belonged to an otherwise destroyed cycle of mural paintings in the chapel reported to have been done during the second half of the thirteenth century and to have exhibited the signature of an artist named Alonso Martínez and also the date 1266; 1 but the technical sophistication is far too great for so primitive a date, at which the style would have been late Romanesque or early Franco-Gothic, and even in these exiguous fragments it is possible, I believe, to discern the traces of the atelier that in the second quarter of the fifteenth century found employment in S. Lorenzo and S. Nicolás. The two heads are drawn according to the same scheme as those of the Italianate figures in the frescoes of these two churches, the parallelism being especially apparent in the mode of delineating the eyes and brows. The details of the haloes and garments are rendered in gilded stucco relief. The stylistic qualities point to the fifteenth century, but it is not to be put beyond the pale of possibility that the two heads were pieces of the mural paintings done at the order of Henry II in 1371 in the Capilla de S. Fernando, now a sacristy of the Capilla de Villaviciosa, although the accounts of these lost frescoes speak only of royal portraits.2 A study of the actual altarpiece in the Obrería del Cabildo 3 at Cordova imparts a still higher estimate of the artistic qualities than could be gleaned from the photograph, and yet one gets a vague, though none the less convincing, impression from the types, however Italianate, that the author was a Spaniard. The St. Catherine, clad in a gold tunic, is a nobly beautiful figure. The gold backgrounds, incised with a floral motif and at the borders with a foliate design, illustrate once more the superiority of the Spaniards in this phase of their craft. Tormo 4 ascribes to the first third of the fifteenth century the original small pictures on wood that he conceives to underly the drastic and successive repaintings of the earlier members in the series of fiftysix Spanish kings from Recceswinth to Philip I I I amidst the opulent mudejar decoration beneath the dome of the Hall of the Ambassadors 1 Ramirez de Arellano, Diccionario biográfico de artistas de la provincia de Córdoba, 1 7 2 - 1 7 3 , and Historia de Córdoba, III, 299, η. ι. The date was in the year of the Era, 1304, which Ramirez de Arellano wrongly interprets in present chronology as 1286, whereas it should be 1266. 2 Ramirez de Arellano, Guia artística de Córdoba, 1 1 , and Diccionario biográfico, etc., 34· 3 See my vol. III, p. 308. 4 Las viejas series icónicas de los reyes de España, 3 1 - 4 1 .

ADDITIONS TO VOLUMES I-III

665

in the Alcázar of Seville; but if there were earlier figures in these spots, they are so completely concealed by the subsequent coats of paint that nothing of their style can be perceived. T h e principal argument for the existence of the earlier paintings (though Tormo believes that he can discern that the present forms follow their general lines) must be one from probability: the architectural arches that frame the royal effigies are Gothic of the end of the fourteenth or beginning of the fifteenth century, and it hardly seems likely that the spaces thus enclosed would have been intended to remain bare. Tormo is inclined to think that the earlier members of the series may have been painted in the reign of John I I , c. 1420, the date when the dome of the Hall of the Ambassadors was reconstructed, and that the first extensive retouching was carried out c. 1599, when the artist Diego de Esquibel was commissioned to paint the thirty-two busts of ladies that are interwoven into the decorative scheme above the frieze of monarchs. The figures of the sovereigns after John I I would have to be later productions, and indeed all the royal forms, in their present condition, look like totally uninspired expressions of the dry, classic style of the end of the sixteenth century.

ADDITIONAL BIBLIOGRAPHY

ADDITIONAL BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR VOLUMES I-III D'Amalasunda, Teodoric, Pintors del Maestral, Boletín de la Sociedad Castellonense de Cultura, X I I I (1932), 55-87. Angulo íñiguez, D., ha pintura trecentista en Toledo, Archivo español de arte y arqueología, VII (1931), 23-29. El retablo de Cardona en el Museo del Parque de Barcelona, Archivo español de arte y arqueología, VII (1931), 272-273. Del Arco, R., Aragón, Huesca, 1931. Betí, M., Por tierras de Morella, Boletín de la Sociedad Castellonense de Cultura, V I (1925), 257-266. Bourdon, M. L., The Sarcophagus of San Isidro Labrador, summary of paper read at the nineteenth annual meeting of the College Art Association, Parnassus, January, 1930, p. 40. Castejón, R., Antiguas pinturas murales en las iglesias de Córdoba, Boletín de la Real Sociedad Cordobesa de Arqueología y Excursiones, June, 1928, pp. 4-7. Cook, W. W. S., Romanesque Frescoes in Roussillon, summary of paper read at the nineteenth annual meeting of the College Art Association, Parnassus, December, 1929, p. 40. Romanesque Spanish Mural Painting, Art Bulletin, X I (1929), 327-356; X I I (1930), 21-42. Couyat-Barthoux, J., Sur une peinture catalane du XIVe siècle trouvée au monastère de Sinaï, Anuari de ΓInstitut d'Estudis Catalans, V (1913-1914), 729-733. Durán y Sanpere, Α., Els sostres gòtics de la Casa de la Ciutat de Barcelona, Estudis universitaris catalans, X I V (1929), 76-94. Fiocco, G., Dello Delli scultore, Rivista d'arte, X I (1929), 25-42. Folch y Torres, J., Imitation de l'orfèvrerie dans les devants d'autel et les retables catalans de l'époque romane, Gazette des beaux arts, 1930, h 248-256. Un nou retaule de Lluis Borrassà, Butlleti dels Museus d'Art de Barcelona, April, 1932, pp. 116-117. Pintures murais romàniques a l'absis de l'església del monestir de Sant Miquel de Cruilles, Butlleti dels Museus d'Art de Barcelona, August, 1931, pp. 74-81. Les pintures murais de Sant Miquel de Cruilles i els grafits de les pintures murais catalanes, Butlleti dels Museus d'Art de Barcelona, May, 1932, pp. 146-150. Les pintures rurals romàniques de Santa Maria de Τ ahull, Gaseta de les arts, December, 1929, pp. 198-201.

βηο

ADDITIONAL

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Folch y Torres, J . , El retaule de Sant Llorenq de Pöblet, Butlletî dels Museus d'Art de Barcelona, June, 1931, pp. 3-9. Fourteenth-Century Painting in the Kingdom of Aragon beyond the Sea, published (without the name of the author) by the Hispanic Society of America, New York, 1929. Gamba, C., Arte toscana in Spagna, Ipittori, Il Marzocco (Florence), Feb. ι , 1925, p. 2. Gascon de Gotor, Α., El arte romànico en Aragon, Nuestro tiempo, 1925, 2, pp. 38-82. Gudiol, J . , La pintura mig-eval catalana, Els primitius, part II, La pintura sobre justa, Barcelona, 1929. La pintura sota vidre, Arts i bells oficis (Barcelona), I (19271928), 209-214. Hugelshofer, W., Eine Gruppe valencianischer Gemälde um 1400, Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst, 1928-1929, pp. 139-144. Leman, H., La Collection Foule, Paris, 1927. Marie, R . van, Ein Altarbild aus der Schule von Avignon, Cicerone, X X I I , I (1930), 185-191. Masó Valenti, R., Les pinture s romàniques de Sant Miquel de Cruïlles, Butlletî dels Museus d'Art de Barcelona, January, 1932, pp. 23-29. Mayer, A. L., Los primitivos españoles, Arte español, V (1920-1921), 236-241. . Nicholson, Α., A Valendan Madonna of the Early Fifteenth Century, Art in America, X X (1932), 60-67. Pérez Llamazares, J . , Historia de la real colegiata de San Isidoro de León, Leon, 1927. Puig y Cadafalch, J . , Les pintures del segle VI de la catedral d'Egara {Terrassa) a Catalunya, Butlletî dels Museus d'Art de Barcelona, April, 1932, pp. 97-105. Put, A. van de, A Primitive at Boston and the Double Crown of Aragon, Art in America, X X (1932), 51-59. El retaule català del Sinai, Anuari de l'Institut d'Estudis Catalans, IV ( 1 9 1 1 - 1 9 1 2 ) , 690-691. Richert, G., Les fresques de Tahull, Gazette des beaux arts, 1930, 2, pp. 65-79. Salmi, M., Un opera giovanile di Dello Delli, Rivista d'arte, X I (1929), 104-110. Saralegui, L. de, El retablo de Gabriel Marti, Boletín de la Sociedad Castellonense de Cultura, X (1929), 80-84. Soler y March, Α., Un antipendi inédit i una antiquissima advocado catalana, Ciutat (Manresa), I I I (1928), 1 3 1 - 1 3 3 . Subías Galter, J . , Les taules gotiques de Castellò d'Empúries, Gerona, 1930. Sutrá Viñas, J . , El retaule de Sant Miquel de l'església del monestir de Sant Miquel de Cruïlles, Gerona, 1931.

ADDITIONAL BIBLIOGRAPHY

671

Tormo, E., 'Toledo: tesoro y museos, two vols., Madrid, ?. ——· Las viejas series icónicas de los reyes de España, Madrid, 1917. Trens, M., El retaule català de Sant Miquel d'Anvers, Vida cristiana, X V I I I (1930-1931), 7-10. V., Un retablo de últimos del s. XIV, Bolleti de la Societat Arqueológica Luliana, X X I I I (1930-1931), 495-496. Vegue y Goldoni, Α., La dotación de Pedro Fernández de Burgos en la catedral de Toledo y Gerardo Stamina, Archivo español de arte y arqueología, V I (1930), 277-279. Gerardo Starnina en Toledo, Archivo español de arte y arqueoldgía, V I (1930), 199-203. Velázquez Bosco, R., El monasterio de Nuestra Señora de la Rábida, Madrid, 1914. Ysasi, R., La Anunciación, fragmento de un retablo de la Lonja, Bolletí de la Societat Arqueológica Luliana, X X I (1926-1927), 337338.

INDICES

INDEX OF NAMES OF ARTISTS In cases where there are two or more entries after a name, the figures in heavy type indicate the pages on which the principal discussions of the artists in question may be found; for masters who are mentioned only incidentally, the heavy type has not been used in such instances. Alfonso, Juan, 396. Alfonso, Master, 7, 8, 13, 55, 56, 58, 61, 62, 322, 400, 520. Amadeo, Giovanni Antonio, 142. Amberes, Francisco de: see Francisco de Amberes. Andrés Florentino, 384, 385, 389. Angelico, Fra, 142. Antonello da Messina, 12, 55, 56, 58, 60, 61, 63, 260. Aponte, Pedro de, 10. Arnaldin, Benito, 629-633, 637. Arnaldín, Jaime, 632. Arnaldín, Juan, 632. Avila Master, The, 337-365, 401, 402, 4°4, 432, 434. 46°· Ayllón, Juan de, 180, 369. Baidung Grien, Hans, 196. Barco, García del, 337,346,347,348,369. Barnaba da Modena, 520. Bartolo, Taddeo di, 514. Bassa, Ferrer, 510-515. Bellini brothers, 12, 15. Bello, Pedro, 90, 108-109, m , 120, 122, 144, 145» 246, 256. Beluga, Vidal, 584. Benson, Ambrosius, 29, 418. Berlinghieri, Bonaventura, 152. Bermejo, Bartolomé, 5, 7, 9, 10, 13, 27, 28, 36» 41, 55, 5 6 , 5 8 , 6 l » 6 4. 74, 80, 95, 98, 104, n i , 181, 194, 256, 292, 322, 358» 385, 386, 400, 406, 432» 435» S2°» 644. Bernaldino, 201. Bernat, Martin, 104, 385, 386, 432, 435, 442,444. Berruguete, Pedro, 11, 15, 55, 181, 182, 285, 330, 348, 356» 366, 369» 388» 4 I 4 j 414.

Bicci di Lorenzo, 654, 656. Borgoña, Juan de: see Juan de Borgoña. Borrassá, Lucas, 622. Borrassá, Luis, 492, 522, 524, 534, 536, 537, 538, 540, 598, 602, 622, 624, 633, 634· Bosch, Jerome, 28, 30. Bourdichon, Jean, 39, 60. Bouts, Albert, 193. Bouts, Dierick, 25-26, 45, 80, 84, 86, 93, 94, 95, 96> 98, 100, 102, 110, 117, 120, 127, 142, 148, 151, 152, 165, 174, 175, 176, 180, 190, 193, 240, 241, 250, 266, 290, 294, 298, 303, 332, 334, 368, 374, 400, 464, 466, 474, 660. Budapest Master, 182, 184, 190, 274, 318-328, 460, 468, 470. Buonarroti, Michael Angelo, 15. Burgos Master, The, 11, 202-219, 220, 222, 223, 224, 227, 230, 236, 250, 254, 282, 303, 304, 307, 308, 314, 376, 423, 425, 474Cabrera, Jaime, 524, 540. Camargo, Fernando, 256. Carillo, 327-332, 334· Carpaccio, Vittorio, 12, 74. Carrillo, Juan, 330. Chacón, Francisco, 6, 370, 392, 397-400. Christus, Petras, 25, 26, 29, 82, 98. Cirera, Jaime, 538-543. Cleve, Joos van, 37. Colantonio, 56, 57, 58, 60. Comes, Francisco, 587. Conrad, Master, 33. Contreras, Antonio, 458-463. Correggio, m . Cosimo, Pier di, 12, 460. Coxie, Michiel, 23. Crivelli, Carlo, 426.

676

INDEX OF NAMES OF ARTISTS

Dalmau, Luis, 17, 63. Daurer, Juan, 608-609, 6io, 616. David, Gerard, 28-29, 39, 416, 418, 427, 47°, 474· Delli, Dello, 106, 121, 346, 347, 368, 648, 652, 653-656. Delli, Sansone, 346, 347, 366, 368. Díaz, Pedro, of Oviedo, 6, 279, 282, 286, 346, 404, 429-450. Donatello, 609. Duccio, 512, 515. Dürer, Albrecht, 416.

Ghirlandaio, Domenico, 12, 15. Giotto, 516, 646. Giusto, Giovanni di, 56. Goes, Hugo van der, 12, 26, 56, 205, 260, 425, 47°· González, Pedro, 390. Goya y Lucientes, Francisco, 10. Gozzoli, Benozzo, 142, 466. Greco, El, 9 j , 132, 142, 423. Guimerá, manner of, 540-542, 589, 622, 626, 633, 642. Gumiel, Pedro, 371.

Espalargucs, Pedro, 562. Esquibel, Diego de, 665. Esteve, Juan, 528. Van Eyck, Hubert, 18, 21.

Holbein, Hans, the Elder, 33. Huguet, Jaime, 8, 10, 13, 264, 290, 548, 550, 556, 562, 564, 600.

Van E y c k , Jan, 4, 15-21, 25, 56, 64, 66,

Ingles, Jorge, 4, 65-76, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 84, 176, 287, 290, 298, 338, 340, 401. Isenbrant, Adriaen, 29.

68, 72. 75. 29°> 30°, 3°2· Van Eyck brothers, 4, 14. Felipe, Juan (Castilian painter), 90. Felipe, Juan (Valencian engraver), 90. Fernández, Alejo, 15, 32, 234, 256. Ferrer, Guillermo, 568. Flamenco, Juan: see Juan Flamenco. Flandes, Juan de, 24, 32, 35, 37-48, 50, 52. 53, 54, 5 8 , 92» 240,397,423· Flandes, Juan de, II, 48-54. Fouquet, Jean, 39. Francés, Nicolás, 109, 122, 155, 156, 160, i68, 170, 176, 242, 316, 576, 626, 656659. Francesca, Piero della, 203. Francisco de Amberes, 54, 384, 385. Gaddi, Taddeo, 290. Gallego, Fernando, 24, 25, 26, 81, 87-147, 1 5 1 . ! 5 2 . l53, 155. i6o, 165, 172, 174, 176, 178, 180, 181, 190, 193, 194, 202, 203, 204, 205, 207, 208, 212, 230, 234, 236, 240, 241, 243, 244, 250, 272, 274, 298, 303, 318, 328, 332, 334, 336, 337. 346, 348, 358> 359, 364, 368, 369. 388,401,416,423,425, 464,470,474. Gallego, Francisco, 92, 100-108, 110, 121, 142, 145. Gaseó, Juan, 10. Geertgen tot Sint Jans, 28. Gentile da Fabriano, 598. Ghiberti, Lorenzo, 655.

Jacobus, Master, 628, 629. Jacomart, 7, 55, 61, 408. Joest, Jan, 32, 75. Juan de Borgoña, 11, 54, 330, 366. Juan de Flandes: see Flandes, Juan de. Juan de Segovia, 371, 372, 397. Juan Flamenco, 24, 46-47, 206, 236-246, 396· Justus of Ghent, 12, 26, 56. Lana, Jaime, 33. Leonardo da Vinci, 12, 252, 354. Levi, Juan de, 104, 626-630, 632. Don Lorenzo Monaco, 594. Luis, Juan, 254, 256. Luna Master, 246, 370-381,387,430,446. Maître aux Armures: see Richmond. Marmion, Simon, 60. Marti, Gabriel, 587-588. Martínez, Alonso, 664. Martini, Simone, 60, 512, 520, 629. Martorell, Bernardo, 530, 532. Marzal de Sas, Andrés, 541, 566, 570-588, 590, 592, 594, 598, 599, 600. Masaccio, 408. Master of Arguis, 636. Master of the Cardona Pentecost, 524527, 652. Master of the Cypresses, 662.

INDEX OF NAMES OF ARTISTS Master of Flémalle, 2 2 - 2 3 , 66, 68, 75, 79, 120, 2 9 2, 332, 338, 340, 344, 374, 4O4. Master of Frankfurt, 30. Master of Lanaja, 638-642. Master of the Large Figures, 2 7 6 - 2 8 7 , 300, 308, 434, 436. Master of the Morrison Triptych, 30. Master of Moulins, 34, 39. Master of the Paheria, 558-564. Master of the St. Barbara Legend, 423. Master of the St. Catherine Legend, 423. Master of St. George, 121, 424, 522, 5 4 2 557, 558, 578, 622, 634. Master of St. Giles, 424. Master of Ste. Gudule, 423. Master of the St. Lucy Legend, 2 7 , 374, 476. Master of 'S Hertogenbosch, 28. Master of Sigüenza, 632, 633, 6 3 7 - 6 3 8 . Master of La Sisla, 304, 359-365, 387. Master of the Solsona Last Supper, 640641. Master of the Tiburtine Sibyl, 294. Master of the Virgo inter Virgines, 2 7 - 2 8 , 81, 82, 84. Matsys, Quentin, 30. Mayol, Martín I, 610. Mayol, Martín II, 610-614. Mayol, Pedro I, 610. Mayol, Pedro II, 610. Melchior Alemán, 33. Melozzo da Forlì, 150, 217. Memling, Hans, 26, 2 7 , 64, 80, 208, 209, 300, 416, 427, 470, 474, 476. Messina, Antonello da: see Antonello da Messina. Moger, Gabriel, 616. Montflorit, Bernardo de, 532-534, 629. Montoliu, Valentin, 599, 600, 602. Moretto, 404. Mostaert, Jan, 32,36. Murillo, Bartolomé Esteban, 432. Nicolau, Pedro, 541, 5 7 0 - 5 8 8 , 590, 592, 594, 59», 599, 607. Núñez, Juan, 400. Oña, school of, 217, 2 2 0 - 2 3 6 , 304. Orcagna, Andrea, 646, 648. Ortiz, Pablo, 371.

677

Ortoneda, Pascual, 632. Osona, Rodrigo de, 11, 15, 55. Ouwater, Albert van, 28. Palanquinos Master, 1 5 5 - 1 7 2 , 176, 177, 178, 261,335,464. Pedro de Salamanca, Fray, 346, 347. Pedro de Toledo, 662. Peñaiflor, Domingo, 508. Perréal, Jean, 34. Pertús, Pedro, 636. Perugino, Pietro, 95. Pintoricchio, Bernardo, 152, 228. Pires, Alvaro, 649. Pisanello, 176. Pisano, Giovanni, 142. Poliamolo, Antonio, 410. Provost, Jan, 39. Quercia, Jacopo della, 208. Raphael, 15, 95, 580. Reixach, Juan, 634. Ribera, Jusepe de, 432. Rincón, Antonio del, 386. Rincón, Hernando del, 385, 386. Rodríguez, Juan, of Béjar, 346, 369. Rodríguez de Toledo (Juan ?), 648, 652. St. Ildefonso Master, 298, 4 0 1 - 4 1 2 . St. Nicholas Master, 250, 2 3 2 - 2 7 6 , 279, 282, 284, 287, 296, 298,300,307,322. Sánchez, Pedro I, 158. Sánchez, Pedro II, 606. Sancho de Zamora, 371, 372, 397. Schongauer, Martin, 33, 41, 88, 89, 98, 117, " 8 , 133, 134, 136, 143, !44, 145, 156, 158, 184, 193, 206, 207, 208, 223, 224, 360, 362, 364, 365, 368, 435, 436, 448, 452· Segovia, Juan de: see Juan de Segovia. Segovia Master, The, 451-456. Serra, Bernardo, 604-608. Serra, Jaime, 5 1 6 - 5 x 9 , 524, 622. Serra, Pedro, 138, 516, 518, 519, 5 2 2 - 5 2 4 , 532, 534, 54°· Serra brothers (the Serras), 174, 512, 524, 530, 532, 534, 54°, 542, SS6, 5 6 6, 57°, 596, 600, 601, 602, 608, 616, 622, 634, 650, 652.

678

INDEX OF NAMES OF ARTISTS

Signorelli, Luca, 203, 204, 206, 460. Siloé, Gil de, 296. Sithium, Miguel, 33"37, 3 8 , 39> 48, 54, 397. 423, 47°· Spagna, Lo, 552. S t a m i n a , Gherardo, 644-649, 650, 654.

Vigarni, Felipe, 92. Vilanova, Marcos de, 528-532. Vivarini, T h e , 12, 15.

Teniers, David, the Younger, 426. Tolosa, Pedro de, 92. T o r r e n t , R a m ó n , 558-559. Tudelilla, 438.

Weyden, Roger van der, 14, 22, 23-23, 26, 56, 62, 66, 68, 72, 75, 79, 80, 94, 100, 120, 145, 148, 158, 172, 173, 174, 182, 192, 238, 260, 272, 276, 282, 290, 292, 294, 296, 298, 302, 304, 308, 337, 338, 374, 422, 424, 427, 448, 474· Witz, Conrad, 89, 100, 112, 334.

Valls, Domingo, 600-602, 606. Vanni, Andrea, 520. Vello, Pedro: see Bello. Vergós family, 10. Verrocchio, Andrea del, 410.

Zamora, Sancho de: see Sancho de Zamora. Zaragoza, Lorenzo, 346. Zittoz: see Sithium. Zuera, Pedro, 596, 626, 642.

INDEX OF PLACES In cases where there are two or more numerical references after an entry, the figures in heavy type indicate the pages on which the principal discussions of the paintings in question may be found.

Asterisks denote the presence of

Agreda, Nuestra Señora de los Milagros, retable of St. Lawrence, 464-465,* 466.

illustrations.

Museum, Annunciation

by

Roger

van

der

Weyden (?), 79.

retable of St. Vincent, 464. Aix-la-Chapelle, Suermondt Museum, A n -

paintings from N á j e r a b y Memling, 27-

nunciation by Master of Virgo in-

Arcenillas, panels of retable, atelier of

ter Virgines, 82.

Fernando Gallego, 1 1 7 - 1 2 2 , * 127,

Albal,

i43> 144. 145. !90, 207, 226, 236,

panel ascribed to Gabriel M a r t i , 587—

334, 425·

588.

Arlanza, San Pedro de, frescoes from, 492.

panels from life of Virgin, 590-593.* retable of St. L u c y , 590.

Arlanzón, panels from Foncea, 303,* 304.

Albentosa, retable, 570-573.

Artajona, retable, school of Pedro Diaz, 440-444,* 446, 448, 450.

Alcalá de Henares, Ayuntamiento, M a donna, 463. retable of St. Augustine, 599. Sts. Michael

and M a r y

Magdalene,

588-589.* Alcudia, panels of international style, 622. A l g a y ó n , retable by Master of the P a heria, 558. All, retable, school of Borrassá, 534-537,* 538· L a Almunia de Doña

frescoes, 506.

Flandes, 54.

de Ribelles, retable, school

of

Serras, 524-532.* cassone panel, N o . 41, 653-654. panel of six Apostles, 654.

Casa de la Diputación, M a n of Sorrows, 369, 373.* cathedral, reliquary of St. Peter, 353-356,* 358.

Altura, Valencian retable, 599.

retable of high altar, 388.

Amusco, Hispano-Flemish predella, 192193· Anento, retable, 624-626,* 634. Antwerp, Bergh

Avila, Flemish triptych, 369.

Altenburg,

den

panels from Villafáfila, 154. Seminario, panel from Santa Marina del R e y ,

Sta. María, retable, school of Juan de

R e c t o r y , crucifix, 506-507.

van

Palacio Episcopal,

S. Pedro, antependium, 656-659.*

ceiling, 507.

Mayer

Collection. Hospital, panel from life of Santiago, 154-155, 177.

154, 165. Astudillo,

Godina,

Nuestra Señora de Cabanas,

Alsina

Astorga, cemetery chapel: see Madrid, L á z a r o

Alcira, S. Agustín,

Collection,

Salome by Juan de Flandes, 48.

retable of Nuestra Señora de Gracia, 347-3So>* 352, 354, 456· retable of St. Martial, 348,

354,

355-358,* 359. retable of St. Peter, 350-354,* 456. St. Anne, 366-369.*

68ο

INDEX OF PLACES

Avila (coni.) S. Segundo, retable, 365-366, 369. S. Vicente, Meeting at Golden Gate by the Avila Master, 342-344,* 364, 434· Balbases, Los, S. Esteban, panels by St. Nicholas Master (?), 271-272.* Pietà, school of the Burgos Master, 217-219.* retable of high altar, 246-250.* Sts. Sebastian and Roch by the Burgos Master, 217-218.* S. Millán, retable by the Burgos Master, 215217,* 218, 250. Bamba, retable by Juan de Flandes II (?), 52-53· Bañeras, retable from, 576. Barcelona, Barnola Collection, panels of life of St. Lucy by Master of St. George, 544,· 548. Rómulo Bosch Collection, antependium of Baptist, 496. panels from Cubélls by Pedro Serra, 522-524,* 540. Romanesque side-piece of altar, 494496. Valencian retable of Madonna, 576578.* Valencian retable of St. Barbara, 573, 576. _ Casa Consistorial, ceiling, 540. cathedral, Marriage of Virgin by Budapest Master, 322-324.* Pietà by Bermejo, 400. predella by Master of St. George, 544, 548, 55°· retable of Sts. Cosmas and Damian, 5°3· retable of the Transfiguration, 121, 548, 55°. 554, 577DalmauCollection, panels by Domingo Vails, 601-603.* Diocesan Museum, retable of San Cugat del Vallès, 608.

Juñer Collection, Madonna from Torroella de Montgrí, 568. Milá Collection, Crucifixion by Master of St. George, 548-551·* panel by Cirera (?), 538-539.* Visitation, school of Palencia (?), 184-186.* Muntadas Collection, Epiphany by Fernando Gallego, 136. Madonna of Humility, 569-570.* Meeting at Golden Gate and Betrayal, 566-567.* painting by Domingo Vails, 601. panel of circle of Cirera, 538-541.* predella of two St. Johns, 552-555·* retable by Bernardo de Montflorit, 532-534.* retable of Sts. John Evangelist and Lucy, 556, 559·* Sts. Augustine, Vincent, and Lawrence, 644-645.* side-pieces of antependium of bishops, 499-501.* Museo de la Ciudadela, antependia from Encamp and Feneras, 498. antependium of bishops, 499, 500, 502. copy of Juan de Flandes's St. Michael, 40. fragment of retable from Cardona, 5 I2 > 5'4> 5 ! 5frescoes from Bohi, 492. frescoes from Estahón, 507. frescoes from Esterri de Aneu, 487, 488,489. frescoes from S. Miguel de Angulasters, 491. frescoes from Sta. María de Tahull, 487, 488, 490. Madonna from Cervera, 540, 541, 542. Madonna from Encamp, 535-538.* Martyrdom of St. Cucufas by Master Alfonso, 62. retable of Baptist and St. Stephen, 566. retable of Sts. Michael and Peter from La Seo de Urgel, 538.

INDEX OF PLACES Barcelona (coni.) retable of St. Vincent by M a s t e r of St. George, 542-549.* Pedralbes, frescoes by Ferrer

Bassa,

5_12· Plandiura Collection, Aragonese Virgin of Mercy, 640,642. board canopy, 496. ciborium, 496, 497. frescoes from S. Pedro del Burgal, 487,488, 489. frescoes from San R o m á n de les Bones, 491-493.* M a d o n n a , circle of F e r n a n d o Gallego, 333-336·* panels from M a h a m u d , 506. retable from Gualter b y Jaime Serra, 519. retable from Santa Coloma de Queralt, 512. retable of circle of M a s t e r of the Solsona Last Supper, 640. retable of St. Vincent from E s t o piñán, 512, 544, 587. St. Ursula, 628. Soler y M a r c h Collection, antependium of St. Victoria, 503-504. retable from Guardiola by Borrassá, 5 2 4 , 527· El Barco de Avila, Assumption, 369. panels by the Avila M a s t e r , 344-343,* 434· triptych in baptismal chapel, 369. Basconcillos, frescoes, 201. Basel, M u s e u m , altarpiece b y Conrad Witz, 112. Beaune, L a s t J u d g m e n t by Roger van der Weyden, 145. Bechi, Valencian M a d o n n a , 590-591.* Belchite, triptych by M a s t e r of Morrison T r i p t y c h , 30. Belorado, N a t i v i t y and Marriage a t C a n a , 308-311,* 313. Berlin, Kaiser Friedrich M u s e u m , Adoration of Shepherds by H u g o v a n der Goes, 26. Annunciation and N a t i v i t y by P e t r u s Christus, 25, 82. Bladelin triptych b y Roger van der Weyden, 337, 338.

68ι

Dormition by Bermejo, 74, 80. E p i p h a n y by H u g o v a n der Goes, 26, 206, 425. E p i p h a n y by M a s t e r of Virgo inter Virgines, 82. head of Christ by J a n van E y c k (?), 21. Last J u d g m e n t by P e t r u s Christus, 25. M a d o n n a by Carillo, 329-332.* M a d o n n a by Geertgen tot Sint Jans, 28. M a d o n n a by Miguel Sithium, 34, 35. replica of Roger van der Weyden's G r a n a d a triptych, 23-24, 100, 173. triptych of St. J o h n Baptist b y Roger van der Weyden (?), 24, 46, 47, 2 38, 239» 2 40. Valencian Salvator M u n d i , 586, 587. Bexley ( K e n t ) , Hall Place, frescoes from Revilla de Santullán, 198-199,201. Bilbao, Gorostiza Collection (formerly in the), panels by L u n a M a s t e r , 380-383.* panels of St. Ursula, 564-565.* St. Ildefonso's reception of chasuble by Jorge Inglés (?), 75-76.* Museum, Sts. P a u l and Andrew, 462-463.* Valencian Salvator M u n d i , 571, 574·* De la Sota Collection, retable by M a s t e r of the Large Figures, 281284,* 285. Bonilla de la Sierra, retable of high altar, 358-359. retable t h a t once contained F e r n a n d o Gallego's Mass of St. Gregory in the Schlayer Collection, M a d r i d , 134· Boston, Fenway Court, triptych of school of the Serras, 622. M u s e u m , Valencian M a d o n n a , 541, 580-583,* 590. Briviesca, retable of Pedro Ruiz, 3 1 3 - 3 1 4 . Bruges, N o t r e D a m e , Transfiguration by Gerard David, 39. Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale, frontispiece of Chroniques du Hainaut b y Roger van der Weyden (?), 79, 80. M u s e u m , Via Dolorosa by M a s t e r of 'S Hertogenbosch, 28.

68α

INDEX OF PLACES

Budapest, Museum, Deposition by Pedro Sánchez, 158. polyptych by Budapest Master, 318319,* 3 2 °> 3 2 2 · Presentation of Virgin by Budapest Master, 320-323.* Buenos Ayres, Hirsch Collection, Circumcision by Juan de Flandes (?), 38. Buezo, retable, 308-310, 313, 314. Burgo de Osma, cathedral, Sts. Augustine and Dominic, 571. Burgos, Cartuja de Miraflores, head of Christ by Juan de Flandes (?), 46-47·* Last Supper, 316. panels of legend of Holy Cross, 239. triptych of Passion, 48. cathedral, Mass of St. Gregory, 214. panels from retable by the Burgos Master, 202-208,* 209, 212, 214, 216, 218, 219, 220. panels from S. Gil, 287-291,* 292, 294. panels of school of Oña, 226-229.* trial of St. Peter, school of St. Nicholas Master, 276-277,* 284. triptych by St. Nicholas Master, 256-260,* 262, 264, 270, 272. Provincial Museum, canvases of Passion, 223, 224-227,* 228, 230, 232, 2 34· SS. Cosme y Damián, Mass of St. Gregory by the Burgos Master, 214-215. miracle of Sts. Cosmas and Damian by the Burgos Master (disappeared from church), 210-212,* 214, 215, 216, 219. panels of paired saints by Fernando Gallego, 128-130,* 214. S. Esteban, Last Supper, 250-252.* St. Francis's reception of stigmata, 306-309.* S. Gil, Pietà by Gerard David (?), 29. S. Nicolás, Last Judgment, 282. panels by Master of Large Figures, 252, 276-282*, 284, 285, 286.

panels by St. Nicholas Master, 252255*, 256, 261, 262, 264, 272, 276, 282, 290. Burriana, S. Bias, St. Blaise, 590. Cabañas, Nuestra Señora de: see L a Almunia de Doña Godina. Cabeza del Buey, panel by Fernando Gallego or atelier, 130-131*. Cabreros del Río, Granja de San Antolin: see Leon, José Sánchez Collection. Cadiz, Museum, panels of school of Palencia (?), 182-185*, 424, 474. Cambridge (England), Fitzwilliam Museum, Mass of St. Gregory, 32733 2 *· Cambridge (Mass.), Fogg Museum, St. Christopher, 193-196*, 198. Campo, panels by Master of Large Figures, 284. Campo de Peñaranda, panels by Fernando Gallego or atelier, 126-127, 207. Campos, retable, 616, 618. Canapost, retable, 60. Cantalpino, lost retable by Fernando Gallego (?), 146. Cardona, retable of St. Anne, 524. Casbas, triptych by Master of Frankfurt, 3°· Castellig, panels of early fifteenth century, 615. retable of Sts. Peter and Paul, 614615*. Castellnovo, retable, 568. Castellón de Ampurias, retable of school of Master of St. George, 618. Castil de Peones, retable, 312-313. Celón, frescoes, 482-483. Cervera de Pisuerga, Epiphany by Juan de Flandes, 46. Chicago, Art Institute, St. George and dragon, 544, 552. Cinctorres, retable, 606-608*. Ciudad Rodrigo: see Richmond. Cleveland, Museum, Valencian panel of episcopal saint, 590. Copenhagen, Art Museum, portrait of Christian II by Miguel Sithium, 35-36. National Museum, Last Judgment with portraits by Miguel Sithium, 36.

INDEX OF PLACES Cordova, Obrería del Cabildo, polyptych, 664. S. Lorenzo, frescoes, 660-662*, 663,664. S. Nicolás de la Villa, fresco, 662-663, 664. Seminary of S. Pelagio, fragments of fresco, 663-664*. Cornbury Park, England, panels by Juan de Flandes, 39. Covarrubias, Colegiata, altarpiece of Epiphany, 300. copy of Madonna by Jan van E y c k , 18-20*. Man of Sorrows, 304-306*. Sto. Tomás, Hispano-Flemish 300-301*, 302, 307.

panels,

Cruilles, S. Miguel, retable by Borrassá, 492, 500, 53&~538*. Romanesque beam, 500-503*. Romanesque frescoes, 492-495*. Cubélls, retable from, by Pedro Serra, 522-526*, 540. Écija, Santiago, retable, 32. Escalada, panels of Infancy, 316. Escobar, retable, 152-154. Escorial, Crowning with Bosch, 30.

Thorns

by

Jerome

Deposition by Roger van der Weyden, 23Presentation of the Virgin, school of Roger van der Weyden, 25. El Espino, Hispano-Flemish predella, 308-312*, 313. Espinosa del Camino, Annunciation and Nativity, 296. Espinosa de los Monteros, retable, 228232*, 234, 304, 376. Estella, S. Miguel, retable of St. Helen, 510, 628, 632. Fión, frescoes, 480. Florence, S. Egidio, sculptured Coronation, 654-656. Frankfurt am Main, Stadel Art Institute, altarpiece by Petrus Christus, 98. Aragonese Madonna, 640, 642. Frómista, Sta. María del Castillo, retable,

683

184-190*, 250, 316, 318, 320, 334, 43°, 47o» 473· Fuentes, ruined retable by Hernando del Rincón, 386. Genestacio, retable, 177. Geneva, Ariana Museum, Salome by Juan de Flandes, 48. Musée d'Art et d'Histoire, miraculous draught of fish by Conrad Witz, 100. Ghent, Museum, panels of school of Oña, 235-236*. Granada, cathedral, Royal Chapel. Crucifixion by the Master o f ' S Hertogenbosch, 28. Holy Family and Pietà by Roger van der Weyden, 23, 24, 100, 173, 424. Madonna and angels by Dierick Bouts, 374. paintings by Memling, 27. triptych by Dierick Bouts, 26, 93, 148. Escuelas Pías, Pietà by Francisco Chacón, 6, 397-400*. Sacro Monte, Madonna by Gerard David, 29. Greixa, antependium, 497-498*, 499. Guadalupe, altar of Epiphany by Master of Frankfurt, 30. Baptism by Jan Provost (?),39,48,54. Gumiel de Hizán, predella of saints, 3103l3*· The Hague, Mauritshuis, Deposition by Roger van der Weyden, 158, 374. Van Stolk Collection (formerly in the), Coronation by Master of Sigiienza, 637-639*· Haza, panels of retable of St. Anne, 302*, 303· Hontoria de la Cantera, Madonna, 298-300*, 476. panel by St. Nicholas Master, 276278*, 300. Hormaza, triptych by Gerard David (?), 29. 31*·

INDEX OF PLACES

684

Huesca, cathedral, retable Zuera, 626, 642.

by

Pedro

L a Iglesuela del Cid, panels by follower of Borrassá, 602. Illescas, Italo-Gothic panel, 649,652. Iravalls, retable by Jaime Serra, 515— 518*. Irús, retable, 216, 233-234*. Játiva,

cathedral, Borgia triptych by Jacomart, 408. Javierre, antependium of St. Eulalia, 507-509*. Jérica, retable, 590. Lanaja, retable by Master of Lanaja, 638, 640. Lebrija, Madonna by Joos van Cleve (?),

37· León, cathedral, Apostles by Palanquinos Master, 155-157*, 158, 160, 162. copy of Schongauer's Dormition, 158. Deposition by Palanquinos Master, 158-159*, 160. Ecce Homo by Nicolás Francés or a pupil, 109, 122. Hispano-Flemish Dormi tion and Pentecost, 156-158. Hispano-Flemish Virgin Annunciate, 176-177. martyrdom of St. Erasmus, 66, 174176*. panels of early Renaissance from Sta. María del Mercado, 158. panels in episcopal throne, 656, 657. retable by Nicolás Francés, 155, 156, 160. St. Cecilia, 176-177. St. Helen by Nicolás Francés (?), 65^57*. Sts. Cosmas and Damian by Palanquinos Master, 160-161*, 162. Sts. Cosmas and Damian, school of Nicolás Francés, 160. scenes from the Infancy by Palanquinos Master, 155. José Sánchez Collection, Epiphany by Palanquinos Master, 162.

S. Marcos, panel by Palanquinos Master, 161-162. Torbado Collection, fragments by Nicolás Francés, 656. Hispano-Flemish panels, 172-174. Lérida, Diocesan Museum, antependium from Treserra, 504. St. Blaise by Master of the Paheria, 558-560*. Santiago by Master of the Paheria, 559-561*. Provincial Museum, retable of the Paheria, 558, 559, 562. Liria, retable of Sts. Vincent and Stephen, 626. Lisbon, Moreira Collection, copy of Mass of St. Gregory by the Master of Flémalle, 23, 332. Museum, Deposition, school of Hugo van der Goes, 26. Lianas, antependium, 492. Logroño, Casa de la Beneficencia, altarpiece of St. Anne, 292-294*. London, British Museum, miniatures by Gerard David (?), 29. Collection of Earl of Yarborough, Ascension by Miguel Sithium, 35,38. Tomas Harris Collection, Crucifixion by Cirera (?), 540-543*. fragments of predella, school of Master of St. George, 556. King's Galleries, betrothal of St. Ursula wrongly ascribed to Jorge Inglés, 70. Lady Ludlow's Collection, St. Michael by Bermejo, 41, 292. National Gallery, Crucifixion, school of Master of St. George, 556. Society of Antiquaries, martyrdom of St. Erasmus, 174-176. Victoria and Albert Museum, retable of St. George, 572, 582. Losarcos, retable, school of Pedro Diaz, 448-450*. Louvain, St. Pierre, altarpiece of Last Supper by Dierick Bouts, 474.

INDEX OF PLACES Louvain (coni.) altarpiece of St. Erasmus by Dierick Bouts, 174-176. Lützschena, Visitation by Roger van der Weyden, 424. Lyons, Museum, retable of St. Michael, 592-595*· Madrid, Alba Collection, panel of Annunciation and Epiphany, 4, 27, 81-84*. Archaeological Museum, Epiphany, school of Hugo van der Goes, 26. panels by St. Nicholas Master (?), 266-268. Biblioteca Nacional, miniatures by Jorge Inglés, 70. Casal Collection, Entombment by the Burgos Master, 208-210*, 218, 222. Purification by the Burgos Master (?), 208-210*, 212, 218. Collection of Doña Antonia García de Cabrejo, Madonna, 411. Collection of the Vizconde de Roda, Baptism by Juan de Flandes (?), 48. Garnelo Collection, Mass of St. Gregory, 296-298*. Instituto de Valencia de Don Juan, martyrdom of St. Lawrence, 24424s*, 246. Kocherthaler Collection, St. Catherine by Martín Bernât, 104. Lafora Collection, fragments of retable, 461-462*. Lázaro Collection, Christ before Pilate, 244-247*. Circumcision, 416-418*, 427. Madonna by Master of Lanaja, 634, 644. panels from cemetery chapel at Asterga, 155. Sts. Anthony of Padua and Bernardine, 246, 248*. St. Jerome, 455-457*. triptych by the Avila Master, 337342*, 344» 348, 354, 35 8 , 3 6 4, 404, 434·

685

young Christ in Temple, school of Fernando Gallego, 331-334*· De Miró Collection (?), ecstasy of Magdalene by St. Nicholas Master (?), 272-274*. Parcent Collection, copies after lost paintings by Bermejo, 5. panels of life of St. Felix, 241-242, 244, 246. predella of Prophets, 304-305*. Via Dolorosa of the early Renaissance, 136. Prado, Assumption, Castro y Solís bequest, 470-473*· copy of the Van Eyck Fountain of Life, 16-18, 20. copy of Roger van der Weyden's Deposition by Michiel Coxie, 23. Deposition by Luna Master, 376379*, 380. Deposition from Zamora, 148-149*. episcopal coronation by St. Nicholas Master, 254-257*. fifteenth-century copy of Roger van der Weyden's Deposition, 23. Flemish Flagellation, 54. Hispano-Flemish Assumption, 452, 468-469*. life of St. John Baptist by " J u a n Flamenco" (?), 24, 46, 47, 236241*, 242, 243, 244, 246, 396. life of the Virgin by Dierick Bouts, 26, 80, 93. Madonna by Gerard David, 29. Madonna by Master Jacobus (?), 629. Madonna by Petrus Christus, 25. Madonna and angels by Luna Master, 374, 376-377*· Marriage and Annunciation of the Virgin by the Master of Flémalle (?), 22-23. panels by Ambrosius Benson, 29. panels by the Segovia Master, 452454*, 455, 468. panels from La Sisla, 339-365*, 460. Pietà by Roger van der Weyden, 25. portrait by Hernando del Rincón (?), 386.

686

INDEX OF PLACES

M a d r i d (cont.) retable by M a s t e r of Sigüenza, 637, 638. retable of San R o m á n de la H o r n i j a , 192, 649-652*, 653. Santiago and St. Gregory, school of F e r n a n d o Gallego (?), 335 _ 33 6 *· Santiago by " J u a n F l a m e n c o , " 2 4 2 243*, 246. Sto. Domingo de Silos by Bermejo, 104, 1 1 1 , 3 5 8 , 3 8 5 , 4 0 6 , 6 4 4 . Saviour b y F e r n a n d o Gallego, n o ni. triptych, circle of L u n a M a s t e r , 3 7 8 381*. triptych b y Memling, 208, 209. triptych of Crucifixion b y Roger van der Weyden (?), 24, 145. triptych of Heinrich von Werl by the M a s t e r of Flémalle, 22. Visitation by J u a n de Flandes, 45. private collection, Ecce H o m o , atelier of F e r n a n d o Gallego, 121-123*, 144. Royal Palace, copy of Roger van der Weyden's portrait of Philip the Good, 25. panels by J u a n de Flandes, 38-40. portrait of Isabella, 36. R a i m u n d o Ruiz Collection, Annunciation by the Burgos M a s t e r (?) (formerly in the Collection), 219, 222*. Crucifixion from Segovia, 456-458. M a d o n n a b y master of Montesión (?), 622-623*. panels of life of St. Lawrence (formerly in the Collection), 243-244*. Santillana Collection, p o r t r a i t of J o a n n a the M a d by Miguel Sithium (?), 37,48. retable b y Jorge Inglés, 4, 65-70*, 72> 74, 75. 79) 81, 34°· St. M a r k , 473-474*· Schlayer Collection, Mass of St. Gregory b y F e r n a n d o Gallego, 134136*, 332, 3 í 8 · T a r a m o n a Collection, St. J o h n panels by St. Nicholas M a s t e r , 261-266*, 268, 270, 274.

Trinidad, copy of Roger v a n der Weyden's St. Luke painting the Virgin, 25. Weibel Collection, Crucifixion b y F e r n a n d o Gallego, 130-132*, 134. Pietà by F e r n a n d o Gallego, 90, 9 9 100*, 1 3 1 , 136, 332, 334. Weissberger Collection, M a d o n n a , 542, 546*. M a n r e s a , Sta. M a r í a , retable ascribed to Martorell, 530, 532. retable by Pedro Serra, 138, 522. Mansilla la M a y o r , fragments of predella, school of Nicolás Francés, 656657*. Marchena, S. J u a n , retable, 32. M a r e ñ á , frescoes, 489, 491-492. Marmellá, frescoes, 496. M a r n e , retable, school of P a l a n q u i n o s Master, 172-173*. Mayorga, Sta. M a r í a de Arvas, panels of two St. Anthonies, 1 6 8 170*. retable, school of Palanquinos M a s ter, 165-169*, 4 1 1 . Sta. M a r i n a , retable by P a l a n q u i n o s M a s t e r , 164-166*. M e d i n a de P o m a r , convent of Poor Clares, E p i p h a n y , school of Bruges ( ?), 26. Megeces de Iscar, retable of Santiago, 4 I 4 . Melbourne, N a t i o n a l Gallery, M a d o n n a by J a n van E y c k , 18, 20. Mellid, parish church, frescoes, 480. Sta. M a r í a , frescoes, 479-481*. .Milan, Brera, Annunciation b y P e d r o Serra, 5 2 1 - 5 2 2 * . M o d e n a , Gallery, St. Christopher b y Albert Bouts, 193. Mondoñedo, frescoes, 478-479, 660. Montorio, head of Christ, 314. Monzón (province of Huesca), N u e s t r a Señora de la Alegría, L a s t J u d g m e n t by J a i m e Cabrera (?), 540. Monzón (province of Palencia), r e t a b l e , 193. !94Moscow, M u s e u m , Via Dolorosa b y Miguel Sithium, 35.

INDEX OF PLACES Mount Sinai, monastery, panel of St. Catherine, 528-532*. Munich, Alte Pinakothek, St. Columba altarpiece by Roger van der Weyden, 26, 79, 422, 448. triptych by Dierick Bouts, i8o. Drey Collection, panel by Palanquinos Master, 165-167*. Heinemann Galleries (?), triptych by Budapest Master, 274, 318-321*, 322, 470. Von Nemes Collection, Madonna by Gerard David, 29. Murcia, cathedral, retable by Barnaba da Modena, 520. Valencian retable of St. Michael, 573. Neguri, Aras Collection, Valencian retable, 573, 575*, 577*. New York, Bache Collection, portrait by Petrus Christus, 25. Beck Collection, Aragonese Madonna, 642-644*. Blumenthal Collection, Epiphany by Justus of Ghent, 26. Collection of P. Jackson Higgs, Valencian Crucifixion, 384, 588*. Drey Collection, St. Bonaventura by Huguet, 290. Ehrich Galleries, Valencian Crucifixion, 582-585*. French and Company, sections of retable of the Reyes Católicos, 5, 3°4» 3 o 8 , 36 2 . 418-428*, 474, 476. Frick Collection, two versions of the Pietà, 60. Hispanic Society, Hispano-Flemish retable, 464-467*. sections of Valencian retable, 584, 59°) 59 2 ) 594, 598» 599· Valencian Nativity, 568. Lehman Collection, Via Dolorosa by Gerard David, 39. Metropolitan Museum, Christ's appearance to His mother by Roger van der Weyden, 23, 173. Pietà by the Master of the Virgo inter Virgines, 28. Pietà by Petrus Christus, 29.

687

retable of St. Andrew, 552, 634. sections of Valencian retable, 584, 59°. S9*> 594, 598, 599· young Christ in the Temple (Friedsam Collection), 554-557*. Morgan Library, polyptych of circle of Ferrer Bassa, 310-512*, 514,515. Satterwhite Collection, sections of retable of the Reyes Católicos, 5, 304, 3°8. 362, 418-428*, 474, 476. Nuremberg, Museum, Peringsdörffer retable, 193, 368. Olocau del Rey, Ermita de la Magdalena, retable, 606609*. Ermita de Nuestra Señora de la Naranja, panels by Domingo Vails, 600-601. Oña, angels in lateral retable, 223-224. canvases of Passion in Panteones de los Reyes, 220-223*, 224, 232, 234, 236. frescoes in vestibule, 224-225*. Ontiñena, retable by Master of Lanaja, 638-639. Oto, Aragonese retable, 541. Palau, retable by Jaime Serra, 516, 518. Palencia, Ayuntamiento, Annunciation by Juan de Flandes II (?), 51-52*, 53, 54. cathedral, altarpiece of Visitation, 178-181*, 182, 184, 191, 298,408,424. ecstasy of Magdalene, 656-638*, 659. retable by Jan Joest, 3 1 - 3 2 , 50,75. retable by Juan de Flandes, 38, 45, 50. St. Florian, 181-182. Hospital de S. Bernabé y S. Antolín, Deposition by Juan de Flandes II (?), 50, 51, 52, 53, 54. S. Lázaro, panels by Juan de Flandes, 45. 5°· Palma, cathedral, papal saint, 608. retable of St. Eulalia, 608.

INDEX OF PLACES

688

retable o f St. L u c y , 544, 548, 550,

P a l m a (cont.) H o s p i t a l , church of, Sts. P e t e r

and

556.

A n t h o n y A b b o t , 614. Montesión,

church

.

St. George, 196-198*.

of, retable,

620,

M u s é e des A r t s Décoratifs, antependium of St. A n d r e w , 496.

622.

retable of St. M i c h a e l , 496.

M u s e o Arqueológico (Luliano),

P a c u l l y Collection,

panels from Castellig, 615.

E p i p h a n y b y Fernando Gallego, 1 3 6 -

retable of St. Nicholas, 616.

137*, 274.

St. George, 609.

St. Ildefonso's reception o f chasuble,

M u s e o de la L o n j a ,

4 1 5 - 4 1 6 * , 4 1 7 , 427, 476.

Annunciation, 609-611*. panels b y master of Montesión (?),

Quesnet

Collection,

Assumption

by

M i g u e l Sithium, 35, 38, 470.

620-621*.

Pego, international retable, 602-604.

Resurrection and Pentecost, 622.

Peñafiel (province of Barcelona) (formerly

retable o f St. Bernard, 6 1 7 - 6 1 9 * .

at), retables, 564.

Sta. C r u z , N u e s t r a Señora del B u e n

Camino,

Peñafiel

(province

Pablo,

620.

of

Valladolid),

Immaculate

S.

Conception,

168, 4 1 1 .

N u e s t r a Señora de la P a z , 620.

Penáguila,

Sta. Eulalia, Salvator M u n d i , 587. P a l m B e a c h , W i l l y s Collection, sections o f retable o f the R e y e s Católicos, 5> 3°4> 3° 8 > 3 6 2 . 418-428*, 474, 476.

M a d o n n a , middle o f fifteenth century, 584. M a d o n n a , school of N i c o l a u , 584. Petrograd, H e r m i t a g e , copy of Roger v a n der W e y d e n ' s S t .

P a m p l o n a , cathedral, Purification and E p i p h a n y , school of P e d r o D i a z , 444-445*. retable öf Caparroso f a m i l y , 445-448*. retable of Prophets and Patriarchs, 448. Paris,

L u k e painting the Virgin, 25. Crucifixion and L a s t J u d g m e n t b y the V a n E y c k s , 21. Philadelphia, Johnson Collection, panels b y M a r z a l de Sas (?), 572. predella in international s t y l e , 565.

B r i m o de Laroussilhe Collection, panels

St.

of two St. Johns, school of M a s t e r of St. George, 550-554*. Foulc

Collection

(formerly

Collection,

the),

Coronation

by

retable of St. A n n e , 369. retable of school o f P e d r o B e r r u g u e t e ,

M a d o n n a of Chancellor R o l i n b y Jan v a n E y c k , 66. panels o f retable b y M a s t e r of St. George, 544, 548, 554, 558.

369· Pifia, retable, 577-580. Pisa, Gallery, altarpiece of St. Catherine by the M a s t e r o f the St. L u c y L e g e n d ,

panels of Valencian School, 5 7 1 , 575. P i e t à b y Dierick B o u t s , 400.

27. Schiff Collection, panel b y Pedro Se-

S t . Ildefonso's reception of chasuble, 191, 402-404*, 406, 408, 410, 4 1 1 , 412,434·

rra (?), 522, 524. Pollensa, E r m i t a of Roser Veil,

(formerly

Betrayal, 207,468-471*. M a r t i n L e R o y Collection,

Dierick

b y Jan v a n E y c k , 20.

Louvre,

Collection

of

Piedrahita,

M i g u e l Sithium, 35.

Manzi

school

St. Francis's reception o f the s t i g m a t a in

Valencian retable, 594-599*, Heugel

Christopher,

B o u t s , 98, 368.

in

the),

Deposition, 622. St. Nicholas panels, 616, 618. Sta. M a r í a del P u i g ,

INDEX OF PLACES Pollensa (cont.) Madonna and angels, 618, 619. panel of two St. Johns, 618-619. predella of Passion, 619-620. retable of St. Michael, 618, 620. Portland, Oregon, Berg Collection, Magdalene by Miguel Sithium, 37. Port Sunlight, Aragonese (?) Madonna, 642, 644. panels of St. Ursula, 564-565. Posen, Flemish or Dutch Crucifixion, 54. Presencio, retable by St. Nicholas Master (?), 269-272*, 276. Púbol, retable, 522, 548, 550, 554. Puebla de Ballestar: see Villafranca del Cid, Ermita de S. Miguel. Puebla de Vallbona, retable, 580-581*. Puentedura, frescoes, 316-317. Puzol, retable of Baptist, 599-600. Rabós del Terri, frescoes, 491, 502-503. Retuerta, retable, 316. Revilla de Santullán, frescoes, 198. Richmond (England), Cook Collection, panels by Juan de Flandes, 41, 48. retable from Ciudad Rodrigo, school of Fernando Gallego, m , 138-145*, 184, 205, 206, 207, 224, 236, 240, 272,316, 425»454· Rohoncz, Schloss, portrait by Juan de Flandes, 48. Rubielos de Mora, parish church, retable, 573· Sádaba, panels of international school, 626. Salamanca, Museum, copy of Juan de Flandes's St. Michael, 40. New Cathedral, triptych by Fernando Gallego, 90-91*, 96-100, 109, 110, 114, 120, 126, 130, 131, 136, 145, '93, 334, 336, 368. Old Cathedral, doors of St. Catherine retable by Pedro Bello, 90, 1 0 8 - 1 0 9 , ι 2 0 , 144.

Last Judgment by Dello Delli, 596, 654. organ-shutters, school of Fernando Gallego, 146-147.

689

retable by Dello Delli, 106, 121, 648, 654, 656. retable by Juan de Flandes, 40-41, 53· retable of St. Barbara, school of Fernando Gallego (?), 146. retable of St. Catherine by Francisco Gallego, 90, 100-105*, 106, 108, 130, 142, 264, 467. St. Andrew in cloister, school of Fernando Gallego, 145-146. St. Christopher in cloister, school of Fernando Gallego (?), 145. two panels by Francisco Gallego in Dello's retable, 106-108*, 121. S. Esteban, martyrdom of St. Ursula, 146. Sta. Ursula, convent, Flemish triptych, . 45\ University, fragments of predella by Juan de Flandes, 37-38, 92. frescoes by Fernando Gallego on vault of chapel, 122-126*. frescoes of St. Anthony Abbot by Juan de Flandes, 41-45*. Salinas de Rosío, retable, 314-315*. Saludes de Castroponce, retable, 151-152. Salvasoria, fragments, school of the Serras, 602. panels by Montoliu, 602. San Diego (California), Gallery, Deposition, circle of Budapest Master, 326-328*. retable of Baptist, 633-635*. San Lorenzo de Morúnys, retable by Cirera (?), 538, 540, 550. retable of Pentecost attributed to Pedro Serra, 519, 522, 524. Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Collection of Don Alfonso de Orléans, triptych of the Passion, 26. San Martín de Mondoñedo, frescoes, 482. San Miguel de Foces, frescoes, 506. San Román de les Bones: see Barcelona, Plandiura Collection. San Saturnino de Osormort, frescoes, 491. Santa Ana de Montrai, fresco, 490. Santa Eulalia de Espenuca, frescoes, 482. Santa Margarita, retable by Martin Mayol (?), 610-614*.

INDEX OF PLACES

690

Santa María (Majorca), Madonna, 619620*. Santa María del Campo, panels by Master of Large Figures, 284-285. works by Pedro Berruguete (?), 285. Santa Maria del Páramo, retable, 177. Santa Olalla, frescoes, 201. Santiponce, frescoes, 661, 662. Sto. Domingo de Silos, Sts. Francis and Bernardine by Master of Large Figures (?), 287-288*. Santoyo, retable by Juan de Flandes II (?), 50-51, 52, 54. Saragossa, Museum, Madonna by Master of Lanaja, 638. retable by Jaime Serra, 519. Román Vicente Collection, Annunciation, circle of Memling, 27. S. Miguel, retable of St. Quiteria, 636-

637· S. Nicolás, panels by Jaime Serra, 519. Santo Sepulcro, retable by Jaime Serra, 518-519, 524. retable of Sts. Fabian, Sebastian, and Genesius, 635-636. Sarrión, Madonna by Pedro Nicolau, 571, 572. L a Seca, panels of Sts. Matthew and Mark, 4I4. Visitation, 414. Segorbe, Iglesia de la Sangre, Spanish adaptation of Colantonio's St. Vincent Ferrer, 57-59*. Segovia, Provincial Museum, Crowning with Thorns by Jerome Bosch (?), 30. Deposition and Assumption, 456,458. Nuestra Señora de los Dolores, 458. Sts. Jerome and Paula, 455. S. Martín, retable of Herrera chapel, 454-455. St. Udefonso's reception of chasuble,

451-452,455· S. Miguel, triptych by Ambrosius Benson, 29. Sena, panels, school of the Serras, 532. Seo de Urgel, La, cathedral, casket of Bernard de Traveseras, 504.

Seville, Alcázar, decoration of Hall of the Ambassadors, 664-665. cathedral, Pietà by Juan Núñez, 400. Municipal Archaeological Museum, painting by Pedro Sánchez II, 606. Pickman Collection, Birth of Virgin by the Burgos Master (?), 218, 221*. Provincial Museum, Dream of Jacob, 474-475*. predella by the Burgos Master, 212215*. retable by the Burgos Master (?), 212-214*. Valencian Entombment, 576-579*. Sta. Inés, Flemish retable, 32. Sigiienza, cathedral, Crucifixion by Luna Master, 376-378, 430, 446.

retableofSts. Andrew and Vincent, 637. retable of Sts. Mark and Catherine, 458-462*, 468. sections of retable of Baptist and St. Catherine, 636. Sinovas, ceiling, 508-510. Sopetrán, Ermita de la Fuensanta, panels of a retable, 4, 77-81*. Sorpe, frescoes from, 487-491*. Tamarite de Litera, retable of St. L u c y ,

634· Tarazona, cathedral, martyrdom of St. Andrew, school of Pedro Diaz, 440-441*. retable by Pedro Diaz, 436-439*, 450. retable of Sts. Lawrence, Prudentius, and Catherine, 626-630*. Tarragona, Diocesan Museum, panel of two St. Johns, 552, 554. retable from Pobla de Ciérvoles, 544,

548, 55°, 554Tarrasa, retable by Borrassá, 522. retable by Huguet, 556, 600. Tejada, retable, 223, 231-234*. Terradillos de Esgueva, retables, 659-660. Teruel, cathedral, ceiling, 508. Virgen del Pópulo, 642. Todolella, retable, school of Montoliu,

599·

INDEX OF PLACES Toledo, cathedral, baptismal chapel, predella, 646, 648. chapel of S. Bias, frescoes, 648, 650, 652. chapel of S. Eugenio, retable, 646, 648. chapel of Santo Sepulcro, panels by Stamina (?), 646-648*. chapel of Trinity, panel of episcopal saint, 646. Luna retable, 246, 370-376*, 378, 380, 397. retable of Mozarabic Chapel, 390393*· retable of St. Martin, 382-387,389. Concepción Francisca, Hispano-Flemish fresco, 397. El Cristo de la Luz, frescoes, 392. Museo del Greco, Crowning with Thorns by Fernando Gallego, 132134*. S. Lucas, Hispano-Flemish frescoes, 392-396*. S. Román, frescoes, 494. S. Salvador, retable, 387-389*. Tordehumos, retable, school of Juan de Flandes, 53. Tordesillas, retable, by Nicolas Francés, 626. Toro, S. Lorenzo, retable by Fernando Gallego, 109-112, 116, 117, 120, 121, 126, 127. Sta. María de la Vega, frescoes, 150. Torralba de Ribota, retable by Arnaldín, 629-633*. retable of St. Andrew, 632-633*, 634. retable of St. Felix, 633, 634. Torres de Medina, retable, 652-653*. Tortosa, triptych-reliquaries, 504-506*. Trujillo, Sta. María la Mayor, retable by Fernando Gallego, 102, 112-117*, 118, 120, 121, 127, 130, 136, 143, 334· Tudela, cathedral, retable by Pedro Diaz, 6, 346, 404, 429-436*, 437, 438, 442. retable of St. Catherine by Juan de Levi, 104, 628. retable of Virgen de la Esperanza, 624.

691

Turin, Gualino Collection, Madonna by Pedro Nicolau (?), 571, 572. Pinacoteca, St. Francis's reception of the stigmata by Jan van Eyck, 20. Visitation by Roger van der Weyden, 424. Valberzoso, frescoes, 199-201*. Valbuena de Pisuerga, panel of school of Fernando Gallego, 190-191. Valencia, Ayuntamiento, Last Judgment, school of Roger van der Weyden, 25. cathedral, fresco by Dello Delli, 654. Incredulity of St. Thomas by Marzal de Sas (?), 572, 582. painting of the Length of Christ, 586, 587. panel in altar of S. Luis Beltrán, 582. St. Michael wrongly attributed to Vidal Beluga, 584. Colegio del Patriarca, triptych by Dierick Bouts, 26, 95, 148. Provincial Museum, copy of triptych by Jerome Bosch, 30· retable from Puebla Larga, 602, 604. retable of Bonifacio Ferrer, 528. retable of Holy Cross, 584. triptych of St. Martin, 542. S. Valero, St. Anthony Abbot, 604. S. Vicente de la Roqueta, Virgen de la Cerca, 604. Valencia de Don Juan, S. Juan, retable, school of Palanquinos Master, 168-171*, 172. Valladolid, archiépiscopal palace, retable from Portillo, 412. Visitation, 412-414*. Museum, retable of Sts. Athanasius and Louis of Toulouse, 181, 191, 404-408*, 410,411. retable of St. Jerome, 70-74*, 75,401. St. Anne by St. Ildefonso Master (?), 407-410*, 411.

6g ι

INDEX OF PLACES

Valladolid (com.) St. Anthony of Padua by St. Ildefonso Master (?), 409-411*. Sts. Leander and Isidore, wings of Pacully triptych, 415-4x6*, 417, 427, 476. S. Salvador, altarpiece, circle of Quentin Matsys, 30. Ventosilla, retable by St. Nicholas Master, 259-262*, 264, 270. Verta villo, ceiling, 659. panels of international school, 659. Vich, Museum, antependium from Montgrony, 496. antependium of Virgin, No. 4, 502. Franco-Gothic crucifix, 507. Last Supper from Tost, 497. Madonna, No. 1054, 540-545*. Meeting at Golden Gate by Master of the Cardona Pentecost, 524-527*. retable from Guimerá, 542. retable, Nos. 1772-1783, 564. retable of St. Lawrence by Master of the Paheria and collaborator, 559564*, 628. retable of Sta. Clara by Borrassá, 598. retable of Virgin and St. Catherine, 556. Romanesque beam, 496. Romanesque side-piece of altar, 496. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Adoration of Shepherds by Master of Virgo inter Virgines, 82. portrait of lady by Miguel Sithium, 34, 35» 37· portraits by Juan de Flandes, 48. Strauss Collection, dance of Salome by St. Nicholas Master, 262-266*, 268, 270, 274, 276. Villacé, copy of Berlinghieri's St. Francis, 152. decapitation of Baptist and Mass of St. Gregory, 152. Villadiego, Augustinian convent, altarpiece of St. John Evangelist, 290292*. Sts. Augustine and Roch by Juan de Flandes, 47-49*.

Villafáfila: see Astorga, Palacio Episcopal. Villaflores, Coronation by Fernando Gallego or atelier, 126-128. Villafranca del Cid, Ayuntamiento, retable by Montoliu, 600. Ermita de S. Miguel, retable, 605-608*. Villafranca del Panades, S. Francisco, retable, 322. Villahermosa, Ermita de S. Bartolomé, retables, 568-570. Villalcázar de Sirga, retable of high altar, 191-192, 193. Villalón de Campos, S. Juan Bautista, retable by Palanquinos Master, 162164. Villalonquejar, panels of Sts. Anthony Abbot and Biaise, 294-296*. Villalpando, S. Miguel, Hispano-Flemish panels, 148-150. retable by Nicolas Francés, 150. Villamediana, panels of international school, 190, 657-659. panels of school of Fernando Gallego, 190, 657. Villanueva de Jamuz, retable, 151-153*. Villarroya, retable, 188. Villasandino, church of Natividad de la Virgen, Trinity, 306-307*. parish church, retable of Virgin, school of St. Nicholas Master, 274-276*. Villasante, retable by Master of Large Figures (?), 285-287*. White Lodge (near London), Collection of Lord Lee, triptych, 474-477*. Zamora, cathedral, retable of St. Ildefonso by Fernando Gallego, 88-90, 92-97*, 98,100,102,104,105, io6, 109, n o , 112, 126, 127, 130, 134, 212, 240. Zorita del Páramo, frescoes, 201. retable of St. Sebastian, 201. Zumaya, panel with Juan Martinez de Mendaro as donor, 6, 84-86*.