Jaume Huguet: A Study of Late Gothic Painting in Catalonia [Reprint 2014 ed.] 9780674433533, 9780674431713

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JAUME HUGUET

LONDON : HUMPHREY MILFORD OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

CI. Arxiu Mas JAUME HUGUET:

ST. GEORGE A N D T H E P R I N C E S S

T R I P T Y C H OF ST. GEORGE, C E N T R A L MUSEO DE LA CIUDADELA, BARCELONA

PANEL

{detail)·,

φ ο φ φ φ φ

JAUME HUGUET ^Α Study of £ate Gothic ^Painting in Catalonia BY B E N J A M I N R O W L A N D , JR.

Φ Φ Φ Φ Φ φ φ

Φ Φ Φ φ Φ Φ Φ

HARVARD U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S Cambridge, cJMassachusetts 1932

COPYRIGHT, I 9 3 2 BY T H E PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE

PRINTED A T T H E HARVARD U N I V E R S I T Y PRESS CAMBRIDGE, MASS., U. S. A.

TO C H A N D L E R R A T H F O N POST AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED

FOREWORD has none of the glamor, none of the posthumous notoriety that attaches itself to the names of famous painters, none of the romantic legends that shroud the career of a Fra Filippo Lippi, no tinsel and no pretense; and yet I may safely say he accomplished enough to make the fame of a dozen little masters. There are no pretty stories about Huguet, nor anecdotes of youthful prodigies; the years of his birth and death are unknown; we know him simply through the mention of his name in musty documents, and, of course, we know him best in his pictures themselves. Not so long ago there was scarcely a critic but sought to distribute Jaume Huguet's works among a handful of minor contemporaries. It is not surprising that he is not famous, because, even in our day, Catalonia is a far place; outside of his native city there are but two works that may be attributed to the painter, a panel of St. Bernardine in the Gualino Collection at Turin and a pair of altar wings in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum at Berlin.1 Sanpere y Miquel, who must be given credit for the first good book on the Catalan School of the fifteenth century, his "Cuatrocentistas," 2 attributed to Huguet only the documented retable of Sts. Abdon and Sennen at Tarrassa, the AUME H U G U E T

[vii]

FOREWORD

altarpiece of Sts. Julitta and Quiricus in the Diocesan Museum at Barcelona, and, as an afterthought, the chief painting by the Master of St. George, now divided between the Louvre and the Chicago Art Institute. In this view he was immediately corrected by Elias Tormo, whose list of Huguet's paintings, in his review of Sanpere's book, agrees very closely with my own.3 Since then, the writings of Mayer, Miss Richert, and, in recent years, of Folch i Torres have done much to restore to Huguet the high place in Catalan art that he so thoroughly deserves. It is undeniable that this painter dominated the art of his whole period as manifested in the works of his many followers, especially the Vergos family, and in the countless imitations of his style that have found their way into almost every parish church not only in Catalonia but also in the neighboring province of Aragon.4 The value of a work of this kind, except as a contribution to the sum total of human knowledge, a vain thing at best, seems always questionable. What, one is asked, is the end of archaeological research save to bring from their graves for a brief dawn a few ghosts that must almost as soon as they are quickened return to their time-made limbo? It has also been said that all writing on art which does not deal with the actual criticism of works of painting or sculpture is not true writing on art at all, but belongs rather to the realm of history or biography or archaeology. These doubts are usually raised by those who, too high-strung aesthetically perhaps, would relegate every work of a scholarly nature to the category of the pedantic and dull. The answer to this cavilling is the fact, so easily forgot[ viii]

FOREWORD

ten, that knowing all things possible about a work of art may help us considerably in our appreciation. When paintings are disassociated from the time and environment that created them, they become, except for their essential aesthetic beauty, meaningless. Therefore it is to be hoped that perhaps there may be justification in undertaking to bring to life again, in relation to the circumstances of their creation, a group of pictures that form an artistic personality, a personality that may hold for modern students something more attractive and vital than the mere nostalgic charm of all faded things. It is the opinion of the writer that Huguet as a reflection of the culture of Catalonia is as great and as important as are the shades we know as Masolino and Angelico for that of Italy. A great many people, too numerous to mention, have helped me in various ways to write this book; if they do not find their names in the brief list of acknowledgments that follows I crave their indulgence and beg them collectively to accept my sincere thanks. To Chandler Rathfon Post, who first suggested the writing of this book and who first quickened my interest in the art of the Iberian Peninsula, I am indebted immeasurably; whatever merit this work may have is the fruit of his kind and always pertinent suggestions. Among the foreign scholars to whom I am grateful are Sr. Don Joaquim Folch i Torres of the Barcelona Museum, who has been most helpful in furnishing information about the paintings there, and Sr. Plandiura, who, on a number of occasions, permitted me to study his splendid collection where, as nowhere else, it is possible to form an impres[ix]

FOREWORD

sion of the whole of Catalan painting from the Romanesque Master John to Pablo Picasso. I am indebted also to Sr. Don A. Durän i Sanpere for the valuable information he was able to supply me. I must express my gratitude also to Sr. Don Adolfo Mas of Barcelona, without whose efforts many of the photographs published here for the first time could never have been secured. A word of thanks must be spoken to the library staff of the Fogg Art Museum, whose able assistance made the writing of this book possible. Place names and proper names have been kept in the original language, either Catalan or Castilian. As is stated in a note, no attempt has been made to treat of the manifestations of Huguet's style in Aragon, a field too vast and, on the whole, too uninteresting to be included here. Examples of the Aragonese copies are to be found in many American museums, where they are generally labeled "Vergos," the name of Huguet's closest followers; they have a certain value in giving the only approximation of Huguet's style and color to be found in this country. Churches, private collections, and museums mentioned in the text, unless expressly stated, may be assumed to be in Barcelona. Since the works of the predecessors of Huguet are treated so thoroughly in the second volume of Professor Post's History of Spanish Painting, I give only the briefest summary of their activity in my own book. Unless specifically stated to the contrary, adequate illustrations of these early paintings may be found in Professor Post's history. In selecting my own reproductions I have tried, first of all, to present photographs of hitherto unpublished works by Hu[x]

FOREWORD

guet, and to include such sections of the altarpieces as are most pertinent; illustrations of a fair number of paintings by Huguet and the Vergos family may be found in Los Cuatrocentistas Catalanes by Sanpere y Miquel and in Miss Richert's Mittelalterliche Malerei in Spanien. Last, but by no means least, I owe a debt of gratitude to Miss Agnes Rindge of Vassar College for her invaluable aid in the reading of the proofs. B.R. CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS

March i , 1932

CONTENTS I.

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

II.

GENERAL

CENTURY

CHARACTERISTICS

III.

THE

ITALO-GOTHIC

IV.

CHRONOLOGY

OF

3

CATALAN

AND I N T E R N A T I O N A L

PAINTING STYLES

IN

CATALONIA

19 AND

GENERAL

CHARACTERISTICS

OF

HUGUET'S WORKS V. VI. VII. VIII. IX.

THE

29

R E T A B L E OF S T S . A B D O N AND S E N N E N

T H E A L T A R P I E C E OF T H E PERE HUGUET I: WORKS

. . .

X.

XII. XIII.

C O N S T A B L E OF P O R T U G A L

50 61

BY J A U M E AND P E R E H U G U E T I

T H E HUGUET-VERGOS

Q U E S T I O N AND T H E

69 RETABLE 96

T H E A L T A R P I E C E OF S T A . M A R £ A DE LA M A R . . .

116

THE THREE

124

GREAT RETABLES

BY J A U M E H U G U E T .

T H E T R I P T Y C H OF S T . G E O R G E DISCOVERIES

AND

CONJECTURES.

154 MINOR

FROM T H E H U G U E T A T E L I E R XIV. XV. XVI.

NOTES

REFLECTIONS

OF H U G U E T IN S A R D I N I A

WORKS 160 178

G A B R I E L GUARDIA

182

VERGOSIANA

193

.

.

.

BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX

39

H I S R E L A T I O N TO J A U M E H U G U E T

OF S T . A U G U S T I N E

XI.

9

.

.

.

221 229

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS J A U M E H U G U E T : S T . G E O R G E AND THE P R I N C E S S ST. GEORGE, CENTRAL PANEL.

( d e t a i l ) ; T R I P T Y C H OF

Museo de la Ciudadela, Barcelona

1.

T H E M A S T E R OF S T . G E O R G E : T H E F L A G E L L A T I O N OF S T . G E O R G E .

2.

SCHOOL OF THE M A S T E R OF S T . G E O R G E : T H E C R U C I F I X I O N .

Louvre, Paris Retable

of St. Peter, Pubol 3.

SCHOOL OF THE M A S T E R OF S T . G E O R G E : P E T E R SUGGESTS THAT THE

Retable of the Transfiguration, Sala Capitular, Cathedral, Barcelona J A U M E H U G U E T : R E T A B L E OF S T S . ABDON AND S E N N E N . Sta. Maria, Tarrassa LORD BUILD T H R E E TABERNACLES.

4. 5.

JAUME

HUGUET:

THE

ABDON AND S E N N E N .

Maria, Tarrassa 6. 7. 8.

9. 10. 11.

12. 13.

TRANSPORTATION

OF THE

RELICS

OF

STS.

Retable of Sts. Abdon and Sennen, Sta.

J A U M E H U G U E T : T H E M A R T Y R D O M OF S T S . COSMAS AND D A M I A N .

Retable of Sts. Abdon and Sennen, Sta. Maria, Tarrassa J A U M E H U G U E T : T H E E P I P H A N Y . Retable of the Constable of Portugal, Royal Chapel of St. Agatha, Barcelona J A U M E H U G U E T : T H E R E S U R R E C T I O N . Retable of the Constable of Portugal, Royal Chapel of St. Agatha, Barcelona J A U M E H U G U E T : T H E C R U C I F I X I O N . Retable of the Constable of Portugal, Royal Chapel of St. Agatha, Barcelona P E R E H U G U E T : R E T A B L E OF S T S . J U L I T T A AND Q U I R I C U S . Diocesan Museum, Barcelona P E R E H U G U E T : DECOLLATION OF S T S . J U L I T T A AND Q U I R I C U S .

Re-

table of Sts. Julitta and Quiricus, Diocesan Museum, Barcelona J A U M E H U G U E T : S T S . C A T H E R I N E AND C L A R A . Retable of Sts. Catherine and Clara, Sala Capitular, Cathedral, Barcelona P E R E H U G U E T : T H E M Y S T I C M A R R I A G E OF S T . C A T H E R I N E . Retable of Sts. Catherine and Clara, Sala Capitular, Cathedral, Barcelona

[xv]

L I S T OF I L L U S T R A T I O N S 14.

P E R E H U G U E T ( ? ) : T H E M A D O N N A AND C H I L D WITH A N G E L S .

Mun-

tadas Collection, Barcelona 15.

JAUME

16.

J A U M E H U G U E T A N D A S S I S T A N T S : T H E D E A T H OF T H E V I R G I N .

17. 18. 19. 20.

H U G U E T AND A S S I S T A N T S : T H E C R U C I F I X I O N . Retable of Christ and the Virgin, Sta. Maria de la Sangre, Alcover Re-

table of Christ and the Virgin, Sta. Maria de la Sangre, Alcover J A U M E H U G U E T AND A S S I S T A N T S : T H E R E S U R R E C T I O N . Retable of Christ and the Virgin, Sta. Maria de la Sangre, Alcover F O L L O W E R OF J A U M E H U G U E T : T H E B E T R A Y A L . Retable of St. John the Evangelist, Palau del Vidre (Pyrenees-Orientales) P E R E H U G U E T : O R D I N A T I O N OF A D O M I N I C A N S A I N T . Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Paris P E R E H U G U E T ( ? ) : S T . S E B A S T I A N E X H O R T I N G M A R C U S AND M A R C E L -

{above)·, S T . S E B A S T I A N A N D P O L Y C A R P {below). Bosch Collection, Prado, Madrid αι. P A U V E R G O S : T H E P R O P H E T S M O S E S A N D D A V I D . Retable of St. Stephen from Granollers, Museo de la Ciudadela, Barcelona 22. R A F A E L ( ? ) V E R G O S : T H E C R U C I F I X I O N . Retable of St. Stephen from Granollers, Museo de la Ciudadela, Barcelona 23. J A U M E V E R G O S I I ( ? ) : T H E O R D I N A T I O N OF S T . S T E P H E N {left)·, T H E I N F A N T S T . S T E P H E N B R O U G H T TO A M O N A S T E R Y B Y A D O E {right). Retable of St. Stephen from Granollers, Museo de la Ciudadela, Barcelona LIANUS

ΤΟ M A R T Y R D O M

D E S T R O Y I N G IDOLS

24.

JAUME

HUGUET:

GUILD.

RETABLE

OF

ST.

25.

JAUME HUGUET: THE

26.

R A F A E L (?)

VERGOS:

OF

THE

TANNERS

Retable of Museo de la Ciudadela,

C O R O N A T I O N OF S T . A U G U S T I N E .

St. Augustine of the Tanners Guild. Barcelona ST.

AUGUSTINE

LISTENING

TO

ST.

AMBROSE

Retable of St. Augustine of the Tanners Guild, Museo de la Ciudadela, Barcelona P A U V E R G O S ( ? ) : T H E W A Y TO C A L V A R Y . Collection of Dna. Rosa Coronas, Barcelona PREACHING.

27.

AUGUSTINE

(Reconstruction by Durän i Sanpere)

[xvi ]

LIST OF I L L U S T R A T I O N S 28.

JAUME

HUGUET:

THE

MARTYRDOM

OF

ST.

BARTHOLOMEW,

THE

C R U C I F I X I O N , T H E D E A T H OF T H E M A G D A L E N E ; P I N N A C L E S OF T H E

Collection of the Marques

R E T A B L E OF S T A . M A R I A DE LA M A R .

de Cornelia, Barcelona 29.

J A U M E H U G U E T : T H E M E E T I N G A T T H E G O L D E N G A T E ; P A R T OF T H E R E T A B L E OF S T A . M A R I A DE LA M A R .

Formerly in the Sala Col-

lection, Barcelona 30.

J A U M E H U G U E T : T H E M A D O N N A AND C H I L D WITH STS. A G N E S , B A R A , P E T R O N I L L A , AND L U C Y .

BAR-

Retable of St. Michael, Retailers

Guild, Barcelona 31.

JAUME

HUGUET:

MICHEL.

32.

ST.

MICHAEL

SAVING

A

WOMAN

AT

MONT

ST.

Retable of St. Michael, Retailers Guild, Barcelona

JAUME H U G U E T : ST. MICHAEL OVERTHROWING ANTICHRIST.

Retable

of St. Michael, Retailers Guild, Barcelona 33.

J A U M E H U G U E T : T H E M O U R N I N G O V E R T H E B O D Y OF C H R I S T ;

PART

OF T H E R E T A B L E OF S T . S T E P H E N OF T H E B R I D L E - M A K E R S G U I L D .

Casa de l'Ardiaca, Barcelona 34.

JAUME H U G U E T : ST. ANTHONY A B B O T

ENTHRONED.

Lost Retable

of St. Anthony, Abbot 35.

JAUME H U G U E T : EXORCISM.

36.

S T . A N T H O N Y A B B O T , C O N F E R R I N G HIS P O W E R

OF

Lost Retable of St. Anthony, A b b o t

JAUME H U G U E T :

ST. ANTHONY A B B O T , B E A T E N BY DEMONS.

Lost

Retable of St. Anthony, Abbot 37.

JAUME

HUGUET:

HERMIT. 38.

39. 40.

JEAN

ST.

ANTHONY

ABBOT,

VISITING

ST.

PAUL

THE

Lost Retable of St. Anthony, Abbot

FIGUERA (?): ANGELS

COMFORTING

ST. VINCENT

IN

PRISON.

Retable of St. Vincent from Sarria, Museo de la Ciudadela, Barcelona JEAN FIGUERA: ST. BERNARDINE. Retable of St. Bernardine, M u seum, Cagliari, Sardinia J A U M E H U G U E T : T H E O R D I N A T I O N OF S T . V I N C E N T . Retable of St. Vincent from Sarria, Museo de la Ciudadela, Barcelona

[ xvii ]

LIST OF

ILLUSTRATIONS

41.

JAUME H U G U E T : T H E MARTYRDOM OF S T . V I N C E N T .

Retable of St. Vincent from Sarriä, Museo de la Ciudadela, Barcelona 42. JAUME H U G U E T : EXORCISM A T THE T O M B OF S T . V I N C E N T . Retable of St. Vincent from Sarriä, Museo de la Ciudadela, Barcelona 43. JAUME H U G U E T ( ? ) : S T . V I N C E N T AT THE S T A K E {detail). Retable of St. Vincent from Sarriä, Museo de la Ciudadela, Barcelona 44. JAUME H U G U E T : FRAGMENT OF A R E T A B L E . Formerly in the Jungent Collection, Barcelona 45. JAUME H U G U E T ( ? ) : S T . M I C H A E L . Collection of Frau Kocherthaler, Berlin 46.

JAUME H U G U E T : S T . GEORGE AND THE PRINCESS; T R I P T Y C H OF S T . GEORGE, CENTRAL PANEL.

47.

Museo de la Ciudadela, Barcelona

JAUME H U G U E T , JOHN I I OF BEAUMONT ( ? ) AND S T . JOHN THE B A P TIST; T R I P T Y C H

OF S T .

{left wing). Kaiser Friedrich

GEORGE

Museum, Berlin 48.

JAUME H U G U E T :

LUISA

OF M O N R E A L (?) AND S T . LOUIS

LOUSE; T R I P T Y C H OF S T . GEORGE

OF T O U -

{right wing). Kaiser Friedrich

Museum, Berlin 49.

SPANISH SCHOOL: FIFTEENTH C E N T U R Y , PORTRAIT OF CHARLES OF

50.

JAUME H U G U E T : T H E PROPHET M O S E S .

VIANA.

Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid

51.

Part of the Retable of Sta. Maria at Ripoll, Episcopal Museum, Vich JAUME H U G U E T : T H E FLAGELLATION. Cobblers Guild, Barcelona

52.

FOLLOWER OF JAUME H U G U E T : STS. C R I S P I N , A N I A N U S , AND C R I S -

53.

JAUME H U G U E T ( ? ) : R E T A B L E OF THE M A D O N N A .

PINIAN.

Massot Collection, Barcelona Episcopal Museum,

Vich 54.

JAUME H U G U E T : S T . BERNARDINE.

Formerly in the Gualino Collec-

tion, Turin 55.

JAUME H U G U E T ( ? ) : S T . B O N A VENTURE.

56.

FOLLOWER OF JAUME H U G U E T : T R I P T Y C H OF THE MADONNA

In Dealer's Hands

CHILD WITH STS. AUGUSTINE AND DOMINIC.

Barcelona [ xviii ]

AND

Amatller Collection,

LIST OF 57.

FOLLOWER

ILLUSTRATIONS

OF JAUME H U G U E T : T H E ANNUNCIATION, T H E

CRUCI-

FIXION, AND THE EPIPHANY. Episcopal Museum, Vich 58.

FOLLOWER OF JAUME H U G U E T : SCENES FROM THE L I F E OF S T . A G A T H A .

La Lonja, Palma, Mallorca 59.

JAUME HUGUET (?): THE TRANSFIGURATION.

Retable of the Trans-

figuration, Cathedral, Tortosa 60.

GABRIEL

GUARDIA: RETABLE

OF THE H O L Y

TRINITY.

Cathedral,

Manresa 61.

GABRIEL GUARDIA:

M O S E S AND THE BURNING B U S H (above);

THE

BAPTISM OF CHRIST (below). Retable of the Holy Trinity, Cathedral, Manresa

JAUME HUGUET

I

HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL SETTING OF PAINTING IN CATALONIA IN THE SECOND HALF OF THE F I F T E E N T H CENTURY Ν THE year 1460, at the very same time that Huguet was painting his retable of Sant Non i Sant Nin in the peaceful town of Tarrassa, the last tragic act of the struggle between Juan II of Aragon and his son the Prince of Viana was being enacted in Barcelona. Juan, the Spanish counterpart of Machiavelli's Principe, had for long dreamed of an Iberian kingdom united under him as it had not been united since the days of Sancho the Great. Perhaps he already had a cunning plan of this nature when he married Blanche of Navarre who, in 1421, bore him a son, Charles, the Prince of Viana. When Blanche died twenty years later she admonished her son not to assume the throne which had been promised him without consulting his father's wishes. With Charles' attempt to assert his rights in Navarre there began the long and bitter struggle between Juan and the son who stood between him and a united Spain. Three years after the death of Blanche, Charles of Viana's fate was as good as sealed when his father married Juana Enriquez, the charming and crafty daughter of the great admiral. Up rose the Beaumonts

[3]

JAUME

HUGUET

and many other nobles to support the Prince against Juan and his imported Castilians. There followed only defeat and fresh humiliation for Charles. In 1452 in the little town of Tos there was born to King Juan a son, Ferdinand, who was to realize the dreams his father planned. For Charles of Viana the time for dreams was almost over; in 1458 he sought refuge with his uncle, Alfonso the Magnanimous, in Naples, a kindly man who shared his enthusiasm for art and letters; two years later, when Alfonso died, Charles, knowing the way of kings, declined the throne that was offered him and removed to Sicily. The next year his father ordered him to repair to Mallorca, where his proximity to Barcelona led to the espousal of his cause by the Catalans, who now became as indignant against the machinations of Juan as had the Navarrese nearly a score of years previous. In March of the year 1460, Charles of Viana finally entered Barcelona, his armor shining with applique work of beaten gold, his banners floating bravely in the streets. The populace hailed him as Primogenit, a greeting that aroused immediately the extreme displeasure of Juan. In December, Charles was arrested. The Catalans rose to his defense, and early in the next year he returned wearily for a brief triumph in Barcelona, where suddenly and mysteriously he ended his hapless role in June, 1461. The legend of the miracles reputed to have taken place around his bier, the dirges of Juan Fogassot, last of the Catalan troubadours, are the final and touching tributes to the memory of the national hero. After a few years of revolt, for the liberty of the jueros more than anything else, the Catalans found a new champion in old

[4]

HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL

SETTING

Dom Pedro, the Constable of Portugal. On January 22,1464, he rode into Barcelona, a new factor in the struggle between Juan and his neighbor Louis X I over the rich province of Catalonia. T h e few artistic projects carried out in his short reign were worth far more than the Constable's paltry deeds at arms; in 1466 Dom Pedro died, and the Catalans offered their allegiance again, this time to Rene of Anjou who could claim relation to the ancient Counts of Barcelona through his mother Violante. T o o old to go himself, Rene sent his son John of Calabria to Catalonia, where he maintained a precarious sovereignty until his death in 1470. T h e resistance of the Catalans was practically at an end, and two years later Juan, now old and almost sightless, led his victorious armies into Barcelona itself. When the beloved Ferdinand married Isabella of Castile the long struggle for the unification of the peninsula was near its end, which came, finally, with the death of old Juan of Aragon in 1479. Whatever feelings of independence may have lingered in the various separate provinces were soon submerged in the wave of patriotism that swept all Spain against the crumbling strongholds of the Moors; the process of unification was completed by the light of the fires lit by Father Torquemada. T h e Catholic kings knew well that as an instrument of unity none surpassed that of a struggle against a common foe; when there were two such foes, one to be fought with cannon, the other with the stake, resistance was out of the question. In the year 1492, when Spain's hour of greatness struck, the prestige of Barcelona dwindled away with the sudden shifting C5]

JAUME

HUGUET

of attention to the ports accessible to the New World and its untold riches. Contemporaneously with the loss of prosperity and political importance, the Catalan School of painting, for these and for various internal reasons, fell upon sorry days, and with its passing our history may properly close. The physical aspect of Barcelona had more or less been decided in the time of Huguet. With the completion of the cloisters the great work of the Cathedral was gradually drawing to a conclusion. The octagonal towers of Sta. Maria de la Mar had long formed a prominent part of the Barcelona skyline; a similar church, the Pino, raised its forbidding exterior not a hundred yards away. Although, until the very end of the century, it was still being adorned with all the splendid trappings that money could buy, the great edifice was ready for dedication in 1453. Everywhere were the palaces of the richer citizens and nobles built in the severe and heavy Gothic that climate and conditions demanded; in these, as well as in the houses of the poorer townspeople, the visitor to Barcelona today can discern the narrow slit-like windows, the rounded arches of the entrances with their heavy voussoirs, the clusters of slender columns in the corners of the patios — all features that form the background of so many of Huguet's paintings. As a painter of the settings, the rich and varied costumes of his time, Huguet has often and well been compared to Carpaccio. The important part played by the guilds in the patronage of art in Barcelona of the fifteenth century, as in Holland of the sixteen hundreds, can never be overestimated. Chapels dedicated to their patron saints were assigned to the various gre-

[6]

H I S T O R I C A L AND C U L T U R A L

SETTING

mios in the Cathedral and the churches of Sta. Maria de la Mar and of the Pino; these chapels the guildsmen felt obliged to embellish with paintings and sculpture "of the finest quality that could be procured"; this qualification might be a quotation from a score of contracts preserved from the archives of the fifteenth century. With the rise of democratic government in the Quattrocento, the Council of Five included one artisan, a merchant, and a member chosen from the laboring classes; in the larger Council of One Hundred, the preponderance of seats was held by members of guilds. It is not surprising, then, to find that of the retables attributed to Huguet five were made to order for various guilds; there were others for which we possess the documents that unfortunately have perished. In contrast with Italy, the private patron was comparatively rare in Catalonia; besides the guilds the chief support of art in Barcelona was the Church. Paintings were intended for devotional purposes; there was no decoration of private palaces with works of art as in Florence of the Medici. The patrons, ecclesiastical and secular, were no less strict in their demands than their contemporaries across the Mediterranean; 1 they not only impressed upon the artist the scenes they wished represented but also stipulated the colors desired for the costumes of the painted figures; in a contract signed by Rafael Vergos and his partner Alemany we may read, "En la casa alta del dit retaula la Annunciacio de Nostra Dona, vestida d atzur lo mantell, ο la roba de carmini, e langell que hage lo manto de carmini, ab lo cetre ab lliris, segons se pertany," and "que la ymatge de Sant Hieronim hage la capa de carmini ab la labradura d

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atzur." a His love of splendor led the patron to specify particularly that the background, haloes, jewels, etc., should be overlaid with gold, " d or fi." With our conceptions of artistic temperament, it seems scarcely possible that the patron could have gone so far as to require the painter to copy portions from other retables, presumably his own, as did the Wool-combers Guild in ordering an altar from Pau Vergos, " e que tots los brocats sien fets segons lo retaula de Sent Agusti major." 3 That the artists of the time were able to produce anything of aesthetic significance under these conditions is certainly to their own great credit.

II GENERAL C H A R A C T E R I S T I C S OF C A T A L A N PAINTING since the expulsion of the Moors in the tenth cen% I D 1 tury, the prosperity of Barcelona, based on her mari|j JCy |j time supremacy and the soundness of her native in» » » » » » dustries, had insured the liberal patronage of the arts. If we have no evidence other than that found in documents for the artistic wealth of the city itself in the Romanesque period, the richness of the furnishings of even the meanest of the parish churches of the Pyrenees gives us some idea of what the sumptuousness of ecclesiastical fittings must have been in Barcelona itself; the treasures — and they are numerous and precious — that have survived from the later centuries testify that the tradition remained unbroken. From these later paintings, with which this book is naturally more concerned, and with references to the earlier works it will be possible to define certain characteristics of Catalan painting that lingered on until the virtual death of the school itself in the early years of the sixteenth century. In Catalonia, as in the rest of Spain, with the passing of the traditional fresco decoration of the apse the sanctuary came to be embellished with the retable, a structure which probably had its ancestor in the painted antependia of Romanesque times, or — another theory — in such a primitive form of the »»»»»»VER

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reredos as that found in San Pere at Tarrassa.1 The retablos> whether sculptured or painted, grew to an enormous size; the panels multiplied until, in the late fifteenth century, the entire end of the church was hidden by the gigantic construction of the altarpiece, which not infrequently reached to the level of the vaults. In some instances, as in Jaume Huguet's retable of St. Augustine, the figures were life-sized. The arrangement of the altarpiece usually consisted of a large central panel devoted to an effigy of the saint to whom it was dedicated. Above this panel there was placed almost invariably a representation of the Crucifixion, although, as in some Valencian and Catalan retables, a painting of the Coronation of the Virgin or of the Virgin and saints occasionally was interposed between the pinnacle and the central compartment. Scenes illustrating the legend of the titular saint filled the panels of the wings, and almost always the artists were called upon to paint episodes from the Passion or half-length figures of saints in the predella. The whole structure was framed and protected by dust guards, guardapohos, narrow strips of wood slanting outward at the sides and upward at the top. Never scientists in the true sense of the word, the Catalan painters were still sufficiently interested in the presentation of reality to strive for a certain accuracy in anatomy and perspective. Part and parcel of the Catalan School of painting was its interest in naturalism. Reality was suggested rather than defined. This naturalistic tendency manifested itself in the introduction of such objects of everyday life as the painter thought appropriate for creating the atmosphere of the episodes he [ 1 0 ]

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represented. Realism, or the faithful presentment of a scene through accuracy of form, perspective, and spatial composition, was practically unknown until the very last years of the fifteenth century. From the scene of the washing of the Christ Child in the Romanesque fresco at Barbara to the detail of the couchant dog in Master Alfonso's Martyrdom of St. Cucufat the tradition of genre is a continuous one. At times, through this introduction of extraneous detail, the scenes from the sacred story take on a decided secular aspect; I mention as an example the painting of the Marriage at Cana in the Sala Capitular of Barcelona, a painting close to the Master of St. George, which in the profusion of culinary utensils littering the composition approaches the bodegones of Velazquez and his followers. A peculiarly indigenous phase of the naturalistic tendency was the delight with which the artists of Catalonia, like their fellows in the rest of the peninsula, painted the more brutal episodes of martyrdom. Frequently their zeal in this pursuit resulted in dramatic overstatement; the antics of the personages of the Master of St. George, for instance, are comparable to the efforts of a provincial stock company in a performance of heavy tragedy. Certainly the directness of the painters of the early frontal of St. Quiricus in the Barcelona Museum and the equally grisly St. Margaret panel at Vich presented more forcefully these horrid stories than did the fifteenth-century masters, for all their posturing executioners and grimacing bravoes. A change in this respect is to be noted in the paintings of Huguet, who, in his handling of these subjects, tones down the violence of the Master of St. George to a

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much lower key; the executioners go about their tasks with a gentleness, an exquisiteness, scarcely appropriate to their dreadful profession. The French critic Rouches describes the tormenter of St. Vincent in Huguet's painting from Sarria as " l e bourreau sans ferocite, qui semble plutot un paisible jardinier en train de manier son rateau." 2 It seems almost as though Huguet had seen the inability of his Gothic forbear to express brutality by all his posturing and distortion, and had gone to the opposite extreme in making his floggers and headsmen completely unemotional and indifferent; "cold-blooded" seems almost too strong a word to describe the listless elegance with which they conduct their horrid business. Another characteristic of the school in the later fifteenth century was its intense interest in realistic delineation of the countenances. In the work of earlier painters, such as Luis Borrassa, this phase of painting fell to the level of caricature in the portrayal of devils, executioners, Jews, Roman persecutors, and all others who made life miserable for Christ and His saints. Although there was an occasional attempt at psychological portraiture, the holy personages were more usually the stereotyped figures of earlier times, and they remained so until Huguet and his followers began to take almost as great an interest in individualized heads of the saints as the earlier men had shown in the lower types. At times, as when he painted the donors for his triptych of St. George, Huguet rose very nearly to the high level of Fouquet and the Clouets. A further hall mark of the Catalan School is the delight in bright colors and splendid brocades and costumes. This bril[12]

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liancy of tonality characterizes the earliest frescoes and frontals; later, with the spread of the International Style, the finery of the court of Burgundy was introduced into Catalonia, where it quickly found its way into the panels of the Serra brothers and their artistic descendants. An auxiliary of this love of splendor was the employment of the gold background, a feature that survived until the very end of the fifteenth century. With the gold sky came the use of embossing and gilt for details of armor and dress; the ultimate development of this practice is well illustrated by the gold-plated heads of the Prophets by Pau Vergos that once formed part of the retable at Granollers. I may observe in passing that the retention of the gold sky, combined with the artists' overpowering interest in figures, was responsible for the subordinate part played by landscape in Catalan painting. This seemingly retrogressive tendency was the natural result not only of the taste for splendor that had never been sated, not even in the valentine gaiety of the International Style, but also by the nature of the very shrines for which the altarpieces were prepared. The Catalan churches, as well as those in the rest of the peninsula, always dimly lighted, demanded retables brilliant enough to make a fine showing even in the obscurity of the darkest chapel. That the patron even more than the artist required this type of decoration is plain to be seen in the countless stipulations for "camps embotits e daurats dor fi" in the contracts from the beginning of the fifteenth century on. The gold backgrounds of the second half of the Quattrocento were of two kinds: a perfectly flat gold field engraved [ 1 3 ]

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with scrolls and foliate motifs, as in the altarpieces of Huguet's early period, and another type in which moulds were used to shape the gesso, which was subsequently gilded. The former variety of background may have been worked out and tooled by hand, although I am of the opinion that stamps may have been used to facilitate the process. Two types of these stamped backgrounds, one with foliate motifs, as in the Sarria retable, the other made up of textile rather than plant designs, were favored in the latter fifteenth century. As an example of the brocade pattern I mention the altarpiece of the Tanners Guild by Huguet and the Vergos family. I may add, to give the reader some idea of the importance attached to the gold sky, that in the works I have attributed to Huguet and his immediate circle there are employed no less than six different patterns. The Vergos atelier seems to have possessed only one set of stamps, which could be varied infinitely by differences in juxtaposition but which are always recognizable by the repeated features of the elaborate floral pattern. I believe that in dealing with panels from the same retable that have become separated the comparison of the stamped backgrounds is a perfectly legitimate means of determining the author, or certainly the atelier, of their provenience, provided the differences in style do not contradict the parallelism of the backgrounds. A case in point is that of the retable of Sarria, in which all the panels stylistically akin have the same type of gold sky. It is also noteworthy that in the altar of the Tanners Guild the one panel definitely ascribed to Huguet was decorated with an entirely different set of moulds than that employed on the re[x4]

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maining panels, presumably executed by members of the Vergos atelier. It seems almost a foregone conclusion, then, that each atelier had its own private embossing moulds. The problem becomes more involved when we consider the real value of comparing the gold skies of two distinct retables in an effort to determine their common authorship. Surely, if they agree in every particular stylistically, the correspondence in design of their respective backgrounds can only be an added proof of their emanation from the same workshop, as in the case of Huguet's retables of St. Vincent and St. Michael. There is good evidence for a contention of mine that in certain instances the stamps employed were varied by moulding the gesso by hand; in the altarpieces of the Escolapios and of Sarriä, the pattern differs only in the number of acorns or berries on the separate branches, agreeing in every other detail even to the disposition of the foliage and the number of serrations on each separate leaf. I do not believe that it is possible ever to put the cart before the horse, in other words to attribute a work solely on the likeness of its embossed design to that of another before considering the necessary stylistic similarities. The question of dating the various retablos by the type of the gold background is practically hopeless; the only safe statement in this regard is that the stamped backgrounds gradually replaced the older, hand-tooled variety, and that towards the end of the century textile as well as floral patterns came more and more into vogue. I may illustrate the complexity of the situation by an example with which we shall have to deal later on: it is unquestionable that a marked identity exists between [ 1 5 ]

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the "camps embotits" of Huguet's Cornelia panels and of his Tortosa retable. Now, we know that the Cornelia paintings, fragments of the retable of Sta. Maria de la Mar, were not completed until about 1480, whereas the altarpiece of Tortosa was finished and installed by the year 1463. Here, then, is a lapse of seventeen years between the execution of the two paintings. The only explanation is that the moulds were part of the stock in trade of the Huguet atelier, and were used indiscriminately by master and pupil alike. The impossibility, therefore, of using these designs as a basis of chronology seems patently established. In Catalonia in the fifteenth century, two methods of tempera painting were in vogue, that recommended by Cennino in the Trattato,3 calling for an underpainting of verde terra over which the flesh tone could be placed, and an older method going back to the manual of Theophilus; 4 in this latter mode the underpainting was eliminated, the modelling being added after a flat flesh tone had been laid directly on the gesso panel. Huguet, it appears to me, used a variation of this latter manner, substituting for verdaccio a neutral pigment which he played into the wet flesh tone. Enlargements of portions of the Tarrassa retable and other works show a freshness of handling that very strongly indicates this direct method of painting. A t the same time it suggests no other preparation than a quick sketch directly on the panel. Basing my judgment on memory and on notes taken in the field, I am prepared to say that I do not consider any single painting of Huguet's to have been executed in oil. In corrob-

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oration of my own observations I would remind the reader of the unpopularity of the Flemish technique in Catalonia; even Dalmau, who had a greater opportunity than any artist of his time to study the Northerners' methods, preferred to work in the traditional tempera manner. Among the few instances of oil painting in Catalonia that we have are the panels by the Master of St. George, who used a combination of tempera with oil glazes, and, years later, paintings by Master Alfonso. We must be grateful for the documents which occasionally help to throw some little light upon the methods of the painters of the time; in the preliminary agreements between Huguet and the Tanners Guild, for example, reference is made to sketches which the artist had shown the guildsmen. Later, Jaume was instructed to present for inspection the drawings for the paintings made directly on the panels of the altarpiece. It is regrettable that not one of these drawings has survived. In the matter of collaboration between members of the same atelier, we have not only the proof of the pictures themselves but also strong documentary evidence; I cite elsewhere the case of Luis Borrassä, who probably executed but small portions of each work himself. If we would go further afield for evidence of this nature, I might mention the partnership of Bartolome Bermejo and Martin Bernat, and the latter's collaboration with Miguel Ximenez. In Catalonia, the association of Rafael Vergos and Pedro Alemany is thoroughly documented. Huguet — at all events in the later years of his life — must have been assisted by a large body of helpers. It is specifically stated in the contract of 1463 with the Tanners [17]

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Guild that Jaume himself was to do the heads and hands of all the figures in the altarpiece of St. Augustine; the implication is, obviously, that a great part of the work would be assigned to journeymen after the master himself had blocked out the main lines of the paintings.

III THE ITALO-GOTHIC AND INTERNATIONAL S T Y L E S IN CATALONIA THE formation of the Gothic styles of northern jj| Τ $jjj Europe it is now generally acknowledged that in the f| JL lj| fourteenth century the models of Italy played a predominant part, replacing almost entirely the work of the earlier Franco-Gothic style. The indebtedness to Italy is, of course, traceable to her supremacy in the art of painting in panel and in fresco; the North, with a long tradition of miniature painting and glass-making, had nothing to rival these modes of decoration perfected in the Italian peninsula. Of the Italian models, those of Siena had the most powerful influence in foreign lands. The reason for this may be that Siena was more in accord with the spirit of Northern Gothic: her paintings already held the mystic qualities of the Franco-Flemish and Rhineland Schools. Sienese painters had also been influenced by the work of artists in France; Duccio was the first to emancip'ate the art of Siena from the Byzantine-Romanesque tradition by infusing the old forms with the life of the Gothic North. The triumph of French Gothicism, hinted at in the sculpture of Giovanni Pisano, is completed in the painting of Simone Martini. The circle is closed in the latter half of the [ 1 9 ]

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Trecento, when Siena exerted a reciprocal and lasting influence on northern Europe. The chief centre for the diffusion of Sienese influence was Avignon, where the exiled Popes had their court from 1309 to 1377, and the French Anti-Popes from 1378 to 1418. The presence of the Papacy lent an importance to the city on the Rhone that made it the focal point of the Christian world and a metropolis of artistic production. Simone himself was there from 1339 (perhaps as early as 1335) to 1344. He and his successors were so influenced by their environment that the French characteristics of gaiety, elegance, and luxurious landscape became fused with the imported Sienese style. There became manifest even in the last works from Simone's brush the caricatured types and late Gothic taste for attenuated forms and exaggeration of emotion, elements that had already been suggested in the work of Giovanni Pisano. Towards the end of the Trecento came a new wave of Flemish influence, which, combining with the Franco-Sienese elements, led to the formation of what is known as the International Style. Much of the old Sienese character of Northern painting persisted in this new manifestation; the calligraphic line, the attenuated forms, the delight in pretty types, and the consideration of the picture as a lovely decoration rather than an attempt to reproduce reality, were all elements already present in the work of Simone's artistic progeny. What is not Sienese is the quaint naturalism, the interest in genre, which has always been the special province of the painters of the Netherlands. The introduction of this factor is ascribed to the presence of many Flemings in Paris and [ao]

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Burgundy following the Burgundian annexation of the Netherlands in 1384. Whether this naturalism was of Franco-Flemish or perhaps German origin will never be satisfactorily decided; the important thing is its presence in the paintings of the late fourteenth century of northern Europe. This naturalism consisted, as Professor Post has so well expressed it, " i n the importation of elements from contemporary life that suggest reality charmingly instead of defining it convincingly." 1 The International School, combining everywhere with local tendencies, appears in a different guise in almost every country of Europe; everywhere, too, it preserves its well-named International character, so that at times it is next to impossible to tell a Spanish from an Italian painting, a panel painted in Germany from one executed in Bohemia. The characteristics of the style in general and of the school of Catalonia in particular will be discussed more at length in their proper place. Spain in the fourteenth century was no exception to the rest of Europe in her adoption of Italian models. Outside of Castile, where the presence of Stamina accounts for the predilection for Florentine prototypes, the Sienese influence predominated. Geographically, Catalonia in the fifteenth century was ideally situated to receive the influence of her neighbors; in the thirteenth century had come the union with Valencia, followed by the annexation of the Kingdom of Aragon. To the North the territory of the Catalans straddled the Pyrenees to embrace the French districts of Cerdagne and Roussillon. The prosperity of the country that even today is proportionally the same, made Barcelona one of the leading ports of the Mediter[ 2 1 ]

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ranean world; it was the gate for trade from Genoa, Venice, and the East. There had been importation of Italian pictures even before the broadcasting of Sienese influence by Simone and his school at Avignon. Dugento and Trecento Madonnas, usually serving as votive offerings, are by no means rare. In the Cathedral of Murcia there is a lovely and important retable of St. Lucy by Barnaba da Modena. Perhaps an even greater source of Sienese influence than Avignon was the island of Mallorca, which carried on a lively trade with the ports of the western coast of Italy. There is, for example, in the museum at Palma an altarpiece painted with many episodes from the life of Christ and resembling in its arrangement the back of Duccio's Maesta. The importation of Italian works of art continued throughout the fourteenth century; I mention only the embroidered altar frontal for the Cathedral of Manresa by the Sienese-Giottesque Geri Lapi. In 1406 Martin the Humane wrote to the Bishop of Lerida asking him for miniature copies of the paintings by Matteo da Viterbo in St. Michael's chapel at Avignon in order to have his own chapel decorated in imitation of the frescoes at the Papal court. As in the rest of Europe, the introduction into Spain of the Franco-Gothic manner led to the development of the International Style. In Catalonia this movement manifests itself in three phases. The first division is the school of the Serra brothers, Pere and Jaume, and their followers Borrassä and Cabrera. They cling more tenaciously to the old Sienese forms, and since they have very little direct influence in the development of the art of Huguet, need detain us no longer. The second [22]

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manifestation of Internationalism in Catalonia has been described by Professor Post as the "Manner of Guimera," from the provenience of the chief product of the school, a retable now in the museum at Vich. 2 This phase of the movement is based on the Franco-Gothic aspects of the International Style. The draperies recall contemporary works of Northern sculpture; the wave lengths of the undulations are greater, and in the folds there is a suggestion of Burgundian breadth. In the Madonna of Cornelia in the Episcopal Museum of Barcelona there may be noted a manifestation of naturalism in the interest shown in the pattern of the brocade, to the utter disregard of the proper foreshortening of the draperies. This tendency was already present in the paintings of the Serras and was eventually inherited by Huguet and the Vergos. A Crucifixion in the Roman Vicente Collection at Zaragoza shows us the haggard, weary Christ of the late Franco-Gothic style. Other works, such as the panels of the Deposition and Pieta in the Episcopal Museum at Barcelona, seem to be dependent on miniatures and lead directly to the third phase of the International Style in Catalonia, the Franco-Flemish form evolved in about 1430 by the Master of St. George and his school. This brings us to the only possible conjecture about Huguet's training, the fact that his teacher must have been a member of the local manifestation of the International School; Jaume has his roots in the style of the Master of St. George, whose painting, with that of his circle, was the best that the Catalan School had yet produced. The retable from which this painter derives his name is now divided between the Louvre C23]

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and the Chicago Art Institute. The latter museum has on loan the large central panel of St. George and the Dragon; four smaller panels of the saint's torments prior to martyrdom have found their way to Paris (Fig. i). In all of these pictures the elements of the International Style are strikingly manifest: the meticulous rendering of stuffs, the nervous Gothic forms, and, what is perhaps most characteristic of the Catalan School, the caricatured types, the grotesques who assist in the martyrdom of the saint. Villains, all of them, these bogeys, for all their scowling and snarling, are never more frightening than figures from a guignole. They do show, however, the same coldbloodedness in the execution of their horrid task which has been from the beginning a trait of the Spanish School. The style of the Master of St. George is based on the Franco-Flemish style of the first half of the fifteenth century, leaning perhaps more to the French manifestation of that movement, as shown by the types and the similarity of the panel of St. George and the Dragon to the miniature of this subject in the Book of Hours of the Marechal de Boucicaut. The evident delight in nature and the conception of the figures as part of the landscape are other elements that the Master of St. George learned from the Franco-Flemish School that culminated in the painting of the van Eyck brothers. The love of detailed naturalism which characterized the work of the Northern painters is likewise repeated in the panels of their Catalan follower. The Master of St. George pertains to that last and florid offshoot of miniature painting exemplified by the precursors of the van Eycks; he shares his magic with Pol de Limbourg and Stefan Lochner. [ 2 4 ]

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In this penchant for the Northern manifestation of the International Style, the Master of St. George makes a definite break with the Sienese manner of the Serra brothers. Since I shall refer to them at frequent intervals in connection with Huguet, I purpose to summarize briefly here the principal works of the followers of the Master of St. George.3 This artist himself was the painter of the retable of St. Lucy, divided between the Martin le Roy Collection in Paris and the Barnola Collection in Barcelona." There is a softer, less robust spirit in these panels compared to that of the panels in the Louvre; the compositions are emptier and at times show a sensitiveness of design comparable only to the sculpture of Pere Johan de Vallfogona.5 Notable are the details of Burgundian costume and the delicate tooling of the gold backgrounds, an element which we shall encounter in the early works by Huguet. In the draperies of the central figure may be seen the Master's indebtedness to the "Manner of Guimera." 6 By a follower who repeats the types of the Master of St. George is a retable of St. Michael from Pobla de Ciervoles in the Diocesan Museum at Tarragona; the Sienese feeling predominates here, although the sumptuous Franco-Flemish costumes are again in evidence. The little scenes of St. Michael and his brother archangels have all the serenity and Oriental delicacy of design that we find in the work of Sassetta. The damascened backgrounds and certain compositions, such as the crowded arrangement of the Crucifixion, suggest Huguet, but the master of these panels had a finer sense of design and movement, a nicer power of invention, than Jaume at his best. Four panels [ 2 5 ]

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of a predella of the Passion in the Sala Capitular of the Cathedral at Barcelona repeat the iconography of the predella scenes in the Ciervoles retable, and are obviously by the same hand. 7 Likewise related to the Master of St. Michael is the large altarpiece of St. Peter at Pubol; the iconography of the Crucifixion (Fig. 2) with its equestrian figures in the background is repeated from the altar in Tarragona. This is the composition which was to be adopted by Huguet in all of his versions of the event. Closely related to these paintings is the retable of the Magdalene at Vich; in this altarpiece the delicacy of drawing, the exquisite spacing, again recall the work of Sassetta. Although I do not even suggest the possible collaboration of the young Huguet in these panels, the monumentality of the forms, the greater emphasis on the embossed backgrounds, and the general improvement in problems of composition show us that here we are dealing with the milieu in which Jaume learned the rudiments of his art. B y a weaker follower of the Master of St. George are the panels of St. Eulalia in the Muntadas collection and four scenes from the life of St. Catherine at Yich, clumsy but at the same time rather exquisite. In the retable of the Pahers of Lerida, although it is not the circle of the Master of St. George, we may see some of the compositions later employed by Huguet for the Dormition and Ascension in the retable of the Constable. More important are the fragments of a retable of St. Michael at Castellon de Ampurias. This is another late manifestation of the International Style in which the manner of the Master of St. George appears to have been revitalized by a new

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infusion of Flemish blood; the heads of the clergy in the Monte Gargano episode parallel the types of the School of Tournai; likewise Northern in feeling is the crumpled drapery which has replaced the freer folds of the early Internationalists. The traditional rocks and trees of the early International Style survive in the backgrounds. The master who most satisfactorily bridges the gap between the Internationalists and the painting of the second half of the century is the painter of the retable of the Transfiguration in the Sala Capitular. He is related to the master of the Ciervoles retable, from whom he borrows the composition for the Crucifixion, and likewise the figure of Christ in the Marriage at Cana and the Feeding of the Multitude. One cannot help but notice what seems a very definite break with the miniaturist tradition in the monumental figures of Christ and His Apostles in the panel where Peter suggests that the Lord build three tabernacles (Fig. 3). Not only does he achieve monumentality in composition, but not infrequently his types suggest those of the Huguet atelier; for example, the figure of St. James in the Transfiguration was copied later in the retable of Tortosa by a member of Jaume's studio. The master of the Transfiguration uses the same type of concentric halo that was to be employed by all the painters of the last half of the Quattrocento in Catalonia. The most important contribution of this painter to the art of the Huguet atelier was his perpetuation of the delicacy and sensitiveness of drawing of the Master of St. George. Bertaux's comment on the relationship of Jaume to this master is interesting: " I I (Huguet) suit la route ouverte par le peintre du re[27]

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table barcelonais de la Transfiguration. Comme celui-ci, il ignore Dalmau, et remonte par delä le disciple de Jan van Eyck, au Maitre de Saint Georges, disciple d'un predecesseur des van Eyck." 8 On account of its relation to the retable of Sts. Catherine and Clara, I postpone further discussion of the Transfiguration altarpiece to a later chapter.

IV CHRONOLOGY AND GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF HUGUET'S WORKS « » » » » » H E principal dates of Jaume Huguet's activity, first » Π Π » brought together by Sanpere y Miquel, have been ® JL H augmented in more recent years by the discovery of » » « » » » further documents, so that we have a record of his activity from 1448 to 1487. Although he is the only artist of that name by whom documented works are known, it appears that, as in the case of his collaborators, the Vergos family, there was a dynasty of painters by the name of Huguet.1 The first of the line is generally assumed to have been Pere Huguet, a personage first mentioned in a document of October 13, 1424, when he was empowered to collect the money for a retablo painted in conjunction with Mateu Ortoneda for the town of Vails.2 From 1434 to 1444, Pere was employed in painting the vaults of various chapels in the cloisters of Barcelona Cathedral.3 The year 1439 found him settled in the city with his wife Constancia.4 I reserve for a later chapter the identification of Pere as the artist of the altarpiece of Sts. Julitta and Quiricus, painted in about 1445 for the parroquia of San Quirse, a town not far from Tarrassa.5 Jaume Huguet is first mentioned in 1448, in which year his [29]

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brother Antoni cancelled a contract Jaume had made for a retable of St. James for the town of Arbeca. In 1448 the painter put another brother, also named Jaume, in charge of his interests. In 1451 this same individual collected the money for an altarpiece delivered to Gabriel Canila of Sardinia. These brothers of Jaume, the painter, were priests, and they, possibly with other members of the family, were residents of Puigtinyos; this information, coupled with the knowledge of Pere's association with Ortoneda at Vails, makes it justifiable to conclude that the Huguet family, if not actually native to Puigtinyos, originated in the province of Tarragona. Antoni figures again in a document of August 7, 1454, in the Llibre de Sposaselles: " R e b e l'Administracio de l'Obra de la Seu 4 sous del dret de sposaselles de Jaume Huguet pintor, les quals feu mossen Antoni Huguet, son frare (germa)." 6 Meanwhile Jaume had in 1453 designed a set of tapestry cartoons in collaboration with one Miguel Nadal for the Casa dels Diputats in Barcelona.7 On November 26, 1455, the Abbot Bernat de Samaso of Ripoll commissioned the painter to provide a predella and various other panels for the retable of the Blessed Virgin, the work to be completed by August 1 of the following year.8 In the case of this and other documented works which are now lost I shall give the description of the paintings according to the specifications of the contracts; information of this kind may enable the reader to identify works which have supposedly disappeared or have strayed from their original places. In the predella of the Ripoll altar were to be portrayed, at the right, the Last Supper and the Agony in the Garden; at the left, the [30]

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painter was instructed to depict the Way to Calvary and the Mourning over Christ's Body. The pinnacles of the same retable, of which the main portions evidently were completed already, were to be decorated with representations of the Madonna and Child, the Crucifixion, and a seated figure of St. Benedict. Below the predella, Huguet had to paint, in the centre, Christ displaying the Host in a chalice, and, flanking this central panel, four half-length figures of those Prophets most appropriate to the act of consecration.9 An unusual clause in the contract stipulated that these figures were to be executed in grisaille with touches of yellow in imitation of gold. For this work the artist received eighty florins and eleven sous: twenty-four florins and six sous in down payment, and the rest in two installments — one when the retable was ready for gilding, and the final payment when the work had been completed. In the course of the same year that he was engaged in this undertaking, Huguet received an order from the Friars Minor of Berga for a painting of St. Anthony of Padua; the price paid for this was seventy-five lliures.10 Another notice of Jaume's source of income occurs in a document of 1456, when the artist claimed his share of the profits of a partnership with the painter of Saragossa, Pedro Ramirez." I assign to the period before 1460, when Huguet was still under the influence of the Master of St. George and of his father, Pere, the following retables, which will be discussed at length in later chapters: in collaboration with Pere, the altarpiece of Sts. Catherine and Clara in that hiding place of so many works of art, the Sala Capitular of Barcelona Cathedral, [31]

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a work executed about 1450; in the same place, the retable of Sts. Cosmas and Damian, painted before 1453; a dismembered reredos of St. Michael the Archangel, painted by Jaume for the Retailers Guild (Revenedors) in 1456 and now preserved in the guild rooms opposite its original location, Sta. Maria del Pino. Another work that was executed mostly by Huguet's shop in these years was the altar of the Seven Joys of Mary in the Iglesia de la Sangre at Alcover (Tarragona). Probably dating from the year 1459 is an oblong panel of the Flagellation of Christ, a charming picture reminiscent of Carpaccio, that was done for the chapel of St. Mark pertaining to the Cobblers Guild. I include in this period also the panels from the retable of St. Vincent from Sarriä and the lost altar of St. Anthony Abbot. From 1459 to 1477, Jaume is mentioned regularly in the records of the Guild of Bridle-makers (Freners)." For them, in 1463, the painter did a retable of St. Stephen for 192 lliures.13 His dazzling altarpiece of Sts. Abdon and Sennen in the church of Sta. Maria at Tarrassa is documented and dated 1460-61. 14 A recent discovery by Sr. Don A. Duran i Sanpere has proved that the first contract for the retable of St. Augustine of the Tanners Guild was drawn up in 1463, although, as I shall explain subsequently, the actual painting was probably not executed until 1487, when the final receipt for payment was signed. 15 Among Jaume's heirs, who were held responsible in case of the non-fulfilment of the contract, was Juana Baruta, the painter's wife, whom he married in 1454. 16 The artist's record of ceaseless activity is continued in the next year, 1464, [32]

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when he was busy painting a retable, again of the Seven Joys of Mary, for the Royal Chapel of St. Agatha; on this occasion his patron was Dom Pedro, the Constable of Portugal. 17 In 1466, on the eighth day of June came a commission from Benet Boran(a) Bataller for a similar retable for the church of San Pere at Villamayor. 18 It was to be ten palms in height by seven in width; the predella was divided into five compartments with half-lengths of saints, a feature popularized early in the fifteenth century by Borrassä. The altarpiece was to be capped by a Coronation of the Virgin in place of the usual Crucifixion. In the wings the painter agreed to portray the Annunciation, Nativity, Epiphany, and Resurrection — all for the sum of " 24 libras barcelonensas." Before June, 1461, the date of the death of Charles of Viana, Huguet must have painted his triptych of St. George, in which the figure of the titular saint is believed to be a portrait of the ill-fated prince. 19 At about this time, various anonymous members of Jaume's atelier produced a retable of the Transfiguration for the Cathedral of Tortosa which seems to show the collaboration of the late fifteenth-century painter of Manresa, Gabriel Guardia. Of passing interest is the date September 5, 1473, when mention is made in a document of Jaume's wife, Juana Baruta. 20 The next notice of Jaume as a painter occurs in a document of Friday, December 2,0, 1471, 2 1 on which day the church of Sta. Maria de la Mar in Barcelona contracted for a retable of St. Bartholomew with scenes from his life and from the legends of St. Catherine, St. Anne, and the Magdalene. The receipt for final payment was signed on M a y 15,1480, by [33]

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Pere Huguet." It seems almost impossible that this could be Jaume's father, who was active in 1425 and last mentioned in 1444. By this time Jaume Huguet could have had a son old enough to assist him in his works. Since in Catalonia it was the custom to name a child after its grandfather, Jaume Huguet accordingly would have christened his son Pere. To distinguish him from his grandsire, I shall refer to this individual as Pere II. Before the retable of St. Bartholomew was finished, Jaume made arrangements with the parish of S. Martin de Monegre to paint an altarpiece of St. Martin and his miracles for the price of thirty-five livres and two measures of flour.23 In the contract it was specified that the backgrounds were to be "finished in colors," a statement which seems to imply that the patrons desired naturalistic landscape settings in place of the conventional gold which they required only in the central compartment. The dates 1464, the year of Master Alfonso's activity in the Royal Chapel,24 and 1480, marking the completion of the retable of Sta. Maria de la Mar, offer consistent boundaries for another period in Huguet's development. The works in this span of years, show the influence of Master Alfonso and other progressive painters in the greater realism of the forms and the deeper chiaroscuro. We next hear of the artist in 1483, in which year, on December 5, he received an order for a retable of St. Eligius from the Locksmiths Guild (Serallers) to be placed in the church of the Carmelites in Barcelona.25 At about this time Huguet also undertook the fashioning of a reredos of St. Jerome for the parish church of Vail d'Hebron. For this work

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he was recompensed to the extent of 400 lliures.26 On October 7, i486, Jaume, together with Bartolome Bermejo, was suggested as the painter of the organ shutters of Sta. Maria de la Mar,27 an association which, implying as it does Bermejo's accepted standing as a painter in Barcelona, also suggests rather convincingly that Huguet must have been acquainted with his work; surely the influence of Bermejo's style may be seen in the advanced chiaroscuro and greater monumentality of Jaume's last effort, the documented retablo of St. Augustine for the Tanners Guild (Blanquers); final payment for this altar, ordered as early as 1463, was made in 1488.28 In the same document which mentions Huguet and Bermejo there occurs the name of Geroni Huguet, " argent er," who was one of the committee that recommended the selection öf the two painters; it seems highly probable that he may have been a brother, or possibly another son, of Jaume's.29 As will be seen in a later chapter, it was at this time, too, that Jaume Huguet was associated with various members of the Vergos family, who may have assisted him in the painting of the one extant work of the last phase of his development. This final period, as I have intimated, marked a development of the characteristics of the third stage. Since there is no further mention of him, it is to be supposed that Jaume died before 1500.30 We have a record of forty years of activity; assuming, then, that the painter was in his twenties at the time of the first recorded commission in 1448, it appears reasonable to conclude that he was born early in the third decade of the century.

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With the passing of the generation of Jaume Huguet, Gabriel Guardia, and the Vergos, the great tradition of painting in Catalonia comes to an end. Before the accomplishments of the early Quattrocento in Florence became influential in Barcelona, the full tide of the High Renaissance burst upon the country in the wake of the last great wave of Gothicism of which the men we shall study were the leading representatives. With the work of the early sixteenth century there begins the wholesale imitation of Michelangelo, Leonardo, and the school of Raphael in which the Catalan School loses its identity and, properly speaking, ceases any longer to exist. In spite of their innovations and approaches to realism in their paintings, Huguet and his immediate followers can never be considered as Renaissance artists in the proper sense of the word; there is never any interest in questions of form, of color, or of perspective for their own sakes. Catalan art produced no Uccellos, no Mantegnas concerned with the solution of definite problems. There was no essential difference in spirit or intent between Huguet and the Master of St. George. What elements of the early Renaissance there were, such as the better perspective and more monumental form, were due to influence from the North rather than from Italy. Only in the last works of Huguet, when the influence of Italy was communicated, perhaps by Bermejo, do we find any approximation of reality in contrast to the earlier naturalism. As there were no dominant personalities in Catalonia, the influence of one painter lasted little longer than his own generation; the artists consequently were ever open to new influences,

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which were in turn assimilated in the main stream. Huguet comes as near to establishing a tradition of his own as any other painter of the time; this is to be explained as much by his own individuality as by his improvements on the manner of his predecessors. In spite of the necessary repetition of compositions established by iconographical precedent, Jaume was always able to infuse the familiar scenes with real drama; I may mention such a happy manifestation of originality and psychological insight as his painting of St. George in the Barcelona Museum. The Pre-Raphaelite charm of this painting, so admired by Bertaux, is the greatest monument to Huguet's delicacy and refinement. In Spain as nowhere else were the saints of Christendom held in veneration; even the most minor local saint lucky enough to enjoy a cult was placed with his iconographical superiors in the great retablos of the fifteenth century. No better illustrations for the Legenda Aurea could be found than Huguet's version of the histories of Anthony, Vincent, and Michael the Archangel. In the events he painted from the lives of these saints, Jaume came very close to the accomplishment of Giotto in crystallizing forever our conception of these scenes from sacred history. Of Huguet's ability in dramatic composition I shall have more to say in the analysis of the individual paintings; suffice it to note here that, in my opinion at any rate, if we are to think of drama in painting as the proper arrangement of the composition, even to the gestures of the hands of the personages portrayed, in order to express properly the full dramatic possibilities of the scene — in this respect Huguet was unsurpassed [37]

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among the early painters of Spain. As in Giotto's frescoes at Padua, it was necessary for the edification of the public that the events should be presented as scenes from everyday life, "but it was also necessary that they should possess that quality of universal and eternal significance which distinguishes a myth from a mere historical event." And likewise, with all the introduction of contemporary costumes, the rugged Gothic architecture of the day, the motley worshippers at the popular shrines, the executioners like butchers from the mercado, Huguet never lost his sense of the heroic in the representation of the actual. He succeeded for the same reason that Giotto did: he was able to make the local and particular stand for a universal idea. Huguet, more than any of his contemporaries or predecessors, seems to have been susceptible to physical beauty, an unusual phenomenon in an art that in general, on account of its almost exclusively religious nature, had no interest in the nude; he dwelt with delight on the forms of the young martyrs in his Tarrassa retable, approaching the mood of poetry in his expression of the awkward adolescent grace of the youthful Cosmas. Likewise the heads of the choristers in the Ordination of St. Vincent from Sarriä are painted with an eye to beauty and individuality suggestive of Giovanni Bellini. On these aesthetic attainments, rather than on his technical improvements on his predecessors, does Huguet's place in art depend. Jaume was certainly a good painter; I am not sure but that he was a great one as well.

ν THE RETABLE OF STS. ABDON AND SENNEN maueu paguades set lliures ff ÜP del retaule e com estan en veritat fac vos lo S JL H present albara escrit de ma mia." 1 This is the simple II&&&&& receipt that Jaume gave to Gabriel Marcans, vestryman of the parish of San Pere at Tarrassa, on November 22, 1460. It is but one excerpt from nearly a dozen documents, beginning in 1458 and continuing through the year 1461; all of them refer to the altar of Saint Abdon and Saint Sennen (Fig. 4), which until recent years was the only authentic work that could be attached to the artistic personality of Huguet. Originally intended for San Miquel, it is now preserved in the church of Sta. Maria at Tarrassa. The subjects of this retablo, Sant Non and Sant Nin, as the Catalan calls them, were noblemen of Cordoba,2 or, according to another version of the story, kings of Persia, "non muy poderosos." 3 They were martyred at Rome "in the time of Decius the Emperor." There, upon refusing to worship the idols, Abdon and his friend were thrown into the amphitheatre with two lions and two bears, but these beasts, miraculously informed of the identity of their intended victims, refused to do any harm to the holy men. The tale of the two martyrs ends, like so many tales in the Legenda Aurea, with JACHME HUGUET . . . er r a o

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their suffering death by decapitation.4 A local continuation of their story has it that in a time of great tribulation Arnulphus, the Abbot of Arles-sur-Tech (Roussillion), journeyed to Rome to gain the help of the Holy See; while he was residing in the capitol of Christendom, the remains of the Persian noblemen were miraculously revealed to him.3 With the permission of the Pope, Arnulphus transported the relics to Arles-sur-Tech, and immediately the various plagues which had beset the community came to an end. It was the proximity of the wonderworking shrine in what was then part of Spain that probably led to the popularity enjoyed by the Persian martyrs in the art of Catalonia. 6 In the central panel of the Tarrassa altar, the two martyrs are represented standing on a terrace of inlaid marble, black and white, a feature already favored by Borrassä and the Master of St. George. The landscape — what we can see of it above the low parapet in back of the figures — is a fanciful panorama with chateaux and little tufted hills that is reminiscent of the work of the Franco-Flemish illuminators. St. Abdon, at the left, is dressed in a blue-black jacket and hat, black hose and shoes, and a salmon pink cape lined richly with vermilion.7 St. Sennen, no less elegantly accoutered, wears, as a foil, a red shirt under a sleeveless garment of dark blue velvet trimmed with gold rosettes. A crenellated crown and a golden chain about his neck complete the costume. Both saints carry swords, the hilts of which are in raised relief, gilded, as are the crowns and Sennen's necklace. The latter and his companion have their hair clipped short in the Italian fashion of the [40]

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period. The figures of the two martyrs may be taken as an illustration of how completely Huguet abandoned the rather harsh drawing of the features, the pronounced eyelids and retrousse noses that are so notable in the work of the Master of St. George and his circle. Jaume's people seem to be based more on actual models; the general type may be described as one with very regular features, oval face, and straight nose. In this and his other early works, the painter treats the hair in the miniature technique of the Catalan Internationalists. Not only the types of the saints in the Tarrassa altar but also the raonumentality of their conception are likely to remind the connoisseur of the work of such fifteenth-century Italian masters as Masolino; there is a special resemblance to the two dandies who hold the centre of the stage in the Brancacci Chapel fresco of the Raising of Tabitha. In the gravity of the Persian martyrs' bearing we may discern, perhaps, the gentle, mystic trend that had been a feature of Catalan painting since the very earliest times. What strikes us most forcefully in viewing this magnificent altar is its feeling of aristocracy, the refinement one would expect to find in the last heir of a noble lineage. The narrative of the martyrs' careers begins in the upper left hand panel with an illustration of the text of the Golden Legend, "Then were they brought tofore Decius and tofore the Senators." The scene is laid in a tiled court shut off by a wall in back. An aged and obviously toothless minion marshals the two saints before their judge, who sits under a sumptuous canopy, resplendent in gold brocade. In back are the senators and courtiers and men-at-arms, all wearing costumes of great [ 4 1 ]

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gorgeousness that recall the splendor of Gentile da Fabriano. These handsome robes, especially those of a pseudo-Oriental cut, if not copied from those seen at court or in the great Church festivals, were almost certainly inspired by the properties of the Mystery Plays. This sumptuousness of appurtenances, this delight in rich stuffs, is Huguet's continuation of one of the traditions of Catalan painting and especially of the style of the Master of St. George. In general the costumes are those of the Burgundian court, and should be compared with the finery of Jaume's immediate predecessors, who owe their wardrobe to the French miniaturists. The composition of this painting of the two martyrs is that popularized by the Master of St. George for the representation of a saint brought to trial. By way of comparison I may point out that in the panel from the altar of St. Lucy in the Martin le Roy Collection the presiding judge, as here, sits on a canopied throne surrounded by his councillors and informers; the right half of the composition is reserved for the martyr Lucy, who, in the position occupied by Abdon and Sennen, is being brought before the judgment seat by the persecutor's soldiers. The figure of Decius with his flowing beard and aquiline nose is, to all intents and purposes, the same person that condemned St. Lucy to the torture in the Martin le Roy panel; his peaked bonnet, an object of Burgundian fashion, adorns the brow of the judge in the trial of St. Lucy and was borrowed directly from the proconsul Dacian in the four panels by the Master of St. George in the Louvre. I take this opportunity to speak of Huguet's treatment of perspective. Basing his drawing more on observation than on [4O

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the application of scientific principles, Huguet is merely improving on the innovations of the painter of the Transfiguration in the Sala Capitular of the Cathedral in Barcelona. The tiled floor which the artist employs in the panel of the tribunal, as on so many other occasions, had long been favored by Northern painters for its efficacy in indicating perspective. It will be noted that Jaume likes a closed composition with the principal object screened in back, either by a wall or by one of those dense crowds that had been so conspicuous in Catalan art since the time of the Serra brothers. This is simply a form of the "cubic" space composition that had been used most notably by Jan van Eyck, in which the figures in the foreground are conceived as existing in a cube, framed by some such architectural member as Huguet's wall and having no relation to the background. The setting for the court-room scene, in which the throne on its dais is the only property introduced, may well have been influenced by the furniture of the Mystery Plays, so entirely sufficient and appropriate it is. "Then were they drawn to martyrdom, and made to be brought to them two lions and two bears, which did them none harm ne touched them not, but rather kept them from harm." In this scene, illustrated in the lower panel of the left wing, the two kings are seen kneeling in prayer and surrounded by the wild beasts of the arena. Of these the bears are harmless little creatures, more of the " t e d d y " variety than anything else; they show a certain similarity to the species Huguet might have seen in the hills about Tarrassa. The lions, however, remind us of those heraldic beasties so popular in the menageries [433

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of the International Style; they are strongly reminiscent of the Romanesque lions on the west fagade of the monastery of Ripoll where Jaume was painting in 1455. The scene is enlivened by the painting of one of the animals as snarling at the provost and his councillors, who, in the royal tribune, are manifesting vexation at the echec of their plans. The floor of the pit, as a further element of genre, is littered with the bones of the noblemen's less fortunate predecessors. The martyrdom is achieved in the upper panel at the right. Before a turbaned and beardless representative of the Emperor, St. Sennen kneels in prayer at the side of his companion, who has already been decapitated, the proud ribbon of his bonnet sadly soiled in the dust. A huge throng of soldiers with lances fills the background, while a priest seems to be expostulating with the master of ceremonies for his cruelty. The resemblance of the primitive guillotine used in the execution to the instrument of St. George's maryrdom in the Louvre panel was noted by Sanpere and utilized by him as a means of attributing both panels to the same hand.8 Last scene of all — the two holy men transporting the relics of the martyrs from Rome to Arles-sur-Tech 9 (Fig. 5). In the foreground, a smart little donkey trots along with the barrels containing the sacred remains on his back. 10 The painter has chosen the moment when the two friars were greeted by a procession of monks who had been forewarned miraculously of their approach; we may discern the holy men, headed by a crucifer and two acolytes with tapers, issuing from a portico at the left. The details of genre, the aftermath of the Master of

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St. George and his group, are to be noted in the presence of the rabbit and quail foraging on the hillside. This scene is one of the few examples in Huguet's work in which figures and landscape are given equal importance. Generally, as I have indicated above, the countryside, as in the work of the Northern illuminators, is simply a "back drop" for the personages in the foreground. The surprise of the Abbot Arnulphus and his companion is both untheatrically and effectively expressed. The Crucifixion occupies its customary place in the panel above the central section. Against the gold sky, engraved like the background of the main compartment with a delicate oakleaf pattern, are silhouetted the towers and spires of a walled city. The cross, mounted on a little hill of formalized rock, occupies the centre of the picture. In the group at the left are Joseph of Arimathea, St. John, and the holy women. On the right side of the Cross a turbaned man is walking towards the group at the left; two soldiers are conversing; and a third, carrying a sceptre, walks off with Caiaphas. No more perfect example of the break with the nervous agitation of the late Internationalists could be found than this completely quiet and undramatic Crucifixion. Again, the towering horizon of the Master of St. George is brought down to its proper place. Although the landscape is more realistic in this respect, its inward character remains the same; the romantic nature of the scene is preserved in the retention of the rounded trees, the toy architecture, and the conical hills in the distance. Huguet's landscapes are never realistic, in that they are not painted from any actual scene; they are a melange of elements observed [45]

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in nature or culled from the works of his predecessors. The resemblance of Huguet's settings to some French manuscript, such as the Grandes Chroniques du Due de Borgogne, is very striking. Whether the derivation is from France direct or from the Master of St. George is of course impossible to determine. Only occasionally, as in his triptych of St. George, does Jaume make the concession to realism that his predecessor did in allowing a tiny speck of blue sky to oust the usual gold, a convention which effectively prevented any space composition in the true Umbrian sense of the word. The three panels of the predella of the Tarrassa retable deal with the legend of Sts. Cosmas and Damian, and it was from this section that the altarpiece got its name, "Lo retaule dels Sants Metges." The scenes chosen from the story of the doctor saints are their martyrdom and the notable occasion on which they replaced the gangrened leg of a devotee by the sound one of a dead blackamoor; in the central panel, we see the two patrons of medicine clad in flowing robes and holding the attributes of their calling. The painting of the final martyrdom by the knife (Fig. 6) is in many ways the most interesting of the three: at the left, in one of those densely packed crowds that Huguet manipulated so well, are the provost Lysias and his councillors, and in the exact centre an executioner is in the act of slitting St. Cosmas' throat. This butcher, who appears to have but one leg, is strangely in need of the ministrations of the very men he is putting to death; we shall encounter him and his idiosyncracy in the retable of Sts. Julitta and Quiricus which, in a later chapter, I attribute to Pere Huguet. I mention again one of

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the fundamental differences between the Master of St. George and Huguet: the executioners, who in the paintings by the former achieved a certain ferocity by their grimacing and posturing, move with a sort of listless elegance in pictures such as this one by Huguet. In the right half of the composition the youthful Damian kneels in prayer, and a soldier leaning on his lance contemplates the bodies of the martyrs' three companions. The figure of St. Damian, in its Gothic slenderness, sufficiently resembles the kneeling St. George in the panel of his flagellation in the Louvre to have caused a numbef of critics to attribute the painting by the Master of St. George to Huguet. The similarity between the two figures is fairly obvious: both are of the sensitive, attenuated type of the late Gothic style, frail and rather exquisite. The difference lies in Huguet's greater interest in anatomy, as evinced by the care with which he indicates the bony structure of the nude forms. The young martyrs with their rather snub noses are Jaume's nearest approach to the type employed by the Master of St. George for his patron saint and for St. Lucy in the Martin le Roy altarpiece. In general, Huguet fattens up the emaciated forms of the Internationalists, as, for example, in the type used for the crucified Christ. The change may be illustrated by a comparison of the painfully thin Saviour of the Pubol retable and Huguet's painting of the Crucified in the altar of the Constable of Portugal, which will be studied in the next chapter. In the middle panel of the predella, the Sants Metges are represented standing on a tiled pavement, much in the same way as Sts. Abdon and Sennen above them. On the basis of in[47]

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ternal evidence alone, Sanpere, in his Cuatrocentistasy attempted to ascribe this panel, as well as the paintings of the Crucifixion and the Miracle of the Leg, to Pau Vergos. This is the first of many occasions when we shall have to consider the members of that family in relation to Huguet. Sanpere based his ascription of the predella panel of Cosmas and Damian on the supposed resemblance of the latter to the figure of St. Augustine in the painting of the Preaching of St. Ambrose from the retable of the Tanners Guild, which he attributed to Pau Vergos. A Morellian comparison of the features of these two figures, such as was undertaken by Folch," shows only a very superficial resemblance on which to base an attribution. If the figure of St. Damian be compared to the youth who peers into the panel of the scene in the bear pit and to the young man in the crowd at the discomfiture of Antichrist in the retable of St. Michael of the Retailers Guild,13 the attribution of the painting to Huguet will prove very convincing. Again, although in the Miracle of the Leg the type of St. Cosmas is different from that used in the scene of martyrdom, his likeness to the soldier who contemplates the martyrs' butchered companions refutes the argument in favor of an ascription to any member of the Vergos atelier, as does the marked resemblance between the patient of the two doctor saints and one of the recumbent nudes in the first panel of the predella. It seems strange that Huguet should have changed the types used in the last two of these three panels; another unusual feature of the predella is his employment of haloes with four rings instead of the nimbi with two such circles, which he had used in the main portion of [48]

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the altarpiece. The only explanation possible appears to be that these parts are the work of an assistant who copied the types painted by his master in the other compartments of the retable. Although a certain definiteness of outline may be noted in all his forms, perhaps a heritage of the calligraphic traditions of the International Style, Huguet is first of all a painter. A close examination of the surface shows him working with fine, sure strokes, placing his accents with final precision. The freedom of the drawing gives the paintings all the delightful freshness of a sketch; note, for example, the quick, sure draughtsmanship of the heads in the judgment scene. Huguet employs a subtle modelling of flesh and fabric alike which, in a later period of his development, suggest rather definitely the new mode of Antonello and Master Alfonso.

VI THE ALTARPIECE OF THE CONSTABLE OF PORTUGAL THE Royal Chapel of St. Agatha, 1 a mournful place » Τ ® where it has stood ever since its first installation, is H J L H the retable of the Constable of Portugal; it remains, $ $ $ $ $ $ in spite of its lamentable deterioration, one of the great artistic treasures of Catalonia. This altarpiece, which must have replaced the earlier work by Ferrer Bassa, is the only relic of the many artistic enterprises fostered by Dom Pedro after his entry into Barcelona in January, 1464. Among the many errors in judgment in a volume whose inaccuracies are redeemed only by its sincerity, Sanpere's Cuatrocentistas, that eminent scholar attributed this painting to the atelier of the Vergos family, on no very convincing grounds.2 Bertaux, with his usual discernment, wrote, " L e peintre n'6tait pas Huguet lui-meme mais ä coup sur, l'un de ses disciples les plus proches." 3 It remained for Sr. D . Josep Palleja to unearth a document which, without any question, confirms what Bertaux had only suggested. 4 This document, of November 14, 1465, which finally clinches the attribution, is to be found among the records compiled by Joan Stela, "regent la Tresoreria del Senyor R e y , " in the Archives of the Royal Patrimony of Catalonia, in which, heading a list of payments for work in C50]

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the Royal Chapel, is the entry " A n Jachme Huguet qui pinte lo retaule . . · C C C solidos." The specification " t h a t he may paint the retable" certainly implies that the work was not yet finished; it leads us to wonder whether the actual painting had been begun at this time. Another record of a payment for the retable, without mention of the artist's name, dating from M a y 12,1464, leaves no doubt in our minds that the altarpiece must have been well-nigh finished in November of the following year. 5 A final document of December 22,1465, orders the placing of a curtain in front of the retable, probably to protect it from dust incidental to the work going on in the chapel. This last mention of the painting surely means that it was finished and in place, since the artist would work on an altar of such small dimensions in his own studio rather than in the place of its final destination. T o all intents and purposes, then, we may assume that the retablo was begun shortly after the Constable's arrival in January, 1464, and completed late in the autumn of the following year. The composition of the Epiphany (Fig. 7), which is the subject of the central panel, is derived from the cartoon employed by the International painters, but in Huguet's version of the scene the cortege of the Magi has been reduced to the figures of the Three Kings themselves. A close analogy exists between this panel and the same subject as painted by Reixach at Rubielos de Mora, although it seems scarcely possible to postulate an influence of the Valencian master on Huguet. 6 Mary is seated with the Christ Child on her knees, while St. Joseph stands behind her holding a precious vessel which he has just [5O

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received from the oldest of the Three Kings kneeling at the Virgin's feet. The two younger Magi, sumptuous in gold and brocade, stand immediately behind the kneeling Melchior, and each one in his hand holds a golden chalice — a symbolic offering — similar to the one already presented by their leader. In back of them are seen the ox and the ass and the third or Ethiopan Magus, who, himself on horseback, is holding one of his companion's mounts. A much faded landscape background in which a castle and distant hills are visible is shut off by the wall and roof of the shed under which the Holy Family is receiving. The sky is of gold, — a pattern of oak leaves and acorns arranged in spirals, — and the Morning Star also in raised relief gilded is inset above the horizon. Peering through the windows of the shed are a boy and a man who might, with some stretch of the imagination, be recognized as his father. It was these two figures whom Sanpere, with more imagination than evidence, sought to identify as Jaume Vergos I and his son Pau.7 As has been noted, the work has suffered considerably from time and neglect. The "azul de Allemania" in the robes of the Virgin and the two Magi has turned to sooty black, and the robe of the kneeling Melchior, formerly of gold brocade, has faded to rusty brown. The figures of the Holy Family are all of them plain — types surely taken from the common people, which we shall meet again and again in the works of Huguet. In the two Magi we have two older, somewhat more serious, brothers of Abdon and Sennen, with all the elegance and grace of their predecessors at Tarrassa. As an animalier, in this work, [52]

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the master is more distinguished than in the representation of the burro in the Tarrassa retable. Bertaux has said, rather inexplicably, " Jaume Huguet, dans son oeuvre authentique, use des reliefs dores plus sobrement que n'avaient f a i t . . . d'autres peintres Catalans . . . la richesse des reliefs a grandi etrangement." Earlier he said, " L e s peintres chargent leurs panneaux de ces reliefs de stuc, qui sont mentionnes expressement dans un contrat de 1456,8 etc." He finds it hard to reconcile this raised relief with the damascened back of the retable of Tarrassa. It seems unnecessary to become alarmed by this, since, from evidence in many contemporary documents and paintings, we may appreciate the sudden growth in popularity of these elaborate backgrounds. In a contract for a retable at Villamayor in 1466 Huguet bound himself not only to gild the back and diadems but also "pilars, formeria, xambrans, arxets, tubes e guarda polsos," all the above to be modelled in stucco and covered with " o r fi." In the panel of the Annunciation, the Virgin is represented kneeling before a low desk, on which stands a candle with an open book. A t the left is Gabriel genuflecting, while from his mouth issues a scroll with the words, DE GRACIA PLENA DMS. In his left hand the Archangel holds a lily plucked from the familiar pot of flowers which may be seen before the window in the back of the room. Through another window at the left, a vision of God the Father encircled by winged heads of seraphim projects the Heavenly Dove towards the kneeling Virgin. T h e painter appears to have lavished an almost Flemish care on the various objects of nature morte which are arranged on

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shelves behind the Virgin — books, bottles, and jars of ointment. In fact, the iconography of the Annunciation with the Virgin kneeling in her tidy chamber seems to be derived from two of the paintings of the subject attributed to the van Eycks, that in the famous Ghent altar-piece and another formerly in the Hermitage at St. Petersburg, and now in the collection of Andrew W . Mellon in Washington, D . C. The figure of Mary with her hands folded across her breast is taken from the former picture; the open book on the low desk, the position of Gabriel, and the Dove descending on the celestial rays are more closely approximated in the Hermitage panel. Behind the Ghent retable by van E y c k is a similar arrangement of still life on a shelf. The glimpse of a landscape through an open window in back is derived from this same cartoon. The panel in the retable of the Constable is not the only instance of this van Eyck cartoon in Catalonia: there is an Annunciation highly similar in the Cathedral of Gerona; 9 the representation of the event in the Ciervoles altar was not dissimilar; and the painting of the subject attributed to Dalmau in the Diocesan Museum at Barcelona is perhaps closer than any to the Flemish original. It seems almost necessary to assume that there was in existence in Barcelona a cartoon by one of the van Eycks, or a follower of theirs, combining the essential traits of the two compositions that we have noted. Jan van E y c k himself was travelling in Spain in 1428 and may have sold some of his designs at the time; at any rate, the importation of Flemish paintings was carried on throughout Spain. Perhaps C54]

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the most plausible theory is that the cartoons emanated from the studio of Dalmau, who had studied the van Eycks. Huguet's method of handling drapery as illustrated in this panel is based in part on the manner of the van Eycks — the crinkled folds and emphasis on the calligraphic silhouette of the border — that replaced, in Northern painting, the free flowing draperies of the Burgundian Internationalists. The influence of the Flemish style we have already seen in the works by the circle of the Ampurias master and in the retable of the Transfiguration. The earlier manner is also represented in Jaume's painting; in the retable of Sts. Catherine and Clara,10 for example, it is possible to study the van Eyckian mode of painting stuffs in the predella panels, and the earlier French style, which in Catalonia is manifest in the " Manner of Guimerä," in the central figures of the titular saints. Occasionally, as in the robes of the two Magi, Huguet reverts to the device practiced by the Serras and their artistic descendants of flattening out the pattern of the brocade regardless of the disposition of the folds of the drapery. In the last quarter of the century a type of drapery was employed by the Vergos atelier that seems derived from such German models as might have been at hand in the form of woodcuts or engravings; Jaume Huguet was apparently untouched by this later and not altogether happy influence. The Nativity, at the top of the right wing, shows us on the left one of the shepherds and St. Joseph, and on the right the Virgin and Zebel or Salome kneeling before the manger. There are ingenious bits of realism, such as St. Joseph cautiously reC 55 3

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moving the Christ Child's coverlet, and the extreme reverence and naturalism of the shepherd pushing back his cowl." In the next panel, the Resurrection (Fig. 8), Christ has just stepped out of a sarcophagus around which are grouped soldiers in various and uncomfortable attitudes of repose. In the background is a walled town of considerable proportions, white, and with turrets at regular intervals. The nearest Spanish analogy for this architectural detail is to be seen in the work of Jacomart. Christ, with His extraordinarily broad face, is a type we shall meet with again. The soldiers, with their bizarre turbans and pseudo-Oriental gear, are of the same tribe as the executioners at Tarrassa." This fondness for exotic costumes already inherent in the works of the International Style we find developed to its fullest extent by Huguet, in this retable and especially in the recently discovered altar at Alcover. The artist's main interest, it would seem, was in foreshortening, and in this he has been fairly successful, though rather unnecessarily crowding the group in the foreground. 13 There exists a marked resemblance in pose and in type between the soldier with a cross bow in this panel and a similar figure in Schongauer's engraving of the same scene. It is unlikely that any connection is to be drawn between the two, since the authorities are of the opinion that Schongauer's print was done no earlier than 1473. There is only a vague similarity, restricted principally to the arrangement of the drapery, between the figures of Christ in Huguet's painting and the German's engraving. The representation of the Pentecost is a development of the traditional Catalan treatment of the theme; the Holy Spirit descends on

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the Virgin, who is standing in the centre of the Twelve, each one of whom we find quite carefully individualized as to type and expression. This is a development of a tendency notable already in the work of the Serra brothers, e. g. in the painting of the same subject by Pere Serra at Manresa. There follows the panel of the Ascension. The upper portion of the Lord's body is cut off by the top of the picture, and we merely see His legs and feet, on either side of which flutter strangely Flemish angels with scrolls. Christ's feet have left a permanent imprint on the conventionalized rock that occupies the centre of the stage. Round about this the painter has crowded the Twelve Apostles and the Virgin. The cartoon, in its essentials, is again derived from the Serra brothers. It seems almost certain that Huguet has sought to convey something of the atmosphere of this desolate, wind-blown place in the desperately agitated robes of the Virgin and the Apostle at the left. With that scrupulous following of texts that marks the illustration of the Golden Legend in Catalonia, the artist has painted the Death of the Virgin with but eleven of the Twelve in attendance. W e know that St. Thomas was absent on this occasion, as on that of the Virgin's Assumption. Mary lies on a richly brocaded couch, while behind her a withered Apostle has just mopped her brow with a handkerchief. A t the upper right, the soul of the departed, represented as usual by a child with a long, trailing dress, is received by Christ in an aureole of seraphs. The Crucifixion (Fig. 9), which surmounts the central panel, is a crowded but not ineffective composition which, as we shall see, has many points in common not only with other versions of

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the theme by Huguet but also with certain earlier representations of the scene; e. g. the retable of St. Peter at Ptibol. We see Christ on the centre cross with the two thieves at the sides and in back. The Saviour and His two companions are of the same type of youthful nudes, exquisitely modelled, as Cosmas and Damian in the Tarrassa retable; in fact the adolescent Dimas bears no little resemblance to the younger of the doctor saints. The success of the representation of the nude may be compared, and not unfavorably, to Masolino's achievement in the Crucifixion at S. Clemente in Rome. The moment represented is obviously that immediately following the discovery of Christ's death upon the Cross. Supported by St. John, the Virgin has just fainted and is being ministered to by Mary Salome, while Mary the wife of Cleofas, and the Magdalene, the latter kneeling at the foot of the Cross, look distractedly up at the dead Saviour. The Magdalene, it may be noted, no longer throws her arms about the Cross as in the Crucifixions of the late International Style. Longinus, mounted and in back of Dimas' cross, is represented in prayer, while at the right one of the horsemen is pointing out the Cross to his companion as though pronouncing the words, "Truly this man was the Son of God." 14 The soldier standing at the extreme right has as a bit of local color the letters SNPOQUER 15 graven on his shield. Two particularly villainous fellows are drawing lots for Christ's raiment in the lower right corner. In its essential makeup this composition is obviously inspired by the Crucifixion of the Transfiguration retable in the Sala Capitular of Barcelona Cathedral. All the figures in the scene are thoroughly and [58]

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quietly dramatic, the group at the left being especially effective, with the emotional collapse of the Virgin accentuated by the broken, nervous line of her gold-bordered gown. There remain for our consideration the two very badly damaged panels of St. Elizabeth of Portugal and St. Sigismund, King of Burgundy; these panels are now detached from the main altarpiece. In the spandrels of each is the red-and-white striped shield of the Constable supported by two angels. St. Elizabeth's azure gown has turned to dirty black; she holds a lapful of roses, red and white. The other painting, that of St. Sigismund, is practically in ruins; suffice it to say that he is recognizable as the same tenderly melancholy type of young man whom Huguet used as St. John in the Crucifixion of the same retable. A scroll in St. Sigismund's hands bears the motto of the Constable, PAINE POUR JOIE. There seems little to justify Bertaux' statement that "les groupements des figures sont moins pittoresques et plus monotones sur le retable du palais de Barcelone que sur celui de Tarrassa." 16 It seems fairly obvious that with the rigid iconographical stipulations to observe and a royal patron to please, Huguet could not with any impunity stray far from the accepted presentations of these age-old themes. Furthermore, we have noted in more than one instance little naturalistic touches of Jaume's which add a delightful freshness to such scenes as the Nativity and the Dormition. With the exception of the Annunciation and the Nativity, I have little doubt but that the entire retable is from Jaume's own hand; Sanpere based his attribution to the Vergos atelier on a record of Sep[59]

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tember 30, 1464, excusing Jaume Vergos from military service, an exemption which might imply that Vergos was at the time the favorite painter of the Constable and hence likely to have been the painter of the retable in the Royal Chapel. Even without documentary proof of Huguet's authorship there would be little to support the attribution to the Vergos studio; this will become clear when we consider the style of these followers of Huguet in the next chapter. The general feeling of the painting, with its svelte, mystic forms and the refined elegance of the gestures, would immediately lead us to recognize the painter as Huguet. The two Magi are better painted than the Persian kings at Tarrassa; they are a splendid example of Huguet's large style, which was replacing the manner of the International painters. I have already suggested a comparison of the figures of Dimas and the youthful martyrs in the Tarrassa predella. Furthermore, as Folch i Torres has pointed out, in the Crucifixion we may recognize not only the Christ but also the Mary Cleofas of the Tarrassa version. 17 Even in its damaged condition we can see that the technique of the retable of the Constable is identical with that of the altar of Sts. Abdon and Sennen.

VII PERE HUGUET I: HIS RELATION TO JAUME HUGUET since the writings of Sanpere brought the Catalan H I D H School to the attention of students of art, there has jjjjj J E / been universally attributed to Huguet the retable of St. Julitta and St. Quiricus (Fig. 10) from the Church of S. Quirse, a town not far from Tarrassa; this altarpiece is now hung in the Diocesan Museum of Barcelona. In the central panel, St. Julitta sits on a canopied throne accompanied by St. Quiricus, who stands at her knees holding a saw, the dreadful attribute of his martyrdom. St. Julitta suggests the fine but rather plain type of woman that Jaume Huguet repeated over and over again in his later work; Quiricus himself, a chubby little gamin, is unlike any of Jaume's pictures of children. The Crucifixion which surmounts this panel is a simple devotional rendering of the event, with the Crucified flanked by the Virgin and St. John. The delicate modelling of the nude Saviour is of as fine quality as anything in the painting of the second half of the fifteenth century in Catalonia, but the types of Christ and His attendants are not those of Jaume Huguet's later versions of the scene; they are, if anything, more closely related to that follower of the Master of St. George who painted the retable of St. Peter at Pubol.

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A curious problem in iconography presents itself with the consideration of the six narrative scenes that form the wings of the central panel, the double version of the martyrdom portrayed in the paintings to the right of the cental picture. In one of these we see what appears to be the gruesome termination of Quiricus' torments by his being sawed in pieces; his soul is received by Christ in an aureole of angels, while St. Julitta awaits her turn.1 There follows a scene of the two saints in a cauldron of boiling water; Quiricus is seen baptizing with this water the ten thousand men he has raised from the dead. Directly below this is the second version of the martyrdom, where an executioner is cutting the throats of St. Julitta and her son (Fig. 11). Evidently Quiricus and his mother survived the ordeal of the saw; the painter in the panel of that episode has perhaps intended to represent the resuscitation of the young martyr rather than his reception into Heaven. There is no mention of such a death in the Golden Legend which, however, does reserve a different martyrdom for St. Quiricus in which the tyrant, exasperated, as well he might be, by the outrageous biting and scratching of the precocious martyr, threw the child down the steps of the palace. The painter of the retable does not undertake to represent this scene — perhaps finding it too elaborate for portrayal or acting under the instruction of his patrons, who may have preferred the more orthodox martyrdom by the knife. The composition of this alternative martyrdom does not convince me as it did Sanpere of the attribution to Huguet. I t will be noted in the first place that the composition is in many

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ways analogous to that of the Martyrdom of Cosmas and Damian in the Tarrassa retable; the provost with his bonnet and flowing beard resembles Dacian in the latter work; but perhaps the most curious analogy of all is the executioner, who in both cases has been deprived of his left leg because of the painter's ineptness at space composition.2 Knowing as we do the habits of the Catalan painters in the matter of adopting compositions, it would not be surprising to find that Jaume Huguet later copied the entire arrangement, one-legged butcher and all, in the altarpiece of the Sants Metges. Other Huguet characteristics are the composition shut off by a wall in back and the conical cypress trees, which figure in several of the scenes here as they do in the retables of Abdon and Sennen and of St. George. In the scene of the Flagellation of St. Quiricus we have the nucleus of a composition, adopted from a cartoon used by the Master of St. George, which Huguet was to repeat over and over again. At the left we see the provost Alexander seated on an elaborate canopied throne, while on either hand stand his councillors. The scene of flagellation takes place in the right half of the picture, a space which in later compositions was reserved for the martyrdom of St. Bartholomew in the Sta. Maria de la Mar retable and for that of St. Vincent in the Sarriä panel; practically an identical disposition we have seen already in the panel of Abdon and Sennen before the Provost. Sanpere dates this retable at about 1440, basing his chronology on the fact that it was at this time that short smocks for men first became generally popular in Europe outside of Italy. 3 Certainly this does not seem too early a date when we consider C63]

JAUME HUGUET the discrepancies in technical ability between it and the altarpiece of Tarrassa painted just twenty years later. It will be noted that in most cases heads are too large for bodies and that the characters have a habit of casting rather coy and sidelong glances. We must not forget, however, that this trick of painting the eyes with only the whites showing was used by Jaume Huguet in the retable at Tarrassa and in other works. The attempts at grace are rather forced and postured, as in the figure at the extreme right in the scene of the cauldron, who seems in danger of losing his balance in his elaborate dehanchement. The crowd of worshippers who approach the martyrs at the left seem to be performing a Peruginesque cotillion rather than the prosaic function of walking. It is apparent at once that the figures are invariably stockier and shorter in stature than those found in Jaume Huguet's paintings; furthermore, the types are almost all round-faced and chubby, resembling the gay little people of Jacomart. The painter of this retable shows a singular lack of imagination in the arrangement of his draperies; almost invariably the garments are treated as flat surfaces or else fall in regularly pleated, uninteresting folds. The perspective, which seems to have been worked out with some care, is never entirely satisfactory. Finally, the palette employed is gayer and intenser in tonality than jaume's. But the question naturally arises, could not the altar of St. Quiricus be considered as an early manifestation of Jaume Huguet's style? It has always been considered so hitherto. Personally, for the stylistic differences stated above, I cannot hold to this view, and for the same reason that I cannot consider the works

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of the Master of St. George as early paintings by Huguet, namely that the painter of the St. Julitta panels was a developed and separate personality with a style as complete as that of Jaume Huguet himself. Without the slightest hesitation I would say that the relations between this painter and Jaume were those of master and pupil. From him Jaume got his training, to a certain extent his types, and, as we have seen in the case of the execution scene, his compositions. Although there is no basis for the theory other than the argument from probability, I should like to identify the master of St. Quiricus as Pere Huguet, to whose activities as a painter I have alluded briefly.4 That Jaume collaborated with his father on more than one occasion is beyond question, as in the retable of Sts. Catherine and Clara, in which we shall be able to contrast their styles; I cannot see his hand in the Quiricus retable, although it may be that he assisted Pere, as in the figure of St. Julitta Enthroned, which, of all the types, seems most likely to be by him. To recapitulate, then, Pere Huguet's style is obviously based on one of the more advanced manifestations of the school of the Master of St. George; his nearest relatives are the group of painters who, while retaining elements of the phase of Internationalism expressed by the Master of St. George, seem to show an acquaintance with the new Flemish mode of the van Eyck's, or at least with that of Jan's and Hubert's immediate predecessors in miniature painting. Pere's types suggest those of the leading member of this progressive group, the "Ampurias master": 5 his chubby angels with ropy hair are cousins once removed of those in the Last

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Judgment of the Ampurias altar and in a retable of St. Michael at Palau del Vidre.6 The Saviour in Pere's Crucifixion is a softening of the exaggerated suffering Christ who reigns from the Cross in half a score of representations of Golgotha in the International Style. Again, in Pere's art the truly Gothic nature of the International Style has abated considerably in that the caricaturing tendency has given way to what seems to be a more zealous study of nature; the executioners in his scenes of torture are no longer the hideous creatures of the Master of St. George, but low-life types that he might have seen in the streets of Barcelona. As in the figure of Christ, the Gothic emaciation has everywhere given way to stockier forms; this development had already been foreshadowed by the Ampurias master. That Pere may have come in contact with a painter of the Franco-Flemish style is almost certainly proved by his use of the blue sky background in place of the traditional gold. He may well have been influenced by Dalmau's retable of 1445, a possibility which is suggested by the rather needlessly complicated draperies of St. Julitta's robe in the central panel of the St. Quiricus retablo. This particular form of drapery manipulation we have already noted in the figure of St. John the Baptist in the Last Judgment of the Castellon de Ampurias altar. Pere is never particularly interested in the arrangement of the garments, and clings to the system of parallel folds, hanging straight down like a bundle of scrolls — a mannerism notable also in the retable of the Transfiguration in the Sala Capitular. Although not always successful, he is far ahead of his contem[66]

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poraries in the accuracy of his perspective, an accomplishment in which he is the rival of the painter of the same altar that I have had occasion to refer to so frequently. In spite of the great advance towards accurate representation, Pere's style must be described as naturalistic rather than realistic, suggesting rather than defining reality; the interest in the details rather than in the painting as a whole still stands between the artist and monumentality; note, for example, his delight in the pattern of the brocade worn by the angels in the martyrdom scene. Like the master of Guimera, he paints the design of the stuff without the slightest regard for the foreshortening of the dress. The details of Burgundian dress and pseudo-Oriental gear persist in Pere's compositions as they do in the work of his son. The fact that Pere Huguet collected the money for a retable painted by Mateu Ortoneda for the town of Vails in 1425 has led the distinguished critic Soler i March to presume an influence of the latter on Pere's son Jaume and, ipso facto, on Pere himself.7 Ortoneda, who was born at Ruidecanas, near Reus, is known in documents from 1417 to 1425. He was one of the many artistic descendants of Luis Borrassa whose color he imitates in his known works, a retable of the Virgin from Solivella in the Diocesan Museum at Tarragona and a small triptych in Soler i March's own collection. Both of these works are signed by the artist. His types, by which he is mos.t easily recognized, show us a countenance narrowing almost to a point at the chin, large doll-like — porcelaine — eyes, and a gentle winsomeness reminiscent of Pere Serra. In the side panels of the

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Solivella altar his relationship with Borrassä is most apparent. In no way do Ortoneda's types resemble those of Jaume Huguet or Pere. Soler's suggestion that the cypress trees favored by Jaume in his St. George and the Princess in the Museo del Parque and other works were a direct borrowing from Ortoneda seems a very thin piece of reasoning; this variety of tree had been favored in Catalan art since the time of the Serra brothers. One of Pere Huguet's favorite tricks is to close his compositions in back by a wall behind which we catch a glimpse of conical trees only slightly similar to those employed by Ortoneda and forming scarcely adequate grounds for the assumption of direct influence in this direction. Soler further states, "Altres analogies lliguen mestre i deixeble: l'intim sentiment dels personatges, l'elevacio del punt de vista en les perspectives, la riguesc dels verds i blaus en el colorit." 8 Certainly these features of the Huguets' style are as easily traceable to the circle of the Master of St. George. So far as Jaume is concerned, it seems scarcely likely that he ever knew Ortoneda; in the year 1425, when Ortoneda is last mentioned, Jaume, according to my chronology, could scarcely have been more than a child of tender years.

VIII WORKS BY JAUME AND PERE HUGUET I THE

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the problems in Catalan painting none is more β (Γ^Ι β complicated, none more engrossing, nor more im§ v J ' j | portant than that of the splendid retable of Sts. β $ $ 8 $ $ Catherine and Clara in the Sala Capitular of Barcelona Cathedral. 1 The subjects of this altarpiece, complete in every particular, are as follows: at the top in the centre the Crucifixion, and below, the central panel of St. Clara holding a crozier and St. Catherine with her wheel and sword and the palm of martyrdom; to the right, beginning at the top, St. Louis of Toulouse and the Mystic Marriage, St. Agatha and St. Catherine at the Torture, St. Vincent Ferrer 2 and the Decapitation of St. Catherine; at the left, again commencing at the top, we find St. Liberius and the Ordination of St. Clara, St. Barbara and St. Clara Exhibiting the Host, 3 St. Francis and the Death of St. Clara. The predella is composed of three panels, the Agony in the Garden, the Mourning over Christ's Body, and the Appearance of Christ to the Magdalene (Noli Me Tangere). On the doors, which formerly gave access to the sacristy behind the altar, stand guard the figures of St. Eulalia 4 and St. Lucy. The guardapolvos are decorated with Β Β Β Β Β Β Γ ALL

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elliptical medallions containing busts of Sts. Elizabeth, Christopher, Cosmas, and Anne.5 It has always seemed strikingly apparent to me that not all of the nineteen panels going to make up this retablo are by one hand; 6 in fact, at times I believed I could distinguish as many as three hands in the painting. In endeavoring to establish the division of labor, I shall begin with the most obvious dissimilarity in style, — i. e. between the central panel and the lateral sections. I am of the opinion that these latter narrative panels, the Crucifixion, and the figures of saints are all by one hand. They are, I believe, unquestionably by the painter of the retable of Sts. Julitta and Quiricus in the Diocesan Museum. The type of the crucified Christ in the two altarpieces is identical, while the figure of Longinus in the retable of Sts. Catherine and Clara appears as the provost in the Diocesan Museum panels. This same figure is seen again as the hermit at the left in the Marriage of St. Catherine (Fig. 13) and in the painting of the Breaking on the Wheel. In this panel it is easy to recognize the figure of the martyr and the female figure directly behind her as the same type, round-faced and dimpled, as the angels in the martyrdom of St. Julitta. St. Louis of Toulouse has the puckered mouth and squinting eyes of the St. Julitta figures, and the gold back of this panel and the central compartment of the Diocesan Museum altar have a foliate pattern identical in every particular. In the scene of the death of St. Catherine are the same executioners that officiated in the torturing of St. Julitta and her son. Likewise St. Ursula and her Virgins, who appear at St. Clara's deathbed, are to be iden[70]

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tified as the chubby group of angels in the execution of St. Julitta. B y a similar process it is possible to prove that all the panels mentioned are by the hand of the Julitta and Quiricus master; certainly the resemblances in style and type are enough to demonstrate that they were executed by a single hand, that of the late Internationalist, Pere Huguet. There remain to be accounted for, the paintings of the central panel, of the predella, and of the doors and guardapohos. It is obvious at once that the serene and stately figures of Catherine and Clara (Fig. 12), executed with all the finish and mastery of Abdon and Sennen, cannot be by the same hand as the lateral panels. They are the grown-up sisters of the St. Lucy in the Martin-le-Roy altarpiece. The main objection to crediting the paintings of these two ladies to the young Jaume Huguet would be that they are too pretty for a painter who never showed himself particularly sensible to feminine loveliness. The nearest resemblance to St. Catherine in Jaume's work is the mother in the panel of the Miracle of Mont St. Michel of the Retailers' altar; she bears a less striking likeness to a Madonna in Glory of the Muntadas Collection which will be considered later. The delicate modelling and the drawing of the mouth and eyes seem to correspond with the characteristics of Huguet's style, as does the simple and natural handling of the draperies. The tone of the figures — their serenity and monumentality — is so characteristic of Jaume Huguet that I find it impossible to detach them from his name.7 The three panels of the predella which, for me, are among the loveliest and most precious of all the rare things of this [ 7 1 ]

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time, do not at first sight seem Spanish in the least. For the spirit that breathes in these three paintings is that of the Gothic North — the finely nervous art of the School of Provence, the richness and color of the Burgundian court. The fact that there are no photographs of these works leads me to describe in detail the iconography and technique. The first of the panels, the Agony in the Garden, has for its setting a dark arbor, the twilight effect of which has doubtless been heightened by the fading of the green pigments; Jesus kneels at the right, refusing the cup; at the left are the figures of three Apostles in attitudes of repose. The disciple in front has an attitude reminiscent of the suspicious and morose St. Joseph in Giotto's Nativity at Padua. In the background we see a field cut up into checkerboard squares by what is certainly a Quattrocento irrigation system. The central panel of the predella showing the Mourning over Christ's Body is perhaps the most impressive of the whole altarpiece.8 Our Lord is laid on a low table supported by two saw-horses; this arrangement is most suggestive of the modern army cot. Christ's head is thrown back, His eyes closed; the body has the appearance of the rigidity of death. The Virgin is kneeling to embrace the cadaver; behind her are the other Holy Women; one holds a jar decorated with geometric patterns,9 while her companion has in her hands a roll of cloth — the shroud. The arrangement of the three Marys, all inclined and pointing to the head of the Christ, recalls the formula employed in the Byzantine iconography of this scene. Standing in back are two bearded men, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicode[ 7 2 ]

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mus. Under the bed may be noted the nails, the pincers employed in pulling them out, a hammer, and the crown of thorns. The composition, which is roughly that of a pyramid, is enlivened by the most subtle rhythms which draw our attention inevitably to the pathetic head of the Christ. Here is expressed the quiet, restrained sorrow, — and for its restraint the more heart-breaking, — rather than the melodramatic demonstrations of grief so usual in the Spanish School; as Mayer has it, this picture is a very notable expression of "der tiefen Innerlichkeit des Schmerzes."10 The Noli Me Tangere which completes the bancal is among the loveliest representations of this particular subject that I know. The scene is laid in a closed garden; and here again the disintegration of the pigment abets the impression of the mystic half-light of the dawn; it intensifies the silhouette of the scraggly tree which rises at the left of the composition to spread its branches over the golden sky." At the right stands the risen Christ, clad in white grave clothes, arranged in the same graceful unmannered folds as the drapery of the central figures. As in the other two panels, the Lord has a light blond beard. Mary Magdalene kneels at His feet, timidly stretching out her hand to convince herself of the miracle. She is clad in a brilliant scarlet robe that is spread out behind her in the most intricate folds we have yet seen in any part of the retable; the arrangement suggests to me the manner popularized by the van Eycks and their followers. Upstage, left, is a very realistic rendering of a stone well-head equipped with a miniature derrick or lever for pulling up the bucket which stands on the [73]

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ground nearby. N o t far from this object, in the lower left-hand corner, is an axe such as one might use for pruning trees — another instance of the painter's delight in still life. When I passed from this picture to the so-called predella of the retable of the Transfiguration 12 which hung in an adjoining room at the Exposition of 1929, it was an immediate temptation to see a definite connection between the two. 13 There are the same delightful details of genre; the well-head is the same construction as that in the Noli Me Tangere panel, the jars with geometric designs in the Descent from the Cross are like those in the Mourning over the Body; Bertaux' qualification of the style of the Transfiguration panels as " the bitter realism of the Master of St. George tempered by the sweetness of Borrassa." 14 might more readily be applied to the predella of the St. Clara retable; as for the altar of the Transfiguration, it would be difficult to oppose anyone who attributed it to the hand of the Master of St. George himself, so thoroughly characteristic are the types, the exaggerated but always charming Gothic realism; in fact, one is led to believe that the same technique of oil glazes over tempera underpainting was employed in the altar of the Transfiguration that we observed in the Louvre panels of St. George's Trial and Martyrdom. 1 5 I believe that the internal evidence is sufficient to prove the predella panels by the painter of the central figures of St. Clara and St. Catherine. We have already noted that the manipulation of the drapery is distinctly similar in the figures of these two parts of the altar. In both of them we see plainly the influence of the long, undulating folds of the "Manner of Gui-

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mera." Furthermore, it is not difficult to see the similarity in type between the women tending the body of Our Lord and the titular saints; the drawing of the features is similarly delicate, and in both panels we see the ladies with lowered lids. Again, the Holy Woman farthest to the right bears a distinct resemblance to the St. Elizabeth of the retable of the Constable. If we go further and compare the panel of the Mourning over the Body with the Crucifixion that surmounts the altar of Abdon and Sennen, we shall see that, in spite of the repainting in the latter, the types of the Holy Women in the two paintings are strikingly similar; likewise, although lacking the delicacy of conception, the Magdalene in the Tarrassa panel is related to the figure in the last panel of the Barcelona altarpiece. Before going further, I take occasion to point out that the prototype for the composition of the Mourning over the Body, based on a cartoon of the Serras, is to be seen in the work of a follower of Jaume Cabrera in the Cathedral of Gerona, a panel ascribed to Martorell by Sanpere in the collection of Sr. D. Alejandro Cerdä in Barcelona, and in the predella of Cabrera's retable of St. Nicholas of Bari in the cathedral archives at Manresa. To use a time-worn cliche, we have only to compare the treatment of the subject in these panels and in those of the Clara and Catherine altar to see the advance made by Catalan painters in little more than a decade. It may seem difficult to reconcile the short, blond-bearded Christ with the type employed by Huguet in his later compositions. Our Lord as painted in the predella of the retable under consideration is distinctly of the Franco-Flemish Gothic [75]

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type, such as may be illustrated by the work of Roger van der Weyden or the well-known altarpiece of the Parliament of Paris. In fact, in the central panel, we are distinctly reminded of the painter of the anonymous panels of the Pieta in the Frick Collection. It will be seen, however, that the Christ in the Agony in the Garden and in the Noli Me Tangere panels is very definitely related to the type seen in the Tarrassa Crucifixion, in the vision enjoyed by St. Vincent in Jaume Huguet's panel of his martyrdom in the Museo del Parque, and also to the similar vision that appears at the Death of the Virgin in the altarpiece of the chapel of St. Agatha. The love of genre details which is so pronounced in these panels is notable in almost every one of Huguet's later works; it is typical of his conception of the scriptural settings in terms of his own time, a tendency in which he is merely continuing the tradition of the Master of St. George. A t this point, it is a mere one-finger exercise to attribute by internal evidence the figures on the doors to the master of the central panels and the small medallions of saints on thζ guardapolvos to the painter of the narrative scenes. This altarpiece was attributed by Sanpere to one Juan Cabrera, who on July 20, 1450, received from Sancha Jimenez de Foix y de Cabrera the sum of fifty-five "florines de o r o " for painting the grill of her chapel in the cloister of the Cathedral and two and one-half florines more for painting a column in the same chapel. 16 T h a t the retable of St. Clara and St. Catherine was once housed in this particular sanctuary is confirmed by the presence of the Cabrera arms emblazoned on the frame

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above the top row of panels.17 In making the attribution to Cabrera, Sanpere said, "No creo que ä ninguno de los lectores de este libro sorprenda que saquemos del hecho de haber pintado Juan Cabrera las rejas del altar y una columna el que hubiese pintado igualmente el retablo, por cuanto conocen ya, y conocerän todavia, ejemplos sobrades a convencerles de que con el mismo pincel con que creaban la Virgen ο pintaban la escena del Calvario, pintaban la cera del gremio ό los mäs humildes muebles domesticos." 18 I am inclined to question this attribution, in fact and in principle. If we knew Duccio only by a document crediting him with gilding the candelabra which served to embellish the Maestä of Siena, it is not likely that we would credit him with the authorship of that painting; I believe my meaning is clear. By the same process it would be possible to credit Pere Huguet, who worked in the cloisters, with almost any painting there displayed — and with more reason.19 The fact that we do not know Cabrera by any other document which, in spite of what Sanpere says, would identify him as anything but a handy-man decorator, makes me think twice before attributing to him so important a work of art. As I have implied at various times in this ponderous amassing of evidence, it is my belief that the central panels, the predella, and the door figures are by Jaume Huguet at an early stage of his development; the Crucifixion, saints, and narrative panels I have already proved to be by the painter of the retable of St. Julitta and St. Quiricus. The juxtaposition of works by this master, Pere Huguet, and his son in the same retable illustrates better than anything else the relation between the two, namely [77]

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that of master and pupil." We may see here in sharp contrast the final development of the manner of the Master of St. George and the style of the second half of the fifteenth century; it is easy to see how Jaume took his types from the older man, — especially in the Crucifixion, — how he refined them and gave the figures greater monumentality; to a certain extent, in contrasting the narrative panels of the main retable with those of the predella, we may study Huguet's solution of the problems of perspective and his infinitely more successful grouping of figures. I would date this altarpiece 1450 for the following reasons: (1) internal evidence seems to confirm this assignment; stylistically it is at least ten years earlier than the retable of Abdon and Sennen,21 (2) it corresponds with the date cited by Sanpere for Cabrera's activities in the chapel; this was evidently a time of re-embellishment in the last resting place of the house of Foix y Cabrera. 23 Another treasure of the Sala Capitular is a very much damaged and faded retablo dedicated to St. Cosmas and St. Damian; 2 3 although I was unable to take actual measurements I should say that this altarpiece was about of a size with that just considered, and sufficiently related in style to warrant consideration in this chapter. Passavant mentions the altarpiece in his account of the art treasures of Barcelona; 24 at that time it was apparently still in one of the chapels of the cloister; on scant evidence, this author believed the retablo to be a work of the sixteenth century. 25 Outside of this brief mention, no other literary or documentary record of this painting exists.26 It was

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moved to the Sala Capitular from its place in the cloisters in i888.*7 The retable consists of eleven panels, including those of the predella and the doors. The subjects of the paintings are as follows: in the central panel are painted large-sized figures of the patrons of medicine, and above them a representation of the Madonna and Child surrounded by angels; to the left, and reading from the top down, we find the Saints Healing a Sick Woman,28 and below, the scene of the denying of the idol Adrian in the presence of the provost Lysias; opposite the Healing of the Sick Woman, the saints are being flogged before their persecutor; in the last panel of the altarpiece proper another trial is in progress; as El Greco, in the Spolio, suggests the coming torment of Christ by the man drilling the nail holes in the Cross, so in this panel the artist implies the coming ordeal by fire in the activity of the men carrying bundles of faggots. The first panel of the predella is devoted to the final martyrdom of the two saints, while the centre of the bancal is, according to custom, given over to a painting of Christ erect in the tomb supported by angels. To the right of this panel we find the popular legend of the sainted doctors replacing a patient's festered leg by that of a dead negro. On the two doors below and on each side of the predella are pictured St. Acisclus and St. Sebastian; in the case of the former, I, like Passavant, applied for information to the canonigo, who was able to identify this abstruse figure as a saint of purely local (Catalan) renown; both Acisclus and Sebastian are dressed in the height of fashion and each one carries a scroll as a means of identification. St. [79]

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Iscle, or Acisclus, of Cordoba enjoyed particular veneration in Catalonia, owing to the fact that his relics were brought to San Salvador de Breda by the Viscount de Cabrera at the time of the Moorish invasion.2» Acisclus and his sister Victoria were children of noble blood — but "more sainted than noble," says the martyrologium, since they were the offspring of St. Marcellus the Centurion. The story of their martyrdom, which came under Diocletian, is the usual one of refusal to bow down to the idols, and the subsequent series of torments. After they had been roasted on a grill and thrown into the river with millstones about their necks, the saints were finally dispatched by the knife. Our Lord and a whole troupe of angels intervened frequently to discountenance the tormentors until Dionysus, the Prefect, finally suspected Acisclus and his sister of magic. When Acisclus' throat was cut there came forth roses instead of blood. He is specially invoked against hail, tempests, and excessive drought. His presence in the retable of St. Cosmas and St. Damian is difficult to explain, and must be due to some personal association of the donor's.30 The resemblance between the figures of the saints in the large central panel and the likenesses of St. Catherine and St. Clara are, I believe, apparent at first glance. We recognize the familiar drapery arrangement in long, undulating folds, an arrangement traceable to the "Manner of Guimerä." The characteristic downcast eyes are repeated here, as is the sober tonality, black and white for Cosmas, black, faded scarlet, and white for Damian. Another convincing link in the relation of these panels is that the embossing of the gold background be[80]

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hind St. Clara and her companion — an unusual pattern, of sprigs of blossoms — is identical with that of the Cosmas and Damian painting. As in the altarpiece of Clara and Catherine, I can see two hands at work, although in this case the collaboration is less distinctly separable. Almost certainly the central panel is by the painter of the large figures of the Foix-Cabrera retable — in other words, the young Huguet. In added proof of this, I call attention to the resemblance between St. Damian (right) in this panel and in the Tarrassa predella. In like manner the Deposition repeats the type of Christ encountered in the predella of the same altarpiece, while the angels are reminiscent of the Holy Women in the Mourning over the Body. It seems fairly evident that the second painter can be identified with the author of the side pieces of the Cabrera retable. Their common denominator is Pere Huguet, the artist of the Julitta and Quiricus panels; for instance, the executioner in the Trial of the Saints and the flogger in the scene of flagellation are both recognizable figures drawn from the painting in the Diocesan Museum. Another familiar character — from the Master of St. George's repertory — is the proconsul in the execution scene; as a matter of fact, he is even more reminiscent of Joseph of Arimathea in the predella of the Catherine and Clara retablo. Perhaps the most extraordinary feature of the whole altarpiece is the one-legged executioner in the butchery scene, a curious error which we have already seen repeated in the predella at Tarrassa and in the Martyrdom of St. Julitta and her child. The composition is more crowded than that of

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the Tarrassa retable since the panel is considerably narrower in proportion; otherwise the arrangement is identical: the Emperor and his councillors are at the left supervising the knifing of the two saints, who kneel in the right half of the picture. On a hill at the right is a castle, with two turrets, that resembles the buildings with which Huguet used to fill his backgrounds, notably in the retable of the Constable. A curious bit of iconography lies in the fact that one of the martyrs is represented wearing a mitre. The proconsul, dressed in rich brocade, has already been commented on. In contrast to the slender nudes of the Tarrassa predella, the figures of the two saints are squatter, more nearly approaching the canon of proportion in the retable of Julitta and Quiricus. Another difference is that the martyrs have light hair, gathered into a sort of chignon in back in the style affected by St. Cosmas in the Tarrassa panel.31 Another subject found in the altar of Abdon and Sennen is duplicated here in the Miracle of the Leg, which, like the Martyrdom scene, is proportionately narrower, so that we do not see the episode of severing the dead blackamoor's leg. The composition in both panels is strikingly similar, even to the discarded leg, which lies at the foot of the bed in exactly the same position. As a type the patient is closely related to the likeness of the young Dimas in the altarpieces of the Constable and of the Retailers. The figure of Christ in the Deposition reproduces in all respects the type employed in the predella of the Cabrera retable, while the angels who support His body recall the Three Marys in the Mourning over the Body. The scene in which the saints denounce the Idol before Lysias ap[82]

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proximates in composition the same subject as treated in the altarpiece of St. Vincent of Sarriä. In this panel, as in all the others in which they are fully clothed, the martyrs wear caps or bonnets of the variety affected by Dirk Bouts' people and by so many characters in the authenticated works of Huguet. The composition of the Virgin and Child with Angels bears a certain resemblance to a picture of the same subject in the Muntadas Collection, and may also have been inspired by Dalmau's Madonna; an iconographical peculiarity is seen in the angels, who wear the same kind of bonnets as the martyrs and their persecutors in the scenes below. So badly faded are the panels of this altarpiece that it is impossible to give any sort of judgment on the colors, save to say that flesh tones are all uniformly greyish, as in the figures of the Julitta and Quiricus altar. Since I ascribed the painting of St. Catherine and her pendant, St. Clara, to the young Huguet I have no hesitation in attributing to him also the figures of Sts. Cosmas and Damian. Furthermore, I see his hand, in collaboration, in the various scenes which frame the central panel; the Huguet characteristics in type and composition have already been pointed out. As I have also indicated, it is fairly certain that Pere Huguet had a hand in the painting; the melange of the traits of this painter and his son, and perhaps of a third hand as well, presupposes, I believe, the existence of a large atelier in which works were produced in collaboration and in which Jaume received his early training; this theory would serve to explain the many intangible Huguet characteristics in the altarpieces of [83]

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this early period, altarpieces which cannot be attached in toto to Jaume himself. T o the works of this period, and forming a perfectly definite group, belong the retablos of St. Quiricus from Tarrassa, and of Sts. Catherine, Clara, Cosmas, and Damian from the Cathedral of Barcelona; all of these works are related stylistically, as we have seen; for the proof of their emergence from the same shop it is well to reiterate the relation in the patterns of the gold backgrounds. From this group of paintings there emerges directly the altarpiece of Sts. Abdon and Sennen, which is perhaps the first work which can be said to be entirely by the master's hand. In fixing a date for the retable of the doctor saints we are aided by a number of contemporary documents referring to the chapel of Sts. Cosmas and Damian and to its benefactor. This chapel, which is on the side of the cloisters adjoining the Cathedral, was until 1445 dedicated to St. Severus, bishop and martyr; on M a y 4 of that year it was formally made over to Francesch Desplä, a member of the Council of Barcelona. 32 Between the year 1441 and his death in 1455 there are numerous references to him in the documents, usually on the occasions when Johan de Maella, the official messenger of the Council, was dispatched in hot haste to fetch Mossenyor from his country site at Vallbona della Trinitat; 3 3 in 1447 Despla made his will providing for a sepulchre in the chapel; 34 after November 30, 1451, when he was elected to the Council, there is no further mention of his participation in the activities of that body. Four years later, under Friday, November 2.8, we find the last brief entry in the record, " L o dit die fou soterrat al [84]

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Monastirde preycadors lo honorable mossenyor Ffrancesch dez Pia ciutada de Barchinoma." 35 Whether he was ever laid to rest in the chapel of Cosmas and Damian we have no way of telling, since all the bones in the cloister chapels were moved into the Cathedral in the seventeenth century;36 at least there is a sepulchral inscription confirming the date of his demise.37 I believe that the retable was certainly begun almost immediately after the consecration of the chapel in 1445; it must certainly have been completed by 1452, the year that Despla retired from public life at the expiration of his term as councillor. This date is supported, I believe, by the stylistic evidence, which has already been treated at length. I N F L U E N C E OF L U I S

DALMAU

I have already alluded to a possible relationship between Pere Huguet and Dalmau. It is now time to take up the whole problem of Dalmau's retable of the Concelleres and its possible connection with the Madonna Enthroned in the Muntadas Collection in Barcelona. Although Dalmau, at the time when the Concelleres were looking for a painter to make their altarpiece, was the best artist that could be found, he seems to have had no active part in the training of Jaume Huguet. He was, however, not entirely without influence on Huguet: certainly his vigorous portraiture is reflected in the individualized heads of Jaume's personages. It may be that, on the one occasion when Pere Huguet employed a naturalistic background, in the retable of Sts. Julitta and Quiricus, he was following timidly in the steps of Dalmau.

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Before going on to discuss the Madonna Enthroned of the Muntadas Collection, which has been attributed to Jaume Huguet and shows more than a superficial resemblance to the Madonna of the Concelleres, I shall summarize briefly the more telling characteristics of Dalmau's one authenticated work. Among the elements that Dalmau borrowed from the van Eycks are first of all the musical angels at the back, which he had taken singly and in groups from the choir of the Ghent altarpiece. The setting, throne, screen, and all, though refurbished with Catalan architectural elements, is another creation of the Flemings. Bertaux has pointed out the resemblance of the Virgin and the Christ Child to the Madonna and Child of the van der Paele altar in the Bruges Gallery.38 The Virgin, whom Dalmau has made a Spanish type, is only slightly less ugly than her Flemish prototype. Again, the portraits of the Councillors, even to the fixed stare of the eyes, are based on such van Eyckian models as the Man with a Pink. Dalmau did not take over the van Eycks' oil technique; he preferred to work in the traditional tempera manner of his own country. A characteristic of his altarpiece which I do not believe has been noted heretofore is the resemblance of the subdued color scheme to that of the Flemish tapestries which form the background for the picture where it hangs in the Barcelona Museum. This would seem to bear out Sanpere's remarks on the imitation of tapestries by the painters of the Catalan School.39 The Virgin Enthroned with Angels (Fig. 14) in the Muntadas Collection was apportioned by Sanpere to Pau Vergos and suggested as a possible work of Jaume Huguet's by Folch i

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Torres. 40 I t is apparent at first glance that the picture owes much to Dalmau's Virgen de los Concelleres·. the elaborate Baroque Gothic throne, the rood screen as a frame for the picture in back, the angels, like the choristers, grouped behind it, the crumpled folds of the Virgin's gown, and, to a certain extent, the types of the Virgin and Child.41 I cannot agree with Sanpere when he claims to see in the Virgin a complete resemblance to the Madonna in Jaume Huguet's retable for the Constable of Portugal; nor can I see the suggested resemblance to the St. Lucy of the Retailers altarpiece. The manner of drawing the eyes and mouth vaguely suggests the style of the Vergos, although I suspect that the rather dry, mechanical appearance of the draughtsmanship is the fault of the heavy-handed restorer. 42 The angels at the back are extremely suggestive of the types of Memling and van der Goes, whereas in the effigy of the angel presenting a lily I cannot help but be reminded of the art of the Master of Moulins; the tender and expressive gesture, the very type of hand with the long, sensitive fingers, point to the influence of the Franco-Flemish School. The composition as a whole is related to the pinnacle of the retable of Sts. Cosmas and Damian in the Sala Capitular, a work which may itself have been inspired by the altar of the Councillors. Since there are no photographs of the Cosmas and Damian retablo available for comparison, I am obliged to trust to my notes in stating that the types of the angels are "distinctly similar" to those in the Muntadas panel. Again, the members of the celestial choir in the latter picture are related to the troops of seraphs who receive the souls of the martyrs in the [87]

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retable of Sts. Julitta and Quiricus; in the guise of virgin martyrs, the same angels attend the deathbed of St. Clara in the retable dedicated to her and St. Catherine in the Sala Capitular. There are further analogies to the style of the Huguets: in spite of restoration, the Madonna does bear a family likeness to the Virgins of the altars pertaining to the Retailers and to the Constable of Portugal; her closest relative, however, is the St. Julitta of the Diocesan Museum, an altarpiece which I have already established as a work of Pere Huguet's; the upper lefthand prophet is none other than the priest who, at the left in one of the side panels of the retable of Sts. Catherine and Clara witnesses the marriage of St. Catherine. In the complicated folds of the drapery in the Madonna's dress we are reminded of the arrangement of St. Julitta's robe in the Diocesan Museum retable. The engraved floral design on the gold background is identical in this picture, in the altarpiece of Sts. Julitta and Quiricus, and in the side panels of the altar of Sts. Catherine and Clara which have been discussed as works by Pere Huguet; the figuration of the haloes, a practice we do not encounter in the works of Jaume Huguet, is analogous to the oak-leaf pattern in the nimbi of St. Julitta in the central panel and of the angelic attendants at her death in the altar of the Diocesan Museum. With this mass of evidence, it would seem almost axiomatic to attribute the painting in the Muntadas Collection to Pere Huguet, possibly with the help of assistants. Which parts should be assigned directly to Pere and which to his helpers, including Jaume,43 seems impossible as well as unprofitable to decide.

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The date of the painting could not be before 1445, the year in which Dalmau's altarpiece was unveiled; I would place the picture between 1445 and 1450 from its close relation to Dalmau's work and to the retable of Sts. Julitta and Quiricus. T H E R E T A B L E OF C H R I S T AND THE V I R G I N AT

ALCOVER

At Alcover, a town of Arab foundation some ten miles northwest of Tarragona, is a much damaged retable that belongs to the aggregation of pictures just considered.44 The altarpiece is housed in the now abandoned church of Sta. Maria de la Sangre, access to which, as Baedecker would say, may be had by finding the custodian, who at the time of the author's visit was also the mayor. Over a lateral altar opposite the entrance of the church are panels of the Crucifixion and the Death of the Virgin; these are detached portions of the retablo mayor that is still in place. The iconography follows exactly the arrangement of the altar of the Constable of Portugal, and so we find represented the Annunciation, Nativity, Epiphany, Resurrection, Ascension, and Pentecost, in addition to the two panels mentioned before. In panels adjacent to the former central compartment are four effigies of saints, seated: Sts. Mary Magdalene, John the Evangelist, Clara, and a fourth figure no longer recognizable. The composition of the Crucifixion (Fig. 15) is crowded, to say the least, with the figures of the Holy Women and the Roman soldiery forming a solid mass in the lower half of the picture. The lances of the centurions, silhouetted against the gold background, recall that ancestor of Velazquez' Surrender

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of Breda, the panel of St. George Dragged to Execution in the Louvre, although in the present instance the arrangement is by no means so interesting. The densely packed crowd, a favorite device of the early Catalan painters, reminds me of the composition of such late products of the school of the Master of St. George as the Crucifixion panel in the retable of the Transfiguration in the Sala Capitular of Barcelona Cathedral. The figures of Christ and the two thieves are most nearly analogous to those in the retable of Sts. Catherine and Clara; by the same token, the type of the Crucified is the same in the altarpiece of Julitta and Quiricus. The Virgin and Mary the wife of Cleofas are Huguet's familiar types, and Mary Magdalene, at the foot of the Cross, again is closely related to the corresponding figure in the Cabrera altar. All of the female types here, in comparison to those in Huguet's other works, are more etherealized, much in the same way as Simone Martini's people were rendered exquisite and perverse by his artistic descendants Sassetta and Giovanni di Paolo. The soldiers in this panel, with their prominent noses and staring eyes, remind me, as do details of the armor, of the types employed by the painter of an altarpiece of St. John Evangelist at Palau del Vidre. The resemblance is so striking — compare, for example, the Crucifixion at Alcover with the Betrayal in the Palau altar (Fig. 18) — that actual collaboration must be presupposed. That the painter was a follower of Huguet rather than of the Master of St. George is apparent not only in his types but also in the handling of drapery and space composition. Another striking [90]

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similarity exists between the design of the gold background of the altar at Alcover and the work in Rousillion. The painting of the Death of the Virgin (Fig. 16), in which the composition of the Constable's altar has been reversed, more closely approximates that of a fragment in the Diocesan Museum attributed elsewhere to the Vergos atelier.45 Although the type of the Virgin and certain of the Apostles recall definite stock figures of the Huguet repertory, others are again more closely related to those of the Palau painter, as in his painting of St. John raising Drusiana. The composition of the Annunciation is, like the treatment of this subject in the altar of 1465, derived from the van Eyck cartoon. In this painting, the faces of Mary and her angelic visitor are again of the rarified, one might almost say pinched, type that I have already mentioned. In the Nativity, which like the other panels follows fairly closely the iconography of the altar of the Constable, is a choir of angels singing that recalls the similar group of choristers in the Madonna of the Muntadas Collection. The Epiphany again approximates that of the central panel of the retable of Dom Pedro. The presence of the Madonna at the Resurrection (Fig. 17) is the survival of an iconography confined almost entirely to the atelier of the Serras; this motive is perhaps derived from the suggestion given in the Legenda Aurea that Christ would naturally appear first to His mother. Such an event is chronicled in the apocryphal gospel of St. Bartholomew, and is likewise stressed by St. Ambrose. The appearance of the oratory in which the Virgin is housed in this picture, as in the paintings [9O

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of the Serra atelier, suggests a probable origin in the miracle plays. The figure of Christ rising from the front is almost completely ruined, and other portions have suffered to a considerable extent. Certainly the figures of the soldiers in their sprawling attitudes of repose are as fine as anything the fifteenth century produced in Spain. The turbaned head of the warrior at the right is suggestive in its powerful conception of the Oriental portraits of Rembrandt. All that is left of the figure of Christ, the drapery of His robe, has a beauty in the arrangement of the folds that reminds us of the linear refinement of the Sung artists in China. Although at first I was inclined to believe that the retable was by Huguet himself, 46 1 think it unquestionable that whole sections of the work, such as the crowd in the Crucifixion and the Epiphany, are by Pere Huguet or the Palau del Vidre master. From the resemblance to paintings by the former I would place this work in the period 1445-50. The presence of the heavily embossed background, perhaps, would suggest a later date, I believe the stylistic evidence is in favor of a date before the middle of the century. It should be remarked that the use of the embossed work in gold must have started shortly after the year 1450, since we already have fully developed examples of this manner in the retable of St. Michael (1456) and in the altar of the Constable (1465). W O R K S OF P E R E H U G U E T

I

I propose to take up briefly at this point a number of paintings that belong to the immediate circle of Pere Huguet. The [ 9 2 ]

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Musee des Arts Decoratifs in Paris possesses a small panel (Fig. 19) representing the ordination of a Dominican saint, — according to the label St. Vincent Ferrer, — although there is no particular reason to suppose that he is the saint represented. A certain pertness in the faces as well as a superficial resemblance in subject and composition to other paintings of the Jacomart circle led Bertaux to attribute this panel to the Valencian; 47 it is under this attribution that it now hangs in the Spanish Room of the museum. It is not difficult to see, however, that the real parentage of the painting is to be sought not in Jacomart but in the master of the altar of Sts. Catherine and Clara, Pere Huguet. Clearly in composition and types the closest relation exists between this picture and the panel of the Profession of St. Clara in the altarpiece of the Sala Capitular; the grouping of the figures around the principal personage is practically identical. The heads of almost all the dramatis personae may be found repeated in the retable of Julitta and Quiricus; the faces of the Dominicans are of the round, dimpled type that characterize the figures in Pere Huguet's chief work. I suggest especially a comparison of the heads of the women at the left with the female types in the altar of Catherine and Clara and with St. Julitta of the Diocesan Museum retable. The design of the gold back of the altarpiece that appears in the panel under consideration is, as one would expect, very similar to the patterns employed by Pere in his other works. A final point in support of an attribution to this master is the pale, almost greyish, tonality of the flesh parts. Four panels in the Bosch Collection in the Prado with scenes [93]

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from the legend of St. Sebastian, although somewhat crude in execution, are also quite obviously in the style of the painter we have come to call Pere Huguet. The events represented are St. Sebastian Exhorting Marcus and Marcellianus to Martyrdom, 48 St. Sebastian and Polycarp Destroying the Idols (Fig. 20), St. Sebastian's martyrdom by arrows, and his final execution by being clubbed to death before Diocletian. The piquant treatment of the unusual events in the story reminds us of the invention displayed in the portrayal of the scenes from the lives of Julitta and her son; most of the types are unmistakably those of Pere Huguet; also familiar is the characteristic of the curiously squinting eyes of the personages. Among Mayer's attributions to Jaume Huguet is a panel of the Resurrection in the Scholtz-Hermensdorff Collection.49 When I first saw this picture (in reproduction) I was inclined to dismiss it as merely another work " in the manner of Jaume," but a closer inspection has convinced me that we may have a rare work by the master in his early period, or a painting by the " M a s t e r of St. Quiricus," Pere Huguet. When Jaume treated this subject in the retable of the Constable he was already a mature artist; the improvement over the panel under consideration is obvious. In the Resurrection of 1465 we no longer see the lofty horizon of the International Style; in both, however, the artist has avoided the problem of painting the sarcophagus at an angle by setting it squarely across the picture. In the altar of the Constable, the postures of the sleeping soldiers are rendered with considerably more conviction. If we compare the equipment of the warriors in this panel with the

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gear of the sleepers in the Scholtz-Hermensdorff painting, we shall see that it is from the same armory. Pikes, halberds, mailed epaulets, and helmets are all strikingly similar. It may be noted that the variety of the weapons in these two works is much greater than in the military scene in the later retable of the Transfiguration at Tortosa. Further than this it would be difficult to carry the comparison, except to say that the drapery of Christ in both paintings is distinctly similar. The nearest relatives of the soldiers — that is, as far as facial resemblance goes — are the ruffians who maltreat St. Julitta and her son in the altarpiece of the Diocesan Museum. Christ and the two soldiers represented awake squint out of the corners of their eyes, a mannerism that was noted in the dramatis personae of the retable of St. Julitta. The tiny angel who seems so inadequate for the task of lifting the lid of the tomb resembles the member of the celestial choir in the retable by Pere Huguet. Another general trade mark of the Huguet atelier might be discerned in the two tall cypresses that figure in the distant landscape. In my opinion, the internal evidence presented unquestionably gives this painting to Pere rather than to Jaume Huguet. Probably it was painted at about the same time as the retable of Sts. Julitta and Quiricus, that is, about the year 1445.

IX T H E HUGUET-VERGOS QUESTION AND T H E RETABLE OF ST. AUGUSTINE SSSBSeSSEFORE considering Jaume's later works, we must |jj Τ δ Hj determine his relation to the various members of the j | JLJ) jj| Vergos family with whose works those of Huguet ^ ^ ^ ^ have been and still are confused. The first of this dynasty of painters was Jaume Vergos, called " t h e first" by Sanpere to distinguish him from his son, Jaume I I . Jaume I is a shadowy personality whom we know only from documents ending in the year 1460. The younger Jaume is also documented from 1459 to 1503, and Pau, his son, is known to have been active in 1492 and to have died three years later; another son, Rafael, died in either 1500 or 1503. Of him I shall have more to say in the chapter dealing with Huguet's follower, Gabriel Guardia. An important date in the history of the Vergos is M a y 1 1 , 1493, when Pau contracted to paint a retable of St. Anthony for the Wool-combers Guild (Perayres); in the contract was interpolated the clause, " E s concordat que, si 50 es que Deu no vulle, lo dit Pau Vergos moria ans que lo retaule sie fos acabat es fara per perits una liquidacio de lo que haura fet y cobrat." 1 Unfortunately Pau did die before the completion of the work, and so, in a document of the year 1495, we

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may read, " veent lo dit Pau Vergos que havia a fer la dita obra del dit retaule esser defunct e per consequencia se age haver altre OBRER qui acab la dita obra, es stat concordat que en Rafael Vergos, pintor, germä del dit Pau Vergos, acap e emprenya la dita obra, etc." 2 This retable presumably was lost in a civic disturbance in 1714, similar to that responsible for the loss of the Escolapios altar in 1909.3 It further appears from a document of March 4, 1500, that Jaume II and Rafael were obliged to finish a retable for the church of Granollers which Pau had also left incomplete at his death. 4 This, of course, was the retable of St. Stephen that was finally acquired by the Barcelona Museum in 1915. 5 This altarpiece, now disassembled, comprised at least six scenes from the legend of the Proto-martyr. If we may base our reconstruction on the altar of St. Stephen at L a Garriga, which will be discussed in a later chapter, the panel of the saint's exaltation occupied the central portion. 6 T h e narrative panels must have been ranged on either side of this central compartment. The episodes chosen for representation are the birth of the saint and the demon's substituting a baby imp for the infant martyr, the ordination of the saint as deacon, the miraculous invention of the body, his delivery of the Lords of Pinos from prison, and a scene of exorcism at his tomb. The panel of St. Stephen's martyrdom has been lost. There survive three episodes of the Passion from the predella and the painting of the Crucifixion that must have surmounted the central section. The guardapolvos with painted busts of prophets are also preserved. We may catalogue certain very easily recognizable traits [97]

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common to all the panels of this retable, traits that must be studied in order to unravel the tremendously complicated question of the relations between Huguet and the Vergos family. In the first place there is about all the figures, especially notable of course in the hands and faces, a certain hard quality that gives them the appearance of wooden statues rather than of actual persons of flesh and blood. The features are all very much generalized, and invariably are accented in certain definite places; the eyelids are always indicated by deeply incised lines with the lachrymal gland specially emphasized; the pupils are rolling upward, giving the eyes a peculiarly fishy look; another characteristic is the separate drawing of each hair in the eyebrows; there is also a predilection shown for curly hair, which is likewise over-meticulously delineated. Perhaps most characteristic of all is the type of mouth, which is repeated again and again for men and women alike, not only in the narrative panel but also in the gigantic heads of the prophets in the guardapolvos: the upper lip is rather straight and longer than the lower one, which is oval in shape and drooping. Almost always there is a carefully marked depression between mouth and chin.7 The assumption, doubtless justified, that Pau was the star performer of the atelier has led almost every critic to attribute to his hand the four gigantic heads of prophets that adorned the guardapolvos of the altarpiece (Fig. 21). Encased in metal as they are, these powerful characterizations manage — to their great credit — to dominate this unfortunately elaborate setting. In strength of modelling, in solidity and majesty of con-

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ception, Catalan painting has no greater monument to offer, either in this century or any other. Sanpere very justly has compared the Moses to Slüter's sculptured prophet at Dijon, the David to that powerful Veronica attributed to Bermejo in the museum at Vich.8 The difference in quality between these panels and the rest of the retable is notable at once. In this part of the work, the author is unable to see more than two hands, presumably those of Jaume II and his remaining son, Rafael; the assigning of certain sections to Rafael and of others to Jaume II will be merely a convenient classification, since there is no certain means of determining which style belongs to either of the two artists. I assume, however, from the frequency with which his name occurs in documents, that Rafael was the more highly esteemed of the two painters. For this reason I assign to him the three most satisfactory panels of the ensemble. These are the Crucifixion (Fig. 22) and the two best pictures in the predella, the Last Supper and the Agony in the Garden. These three show a uniformity of style not only in the repetition of types, as that of Christ, but in the peculiar stiff and chunky folds of drapery, and the manner of drawing eyes and mouths. Rafael's type of drapery, it is to be noted, is very similar to that employed by the German School of Cologne. The style of the other five panels is dry, stiff, and rather dull. Though there is a perfectly obvious resemblance to Rafael's work in the heads of personages, the hand of Jaume II is betrayed by its feebler modelling and by a perfectly distinct mannerism of broken-up and crinkly folds of drapery which [99]

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may be seen in the maid's headdress in the abduction scene, in the folds of Stephen's garment in the Glorification, and, coming from the sublime to the ridiculous, in the seat of the sitting Arab's trousers in the panel of the Liberation of the Lords of Pinos! To the author's way of thinking, then, to " J a u m e I I " belong the following panels: St. Stephen exchanged for a Baby Demon by the Evil One (Fig. 23), the Invention of St. Stephen's Body, the Ordination of St. Stephen, the Glorification of St. Stephen, Exorcism at the Tomb of St. Stephen, and the Delivery of the Lords of Pinos. 9 Also by this hand is the Way to Calvary that formed part of the predella. Forming, as it were, a tall, narrow compartment attached to the panel of the Ordination of St. Stephen, is the sequel to the story in the abduction. In this subsidiary picture, a doe is kneeling before the infant Stephen, whom it has just brought to the doorstep of a monastery. An inmate of the establishment stands on the threshhold in amazement at the miracle; in the upper right-hand corner, the discomfited devil is flying away with his rightful offspring. The drawing suggests the freer style of Huguet, as the bearded monk recalls the type employed by Jaume for old men in general. This picture may well have been painted by the assistant who did the St. Bonaventure, formerly in the Voss Collection at Berlin, that will be studied in connection with the work of Huguet's atelier. I have been unable to find the literary sources for any of the scenes from the early life of St. Stephen, although the popularity of these apocryphal incidents from his legend in the painting of Catalonia and Italy suggests that their telling might [ 100]

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be found in some popular work on iconography. It almost seems as though some local folk-tale of a changeling or Wechselbalg remarkably saved by a doe had been interpolated into the story of the Proto-martyr. The scenes representing the substitution of the baby demon for St. Stephen and of the latter's rescue by the doe are to be seen in an altarpiece attributed to Martino di Bartolommeo in the Staedel Institut at Frankfurt; there is a further episode represented in this series in which the false infant is detected and burned.10 The story of the liberation of the Lords of Pinos is never represented in the Italian versions of St. Stephen's legend and must be considered as a posthumous miracle of purely local interest." To point out by other than the proofs already given that the Granollers retable is the work of the Vergos family without the collaboration of Huguet, a partnership Mayer would suggest in Thieme-Becker," seems superfluous. However, for the sake of lending final conviction to the above statements, I shall summarize here the excellent and irrefutable deduction of Folch i Torres.13 Taking the painting of the Crucifixion, which, with the Exorcism, was singled out by Mayer as a work by Huguet, we move towards the solution of the problem. If the differences in technique and documentary proof were not enough, it may be proved by actual comparison of photographs that, whereas the figures of Christ and Mary Cleofas are identical in the documented retables of Abdon and Sennen and of the Constable, they have little resemblance to the same characters in the Granollers retable. The same may be said of the two thieves and the figure of St. John. A careful study of the [ ΙΟΙ ]

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figures in the scene of exorcism show them to be but hard and mediocre copies of Huguet's version of the scene in the retable of Anthony Abbot, a lost work that will be considered in a later chapter. With the characteristics of the Vergos family well in mind we are now ready to consider the altarpiece of St. Augustine, formerly belonging to the Tanners Guild (Blanquers) and now lodged in the Museo del Parque in Barcelona. The retable was originally housed in the church of the Augustinian fathers of Barcelona, where it remained until the destruction of that edifice in the seventeenth century. A document of 1452, which we shall study presently, tells us that in return for the magnificent embellishment of the chapel the Augustinians were to say a weekly Friday mass for the members of the guild. Whether the altarpiece was transferred to the new Augustinian church before it was relegated to the guild house is immaterial. Suffice it to say that the centuries have not been kind to this great work of art; a large number of its panels have been lost and some of those remaining are in a sorry state. Tradition has it that several of them were injured by the brutality of Napoleon's soldiery. The six surviving parts of the retable were attributed by both Sanpere and Bertaux to the atelier of the Vergos and particularly to the hand of Pau. This was the almost universal critical opinion until Folch i Torres published a document which, were it not for certain dissimilarities in the technique of the panels, would give all six of them to Jaume Huguet. 14 Since the discovery of this document further records have 1102]

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emerged from the archives, records that enable us to trace the history of the altarpiece from the ground up. 15 The first of these documents, from July 20, 1452, is the contract given by the members of the guild to the carpenter Macia Bonafe for the actual construction of the retable. T h a t Macia was more than a mere joiner we shall see very shortly. It is stipulated in the commission that the altarpiece was to rest on a stone base, with doors on either side leading to the sacristy. In the central compartment of the reredos itself was to be placed a statue of St. Augustine, already owned by the guild, and above this, in another niche, a figure of the Madonna, which Macia Bonafe was ordered to fashion himself. A t the lower extremity of each of the vertical guardapohos he was to carve the heraldic lions of the guild. For the work of constructing the retable, the carpenter-sculptor was promised four hundred lliures. T h a t the guildsmen were somewhat negligent in upholding their end of the bargain is manifest in a further document of April 26, 1456, when Macia complained that, although the altarpiece was finished and ready for the painter, he himself had received only two hundred of the eight hundred florins owed him. There has been a great deal of conjecture as to the actual dimensions of the retable in its original state. Traditionally believed to have contained some sixteen panels, it has now been rather convincingly expounded by Sr. Duran i Sanpere that the original number of compartments was thirteen. 16 His conclusions are based on the information furnished by the documents that the whole altarpiece was to be sixty palms, or 12.10 metres, in width, and on the further record that the effigies in the cen[ 103]

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tral compartments were to be flanked by four panels devoted to episodes from the life of the titular saint. Given the dimensions of the surviving panels and the width of the original retable, the distinguished critic has shown that there were probably four paintings in each zone of the altar, and that, although no mention is made of the height of the reredos, in order to preserve a decent proportion the altar would have been in three tiers with the customary Crucifixion, making a fourth tier above the sculptured effigy of the Virgin. Thus, with the four predella panels which are specifically mentioned in a later document, the retable would have comprised seventeen paintings in all, exclusive of the guardapolvos and the figures of saints on the sacristy doors. The appearance of the altarpiece based on this reconstruction is well illustrated in the cut which I have reproduced from Sr. Duran's article (Fig. 24). The arrangement suggested by the Catalan critic is corroborated by a rather unusual piece of evidence. In a contract made in 1489 by the painters Miguel Ximenez and Martin Bernat for the (lost) retable of the Augustinian church at Zaragoza, 17 it was suggested that they take as models for the scenes from the life of the saint the representations of the subjects in the altar belonging to the Order in Barcelona, in other words the retable which we now know as a work by Huguet. The description of the altarpiece states that it shall comprise six scenes from the life of Augustine on one side of the central effigy and six episodes from the legend of his mother on the opposite side. This, it is evident, corresponds with Sr. Duran's reconstruction; as we shall see when we consider the subjects of the surviving [ 104 ]

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panels from the Barcelona altar, only one of the six has to do with the life of St. Monica. In the Zaragoza retable, there was to be a painting of the Madonna and Angels between the central effigy and the Crucifixion instead of the polychrome statue of the Virgin that occupied this section of the altarpiece built by Macia Bonafe. From the fact that there were to be figures of Sts. Peter and Paul on the sacristy doors of the altarpiece at Zaragoza, we may surmise that these were the saints represented in the corresponding position in Huguet's retable.18 The Tanners had already thought of a painter for the retablo when they arranged for its construction; on the same July day in 1452, the guildsmen engaged Luis Dalmau to begin work as soon as the altarpiece had been built by Macia Bonafe. It was stipulated at the time that the carpenter was to fulfil his end of the bargain by Christmas of the following year. What took place between the occasion of Dalmau's undertaking the project and the year 1463, when the commission was finally given to Huguet, is difficult to determine. It seems odd, for example, that, although the retable was ready for painting in 1456, the following year found Dalmau busily engaged on an altarpiece of St. Cecilia for the town of Mataro, a project which kept him occupied until 1459. The painter was to receive eleven hundred lliures for his work, and yet on the day of the signing of the contract he was given but eleven lliures in down payment. The amount seems rather small in proportion to the sum of seventyfive lliures that he received as a first installment of the total two hundred and fifty lliures paid him for the altarpiece of the Councillors done in 1445. For a very plausible explanation I [105]

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am again indebted to the astute Sr. Duran, who has decided that the eleven lliures given Dalmau in 1452 were simply to bind the bargain and that, for reasons unknown, he received no further payment, did no actual work on the altarpiece. The only other item of interest in the contract of 145a is the stipulation that the gilding of the frame of the retable was to be done in the same manner as that of the earlier painting for the city fathers. The most complete and elaborate of all the documents having to do with this retable is the contract with Jaume Huguet that dates from December 4, 1463.19 The price to be paid for the work was the same as was offered to Dalmau eleven years earlier. The painter received one hundred and ten lliures on February 1, 1464, and the same amount on July 1 of the same year; thereafter he was to draw fifty-six lliures every Christmas until the full amount had been paid. The specifications for the actual painting are no less businesslike; first of all, the artist was instructed to paint the four panels of the predella with scenes from the Passion as conceived in a sketch that he had exhibited to the committee of the guild.20 This part of the altarpiece was to be ready by Christmas, 1466. Among his other duties was the painting of the figures of saints on the sacristy doors and the coloring of the statues that had been placed in the central compartments. The heraldic lions of the guild also were to be painted in their natural colors. Before beginning the actual painting, Huguet had to present the drawings of the compositions made directly on the panels for the approval of the guildsmen and a committee of two painters, one selected by [106]

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the guild, the other by Huguet. The artist was especially importuned to paint good heads and hands; a further injunction was that these portions were to be executed by Jaume himself. In so large an undertaking as this the head of the atelier would be expected to leave large portions of the work to assistants. All decisions as to the worth of the painting were left to the judgment of the two painters empowered to act in this capacity; in case of a disagreement between the judges, Macia Bonafe, the carpenter, was to act as arbiter, and in the event of Huguet's dying before the completion of the work these same men were to arrange with the painter's heirs for its completion. There was a further provision to the effect that if for any reason Huguet was unable to complete the altarpiece the painting should be finished at his expense. The artist was likewise bound to make any alterations that the committee might suggest. The painting of the retable was interrupted again, this time by an interval of twenty-three years, for it is not until November 29, i486, in one of the documents unearthed by Folch i Torres, that we find a mention of the payments to Huguet." A t this time the retable is spoken of as completed. The records of the transactions continue at irregular intervals through November 28 of the following year. There is a final and most official document of 1488 in which the representatives of the guild promise to pay two hundred lliures still owed the artist from the original sum — "per resta illarum Mille Centum librarum." 22 Apparently the first plan of payment was not adhered to, since in the records of the year 1487 we find that [ 107 ]

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Huguet was being given small installments of from four to twenty lliures. It will be remembered that the contract of 1463 called for a yearly payment of fifty-six lliures at Christmas. It is only possible to offer a few conjectures to explain the postponement of the painting of the altar after the signing of the first contract. For example, it might be supposed that the arrival of the Constable Dom Pedro six weeks after the drawing up of the agreement accounted for the interruption; in 1464 and 1465, Huguet was engaged in painting a retable for this royal patron, whose order would presumably have taken precedence over the arrangements made with the Tanners Guild.23 Financial reverses or lack of interest on the part of the guildsmen may also have led to the temporary abandonment of the project; there is no reason to suppose that Huguet was incapable of finishing the undertaking, since we have a record of his activities from 1466 to i486. As we shall see when we study the retable in detail, there is reason to believe that no actual painting was done until the years just before the date of the final settlement. We have, apparently, documents which would ordinarily give the execution of all six of the existing panels to Huguet himself. An examination of the most casual nature will convince us, however, that all six cannot be by the same hand. The striking dissimilarity in technique was noted by Sanpere, who ascribed four of the panels to Pau Vergos and the two remaining scenes to Jaume II and Rafael.24 What becomes apparent immediately on viewing the remains of this retable is [ 108]

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that the painting of the coronation of St. Augustine (Fig. 25) is by a different, more skillful hand than the other five. N o t only is the stamping of the gold background different, but also the figures are drawn with greater freedom and with consummate ease in space composition. Furthermore, the heads are all thoroughly individualized, and so finely painted as to leave no doubt but that of the six panels this is the authentic work of Huguet. The countenances show the subtle mingling of spiritual and earthly charm that is so peculiar to Huguet in all of his works. The study of some such Flemish master as Dirk Bouts seems manifest in such a figure as that of the sombre and emaciated cleric at the left. In the combination of the highly realistic heads and the decorative expanse of the brocade we have a final example of that dualism that had been a characteristic of the Catalan School since earliest times. The scene represented is one of solemn ecclesiastical splendor — the moment of awful import when the mitre is imposed upon the saintly brow. The gold background, far from robbing the scene of any realism, gives an impression of the blaze of lights when the church is in holiday attire. T h e glitter of the jewels and precious metals, — heavy, heavy vestments, — gold brocade and silks — all the wealth and power and glory of the church on earth are there. Only the sombre figure of the prelate at the left seems somewhat out of key with the solemnity and gorgeousness of the occasion. His enigmatic smile seems to denote a certain amusement at all this elaborate function. In type and dress he is a cura such as one may encounter in every Spanish village today. [ 109]

JAUME HUGUET The subjects represented in the five other paintings are St. Augustine Listening to St. Ambrose Preaching, the Conversion of Augustine's Mother, St. Monica, the Encounter with the Child, St. Augustine Washing the Feet of Christ, who appears as a pilgrim, and a scene in which St. Augustine denounces heretical books.25 It may be noted that in the first of these scenes St. Augustine, as yet unconverted, is represented without a halo. It is evident at once upon examining these panels that the style is analogous to that of the altar of St. Stephen by the Vergos family. In the scenes from the life of St. Augustine we find the same strangely wooden quality in the flesh tones, the same treatments of eyebrows and hair in separate strokes; the peculiarly Vergosian manner of drawing eyes and mouths is easily recognized. It is even possible to identify types that occur in both of these retablos\ the St. Monica in the panel of St. Ambrose preaching (Fig. 26), for example, is none other than the Mary Cleofas in the Crucifixion of the Granollers altarpiece. Likewise, the man who sits directly beneath the pulpit in the former scene — the one with the double-pointed beard — may be recognized in the person of the villainous appearing soldier in the lower right-hand corner of the Vergos Crucifixion. The Child in the episode by the seashore is a repetition of one of the angels that minister to Christ in Gethsemane in the predella of the St. Stephen retable. As a final proof of the intervention of the Vergos atelier in these portions of the Tanners altar, it may be added that the pattern of the background, derived from a velvet brocade, in these five panels of St. Augustine's life is a mere modification of that employed [no]

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in the retable from Granollers. In the contract of 1463, it was stipulated that Jaume was to draw the compositions of all the panels and that the heads and hands of all the personages represented were to be painted by the master himself. Occasionally, as in the alert and winning figure of the Child in the seaside incident, we find a detail worthy of Huguet. A study of the compositions, however, suggests that although they may have been planned by Huguet personally, certainly none of the painting, with the exception of the Coronation of St. Augustine, is by his hand. In this one panel, too, it does seem very possible that some member of the Vergos family may have had something to do with the painting of the saints on Augustine's robes; stylistically these figures compare very closely with those in the panels by Huguet's assistants.26 The fact that no member of the Vergos clan is spoken of in the documents is not unusual, since Huguet as impresario of the workshop would have had no reason to mention his apprentices in dealing with the patron. In writing of the lost Wool-combers retable begun by Pau Vergos, Sanpere cites the stipulation in the contract " q u e tots los brocats sien fets segon lo retaule de Sant Augusti major." Taking this as virtual proof that Pau painted the Augustine retable, he says, " A un gran pintor . . . de admirables brocados, no se le podia indicar la imitacion de unos brocados que no fueran suyos." 27 It seems to me that this may almost be taken as evidence of Pau's collaboration with Huguet, since certainly the former could take no offense at the injunction to imitate brocades which, in five out of the six panels surviving, may have been as much his as his master's. [ i n ]

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Ever since the discovery of the documents crediting Huguet with the panels of the St. Augustine altarpiece, critics have been hard put to it to account for the amazing improvement in monumentality and vigorous chiaroscuro over the slight and delicate painting of the Tarrassa retable. Mayer was the first to declare himself on this point: "Huguet musste eine ausserordentliche Entwicklung seit jenem Abdon y SenenAltarwerk erlebt haben." 28 M. Gabriel Rouches, whose volume adds but little to our information, suggests the influence of and the active collaboration of Pau Vergos.29 It is surprising how much influence the name of this painter has had on modern criticism of Catalan art. And yet we do not know of a single work that can definitely be called his; the heads of the Granollers Prophets — if they were done by Pau — were not begun until seven years after the completion of the Tanners altar, and so can scarcely be cited as precedents. Certainly the work of the rest of the Vergos family is clearly derived from Huguet and could have no reciprocal influence on him. Between the time that he painted the retable for Don Pedro of Portugal and the altar of St. Augustine, I believe that Huguet must undoubtedly have come in contact with the more robust art of Alfonso — of whom I have more to say in another chapter — and with the Neapolitan manner of Bartolome Bermejo, a painter who, in 1490, signed the Pieta of Canon Desplä that now moulders away in the Sala Capitular of Barcelona Cathedral. It is known by a document of October 7, i486, that at a meeting of the chapters of Sta. Maria de la Mar on that day it was decided to entrust the painting of the shutters of the organ [ I I I ]

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constructed by Johann Spin von Noyern (Spindelnoguer) to Jaume Huguet and Bermejo. 30 This is certainly an indication that Huguet and the Cordovan were highly esteemed as craftsmen. The fact that the two painters are mentioned together in such a document would seem to imply that they must have been acquainted; at least it would have been impossible for them to have been ignorant of each other's work. On another page, I note the superficial resemblance between Bermejo's portrait of Desplä and Simon the Cyrenean in Pau Vergos' W a y to Calvary in the collection of Dfia. Rosa Coronas. There is also a certain similarity between the former's conception of the St. Dominic Enthroned in the Prado and Huguet's St. Augustine in the coronation scene. In both paintings the saint is one of those severe idol-like figures that had always been favored by Spanish artists. The facial resemblance between St. Dominic and St. Augustine may be purely accidental; the advanced chiaroscuro of Huguet's last work, however, must undoubtedly be laid to the example of Bermejo. Whether the influence of Bermejo on Huguet was deeper than these observations would imply, it is impossible to say; I regard Bartolome, like Alfonso, as a member of the progressive school who, by his presence in Barcelona, forced Huguet and his fellows to take over the newer, more monumental style. 31 I conclude this chapter with a consideration of the W a y to Calvary in Dfia. Rosa Coronas' Collection (Fig. 27), which at various times has been suggested as forming the original of the Granollers predella panel.32 Its fineness in drawing and power in modelling, though suggesting the Coronation of St. Augus["3]

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tine, is actually far superior to this painting and any other we have studied. The developed style of chiaroscuro is nearer the technique of Bermejo, and, as we shall see, this is not the only point of contact with that master. That the painting is by some member of the Vergos family is clear at once from the type of drapery and from the telltale method of drawing the features — although in this picture instead of the usual types we have strongly individualized heads. The fact that the craftsmanship in composition and in handling is far better than anything Rafael or the two Jaumes have to offer brings us to the only possible conclusion, and that is that the painting is by the best performer in the workshop — the painter of the prophets in the retable of St. Stephen, Pau Vergos. The shape of the panel with its rounded top suggests that it must have formed the pinnacle of the retablo rather than part of the predella to which this subject was generally relegated.33 The contention that the panel may have been cut down at some time is of course unanswerable. My own theory would be that it formed part of the retable that Pau began for the Wool-combers, at the top of which, in place of the Crucifixion, he was ordered to paint the Procession of Corpus Christi. Sanpere had pointed out the striking resemblance between the Cyrenean and the portrait of Canon Desplä in Bermejo's Pietä.34 I can take no exception to this observation, and consider it likely that so distinguished a piece of portraiture as Bermejo's may well have haunted the minds of his contemporaries, who, wittlingly or unwittingly, produced a likeness of Despla's virile features in their own work. I can go further and ["4]

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point out the resemblance of the Christ to the Veronica attributed to Bermejo in the Museum of Vich; 35 the figure of the Virgin should be compared with the sorrowing Madonna in the Descent from the Cross.in the retable of St. Martin at Daroca 3 " and in another version of the same (lost) cartoon in the Museum of Zaragoza. 37 On account of the developed technique and the relation to the Bermejo Pieta this painting might be dated 1490 or slightly later.38 The fact that the stamp of the gold background is identical with that of no other extant retablo lends strength to the suggestion that we have here an isolated panel surviving from some lost work by Pau Vergos. 39 This is also consistent with my theory that the panel once formed a part of the Woolcombers work, which was interrupted by Pau's death in 1495. It is interesting to note in this painting the survival of the composition favored by the masters of the International Style; the soldier with a trumpet at the right also led the processions in the versions of this subject in the altar of St. Michael from Ciervoles and in Ortoneda's retable in the Tarragona Museum.

χ THE ALTARPIECE OF STA. MARIA DE LA MAR » « « » » » h e next documented work by Huguet that has sur» H P ® vived is the retable of Sta. Maria de la Mar, or rather H JL H what is left of it, three panels in the Cornelia Collec» « » » » » tion, and another formerly in the Sala Collection. Jaume contracted for this altarpiece on December 20, 147-; as has been noted, the condition of the document does not permit a reading of the last cipher of the date. 1 The retable was promised for " l a festa de Sant Barthomeu del mes dagost prop vinent." Since the receipt for final payment is dated M a y 15, 1480, Sanpere deducted that the retable must have been ready for the Feast of St. Bartholomew in August of the preceding year, 1479, and that therefore the date of the original contract could be fixed at December 2,0, 1478. 2 Of the fact that Petrus Huguet — " P e r e " — signed the receipt for " L X X V liuras quas fuit per salario et laboribus suis" I shall have more to say later. A factor that Sanpere failed to consider in computing the date of the original contract is that Friday fell on the twentieth of December only in 1471 and 1476 between the years 1470 and 148ο.3 Although, in consideration of the date of final payment, 1476 seems the more likely year for the work to have been begun, I personally favor the early reckoning, 1471, in view of the [116]

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unadvanced quality of the painting in comparison with the retable of the Constable that was finished in 1465. The length of time sometimes required by the painters of this time to fulfill their contracts has already been illustrated by the example of the altar of St. Augustine in the last chapter. Before going on to discuss the Cornelia triptych I shall dismiss what at first may seem a rather disquieting revelation made by Sr. Bassegoda in his work on Sta. Maria de la Mar. The author tells us that in the course of renovating the Chapel of St. Bartholomew there was discovered behind the altar a fresco of the Crucifixion. This has perished, but Bassegoda supplies us with a garish and rather unsatisfactory copy.4 He concludes from the fact that the retable by Huguet was to be ready for the feast of St. Bartholomew that it was originally prepared for the chapel of that saint; he goes on to say, " M e s la pintura qu'en la capella aquesta se descobri, fa posar en dupte. Seria, per ventura, aquesta d'en Uguet?" 5 In answer to this I would say that, in the first place, the stipulations for a retable are so specific in the documents cited that there can be no supposing that any part of the work was to be executed in fresco. With the exception of Alfonso's work in the Royal Chapel, there is no record of Huguet's or of his contemporaries' painting in fresco, a medium that has been little practiced in Catalonia since the days of Ferrer Bassa. Finally, the reproduction alluded to shows little stylistic relation to Jaume or the Vergos; if I were forced to pass judgment on it I should say it was the work of a third-rate Italian of a half century earlier.

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From the description in the very mutilated document it is possible to reconstruct Huguet's retablo as it was originally arranged. In the central compartment we may infer that there was to be an effigy of the titular saint as in the (lost) retable of St. Anthony Abbot that I shall consider subsequently.6 To the right of the middle compartment was to be a figure of St. Catherine, and on the left a likeness of the Magdalene. The Crucifixion occupied its customary place above the central section. To the right and left of this panel, the painter was to represent respectively episodes from the legends of St. Bartholomew and of the Magdalene. The predella, in five compartments, comprised, besides the usual Pietä in the centre, two scenes from the life of St. Anne and two from the story of St. Bartholomew. The three panels from the altarpiece (Fig. 28), formerly in the Estruch Collection and now belonging to the Marques of Cornelia, were first identified by Bertaux.7 The subjects represented in the surviving sections are the Crucifixion, the Martyrdom of St. Bartholomew, and the Death of the Magdalene. From their pointed frames one might conclude that these three panels should comprise the pinnacles of the retable described in the contract. The juxtaposition of St. Bartholomew and the Magdalene is so unusual that we have no doubt but that these panels formed part of the retable mentioned in the document. This fragment is arranged with the Martyrdom of St. Bartholomew to the left and the Death of the Magdalene to the right of the Crucifixion, whereas the contract stipulated that the order was to be reversed, i. e. with the former scene at [118]

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the right and the latter at the left. In explanation of this confusion, I may say that it is not unlikely that the pictures have lost their original frames. The composition of the Crucifixion is almost identical with that of the Condestable retable, with the curious exception that the two thieves have been replaced, or crowded out, by several additional horsemen. The figure of Christ is practically a copy of the effigy in the altar of the Constable; their identity even to the arrangement of the fingers makes it certain that they were drawn from the same cartoon. The gentle face of the Christ is perhaps a derivation from a Flemish prototype, but it is softened, veiled by that mystic, rather melancholy, expression with which Huguet so often infuses his countenances. A close analogy is to be noted between the types of the Virgin in this and in the altarpiece of the Constable. The painter has also retained the arrangement of the two priests on horseback, but in this panel the steeds ridden by Caiaphas and his companion are even more of the merry-goround breed than their predecessors in the Constable's retable. Nowhere are there signs of the advance one would expect to find since the painting of the altarpiece of 1465; the group of St. John and the Three Marys particularly appears wooden and lacking in distinction. The painter seems to have been more interested in the expressive, low-life types of the soldiers than in the principal characters; in fact, the high point of achievement in this panel is in the heads of these Roman bravoes — they represent a modification of the over-exact realism of the Flemish masters of the fifteenth century. The gold back-

["9]

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ground, a feature omitted in the other two panels, is here quite boldly stamped with a repeated pattern of large rosettes. The panel at the left of the Crucifixion represents the grisly martyrdom of St. Bartholomew. The holy man is tied by his hands to a crosspiece fixed on two uprights; a pair of very calm and indifferent executioners are shown removing a sheet of skin that they have just flayed from his arms and torso. It would be difficult to find in the art of all Europe a more pertinent example than this of that taste for the gruesome and brutal that marked the autumn of the Gothic period. Even Ribera in his etching of this horrid subject did not surpass Huguet in the representation of cold-blooded cruelty. The tormentor at the right, pausing momentarily with his knife in his mouth, is a figure one would expect to find in Lo Spagnoletto's repertory of horrors. In spite of all this, the scene as painted represents a toning down of these scenes of butchery as depicted by the Master of St. George and his contemporaries; how well Huguet was able to suggest ferocity by the very indifference and placidity of his executioners we have seen already on more than one occasion. To the left of the saint and his tormentors stands the persecutor Astrages in the midst of his retinue; he wears a bonnet and beard that relate him definitely to the judge of Sts. Cosmas and Damian in the predella at Tarrassa and, by the same token, to the type invented by the Master of St. George. As has been said, the types are coarser than we have met before, but this interest in realism is one which has been predominant in Huguet's work from the first. The technique, too, has changed, perhaps under the in[

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fluence of Master Alfonso, becoming slightly broad in places but losing none of its former decisiveness. The greatest distinction of this unpleasant panel is found, as in the Crucifixion, in the finely characterized heads. Of the many points this painting has in common with the retable of St. Vincent from Sarriä I shall have more to say later. In the third panel we see the Magdalene dying on a couch, the brocade covering of which is identical with that in the Dormition of the Virgin in the retable of the Constable, a composition to which the present one is decidedly inferior. The saint is represented as completely clothed in her long hair, a hirsute marvel which is solid in appearance like a species of shard covering. St. Lazarus, wearing a mitre as Bishop of Marseilles, is a type we shall encounter in later works of Huguet. The attendants are the usual realistic minor actors of the master's repertory. Except for the interesting heads, the composition is rather dull; the three kneeling figures on the left, it may be noted, seem to impinge somewhat on the space which would naturally be occupied by the couch. This neglect of pictorial relations in space is one we have encountered before in Huguet's work; i. e. the "one-legged" executioner of the Tarrassa predella. The angels who bear the soul of Mary Magdalene to Heaven are brothers (or is it sisters?) of the curly-headed St. Gabriel of the Constable Annunciation, and also of those mignon figures who support the arms of Portugal in the wings of the same retable. Another panel from the altarpiece of Sta. Maria de la Mar, the Meeting at the Golden Gate (Fig. 29), was once in the Sala [121]

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Collection in Barcelona.8 This is undoubtedly one of the scenes from the life of St. Anne which were specified for the predella.9 In the centre an angel brings the elderly pair into a very formal embrace. All three are dressed in brocade; the pattern of Joachim's robe resembles that of the proconsul in the retable of Abdon and Sennen. Joachim himself bears a likeness to the good centurion in the Crucifixion of the lost retable of St. Anthony Abbot that I have mentioned as a work by Huguet. At the left under the arch of the gate is a female figure and, behind Joachim, a bearded man; this latter resembles Dacian's councillor in the St. Vincent of Sarriä panels which we are about to consider; in the lower right foreground is Joachim's dog, which has followed him from Giotto's fresco at Padua. A landscape with a fortified town fills the upper background, the same type of setting that we have discovered in so many of Jaume's compositions. In the arch with its heavy voussoirs and in the narrow, pointed windows we may recognize features of contemporary Catalan architecture. The fact that Pere Huguet signed the receipt for the final payment on the altarpiece certainly seems an indication that he may have had a hand in the painting of the retable. This artist obviously could not be the Pere Huguet who is mentioned in documents from 1424 to 1444, and whom I have already discussed at length in an early chapter; the Pere of the Sta. Maria de la Mar altar must, in other words, be Jaume's son, who was christened Pere, following the Catalan tradition of naming the grandson after his father's father.10 I propose to call this painter Pere Huguet I I to distinguish him from his [ 122 ]

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grandfather. Although the style of the Cornelia panels has been recognized as Jaume Huguet's, it may be convenient and perhaps not unjustifiable to assign to Pere Huguet II those portions which seem below his "father's" standard, since very soon we shall recognize the same assistant working in certain panels of the retable of St. Vincent of Sarria.

XI

T H E T H R E E GREAT RETABLES BY JAUME HUGUET the works that may be convincingly attributed to Huguet on internal evidence are three retables which may be placed in a single group. These are the altar of St. Michael the Archangel, the retablo of St. Anthony Abbot which was burned in the disturbances of 1909, and six panels of an altarpiece of St. Vincent from Sarria now in the Museo de la Ciudadella del Parque in Barcelona. An isolated panel of the Mourning over Christ's Body from the altar of the Bridle-makers also belongs in this group. We shall consider first the five panels from the dismembered altarpiece of St. Michael, formerly in the chapel of the Retailers Guild (Revenedors) in Sta. Maria del Pino and now exhibited in the guild rooms opposite the church where they were originally installed. The retable was probably arranged with the panel of St. Michael trampling the demon in the center, and above it the paintings of the Madonna and Female Saints and the Crucifixion. It seems likely that besides the pictures of St. Michael's appearances at Rome and Mont St. Michel and of his victory over Antichrist there was also a lateral section devoted to the Monte Gargano story.1 These paintings were distributed by Sanpere among three members of the Vergos family; * Bertaux is non-commital on the subject, but Miss MONG

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Richert has attributed four of the panels either to Huguet or to his school.3 The technique of these pictures is the same as that of the panels of the Tarrassa retable; there is the greatest economy and simplicity of line; the modelling of flesh tones is both subtle and firm — that delicious liquid quality in the painting which distinguishes the manner of the early works. In the elegance and aristocracy of the heads and in the fine precision of the draughtsmanship there is a very decided reminder of the refined art of the Clouets. The heads in the panel of the Cession of the Plague give the same impression of actual portraiture as does the famous St. George in the Barcelona Museum. A point of resemblance between the Retailers paintings and the Sarriä altarpiece is that the oak-leaf-and-acorn pattern of the gold background is so similar that it is a veritable certainty that both were taken from the same moulds. This might be taken as a point of departure against the mechanical processes of the Catalan School; when one considers the labor that goes into the moulding and gilding of gesso, the efficacy of such an economical and at the same time lovely mechanical aid cannot be denied. Certainly its employment is to be condoned in the case of such a busy craftsman as Huguet must have been. All the paintings are done in pure tempera, and in tonality are close to the altarpiece of Sarria; the ruined state of some of the panels makes it possible to see that the sizing has been reinforced with cloth, apparently a cheap grade of canvas. The central panel of St. Michael Crushing the Demon has suffered so severely from later repainting that it is impossible [125]

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to decipher what remains of the original figure. If we disregard the stupid round face, like that of a Teutonic " k e w p y , " and the meddling with the details of costume, it is not difficult to see the distinct relationship both in pose and in the svelte athletic form between this much ruined painting and that of the young St. George in the Barcelona Museum.4 The design of the gold sky is a stiffer, more formal arrangement of that employed in the lateral panels; I shall have occasion to mention this in the discussion of the retable of St. Anthony. An adjacent panel of thoroughly dignified and formal arrangement represents the Virgin and Child Enthroned and surrounded by Sts. Agnes, Barbara, Petronilla and Lucy (Fig. 30), a composition favored by Memling and his followers.5 All these sacred ladies are the dry, rather homely, types of femininity that we have come to expect from Huguet; St. Petronilla, in fact, is surely drawn from the same model as the Virgin in the Epiphany of the Royal Chapel. It is not hard to see in this group of saints the inspiration for the feminine type later employed by Gabriel Guardia; 6 in fact, I am of the opinion that this panel is a youthful work by that painter. One has only to compare the type of the Virgin· with the Madonna of the Manresa retablo. St. Petronilla is related to the young St. Agnes in the same panel. The dry linear technique and the trick of drawing the personages with parted lips are unmistakable Guardia characteristics.7 There are several noteworthy changes in the panel of the Crucifixion: the man with the sponge has disappeared, as has one of the horsemen at the right. The soldiers at the lower [126]

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right have turned from drawing lots to casting dice. Christ's head is practically identical in this retable and those of Tarrassa the Constable and Sta. Maria de la Mar. His body seems rather small and ill-favored in relation to the noble head, but this defect is probably to be laid at the hands of the restorer. In the figure of Dimas we have one of those slender adolescent nudes of the Tarrassa altar; certainly the expression of complete relaxation in the beautiful young body is one of the loveliest things in Catalan art. Dimas is a twin of the good thieves in the retables of the Constable and St. Anthony Abbot. Scarcely less fine is the figure of the impenitent thief, who also has a close relationship to those of the other retables mentioned. The high priest Caiaphas reappears in the identical pose that he occupied in the Crucifixion of Sta. Maria de la Mar, while his companion, who points to the Crucified, bears a family resemblance to the same figure in the Cornelia panel. In the restrained and yet wonderfully dramatic group at the left we may recognize Mary the wife of Cleofas and St. John from their effigies in the retables at Tarrassa and in the Royal Chapel. The same ascetic type of Magdalene watched Christ's sufferings in the retable of Sts. Abdon and Sennen. Likewise, the black-bearded soldier wrangling with his companion is a blood brother of the burly individual who stands behind the executioner in the Flaying of St. Bartholomew. The horses in the background of this picture are rendered somewhat more realistically than is usual with Jaume. The next of the series shows one of the miracles of St. Michael, his rescue of the pregnant woman caught by the tides [ 127 ]

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at Mont St. Michel (Fig. 31). The Archangel is represented in the act of ferrying the lady and her newly-delivered offspring safely to the shore, on which stand a group of amazed spectators. On an island, evidently intended as the Mont St. Michel, the woman and child are repeated, while one man points out her marvellous rescue to another. The iconography of this scene is not original with Huguet, and may be found in a painting of the International Style at Palau del Vidre in Roussillon. There is a very slow and lovely rhythm in the parallel ripples moving slowly to shore, as though the water had just been disturbed by the beat of Michael's wings. The effect of motion is enhanced considerably by the long curve formed by the lady's skirt and the direction of the angel's wings. Surely the delivered woman with her mild eyes and soft mouth is the loveliest of Huguet's feminine types; in fact, this little oval face in its white wimple reminds us strangely of one of Memling's Madonnas. In the Catälogo de la Exposiciön de Arte Antiguo, the subject of this panel was described wrongly by Bufaroll as " S t . Michael with the Virgin of the Milk." 8 Curiously enough another error in the same publication described one of the panels as " S t . Michael overthrowing the Demon," adding that the Demon was represented in contemporary dress. The proper title for the subject, which is taken directly from the Golden Legend, is " S t . Michael Smiting Antichrist" (Fig. 32.). The Archangel is shown striking with his lance the head of a figure falling almost diagonally across the upper half of the picture. A t the touch of the celestial spear, a demon escapes from Antichrist's head. Below and [128]

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strangely out of perspective, a number of awe-stricken folk are arranged in two groups on either side of a conventionalized plateau, doubtless intended to be the Mount of Olives: In the words of Caxton, " A n d at last he shall mount up on the Mount of Olives, and when he shall be in a pavillion, in his siege, entered into that place where our Lord ascended, Michael shall come and shall slay him." It is interesting to compare this panel with the exquisite version of the subject in the retable of Pobla de Ciervoles, in the Diocesan Museum at Tarragona. A juxtaposition of these two panels shows Huguet's lack of interest in or inability to express movement; the figure of Antichrist is virtually suspended in mid-air, and the spectators are frozen in their attitudes of consternation. The next panel goes on to depict yet another of St. Michael's earthly visits; this "third apparition happed in the time of Gregory the pope. For when the said pope had established the litanies for the pestilence that was that time, and prayed devoutly for the people, he saw upon the castle which was said sometime: the memory of Adrian, the angel of God, which wiped and made clean a bloody sword, and put it into a sheath. And he thereby understood that his prayers were heard." In the painting there is a procession headed by boys carrying plague banners and tapers, and in the midst of the press is the Pontiff himself, with the precious icon of the Virgin in his hands.9 Above and in back a canopy is carried above the heads of the crowd, which mounts up towards the top of the painting much in the same way as does the crowd in the Miracle of the Loaves in the retable of the Transfiguration in [

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the Sala Capitular, by a follower of the Master of St. George. On a not unconvincing " s e t " of Hadrian's tomb, the young Archangel is in the act of sheathing his sword. Every character in this panel has that quality of refinement so peculiar to Huguet. In fact, there are several that we have seen before. The young Michael, as Sanpere pointed out, plays a less significant role as the page who peers through the stable window in the Epiphany of the Constable's altar. The priest to the left of Gregory, with his strong aquiline nose, firm jaw, and rather piercing eye, is to be identified in the background to the extreme right in the Coronation of St. Augustine; and most certainly he is to be recognized in the inconspicuous priest who stands behind the king in the scene of Exorcism at St. Anthony's tomb. Perhaps most familiar of them all is the dreamy-eyed cleric at the extreme upper left of the crowd; not long ago we saw him expostulating with Decius in the Martyrdom of Sts. Abdon and Sennen. Later we shall meet St. Gregory and his crucifer in the Ordination of St. Vincent of the Sarriä retable, where they play the roles of Valerius and Vincent respectively. As in all of Huguet's early works, the people of this panel glance at one another coyly out of the corners of their eyes. The architecture of this panel is of the toy-like variety — the stage scenery of the International School. The crowded composition, the disproportion of the architecture to the figures, show that this is a work of the master's early period. It is noteworthy that the entrance to Hadrian's tomb bears a distinct resemblance to the castle gate in the Chicago panel by the Mas[

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ter of St. George. It would be interesting to know where Huguet could have got so accurate an impression of Hadrian's tomb; my own guess is that it must either have been inspired by a print or by the description of a contemporary more travelled than Jaume. With the evidence presented, I think we may safely conclude that this is a genuine work of Huguet's. The youthful talent betrayed in the compositions, the svelte types, and lack of deep chiaroscuro would incline me to date it contemporaneously with the Tarrassa retable. The year 1456, in which was consecrated the Retailers' chapel in Sta. Maria del Pino, 10 will do very nicely, corresponding as it does with the period of the Abdon and Sennen panels. The earliest possible date for the painting, were the time of the dedication of the chapel not known, would be 1453, when the church of Sta. Maria was itself consecrated." The degree of distinction shown in the painting, as in the modelling of the heads of the spectators in the Procession scene, is certainly not far enough in advance of the performance of which Huguet had shown himself capable in such works as the retable of the Constable, and consequently there is little ground for our attempting to assign this altarpiece to a later moment of the artist's career. The " d r y n e s s " noted by certain critics in the panels of this retable is, to my way of thinking, the natural result of the enlargement of the dimensions of the panels, and the consequent loss of the rather sparkling miniature technique of the smaller scenes. There is in the possession of the Bridle-makers Guild " of [131]

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Barcelona a panel (Fig. 33), which must at one time have formed a part of the predella of the altar of St. Stephen painted by Huguet in 1462.13 The subject is the Mourning over Christ's Body. As a composition, it depends directly on the version of the subject in the altar of Catherine and Clara, which we have already considered. The types, all of them unmistakably Huguetesque, are most closely related to those in the altar of St. Michael. From the Crucifixion, for instance, we may recognize the figures of St. John and the Virgin repeated in this isolated panel. The woman farthest to the right may be found also in the crowd in the panel of the discomfiture of Antichrist. The Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus we have seen before enacting the roles of the persecutors of the saints in the retablos of Tarrassa and of Sta. Maria de la Mar. The unhaloed male figure that appears at the right in back of the main group is none other than the high priest, again, in the Crucifixion of the altarpiece of St. Michael. There seems little or no reason to doubt that this panel formed part of Huguet's documented works of 1462; the style, as has been suggested in the comparison of the types, is that of this period of Huguet's artistic development. The design of the gold background, an arrangement of oak leaves and acorns, corresponds closely to that of the altar of St. Michael, and, as we shall see, to the pattern employed in the retables of St. Anthony Abbot (lost) and of St. Vincent. There are notable analogies to the Huguet manner, as the extreme shortness of the arms in the figures of Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus. This is a mannerism, perhaps of a pupil, that may be found in certain panels of the retables of St. [

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Michael and of St. Vincent of Sarriä. The color of the Pietä is the rather dead and grayish tonality of the paintings from Sarriä. The importance of this Deposition as a basis for establishing the chronology of the other undocumented works cannot be overestimated. This panel, according to its discoverer, Sr. Durän, has always been in the possession of the Bridlemakers Guild, which still numbers a few veteran adherents. It is a question whether it actually formed part of the retable of 1462 or whether it may have been a separate ex-voto. Certainly the document specifies the introduction of this subject, the Piedad de Maria; on the back of the panel are the marks of what may have been crosspieces attaching it to the other portions of the predella. Now in an inventory of the eighteenth century there is mentioned a picture in a black and gold frame. Whether or not the present work is meant by this is questioned by Sr. Durän since the surviving picture has only a plain wooden frame. I am of the opinion that in spite of this last minor contradiction the panel originally formed a part of the Bridle-makers retable. Certainly of all the blunders and violence of the Semana Tragica of 1909 nothing is more to be regretted than the loss of the splendid retable of St. Anthony Abbot, destroyed in the burning of the Escolapios where it was housed. Previously, until the beginning of the nineteenth century, the altarpiece had been in the church attached to the hospital of the canons of St. Anthony. No fragment remains, and consequently we can judge this work only in the poor photographs and by the very [ 133 ]

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summary descriptions of the critics who were privileged to see it.14 The gigantic figure of St. Anthony Enthroned (Fig. 34), a conception worthy of the Burgundian Claus Sluter, shows us the painter working on a more monumental scale than we have yet seen in the work of the Catalan School. Sanpere has it that the Prophets of the Granollers retable cannot be explained without this figure of Anthony Abbot. 15 Even a comparison of the photograph of this section of the retable with the figures of the altar of St. Stephen will show the absurdity of attributing both to the same master. The modelling in the noble head of the saint is softer, more accomplished, than anything that Pau Vergos has to offer. As in the central panel of the altar of St. Michael, the pattern of the gold background is a more formal arrangement of the oak-leaf design embossed in the lateral sections. An interesting iconographical peculiarity is the introduction, in the lower left-hand corner, of a sow devouring her young.16 The panel that above all others suggests the hand of Huguet is — I use the present tense simply for convenience — that elegant double picture that may represent St. Anthony transmitting his power of exorcism to Martinianus, who, in the adjoining compartment, is seen delivering his daughter of an evil spirit (Fig. 35). 17 Surely she is one of the fairest of all Jaume's ladies; as Sanpere pointed out, it is not only the beauty of this dame, whom he called a princess, that strikes us in this painting, but also the purity of the drawing, the extreme correctness and elegance of all the figures, qualities that remind us of the [ 1 3 4 ]

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attainments of the retable of the Constable. As a matter of fact, the young Martinianus and his friend in the brocade robe behind the possessed lady are not only reminiscent of the young Magi but more particularly of Sts. Abdon and Sennen. The panel of the Crucifixion is as usual the most convenient means of comparison with other works of Huguet's. Those three familiar figures — Christ, Mary Cleofas, and Longinus — are very nearly identical in this panel and the versions of the scene in the retables of the Constable, of Sta. Maria de la Mar, and that of the Revenedors. Dimas likewise bears a sufficient resemblance to the type in the Royal Chapel and the Retailers altars. 18 The moment is the same chosen in all the earlier versions of the scene, that when the centurion exclaims, — only here it is one of the high priests, — "Verily this man was the Son of G o d " ; these words appear on the scroll over Annas' head. Judging solely from the photograph, and comparing this with the other versions of the subject we have examined, I should say that the execution here was considerably coarser — broader, if you will. Likewise, although the heads of Christ and Dimas are obviously like their representatives in other works, the differences in disposition of the bodies suggests a drawing from a model rather than from a cartoon copy. Also the heavy, muscular nude of the impenitent thief is something new in the work of Huguet. The first of the panels illustrating St. Anthony's life in the Thebaid, the Visitation of Demons (Fig. 36), of which no complete photograph has been published hitherto, reveals Huguet as capable of the greatest imagination in the painting of the [ 1 3 5 ]

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hermit's diabolical tormentors. 19 The horrific demons, waving snakes and bludgeons, are creations worthy of Hieronymous Bosch.20 The panel is unquestionably by the same hand as the others and hence need not detain us. The painting of St. Anthony Abbot visiting St. Paul the Hermit (Fig. 37) is chiefly remarkable for the wonderfully expressive and significantly modelled head of St. Anthony, a piece of portraiture which Sanpere qualified as the work of the artist of the Pentecost in the retable of the Constable. 21 At the time of making this statement the eminent critic was under the impression that the retable of the Capella Real was by the Vergos family. His astute deduction, however, will serve us equally well, for it is not difficult to discern here the distinction of Huguet's youthful talent when he painted the rugged and expressive countenances of the Apostles in the scene of Pentecost. The head of St. Anthony, here as in the central panel, is comparable to the bearded Magus in the retable of 1465. The painting shows us at the left and in back the two hermits embracing, and in the foreground about to partition a loaf of bread which a raven has brought them. St. Paul, it will be observed, is wearing his garment of plaited palm leaves. I commend to the reader's attention also the essential setting of the Thebaid in the realistically painted palm tree and the entrance to the cave, with St. Paul's crucifix hanging on the wall. In the lower left-hand corner — I am, of course, referring only to the photograph — one can barely make out a stag (or is it an antelope?) which has come to drink at the stream that flows between verdant banks across the lower part of the picture. It [136]

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recalls the details of wild life already observed in the rabbit and the partridge that strayed from the zoo of the International Style into Huguet's panel of the Miraculous Transportation of the Relics of Sts. Abdon and Sennen. If I had my choice of all of Jaume's pictures, I believe (were it any longer possible!) that I would select this scene with its almost Theocritan atmosphere of pastoral quiet. In this painting more than in any other work has Huguet succeeded in accommodating the figures to the setting. In the painting of St. Anthony saving a hanged man, we may recognize — in the astonished individual at the left — the man who holds the sponge to Christ's lips in all of Huguet's representations of the Crucifixion. The contrivance which here serves as a gibbet was also employed in the Flaying of St. Bartholomew of the Cornelia triptych. The broad technique and rather distinguished composition gives no reason to suspect the collaboration of an assistant. The types employed for the bystanders and the hanged man himself may all of them be found in the altars of Tarrassa and of the Constable. Another panel of the St. Anthony series showed a body of clerics at the saint's grave, kneeling in gratitude at the invention he has vouchsafed them. Following the account in Voragine, the painter represented the Saint in his palm-leaf robes. The slab has been removed, and we see the hermit lying in his sarcophagus, guarded by the two lions who once helped to bury his friend St. Paul. These beasts — more like two great danes, couchants, than lions — are typical of Huguet's shortcomings as an animalier. We shall recognize the clergy in this picture [ 137 3

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as the choristers in the Ordination of St. Vincent; we have met them already in the earlier retable of St. Michael, in which, with Pope Gregory at their head, they formed a procession with banners for the cession of the plague. Since the originals are lost it seems impossible to dispute the statement of Sanpere, an eye-witness, that the predella panels were by a different hand: "tuvo que son de un mano auxiliar pero no mäs que auxiliar . . . son todos solidamente construidos como se puede ver en S. Jorge, etc." " Judging by the photographs 23 there seems to be no reason to question Jaume Huguet's share in them, although in undertakings of such size as this retable, it must be assumed that the master was assisted by a number of apprentices.24 A glance will suffice to discover the superiority of the St. George over the other figures, which nevertheless are unquestionably by the same hand. The figure of St. George has a certain resemblance to the representation of him in the Barcelona Museum and to the damaged St. Michael of the Retailers altar. In execution the painting shows a drier, more laborious, and hence somewhat stiffer technique than that of Huguet himself. This defect is particularly noticeable in the St. Lucy panel, in which the assistant, seeking to equal the serenity and stateliness of his master's forms, has produced only an unfortunately lifeless and postured figure. It seems obvious that in this, as well as in the St. Clara (?), the painter had in mind the retable of Sts. Catherine and Clara in the Sala Capitular. Undoubtedly inspired by one of the pendant saints in the same retable is the picture of St. Anthony of Padua, depicted holding a book in one hand [ 1 3 8 ]

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and a flaming heart in the other. The figures of Sts. Peter and Paul are adequate but mediocre; the former is derived from one of Huguet's many rather standardized old men. Whether the assistant here was Pere Huguet I I who worked on portions of the altarpiece of Sta. Maria de la Mar, the photographs are not sufficiently clear to show. The last panel shows us a scene of exorcism at the tomb of St. Anthony. A casual glance will suffice to discover here one of Huguet's favorite compositions, that of one or two isolated figures balanced by a crowd; it is the same here and in the martyrdoms of St. Bartholomew and of Sts. Cosmas and Damian. The whole scene is filled with the gray silence of the Gothic place; it is a quiet picture, and conceived in the mood of complete sincerity and reverence. As a possible means of dating this altarpiece, Sanpere suggests the headdress of the Princess in the panel of the Exorcism as a starting point.25 According to Puiggari this type of bonnet was popular until 1470. Viollet de Due states that it went out of fashion no later than 1475, adding that at the death of Louis X I in 1483 this particular variety had not been worn for a long time. But how can we explain the fact that the Princess in the retable of Granollers, ca. 1496, wears the same crown? Sanpere was loth to admit plagiarism on the part of his beloved Vergos, but it seems clear, as has been pointed out, that the Exorcism at the Tomb of St. Stephen is simply a secondrate copy — Princess, bonnet, and all — of the panel in the retable under discussion. Therefore, if we take into consideration the fact that modes arrive later and last longer in the provinces [ 139]

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than the court, it seems safe to say that the vogue of the rocadero lasted in Spain until 1480 at least; and hence it might be possible to date the retable of the Escolapios at ca. 1480. The only bit of external evidence enabling us to fix the date of the altarpiece is the casual mention by Carreras y Candi 26 that, in 1456, the canons of the church of St. Anthony Abbot ordered "un singular retaule, lo qual serä de cost de mil florins." If we could be sure of this reference there would be good reason for accepting this date as the probable one for the lost retable of the Escolapios. Although it is unquestionably a distinguished piece of work, the figure of St. Anthony enthroned was surely within the range of Huguet's powers at the time of his painting the altarpiece of Sts. Abdon and Sennen and the one panel from the altar of St. Stephen of the Bridle-makers. I call attention, for instance, to its resemblance to the kneeling Melchior in the retable of the Constable. To all intents and purposes, this St. Anthony, which Sanpere sought to date as late as 1480, is really only an enlargement and a broadening of such a figure as the enthroned St. Andrew from the workshop of the Master of St. George in the Metropolitan Museum in New York. The analogies existing between certain other portions of the alterpiece to the retablo at Tarrassa only lend strength to the conclusion that Huguet may very well have begun work as early as 1456. We approach at last the problem of the authorship of the nine panels of St. Vincent, proceeding from a church in the suburb of Sarriä, and now housed all together in the Barcelona Museum. In this question, as in so many others, the venerable [

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Sanpere is the root of all evil. T o various members of the Vergos family he attributed the following six panels: to Pau, The Ordination of St. Vincent, The Miracle before the Proconsul, the Martyrdom, and the Exorcism at the Saint's Tomb; to Jaume II, the panels of St. Vincent at the Stake, and that of St. Vincent in Prison; to Huguet, the pictures of St. Vincent on the Gridiron, the Flagellation of the Saint, and the panel depicting his death. 27 The absurdity of the attribution in the case of the last three panels is obvious. In the first place the heavy Renaissance architecture alone would be enough to place the paintings in the Cinquecento. Furthermore, the technique throughout is that of a sixteenth-century master thoroughly imbued with the Italian and Flemish Renaissance elements; there is even in the drapery of the angels a strong suspicion of German influence. 18 T h e treatment of the nude furthermore shows a scholarly Florentine — but pre-Michelangelesque — concern for anatomical accuracy — a far cry from the slender Gothic forms to which we have been accustomed! No wonder Sanpere said these panels showed a marked improvement over those in the Tarrassa retable! How could he help it ? Another of the panels, that of St. Vincent Comforted by Angels (Fig. 38), is certainly as late as the three just mentioned and by the same very heavy hand. N o t only is the composition hopelessly overcrowded and ill-organized, so much so that the subject is only discovered after diligent scrutiny, but also it lacks all refinement in drawing. A fact which has not been noted before, I think, is that there is a close analogy, not only in the rather harsh drawing [HO

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and murky chiaroscuro but also in the types of angels, between this panel and the retable of St. Bernardine (Fig. 39) in the Museo at Cagliari, Sardinia. The method of drawing the eyes with a pronounced lachrymal gland and heavily defined, almost incised, crow's feet is the same in both the Sarriä panel and that of St. Bernardine with two Angelic Attendants. A comparison of the stamped gold backs of the two shows the greatest similarity not only in execution but also in the rather mediocre design which is of a textile rather than a floral pattern. The fact that all of the St. Bernardine panels are equally undistinguished in composition only lends strength to the hypothesis that this panel and its mates may, like the Cagliari retable, be the product of Rafael Thomas and Joan Figuera, 29 and as such a very weak and distant offshoot of the Huguet tradition.30 T h a t leaves us the four earlier panels still to consider. It is very pleasant to turn from the rather disagreeable picture we have just examined to the stirring painting of St. Vincent's Ordination (Fig. 40), a very simple scene and yet one of the most effective in all the annals of art. St. Vincent, clad in a white alb, kneels before the bishop, Valerius, who is about to pass the dalmatic over his head; at his side a youthful acolyte holds open a breviary. A rather cynical individual stands behind the bishop and holds his crozier, and just to the left of Valerius are two of the most remarkable portraits in the whole group. The cleric at the left, scarcely more than a novice, surely, is quite young, of a very tender and timid type; he holds the hymnal with unsure and awkward hands. He does not C14O

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look at the words, but beyond into some far and melancholy revery. Beside him stands a very different man. He has a bitter, disillusioned mouth, a face both young and old. This is the type that Thais loved and lost. He clutches his young companion's arm, looks fixedly at the text as though suppressing some unwelcome temptation. Behind these two are a lusty throng of choristers singing together from a large book on a lectern. In the background there is an altarpiece of the Virgin and St. John the Baptist. If we compare the Ordination of St. Vincent with the Coronation of St. Augustine in the Tanners retable, we feel that we are viewing two works by the same hand but of different periods. The bishop at the left in the Augustine panel and our Valerius are identical; the drawing is undoubtedly by the same hand, with a somewhat richer, more accomplished chiaroscuro in the Blanquers' painting. There is the same amazing refinement in portraiture, the same crisp delight in rich stuffs and realistic detail. I do not agree with Mayer, who believes that certain parts of the Ordination, such as the choir, are broader in handling than others; 31 rather, the astonishing simplicity with which the artist has defined the expressions of the singers has led the critic to think that this portion of the work is by another and broader hand, whereas as a matter of fact the same simplicity prevails, though not so spectacularly, in all the other parts of the picture. I call the reader's attention to the painter's delight in varied and lovely arrangements of drapery: how he must have plucked and pulled and rearranged — I had almost said "starched"! [ 1 4 3 ]

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— the folds of St. Vincent's robe and that of the young choir boy! With what convincing ease has he represented the bishop passing his hands under the dalmatic, the better to slip it over Vincent's head! Now we have seen this type of drapery in the Finding of the Body of St. Anthony from the lost altar of the Escolapios and also in the picture of St. Michael Arresting the Plague at Rome in the retablo of the Retailers' Guild. It is this same trick of arranging drapery with just the proper balance between formalism and naturalism that was the pride of the Praxitelian Age and the Italian High Renaissance. Huguet has furthermore borrowed his Valerius from the Invention of St. Anthony's Body, or from Pope Gregory in the Revenedors' panel of the Plague at Rome. Likewise, the strong, psychological individualization in the heads is a common denominator of all these three paintings. I can go further and point out that almost all the choristers here have been recruited from those who discover the body of St. Anthony, while St. Vincent himself is no distant relation of the intense young crucifer in the Cession of the Plague. Ecclesiastical furniture, too, can be recognized: the crozier which twists into a shamrock form is identical in this as in the lost Escolapios panel. There are identities in technique, too: the great refinement in drawing — the lithe brush that runs the whole gamut from feather-like touch to biting accent, the same technique in the drawing of the eyes, with a slight curve of the lowered lid and a strong accent for the lashes, and, what is perhaps most noticeable, the same exquisite draughtsmanship in the hands. The eventual basis for this magnificent group of portrait heads is certainly to be [

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sought in the work of Huguet's Flemish contemporaries. We might be led to believe that the inspiration for these as well as for all of Jaume's powerfully characterized heads lay in Dalmau's portraits in his altarpiece of the Councillors. There is a vast difference between Huguet and the earlier master. Jaume strikes such a nice balance between the over-realistic and the general that his heads are truly lifelike; he avoids the pitfalls of the over-particular type of realism that loses itself in the topographical variations of the countenance, the type of realism practiced by Jan van Eyck. We might compare Huguet's achievement in this respect to Ghirlandaio's, but there is, I believe, a greater personality in Spain to whom Jaume shows his indebtedness in this and his last work, the retable of St. Augustine. I refer to Master Alfonso of Cordova, who had worked in the Royal Chapel at the same time as Huguet. His lyric portrait heads in the Martyrdom of St. Cucufates 32 may be compared to those of Giovanni Bellini. What Master Alfonso learned from the Italians can be seen at a glance in these nobly modelled and individualized heads and in his mastery of chiaroscuro. Such splendid bits of detail as the couched dog at the right and the basket behind the executioner prophesy the supreme painter-man's technique of Velazquez. The mortmain of convention still rested too heavily on Huguet and his contemporaries for them to take advantage of such novelties as Alfonso's suggestion of atmosphere and his realistically painted sky and landscape. What Huguet did learn from the Alfonso Master was greater monumentality and a bolder, more telling use of light and shade. [ 1 4 5 ]

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The next scene we shall consider is that of the Martyrdom of St. Vincent (Fig. 41). The essential composition is that of the Martyrdoms of Bartholomew, and of Cosmas and Damian in the retables of Sta. Maria de la Mar and Tarrassa respectively.33 The persecutor Dacian's nearest relative is Decius in the panel of Cosmas and Damian; both wear the same type of beard, slightly stylized in flowing curls; and their bonnets are of the same model. The Proconsul's henchmen in both pictures are surprisingly alike, both in facial appearance and the type of headgear they wear. On the other hand the drawing here has the refinement of the Tarrassa retable, a refinement which that of Sta. Maria de la Mar so sadly lacks. And yet there are links between the latter and the retable under consideration; the executioner at the left in the Sarriä panel is practically identical with the tormentor of St. Bartholomew. Then, the little girl who peers so curiously down at St. Bartholomew's predicament occupies a similar point of vantage at the torturing of St. Vincent, only she is less delicately drawn — painted, as it were, de grosso modo. We may find, if we look, the same kind of house with long slits of windows and other, smaller openings under the eaves both in the St. Vincent panel and that of the Martyrdom of Abdon and Sennen. This is certainly a representation of some contemporary architectural work such as the "Diputaci6" in the Caller de Sant Honorat. St. Vincent is of the same type as the nudes in the martyrdom of the Sants Metges — young, slender, somewhat Gothic. In this panel, the executioner wields his steel currycomb with the same sang froid as the butcher in the Tarrassa altar; his companion, smiling, [146]

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listens to Dacian's latest idea in the way of torment. Finally, the Proconsul's throne and that of Decius in the altar of Abdon and Sennen are very nearly alike, and the embossed background of oak leaves and acorns is virtually a copy of or a model for that in the retable of Anthony Abbot, and the Deposition from the retable of the Bridle-makers. And, postscriptum, the figure of Christ in the vision which the Saint enjoys is the familiar type of Redeemer we have studied in the retable of the Constable; He should be compared also to the figure comforting St. Anthony Abbot in the Temptation scene. The second panel of the series — i. e., second as regards its order in the unfolding of the narrative — is described on its plaque as S. Vicente que hace bailar el Dios Lunus ante el Gobernador Daciano. We see St. Vincent, Dacian, and a number of councillors and men-at-arms watching with amazement the undignified antics of the object of worship, a small figure on a column in high relief, gilded. The composition is an adaptation of the cartoon for a saint brought to judgment that was popularized by the Master of St. George. This panel is one of the four attributed to Huguet by Mayer 34 and Miss Richert. Vincent himself is the same figure as in the first painting considered, while Dacian and his councillor are taken from the identical models as the directors of the torture in the scene of martyrdom. 35 The unpleasant character who stands behind the councillor certainly played this latter part himself in the retable of Abdon and Sennen. The canopy of the governor's throne is covered with a brocade very similar in design to that employed in the third panel of the altarpiece; it matches the [H7]

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pattern of St. Vincent's red and gold dalmatic, a garment which we have already seen in the two panels just considered. Identical in all three paintings is the oak-leaf-and-acorn figuration of the gold background. There are certain features of the picture of St. Vincent and the Idol which make me hesitate to attribute it outright to the master's own hand; for instance, the entire composition is rather unhappily confused. The introduction of the time-honored Catalan crowd and the drawing of certain figures, such as that of the executioner at the right, do not seem quite typical of Jaume; the painting of the heads of the "supers" strongly suggests the collaboration of the painter of St. Vincent at the Stake, who, as we shall see, may well be Pere Huguet II. A quaint attempt at local color, the more amusing for its anachronism, is seen in the painting of the star and crescent on one of the tiles of the pavement. On the base of the column, another archaeological detail appears in the double-headed eagle of the divided Roman empire. I have no hesitation in ascribing the scene of Exorcism at St. Vincent's Tomb (Fig. 4a), to the same hand as the Martyrdom on the Cross. In both panels, the martyr is the same rather emaciated, lantern-jawed young man; he is still wearing the red and gold dalmatic. The peasant mother at the left is almost an enlargement of the little girl we saw in the window in back of the Martyrdom on the Cross. Curiously enough, the individual who points so reassuringly at the miraculous sepulchre bears a decided resemblance to one of the executioners who, not so long ago, was tearing the saint with an iron fork. This is the popular version of the very aristocratic exorcism at [ 1 4 8 ]

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the tomb of St. Anthony. Here are the common people of great faith whom Huguet has always loved to draw; we recognize his pleasant little inventions, such as the infant manifestly startled at the appearance of the diabolo emerging from the head of the possessed. There are certain similarities between this version and that of the Escolapios: the one-legged man reappears, and so does the peculiar banding of the floor beneath the sarcophagus. Here the mad woman has to be content with one of the swarm of demons that issue from the head of the princess. So far our work has been fairly easy, but it is a far different matter when we consider the painting of St. Vincent at the Stake (Fig. 43). In some respects this panel appears to be the earliest of all: the amazingly awkward perspective, the Gothic nudes, and the huge crowd in the background all point to it, as well as the predominance of the costumes of the Master of St. George. The superficial relation to the composition of the Decapitation of St. George in the Louvre may also be noted in passing. Although it exhibits certain striking dissimilarities with the other panels of the series, it is by no means a work unworthy of the master himself. The painting of the figures in their startled attitudes and of the still-life of the faggots, etc., shows most capable craftsmanship. The dryness and stereotyped quality of other portions of the panel, such as in the crowd in back and the angels in the role of pompiers, is not in the least suggestive of Huguet's work. There are several things which distinguish the types from those we have considered; the chief characteristics are rather large heads, an overly long upper lip, and narrow, squinting eyes. These eyes [ 149]

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are drawn rather summarily, and usually without any definition in the crease in the lid. Also there is a predilection for rather thick, frizzly hair. Now these same characteristics of drawing and type may be clearly discerned in the panels from Sta. Maria de la Mar, and particularly in the soldiers and the groups of holy women in the panel of the Crucifixion. Any number of individuals may be recognized as appearing in both of these separate works, notably the soldier, at the left in the group drawing lots, who appears in the Sarria panel at the extreme upper left to the right of Dacian; likewise the man with the sponge may be identified as the soldier with the lance in the center of the Sarria panel. In the crowd at the left rides a man on a white horse, a beast that is of the same stock as that ridden by the man in the burnous in the altar of Sta. Maria de la Mar. It is even more surprising to find that this same turbaned individual, both in costume and features, bears a close resemblance to the figure in the Sarria panel. Furthermore, the soldier just beneath this equestrian figure wears a type of headgear with a long ribbon attached, the whole similar in all respects to the "top piece" displayed by that particularly evillooking warrior who glares up at the impenitent thief in the retable of the Constable. · Several versions of the bonnet with the criss-cross pattern worn by the soldier to the right of the Magdalene in the Cornelia panel may be seen in the painting under consideration. A certain resemblance in type, the arrangement of the lances against the sky, besides several other qualities already mentioned, suggest the painter of this panel as a direct descendant of the Master of St. George. My conclusion is that [150]

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this panel is by the same hand that assisted Huguet in the Cornelia Crucifixion, which I sought to identify as that of Pere Huguet II. For reasons already stated I would place this panel considerably earlier than the collaboration in these panels of Sta. Maria de la Mar. The technique of the four other Sarriä panels, those of St. Vincent's ordination, the overturning of the idol, the martyrdom, and the exorcism at the shrine, shows an increase in monumentality and a greater mastery of light and shade which suggest that they might have been painted after Huguet had come into contact with Alfonso and Bermejo; in short, we might date them ca. 1475, before the complete predominance of the style öf the Cordovans. The altarpiece shows in many ways the improvements we expected to find in the panels surviving from the retable of Sta. Maria de la Mar. When I suggest the influence of Alfonso, I in no way mean to obscure the equation of the artist's own innate ability. The fact that portions of this altarpiece show many analogies to works that I am forced to date as early as 1456 would lead me to conclude that it may have been painted as early as the altarpiece of the Constable. That Huguet, when he wished, was capable of painting in the large style, we have already seen in the central panel of that retable of 1465. It was in this achievement that I first suggested the example of the Cordovan painter's monumental style spurring Huguet to greater efforts. Perhaps these panels do not show sufficient advance over the paintings of the St. Michael altar and that of St. Anthony, which I have dated 1456, to assign them to a later period; with no definite external [15O

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evidence, it is decidedly unprofitable to indulge in hair-splitting over this question of chronology. T h a t the treatment of the gold background is of little value in determining the proper chronology is manifested in the altar of St. Anthony Abbot, in which Huguet employed the raised embossed arch popular in the later part of the century, and the engraved foliate manner of decoration used in such early works as the altar at Tarrassa. The style of the Sarriä panels is in general that of the one panel surviving from Huguet's retable of St. Stephen, painted in 1462, which might serve as a basis for dating the undocumented altar of St. Vincent. There was once in the Jungent Collection in Barcelona a fragment of what must have been a panel of large dimensions (Fig. 44). Basing our judgment on what is left of the figures, none of them complete, it may be conjectured that the scene represented was the familiar one of a saint before his judge, who may be recognized in the bearded figure in the peaked bonnet at the left; only the hand of the saint is visible, upraised in a gesture of expostulation, like the hand of St. Abdon in the trial scene at Tarrassa. From what remains of the original painting under later retouching it is possible to associate it with the panels of St. Vincent from Sarriä; the types used for the Emperor and the heads of the youths behind him are the same rather dry portraits we have encountered in the scenes of St. Vincent's Trial and Martyrdom on the Cross; the drawing of the hands and the drapery in the judge's (?) sleeve is characteristic of Huguet as is the expressive psychological portraiture of the provost and boy at his elbow. It would be possible, [15Ο

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perhaps, to reconstruct the rest of the panel from what has survived in the same way that Professor Mather recreated the San Cassiano altarpiece of Antonello; the identity of the saint, the one factor necessary to determine from which of Huguet's many retables this panel might have come, is unhappily lost forever. A painting of St. Michael (Fig. 45) in the collection of Frau Kocherthaler in Berlin may be provisionally classified as a work proceeding from the Huguet studio and related to the other pictures already discussed in this chapter. The figure of the saint is rather awkwardly balanced on the recumbent demon, his whole weight seemingly supported by the upright lance. The tiny mouth, high forehead, and short curly locks make up a type that has already been studied in the St. Michael of the Retailers altar. It may be noted that the costume likewise duplicates that of the Archangel in this retable. There is a decidedly pleasant if rather obvious design in the repeated curves of the peacock wings and the flaring mantle, but the work as a whole is a little too dry and uninteresting for me to attribute it to Huguet himself; I should say that it was by one of the assistants familiar enough with the master's types and procedure to turn out a tolerable but uninspired reproduction of his manner, in much the same way as Sano di Pietro mimicked the art of Sassetta. It is very likely that Frau Kocherthaler's painting is a reflection of the central panel of the Retailers altar as it was before being ruined by repainting.

XII THE TRIPTYCH OF ST. GEORGE is rather ambiguously termed the Sala Vergös » ΊΓ % the Barcelona Museum is the central panel of a ® JL ® retable of St. George (Fig. 46) proceeding from the »&«»&& Cabot Collection.1 The young saint, dressed in his armor, stands before an open window. It is the moment after the victory over the dragon; the beast's drab pinions may be seen as though flapping against the saint's leg in the lower part of the picture. St. George leans on his halberd, while a mysterious lady, perhaps the princess of the legend, presents his casque. It is a picture conceived in the same idyllic mood as the version of the similar scene by Andres Marzal de Sas in the Victoria and Albert Museum.2 A cool Umbrian dawn creeps over the landscape with its conical cypresses; it is morning, and the dust of dreams is vanished, and it is the time when youth goes forth to glory. St. George seems scarcely a warrior, this timid beardling of seventeen or so, but rather a melancholy, sensitive little boy, who bears his arms with all the awkward grace of adolescence. He seems made more for poetry than for deeds of arms. $ $ $ $ $ $ N WHAT

As in the case of the retable of the Constable, the panel of St. George and the Princess is in too ruinous a condition to give us much of an idea of its original loveliness; in this case the harm done is not to be laid at the hands of time and dampness, [154:

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but rather to successive generations of vandals, who not only reduced the panel in size but also greedily stripped off the goldleaf that must originally have covered the saint's armor.3 If this supposition is true, I believe that the painting has gained by its loss; such a brilliant mass of shining metal would not only detract from the delicate psychological delineation of the features but would also destroy the poetic mood suggested by the pallor of the background. As it stands today the picture has an almost unearthly, very spiritual tone due to the economy and lightness of the color that remains; the colors are red for the saint's bonnet, faint blue for the sky, and green-gold in the princess' robe; the landscape is a rather intense green. Certainly we should be loath to sacrifice the delicate PreRaphaelite charm of the painting for anything the restorer's vandal hands could do to bring the picture to its "original" condition. Without even considering the technique, the very mood of the whole picture suggests the weary elegance of Abdon and Sennen and the Magi of the retable of the Constable. This is the same exquisite drawing that we have identified as Huguet's in all of his authenticated works: the manner of drawing eyes, mouth, and hands is thoroughly familiar. One final proof may be added, and that is that St. George's ear has been bent forward by his casque in exactly the same way as St. Sennen's ear in the panel of his martyrdom. A comparison with the St. George of the Escolapios retable shows us the young warriors wearing the same type of armor and helmet. It was effectively proved by Bertaux and van Loga that the [155]

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two wings needed to complete this retable are now in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin. 4 In the panel to the left we have a male donor with his patron, St. John the Baptist (Fig. 47), and at the right his lady with St. Louis of Toulouse (Fig. 48). The reconstruction of the triptych is based on the fact that the window enframements in both the Barcelona panel and the wings are identical, as are the conical cypresses in the background. W h a t is more, it was discovered in the course of Bertaux's investigations that the central panel had been sawed off to considerably less than its original size. Certainly even in a photograph the technique of the two lateral sections is recognizable as Huguet's. St. Louis is the type employed by Jaume as a bishop in the retable of St. Vincent, and the St. John might be an older and bearded brother of Abdon and Sennen. The fact that the patrons place their hands on the donors' books that Miss King found such an advanced idea is a concept quite as typical of Huguet as the various little conceits in the many works we have studied. 5 On the backs of the side panels are half-length paintings of Sts. Peter and Paul, identified by their attributes of the key and the sword respectively. Each saint is further supplied with a book. Above them are fragments of two other saints, half-lengths of which only the lower portions of the torsos have survived, the upper parts having been cut off with the tops of the panels. Apparently the wings of the triptych were originally much higher, or perhaps were surmounted by pinnacles. These figures are very sketchily painted, de grosso modo, but are obviously by the same hand that did the obverse of the panels. [156]

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The treatment of the hair, notably in St. Paul's belle barbe, is in the miniature manner of Huguet's early period. The drawing of the features, notably the eyes, is also typical of the painter. As types, these old men should be compared to those in Pere Huguet I's altarpiece of Sts. Julitta and Quiricus, and to the two splendid Prophets from Huguet's altar at Ripoll that I mention in another chapter.6 A further connection with Pere is to be seen in the blue-sky background and cypresses of the obverse panels. Both of these features we have already seen in Pere's altar of Sts. Julitta and Quiricus. Such natural backgrounds were expressly ordered in Jaume Huguet's (lost) retable of St. Martin at Monegre. The fact that the male donor is represented with St. John the Baptist would lead us to believe that his Christian name was John. The donatrice, it will be noted, is represented not with a female patron but with the male saint, Louis of Toulouse, whose name must have corresponded most closely to her own, which we may assume, therefore, to have been Louise.7 On the scarfs worn by John and Louise may be discerned respectively the insignia of the orders of the Jarra y Estola and of the Pilar. The former was instituted by Ferdinand of Antequera in 1403, and was widely bestowed under John II of Aragon. The order of the Pilar was founded by the latter's wife, Blanche of Navarre, in 1433. This information would lead us to conclude that the donors represented were Aragonese nobles.8 The only pair with the names John and Louise that we find in the register of the Navarro-Aragonese nobility of the time are John II of Beaumont and Louise of Mon-

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real. This identification would seem to be disproved if we are to credit FolcH's revelation that, on the reverse of the St. George panel, is the escutcheon of the Cabrera family.» A further suggestion of Folch's 10 is that in the painting of St. George we are to recognize an authentic portrait of the Prince of Viana." This theory is supported by the resemblance of the St. George to a contemporary description of the Prince by the historian Gongal Garcia de Sta. Maria, " Fou d'estatura mes que mitjana, de rostre prim, d'expressio modest'a i greu." There is likewise a striking likeness between St. George and a miniature portrait of Charles in the Biblioteca Nacional (Fig. 49).12 We see the same rather angular frame, the same melancholy and timid expression; the fine mouth and the short, straight hair are likewise identical in the two pictures. Certainly the picture in the Barcelona Museum corresponds with our mental image of the ill-fated Amador de la Gentileza. It seems altogether likely that Huguet should have chosen the hapless prince, the darling of the Catalans, to portray their patron saint, an arrangement agreeable to both painter and patrons. Folch tells us that it was not unusual for the prince to be depicted as a saint — a practice which had probably met with universal approval considering the reverence he was held in both before and after his premature and mysterious death. The miracles that brought the populace crowding about his bier would favor even more his representation as a saint.13 The final corroboration for this romantic theory would lie in the identification of the donors as John II of Beaumont and Louise of Monreal, probably the closest and most loyal supporters of [158]

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Charles' short-lived triumph.14 It may be noted that the prince had the prerogative for the bestowal of the Order of the Jarra in 1460, the decoration worn by the male donor in the left wing. The assignment of the entire retable to the year 1460 by Bertaux/ 5 corresponding chronologically as it does with Charles of Viana's brief career, would add still further strength to the theory of portraiture. Certainly the technique, the details of costume, and the resemblance of the Princess to the rather austere virgin of the Constable would suffice to place the triptych between the latter retable and that of Tarrassa, in other words, between 1459 and 1464. It is rather difficult to recognize in this portrait of a stripling the disillusioned man of thirty-nine that Charles of Viana was in 1460; if it is a likeness at all it must be a completely idealized one, or else taken from an earlier picture such as that mentioned on the preceding page. Portrait of Charles or not, in this sensitive and psychological likeness of a shy and melancholy adolescent we have Jaume Huguet's masterpiece; in his many paintings of kings and saints and potentates the painter was never more expressive than in this, the simple portrait of a boy.

XIII

DISCOVERIES AND CONJECTURES MINOR WORKS FROM THE HUGUET ATELIER ϋ&Φ&Μ&τ is NOT often that the critic is fortunate enough to jjjjj Τ jj| recognize a " l o s t " work from the description in a S JL H document. The reader may imagine my excitement on identifying, in the Vich Museum, two of the four figures of Prophets from the altarpiece that Huguet painted for Ripoll in 1455. 1 The panels that survive are those of Moses and Melchizedek (Fig. 50), identified by banderoles with their names in Gothic lettering.2 These paintings correspond absolutely to the description in the document of November 26, 1455; in the contract there were ordered four half-length figures of Prophets — "quatre mitges ymatges de profetas" — which were to be executed in grisaille — " e que les haia acabar de blanch e de negre." The panels in the Vich Museum are painted in black and white, and furthermore, as stipulated in the contract, the haloes and the backgrounds are painted in yellow "perque don semblanca dor!" Another factor in favor of associating these particular patriarchs with the retable at Ripoll is that they meet the requirements of a clause in the commission that calls for those Prophets most appropriate to the figure of Christ displaying the Host that was to have been painted in the central compartment — " q u i millor fassen el [160]

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fet de la consegracio." Melchizedek, accordingly, is represented with a chalice, indicative of his priestly activities and of his prophecy of the Eucharist in partaking of bread and wine at Abraham's table.3 The presence of Moses is to be explained probably by some scholastic's interpretation of the sprinkling of the Tabernacle "with the blood of Calves and Goates" 4 as another prototype for the Body and Blood of Christ. Both the patriarchs are represented with yard-long beards; in this respect they may be compared with Huguet's many paintings of hirsute personages such as the kneeling Melchior in the retable of the Constable, the (lost) figure of St. Anthony Abbot, or God the Father in the Huguetesque retablo at Tortosa. These sturdy prophets are of the same race as the Sts. Peter and Paul which Huguet painted on the backs of the wings of the St. George altar now in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum. The peculiar squinting glance of the eyes, the drawing of the features and of the delicate hands, are unmistakably characteristic of Huguet. The drapery that swathes these monumental forms is arranged in the easy, unmannered folds that are typical of the painter's style. In these figures of Moses and Melchizedek I think we can see the ancestors of the Prophets by Pau Vergos; how little Huguet's paintings suffer by this comparison will be apparent upon even the most casual examination. It was Bertaux who first recognized as a work by Huguet a thoroughly charming picture of the Flagellation of Christ (Fig. 51) in the possession of the Cobblers' Guild in Barcelona.5 The odd shape of the panel suggests that it was either complete in itself or else formed the entire predella of a now vanished re[161]

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table probably dedicated to Mark, the patron saint of the guild. On either side of the main panel are painted medallions of the Tetramorph and, in raised stucco, gilded, the insignia of the shoemakers. The Flagellation is conceived as taking place in a tiled courtyard, in back the happy motif of an arcade opening on a vast expanse of sylvan landscape — a device that suggests to us very pleasantly the mood of Carpaccio. The figure of Christ bound to a column in the center is the emaciated, almost beardless, personage of Huguet's many versions of the tragedy of Golgotha. A rather piquant iconographical element is the introduction of the miniature angel, who wipes Our Lord's brow, and his companions, who catch the blood from the Saviour's wounds. Another unusual feature is the appearance, at the extreme left, of two haloed individuals who may be intended as Apostles. Perhaps they are Crispin and Anianus, the patrons of the Cobblers Guild, who are here vouchsafed a vision of Christ's suffering. There are other characters whom we have met before; such a one is the seated Pilate, who is none other than the Decius of the Tarrassa altar. The Procurator's henchmen and the crowd of youths and holy men have left their places at the Martyrdom of Abdon and Sennen to assist at this scene from the Passion. In the crowd at the left are two of those inquisitive gamins that appear at all of Huguet's martyrdoms; they prophesy in their roguish charm the urchins of the great painter of Spanish childhood, Murillo. The executioners, as usual going about their business with the greatest sang froid> are the brothers of the tormentors of St. Vincent in the Sarriä panel. [162]

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In style, this painting corresponds to the period of the retables of St. Michael and of Sts. Abdon and Sennen; the date 1459, when the Cobblers were assigned to a new chapel dedicated to St. Mark, must have been a propitious occasion for the painting of a new altarpiece, and to that year I believe we may ascribe the picture of the Flagellation.6 Among the paintings related to Huguet's school is a large panel of the patrons of the Cobblers, Sts. Crispin, Anianus, and Crispinian (Fig. 52), formerly, according to its last owner, Sr. D. Miguel Massot of Barcelona, in the chapel of the guild in Barcelona Cathedral.7 With only this statement on which to base our judgment, it is difficult to decide whether we are to associate this panel with the authentic Huguet painting for the same shrine that we have just considered. On the evidence of a document commissioning the painter Martorell to execute a panel for the chapel of the Cobblers' Guild the picture was attributed to that master. Obviously the date of the lost work by Martorell — 1437 — is too early for our painting, which belongs to the second half of the century and may very well have replaced the earlier retable. The drawing of the hands and faces of the shoemaker saints is delicate and at the same time sculpturesque. As in so many works by Huguet, the types suggest those of Pinturicchio and his immediate school; the young Crispinian at the right is particularly reminiscent of the Umbrian master's exquisite portrait of a boy in the Dresden Gallery. The indebtedness to Huguet may be discerned also in the general excellence of the technique and in the serenity and monumentality of the conception, as well as in the dama[163]

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scened gold, which recalls the decoration of the retablo at Tarrassa. The handling of the drapery in stiff, chunky folds is surely related to the Vergos manner. When I studied this painting in the Barcelona Exposition of 1929 I was struck by the similarity of the rather wooden features, especially in the conventional drawing of the mouths, to those portions in the panel of the Way to Calvary by Pau Vergos that hung in the same room. In the catalogue of the 1929 exposition the picture was attributed to Alemany; 8 certainly it is not difficult to see the relation to the painting of Sts. Sebastian and Thecla attributed to that master in the cloisters of . the cathedral. If this picture were indeed a part of the same altarpiece of which the Flagellation formed the predella, it seems strange that Huguet should have left such an important panel as this entirely to his assistants. For want of any more definite information as to its history, the best we can do is to attribute it to an anonymous but fairly distinguished follower of Huguet, a follower who had also come in contact with the more stereotyped art of the Vergos atelier. I mention as an early work of the Huguet atelier the retablo of the Madonna and Child (Fig. 53) in the Episcopal Museum at Vich (No. 301). The Madonna is enthroned between St. Michael and St. Gabriel; the former, armed with shield and spear, is rather nonchalantly trampling an unpleasant and diminutive demon; St. Gabriel is holding a crown and the nails from the Crucifixion. Above is Christ crucified, in a rocky landscape, with John the Baptist at the left and the Magdalene in the right-hand panel. In the central painting of the [164]

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predella is Christ in the Tomb, supported by an angel with the column and the Cross in the background. At the left is St. Peter and at the right St. Jerome. This retable is most closely related to the Crucifixion of the Tarrassa retable. The figures of Our Lord are identical in both works, and the same type is used for Christ in the Tomb. Further analogies may be pointed out in the St. Michael, who resembles one of Huguet's pretty young men, such as the St. John or the Dimas of the Retailers altar, and in the St. Jerome, who might be described as the Damian of the Tarrassa predella grown somewhat older. The Madonna and the other figures cannot be said to bear a relation to any distinct Huguet type, although the Virgin does resemble distantly the Holy Women of the Abdon and Sennen retable. Another point of contact with this work is that the sharp escarpments of rock which Huguet painted into the background of the Tarrassa Crucifixion are also present in the Vich panel. On the whole, the altarpiece is so summary in execution that I am inclined to give it to a member of the atelier rather than to Jaume himself; on the basis of the evidence presented I would date it about 1460. A large panel (1.76 m. X .80 m.) of St. Bernardine (Fig. 54), recently acquired for the Gualino Collection in Turin, must, I believe, be added to the list of attributions to Jaume Huguet. St. Bernardine is represented standing, dressed in the Franciscan habit, and holding above his head a banderole with the inscription PATER M A N I F E S T A V I NOMEN (TUUM HOMINIBUS). 9 His regular attribute, the flame-encircled monogram of Christ, is partially shown at the left. Behind the saint is a mitre, sym[165]

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bolical of one of the bishoprics he refused. T w o angels at his feet seem about to aid him in levitation. The background is lightly incised with a pattern resembling the designs of contemporary brocades. The head of St. Bernardine, though unrelated to any definite Huguet character, suggests the refined, sensitive type of manhood, such as the St. George of the Barcelona Museum panel or Sts. Abdon and Sennen in the retable of 1460. I can see no relation between St. Bernardine as here portrayed and in the various Italian portraits of him by Sano di Pietro and other Quattrocento masters. The saint and his angelic companions have the straining eyes characteristic of Pere Huguet and found in early works by Jaume. The angels, more generalized than the principal figure, may be compared to St. Michael and his companions in the Retailers altar; the angel at the right bears a resemblance to the Proconsul in the scene of the martyrdom of Sts. Abdon and Sennen. It will be noted that the curious leaf-shaped wings of St. Bernardine's celestial attendants are of the same type that Huguet used in the retablo of St. Michael. The drapery is somewhat more angular than usual; it is most nearly related to the arrangement of the folds in the garments of the Virgin and Saints in that other panel from the Retailers altarpiece. I do not hesitate to attribute the panel to Jaume himself, possibly with the aid of assistants in the portions that I have not found quite characteristic. Basing my judgment on the relationship to the altar of St. Michael and other works of the same period, I would date this picture ca. 1455-60. Although the provenience of the panel is unknown, [166]

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it is a temptation to attach it to the (lost) retable of St. Anthony of Padua which Huguet painted in 1455 for the monastery at Berga. 10 I should like to associate with the painting of St. Bernardine two large panels (150:80 cm.), painted on both sides with figures of Franciscan saints." The personages represented are Bonaventure, Accurso and Otho, two friars martyred in Morocco in the year 12,19," anc * St. Wigbert.13 The first painting, that of St. Bonaventure (Fig. 55) in Cardinal's dress regarding a crucifix, is by far the best of the lot. Both the type and handling relate it definitely to the painter of the Coronation of St. Augustine whom I have identified elsewhere as Jaume Huguet; I do not believe, however, that the craftsmanship is of a sufficiently high order to warrant attribution to the master himself. The drawing of the figure of Christ is bad in foreshortening, and the perspective is everywhere uncertain.14 The three other panels with their stiff and conventionalized figures — those of the two friars being particularly dull — are related to the assistant who painted, the minor narrative panels in the St. Augustine altar. The drawing of the features and the arrangement of the draperies indicate clearly the hand of a member of the Vergos family, although the technique, especially in the painting of the hands of the two friars, is too poor for the artist whom I have labelled Rafael Vergos. It is certain that the same moulds for the embossed backgrounds were used here as in the retable of St. Stephen of Granollers, a fact which settles beyond a doubt the provenience of the panels from the Vergos atelier. With but slight varia[167]

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tions the design is the same as that of the St. Augustine panels of the Tanners Guild, and of the W a y to Calvary in the collection of Dfia Rosa Coronas. I believe all four of the paintings are products of the Vergos studio — the panel of St. Bonaventure by a follower of Huguet, and the other three by an assistant of Rafael. It is hard to see the appropriateness of this quartet of Franciscan saints for either the altar of St. Augustine or that of the Proto-martyr Stephen. 15 The nature of the subjects again suggests the retablo at Berga, although the date of the pictures must be nearer 1500, judging from the developed technique and from the architectural backgrounds, completely in the Renaissance style. However, from what we now know of Huguet's delay in finishing some of his other commissions, it is not inconceivable that the sections were added some time after the painting of the St. Bernardine at Turin. Two· panels in the Tschudi Collection in Berlin were published and cited by von Loga as forming part of the retable with the panels just mentioned. 16 The first of these is a painting of St. Louis of Toulouse standing in a little oratory with a glimpse of some rather elaborate Gothic vaulting in the background. He is dressed in the customary brocade with a golden fleur-de-lis design. He resembles more than anyone else the figure of the young man listening to St. Ambrose in the scene of the latter's preaching in the Augustine altar, although the style, especially in the drapery which is arranged in the easy, unmannered folds of the Huguet tradition, relates him to the painter of the Seraphic Doctor of the Drey panels. The stamped back of this panel and its companion, like that of the [168]

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Drey paintings, is patterned after the exotic floriate design of the St. Augustine retable. The second of the two pictures, St. Ausidius' Vision of Christ, seems to have suffered considerably from repainting. It could never have been a great work of art at any time. As nearly as I can judge, the style is that of a third-rate imitator of the painter of the Granollers Calvary — Rafael Vergos. The most notable thing about the painting is the miserable failure the artist has made in attempting to show us the saint's charger in front view. Unphotographed, like so many of the paintings in the Sala Capitular, is a small triptych of the Crucified with the Virgin and St. John flanked by standing figures of Sts. Eulalia and Catherine of Alexandria. So far as can be seen in its present damaged condition this painting must be assigned to Jaume Huguet's immediate atelier; judging by the rather linear quality and by the resemblance of the types to those in the altar of the Constable, I should say that it probably dates from the prolific period of 1455-65. There is an altarpiece (Fig. 56) in the Amatller Collection which, although it has never been attributed to Huguet, should perhaps be considered in connection with his school. In the central panel is the Madonna and Child with attendant angels and a small kneeling donor; this panel is surmounted by a representation of the Epiphany. To the left of these panels is St. Augustine as a Church Father, and above the saint is seen ordaining novices. The right wing of the triptych represents a figure of St. Dominic surmounted by a scene of the saint saying [169]

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a mass for the dead; through an aperture in back we see the souls of the departed received by angels. The Madonna in the two panels in which she appears is a type reminiscent of the winsome beauties in the central section of the retable of Sts. Catherine and Clara. The scene of ordination with its mass of rather well-characterized heads suggests remotely the scene painted by Jaume Huguet in the altar of St. Vincent. Other figures such as that of the donor in the central panel are also superficially suggestive of the master; the figuration of the gold background, however, is totally unlike any of the designs employed by either Huguet or the Vergos. Some of the personages in this painting, such as the maid servant in the Epiphany, the types of the Magi and of St. Augustine, call to mind the art of the Maitre de Moulins or even of a member of the Avignon group; one might, for example, compare the St. Augustine of the Amatller panel with the well-known St. Liberius in the Musee Calvet at Avignon. I would not claim an extra-Spanish origin for this picture; its form, the use of gold and brocade, and the piquant treatment of the narrative panels, all point to a Catalan atelier, not the atelier of Jaume Huguet, to be sure, but, I should suggest, of a foreign painter who was acquainted with the style of the second half of the fifteenth century in Barcelona. Widely attributed to Jaume Huguet but certainly not by his hand is a triptych in the Vich Museum (Fig. 57). In the main panel of the Epiphany are the members of the Holy Family seated under an open shed. The Magi and their followers, all dressed in very rich Burgundian costumes, are grouped around [ 17° 3

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the Virgin and Child. The figures of Christ, St. Joseph, and the Madonna seem to be based on Huguet's types, although they are much drier in execution. The detail, behind the shed at the right, of the Ethiopian Magus bestriding his own horse and holding the bridle of another has likewise been encountered in the altar of the Royal Chapel at Barcelona. Above this painting of the Epiphany is a devotional rendering of the Crucifixion: to the right and left of the Cross are, respectively, the Virgin and St. John, and beyond them are two kneeling donors being presented to the Crucified by St. Anthony Abbot and the Magdalene. In the background is a landscape of hills and river valleys and a view of the Holy City conceived in the manner of the precursors of the van Eycks. Mayer calls the landscape Burgundian in character. In the spandrels over this panel is painted an Annunciation based on the van Eyck cartoon: the Virgin is kneeling at a desk covered with odds and ends of stilllife; on the opposite side, Gabriel presents his message on a long, fluttering scroll. In spite of its superficial resemblance to the retable of the Constable, the manner of this triptych is obviously that of the Franco-Flemish School of the Master of St. George in its late phase under the influence of the van Eyck brothers. The painting was done in the oil-glaze technique and is very rich and rather dark in color. The landscape background, with a blue sky in favor of the usual gold, and the Burgundian details of costume are all indications of foreign influence. This painting represents the development of the Flemish strain noted in the works of the Ampurias master. The types, like those of the [171]

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Master of St. George, are superficially suggestive of Huguet's people. Some of them, with their large noses and heads, may be compared with those of the St. Michael altar at Palau del Vidre, the painter of which may have been a collaborator of Jaume Huguet's in his early period. The type of fluffy-haired angel and the agitated Tournai drapery are further bonds. These are the foreign elements introduced after the influence of the Master of St. George had really exhausted itself in Catalonia. I would attribute this altarpiece, then, to a Flemishtrained follower of Huguet in his early period — a follower who was acquainted with the work of the essentially Catalonian Internationalists as well. An even closer parentage may be found for this painting in a number of small panels in the Lonja at Palma de Mallorca (Fig. 58). These latter pictures — three scenes from the life of St. Agatha (?) — show the same minute finish in execution. One may find also the same people with over-large heads and extravagantly pointed shoes. Actual types may be selected for comparison, as, for example, the Virgin Annunciate at Vich and the saint in the panel of her imprisonment at Palma. Repetitions of the types of the Magi and St. Joseph in the Vich Epiphany may be readily found in the scene of the Martyrdom of St. Agatha. Another set of panels representing the Resurrection, in the Diocesan Museum at Palma, is likewise related to the paintings just considered. The inference is not necessarily that all of these pictures are Mallorcan products. It is more likely that they were painted [ 172]

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for export in Catalonia, just as Huguet, for one, is known to have consigned an altarpiece to Sardinia. 17 Behind the high altar of the Cathedral at Tortosa is a retable of the Transfiguration which Mayer has suggested as a possible school piece of the Huguet atelier. 18 N o document exists to determine either the date or the painter of this altarpiece, although, through the researches of Sr. Gracia, we are able to identify it with a retable made for one Pere Ferrer, "Rector de la Iglesia de Asco y Comensal." From June, 1441, we have a record of the assigning to Pere of a chapel behind the high altar, — "retro altare maius," — and the institution of daily masses for his soul.19 Pere's will, dated February 14, 1463, is slightly more valuable as a document: " I t e m volo et mando fieri et celebrari duo aniversaria perpetua in sede Derthusae ilia videlicet que in capitulis super missis de tabula per me dimissis fuerunt dimissa et ordinata quorum unum volo fieri et celebrari pro anima patris et matris meorum sepultorum et translatorum in vase seu tumulo meo, retro altare maius per me constructo statim in diem crastinum post festum Transfigurationis Dni. in Jhu — xpi." Since at Tortosa, and in fact in all Catalonia, it is customary to celebrate anniversaries on the day following the feast or the saint's day to which the chapel is dedicated, it is to be supposed that, since Ferrer gave orders for such a celebration " o n the day next after the feast of the Transfiguration," the chapel was dedicated to this feast and that for it the retable still in its original position was painted. Gracia has also indicated that, among the crowd of the blessed in the panel of the Last Judg[ 173]

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ment, the donor of the retable may be recognized by his clerical garb and tonsure. The retable is composed of eight panels, four scenes from the Old Testament and four from the New. The central section comprises paintings of the Transfiguration (Fig. 59), and above it the Crucifixion. In the wing at the left is represented Moses receiving the tablets of the law in a rocky landscape that might have been inspired by the fastnesses of Montserrat. In this painting and the one below it of the encounter with the burning bush, the Patriarch is represented with horns, the popular misconception that may be traced to the notorious error in the translation of the Vulgate. The lowest panel in this section is devoted to the Ascension. In the right wing, at the top, is Elias on the Chariot of Fire, and below this the Prophet calling down celestial fire on the messengers of Ahaziah. The lowest panel represents the Last Judgment. The color of the altarpiece is as fresh and bright as when it left the workshop of the painter. The gaudiness of the tones is a shock to the student accustomed to the nostalgic charm of the faded black and gold of a typical work by Huguet. Particularly disturbing is the hot and foxy tonality of the flesh parts and, in the landscapes in the Moses story, thoroughly disagreeable reds and greens — the same "verdes y carmines" that sound so enchanting in the reading of the documents! If this retable is a fair example of the original condition of a fifteenthcentury work, and there is no evidence of restoration, we must reconcile ourselves to the fact that, for all their accomplishment in drawing, the Catalan painters of the later Quattrocento [ 1 7 4 ]

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were as innocent of color sense as the most unpleasant of the followers of Raphael and Leonardo. Sr. Gracia, writing before the definite attribution of the retable of the Constable to Huguet, attributed the Tortosa altarpiece to Pau Vergos on grounds of resemblance between these two works. The only subject treated in both paintings is that of the Ascension. In the Tortosa retable the composition of the scene is practically identical with the Barcelona version, except that St. John and the Virgin have exchanged places in the foreground. Not only are these two characters identical in the two paintings, but also the types chosen for the rest of the Twelve are the same in one and the other. In the case of the Tortosa panel, the angels who flank the ascending Saviour bear legible scrolls with the words from Acts i, n , " Viri Galiloei, quid

statis aspicientes coelum? " and " Sit veniet, quemadmodum tis eum euntem in coelum."

vidis-

The representation of the Crucifixion is, to all intents and purposes, composed according to the standard Huguet formula with the omission of the two thieves, Longinus, the high priest, and the soldiers casting lots. In this respect it is a further simplification of the version in the Cornelia retable, which, we remember, did not include the figures of Dimas and his unrepentant companion. It may be pointed out that Christ as well as the three Marys and St. John have their nearest relatives in the same panel; surely the rather coarse model employed for Mary Salome in the Tortosa panel is the same that served as the Virgin in the Cornelia Calvary. In the background, to the left, is a part of the same walled city that figured in the setting [175]

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of the Resurrection in the Constable retable. A further and perhaps more striking point of similarity between the Tortosa altar and the Cornelia fragments is that the same mould, identical in every particular, has been employed in stamping the rosette pattern on the gold background of both retables. In the scene of the Transfiguration, Christ is the rather broad-faced figure that appears in the scene of the Resurrection in the Constable altarpiece, while his companions, the Apostles, are quite obviously taken from the same set of models used for the Pentecost scene of the same retable. The figure of St. James (center) is derived in pose and type from the Transfiguration by a follower of the Master of St. George in the Sala Capitular in Barcelona. The bearded figures of the patriarchs as well as that of God the Father are related to Huguet's conception of St. Anthony Abbot. The soldiers in the scene of Elias and the messengers, which St. Gracia relates to the panel of St. Vincent at the Stake, seem to be unquestionably drawn from the same models as the sleeping guards in the Resurrection panel of the altar of 1465. The white-bearded warrior in the center of the discomfited group is none other than Decius' councillor in the Tarrassa altar, here called upon to play a new and somewhat less important röle. I may add that in the Last Judgment we see the same type of Christ as served in the retable of the Constable, and that the prophets and elect are likewise drawn from the scene of Pentecost in that altarpiece. The nudes in the lower part of the panel may be compared to the figures of the martyrs in the predella of the altarpiece at Tarrassa. The completely literal transcription of Biblical [176]

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scenes by the Catalan painters is illustrated by the panel of Elias on the chariot of fire. Miss Richert aptly points out that the chariot is no more than a laborer's cart and that, were it not for his wings and halo, the angel who sits so jauntily on the horse might be mistaken for a charming gamin.30 The technique is that of Huguet's early manner in the period of the Tarrassa retable. Certainly the painting is by a much more youthful hand than the Cornelia altar, with which it has little in common save the identity of the background pattern. Tentatively, then, for this reason and on account of the striking resemblances already noted, it seems just to ascribe this work to the master's atelier. A certain coarseness in the drawing and the lack of distinction in the compositions prevents me from assigning it outright to the hand of Huguet himself. The drapery is of the chunky, deeply cut variety employed particularly by Rafael Vergos; it might be possible, therefore, to attribute this altarpiece to him while still in the workshop of Huguet. The words in Ferrer's testament, "altare maius per me constructo," would certainly lead me to believe that at the time of writing (1463) the altar had been finished already, and since the style is typical of that period of the master's work it seems reasonable to date the retable at about 1460-63. It is of course possible that it was done even before the Tarrassa retable, and this would account for the lack of finish and the youthful quality of the work.

XIV REFLECTIONS OF HUGUET IN SARDINIA &β$$$» JQ*

jQt

HAVE

already noted the existence of a document »

» TT ® whereby Huguet empowered his brother to collect for H JL |j a retable delivered to one Gabriel Canila of Sardinia. $ $ $ $ $ $ That was in 1451. From earliest times a school of painting had existed on the island, which, by its position, was subject to every artistic wind that blew from Italy, and especially from Catalonia. Although it is impossible for me to attach so much importance to the work of the Sard School as does Miss King, 1 it is necessary to consider certain paintings, provincial and mediocre as they are, for the reason that by both Miss King and Mr. Aru they have been associated with Huguet and his immediate contemporaries. The names of chief importance for the history of Sardinian painting in the fifteenth century are those of Jean Figuera and Rafael Thomas, who in the years 1456-65 painted an altarpieceof St. Bernardine that is now in the Cagliari Museum. This work, discovered by A m , is documented, and was contracted for six years after the canonization of the saint to whom it is dedicated. Sanpere 2 and Mayer 3 both suggested this work as one by Huguet's own hand, while Signor Aru, after the invention of his Thomas and Figuera, only pointed out the relationship to Jaume's atelier. Miss King and Venturi 4 favor the latter opinion. In a review [ 178 ]

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of Aru's article Tormo forcefully denies any relationship whatever; he says of the St. Bernardine altar, "Ni es de Huguet, ni de su escuela, ni probablemente Catalan, tanto como se acerca al valenciano." 5 The resemblance of the central panel of St. Bernardine's Levitation to the scene of St. Vincent in Prison, most uninteresting of the Sarriä panels, has already been noted.6 In the smaller panels I can see only a faint reflection of Huguet in his earliest period. That the artist (Thomas ?) lacked entirely Jaume's Italian sensibility for beauty of body is apparent at once. These spindly little men and women with their ugly, rather undersized heads are poor shadows of the people in the Tarrassa predella. They would suffer even in comparison with the altar of Sts. Julitta and Quiricus. Occasionally realistic gestures and lively posing make me think of the painter of the side panels of the St. Clara retable, who was catalogued as one of Huguet's immediate predecessors, if not his actual master. In the panel of the Pietä is an angel supporting the body of Christ who, like his brethren in the main picture, bears a resemblance to the attendants on St. Vincent in the Sarriä panel of the prison scene. Miss King is pitifully unconvincing in her attempt to attach to Figuera the handsome retable of St. George now divided between Barcelona and Berlin.7 In none of his works does Figuera show himself capable of executing a work as fine as the St. George altar; furthermore, as we have seen, his technique is hard and "algo vulgar," in contrast to the fine and confident handling of Huguet. Miss King's assertion that the treatment C !79 3

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of the brocade in the garment of the princess and in that of the angels of the St. Bernardine altar is analogous is not surprising, since no one will deny that Figuera received his training in Barcelona and consequently must have known the conventions for handling fine stuffs in vogue at the time. A further "proof" of hers for the ascription of the St. George to Figuera is that in the painting of the princess as well as in the St. George of the St. Lucifer retable we are afforded a view into the nostril of the personages portrayed! One can sympathize with Miss King in attempting to attribute to Figuera one first-rate picture, without which it would be almost impossible to classify him otherwise than as a mediocre imitator of a great school. On the other hand, her attempt to belittle Huguet, referring to him as "nowhere first rate" and "lacking the temperament of Figuera," seems very close to anathema. In general the Sardinian School is close to that of Catalonia in its adherence to the traditional gold background, more often than not embossed with floral or textile motifs, and, as we have seen, in that the types and the method of approach in the fifteenth century were eventually derived from the HuguetVergos atelier — as, in an earlier period, the dependence had been on Borrassa. As an example not far from the Vergos manner it will suffice to mention the Carnicer retable of the Epiphany, now in the Cagliari Museum. In connection with the Sardinian paintings I must allude to a cycle of ruined frescoes in the church of Sta. Maria di Gesu, near Palermo in Sicily, which were mentioned by the critic Lavagnino as related to Huguet.8 These paintings are almost [iBo]

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totally obliterated, and can be studied only in some rather unsatisfactory drawings made in the nineteenth century. The subjects are scenes from the life of a Franciscan saint who is seen preaching, in meditation, and finally laid in his tomb. From the resemblance to known portraits, the chief protagonist in this series of frescoes has been identified as St. Bernardine of Siena. The group of heads in the scene of the saint's entombment suggests the virile characterizations in the altar of St. Vincent from Sarriä. Besides this there is little or no evidence for supposing that the pictures were painted by a Spaniard. A relation to Jacomart, suggested by Lavagnino, is more plausible and is corroborated by the type of drapery and the heavy chiaroscuro. The most likely assumption, I believe, is that the frescoes were executed by an artist who, together with Jacomart and Bermejo, originated in the fifteenth-century school of Naples.

XV GABRIEL GUARDIA OF THE few remnants of the religious art of Mani resa that survived the torch of the Napoleonic inS vaders is an altarpiece of the Trinity painted by a native of the town, Gabriel Guardia. A document of the year 1501, the only one in which the name of this artist is mentioned, is a contract between the canons of Sta. Maria and Guardia for the painting of an altar of the Trinity, a work that, according to the record, had been ordered by the deceased prior, Bernat Massadella. 1 The executors of this latter, Bernard Mallo and Andreas Segui, give the most explicit directions for the painting of the retablo. In the central compartment was to be represented the Trinity, and above it the Coronation of the Virgin. The activities of the Three Persons selected for illustration in the lateral panels were the Creation of the World, the Appearance of the Three Angels to Abraham, and, from the New Testament, the Baptism and Transfiguration. The subjects of the predella panels, which were to be five in number, were also suggested by the canons. For the whole project Guardia was to receive fifty-five lliures upon the satisfactory termination of the work within four years.

O

The disassembled panels of this altarpiece (Fig. 60) are now very inadequately stored in the organ loft of the Cathedral.' A t some time after the drawing up of the contract of 1501, the [ 1 8 2 ]

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iconography of the retable must have been rearranged, since, instead of the Coronation of the Virgin, we have a panel of the Madonna enthroned with Sts. Lucy and Gabriel; in the lateral panels, the Creation of Eve has replaced the Creation of the World, and Moses before the Burning Bush has been substituted for the Transfiguration that was ordered in the document. The central panel shows us the Trinity represented in accordance with the specifications of the donor, that is, with God the Father supporting the crucified Christ and the Holy Spirit proceeding from Father and Son together —precehint dels dos. In its solid frontal arrangement, the group is but one more example of the Spanish painters' delight in the hieratic, idol-like form; the tradition has its beginning in the Pantokrator of the Romanesque basilica, and continues through Bermejo's St. Dominic, to end in this painting by Guardia. Another survival is the great emphasis on the pattern of the brocade which in the robe of God the Father is flattened out almost as conspicuously as in the works by the Serra brothers. Perhaps the most distinguished part of the painting is the portrait of the donor in priest's robes which appears in the lower left-hand corner, and which is almost certainly a likeness of the Prior Bernat Massadella mentioned in the document. The derivation from Huguet's types of Christ and the Father in the central panel is as easily detected as the similar dependence of Our Lord and His angelic companions in the scene of the Baptism. The same may be said of the protagonists in the Creation of Eve. It is an interesting possibility [183]

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that both the wall confining the terrestrial paradise and the iconography of Eve's emerging from Adam's side may have their origin in the Miracle Plays. In the stage directions for this scene in contemporary dramas it is specified that Eve shall appear from a trapdoor behind the recumbent Adam, thus creating for the spectators an illusion of actually proceeding from his side.3 It is a temptation to ascribe to this source also the conceit of the angel's supporting the train of God the Father's flowing robe. Very striking is the complete resemblance between the representation of the Burning Bush (Fig. 61) in this altarpiece and in that of Tortosa, which I have considered as a work of the Huguet studio. Even to the two trees on the hillock behind the patriarch's head the two compositions are identical. Moses seems almost certainly to have been copied from the earlier painting, although in the altarpiece of 1501 his beard is black instead of white. The very shoes that the prophet has cast aside are alike in both panels, and there is only a slight difference in the disposition of the sheep grazing on the hillside. How are we to account for this astonishing resemblance? T o call it mere plagiarism is perhaps too strong an indictment. There are several conclusions possible: that Guardia was a pupil of Huguet and did not hesitate to use his master's cartoons; or that the author of the retables of Tortosa and Manresa is one and the same. I cannot believe that we could reconcile the artist of the Tortosa retable painted about 1460 with the painter of this altarpiece done forty years later. I consider it more plausible that, if Huguet was the master of the Tortosa [184]

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altarpiece, which we have reason to believe, then Guardia was his pupil. A s has been indicated, I feel quite certain that the retable of the T r i n i t y in its original state comprised not only the central picture, with the smaller narrative panels illustrating the various manifestations of the T h r e e Persons, b u t also a painting of the Virgin with Sts. Gabriel and Agnes also stored in the organ loft of the Cathedral, which replaced the Coronation of the Virgin ordered in the document of 1501. 4 T h e Madonna, slightly elevated above her kneeling companions, wears a robe somew h a t similar to the gold-bordered garment affected b y the Virgin of the Constable; I have already noted the points of resemblance between this panel and that of the M a d o n n a E n throned in the altar of St. Michael. 5 T h e treatment of the drapery, in the rather linear arrangement of the folds, has something distinctly " Guardia-esque" about it, and there is a striking similarity between St. Agnes and the member of the T r i n i t y at the left in the panel of A b r a h a m and the T h r e e Angels. T h e Madonna and St. Gabriel are certainly of the same family as the angels in the Baptism. There are other Guardia characteristics, such as the drawing of the lips and the brilliant colors of the draperies; one should compare the brilliant matt red of the Virgin's gown with the shade used in the central compartment itself. Finally, the panel happens to coincide in size with that of the Trinity. T o complete the altarpiece we must add to this list the four figures of saints forming the predella of Pere Serra's retable of the Pentecost (Fig. 60).6 These panels have heretofore been [ 1 8 5 ]

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ascribed to Huguet. The types, however, especially that of the Bishop Saint at the left, and the manner of drawing the features, correspond completely with the type and technique which we have found peculiar to Guardia. What is suggested by this similarity becomes a virtual certainty with the discovery of the complete identity of the figuration of the gold backgrounds of the predella panels and those of the Trinity and the Virgin. It may be that St. Andrew was introduced as the patron of Andreas Segui, a canon of the Cathedral, whose name is mentioned in the document of 1501. In like manner it may be possible to identify one of the bishop saints as Bernard in honor of the Canon Bernard Mallo, who also figures in the contract. As I have suggested, I think it may be possible to find evidence of Guardia's collaboration in certain panels of the retable of the Constable, namely those of the Annunciation and the Nativity. In both of these the Virgin is the rather plain, redhaired type of femininity employed by Guardia in his painting at Manresa, and, if it is by his hand, in the Madonna and Saints of the St. Michael altarpiece. It should not be difficult to add to Guardia's credit the Madonna in the Epiphany of the St. Agatha retable; she is certainly the same type. The only additional solution for the problem, other than that Guardia had a hand in painting the early Huguet retables, would be that the former took his types directly from Jaume's cartoons. I prefer to believe that as a young man in Huguet's atelier he was allowed to take part in the painting of the two altarpieces we have just examined. [ 1 8 6 ]

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Guardia's technique is the broad manner of Huguet's later period; the artist has a predilection for hatching the shadows of both the drapery and the flesh parts in parallel lines. In its original state the color must have been close to the tonality of the remarkably preserved altar at Tortosa. It may be pointed out, en passant, that in the painting of the flesh parts the artist uses more cinabrese than we find in the works by Huguet. His nudes show a greater command of anatomical structure than Jaume ever attained; as an example I need point out only the foreshortened figure of Adam in the Creation of Eve. Most interesting of all is Guardia's manifest delight in landscape, a feature that was never particularly stressed by Huguet and his atelier. Guardia's method of drawing eyes and mouths approximates that of Huguet, as contrasted with what we have identified as the formula of the Vergos family. The same document that identifies Guardia as the painter of the retable at Manresa informs us that, although a citizen of that town, he was at the time (1501) living in Vich. It may have been this information that once led the late director of the Vich Museum, Gudiol, to attribute to Guardia a panel of Christ in the tomb with symbols of the Passion, a painting now in the Episcopal Museum of the town. If we knew definitely that this picture came from Manresa it would be possible, perhaps, to identify it as a part of the predella of the altarpiece of the Trinity. Technically, the work is much coarser than any portion of the Manresa retable; in another chapter I seek to relate it to the Vergosian retablo of Sts. Justa and Rufina in the Diocesan Museum at Barcelona. 7 Gudiol subsequently

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changed the attribution of this painting, expressing the opinion that it was done by one Pedro Alegret in 1531.8 Another panel attributed to this master, whose name I have been unable to find anywhere, is a representation of St. Augustine in his study that hangs in the same gallery. The saint is seated at his desk in a little apartment littered with books and objects of nature morte\ through an open door at the left there is shown, in a very small space, St. Augustine's dispute with the Child. The characterization of the old man and the painting of the varied bits of still life are eventually derived from Huguet, although the extreme precision of the technique in the details relates the painting to a personality who was neither Huguet nor Guardia. At all events, the author of this work could not have painted the panel of Christ in the Tomb, as suggested by Gudiol. The representation in the Manresa altarpiece of Abraham Entertaining the Three Angels, a subject that was so popular in the Quattrocento schools of Naples and Sicily, is the only one known to me in the whole history of medieval Catalan painting. So little actual resemblance exists between Guardia's painting and the several versions of the subject by the Sicilian painter Jacobello d'Antonio that we would be unjustified in seeking, on this iconographical relationship, to associate Guardia with the pan-Mediterranean style of painting which linked the work of Nufio Gongalves with that of Naples, and Bermejo with the school of Provence. 9 Sanpere was the first to suggest a Burgundian strain in the work of Gabriel Guardia.10 In reference to the Manresa Trinity, he says, " E l Padre Eterno de Maelweel (Malouel) [ 188 ]

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creemos poder decir que es indudablemente el de Guardia, pero media un siglo entre uno y otro pintor." To explain this latter discrepancy he goes on to say, " E s sencillamente fortuita, la semejanza, ό bien es el efecto de un difusion del tipo que se dice creado per Malouel lo que todos admiten . . . un tipo extranjero conocio y sin antecedentes en el solar de la escuela catalana." " There is really no way of disputing Sanpere's suggested adoption of the Malouel type; personally, I would rather think that Guardia's God the Father is a perfectly natural enlargement and elaboration of the venerable figure of the Eternal that Huguet employed in the small, aureoled detail of the Annunciation in the Constable retable. The representation of the First Person of the Trinity as an old man and a bearded was universally popular in Europe of the fifteenth century; what basis Sanpere had for attributing to Malouel the invention of this type I cannot imagine — certainly we can trace the iconography as far back as Giotto and Cavallini, and further if need be. This is not sufficient, however, to dispel the notion of Guardia's definite relation to the Provengal-Burgundian School. I have found particularly striking analogies in the work of the school of Nice. Gabriel's Madonna at Manresa, for example, bears the most extraordinary likeness to the figure of St. Catherine in a triptych from Sospel that figured in the 1904 exhibition of French primitives." The St. Lucy of the Manresa picture is a full sister of the angel who attends the Madonna mourning over her dead Son in the central panel. The painter of the Sospel panels is surprisingly close to Guardia stylisti[ 1 8 9 ]

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cally; "Son dessin est precis, tr£s arrete, pas toujours extrememen t heureux; il sait pourtant draper avec simplicite; son modele, enfin, est un peu sommaire." 13 This description of M. Labande's would serve as well to characterize a picture by Guardia! In types also the two are very similar; St. Lucy and all of Guardia's angels have the same long, straight hair, parted in the center of the forehead; the treatment of eyes and noses in both paintings is extraordinarily analogous, too. Guardia and his French cousin both draw the same full but very firm mouths; they are equally careful in the telling and delicate arrangement of the hands. Further analogies might be drawn between Guardia's angels and those employed by Enguerrand Charonton; another point would be Guardia's curiously un-Catalan sense for spaciousness in landscape that may well be an echo of the contemporary school in the Rhone Valley. It seems almost impossible that Guardia could have picked up as many foreign traits — in this case French traits—without actually studying in France or at least having the advantage of inspecting paintings by French masters. Since there is no documentary evidence for any such sojourn, I can present this only as an interesting conjecture. The only piece of evidence for Provencal influence in Catalonia would be the residence, short as it was, of John of Calabria in Barcelona following the death of the Constable. Strangely enough, however, there is no mention of a single imported work of art, nor of any artists proceeding from Provence to serve the court at Barcelona. The nearest we have to an actual artistic communication between the two regions is SanC

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pere's quotation from La Marche 14 to the effect that there were working for Rene, in Aix supposedly, two artists, one a Catalan, the other a Castillian. There seem to be few repercussions from the thoroughly Flemish group of painters in France of whom Froment and the Maitre de Moulins are the shining examples; what FrancoFlemish influence reached Catalonia was introduced directly from Flanders by Flemings or by native Catalans who had worked there, an influence which is seen in the "Manner of Guimerä" and in the Master of St. George. A closer relationship exists between the Catalan masters of the fifteenth century and the school of Nice, which was itself an offshoot of the schools of Northern Italy and Tuscany. As an example of this school we may take the painter Louis Brea, mentioned in documents from 1475 to 1520, a period exactly contemporary with the principal activity of Jaume Huguet and the Vergos brothers. Certainly his finest work is the altarpiece, a triptych from the church of Cimiez-Nice, consisting of a central panel with a thoroughly monumental Pietä, flanked by paintings of St. Martin and the Beggar and St. Catherine of Alexandria. 15 It will be noted at once that the tensely dramatic feeling of the Pietä is stronger than anything attempted by either Huguet or Guardia; this intensity of sentiment relates the work more closely to Bermejo and to the artist of the Avignon Pietä, to whom Brea has more than one close analogy. Brea employs the miniature angels of Flanders, not for mere decorative and functional purposes as do Huguet and Guardia, but as actually engaged in expressing their grief at the death of the Lord. [19O

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Characteristics close to the Catalonia style are the gold back engraved with floral designs, but now painted over with a blue sky, and the miniature landscape of the central panel which recalls the arrangement of the Constable's retable. The painter gives us realistic types, executed with all the innovations of the van Eycks but tempered with a tenderness which we may perhaps interpret as distinctly French. The countenances of the Virgin and especially that of St. Catherine, are closely related to the female types of Huguet and Guardia. St. Martin's horse is the same exaggerated hobby of the International School as employed by Gentile da Fabriano and by Huguet in Catalonia. On such slight stylistic analogies as are supplied by this and later works of Brea it would be impossible, without definite documentation, to trace any direct influence between their respective schools. The work by such earlier masters as Durandi show only a relation which may be explained by a common origin in the fading splendor of the International Style.

XVI VERGOSIANA ®»»»»»τ

LA GARRIGA in the province of Barcelona is a retable of St. Stephen which in its makeup will give us some idea of the original arrangement of the Granollers altarpiece. On either side of the large central panel of the Exaltation of St. Stephen are paintings, four in all, illustrating the principal scenes from his legend: his martyrdom and the miraculous invention of his body. All of these sections, the central panel, and the four standing effigies of saints in the guardapolvos are a poor, countrified travesty of the HuguetVergos manner; the style seems most closely related to that of the weakest of the three collaborators in the Granollers retable, whom I have identified as Jaume Vergos II. The endowment of all the protagonists of the stories with exotic and curling eyelashes is an element rather incongruous with their stolid and wooden countenances. By the heavy, Teutonic hand that painted the later panels of the retablo of St. Vincent from Sarria are the figures of St. Peter and St. Paul on the doors leading to the sacristy. The bearded effigies of the two apostles may be compared with the hirsute spectators in the scene of St. Vincent's martyrdom on the gridiron in the Barcelona Museum. Another factor that enables us to pin the attribution on the sixteenth-century collaborator of the Sarria altarpiece is the iden-

[ x93 ]

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tity of the design of the gold sky, which is in both cases imitated from the same brocade pattern. A work of almost indisputable origin in the Vergos atelier is a retable of Sts. Justa and Rufina in the Diocesan Museum at Barcelona, a work that Miss Richert attributed, on little or no evidence, to Gabriel Guardia. 1 The central panel represents the two saints to whom the altar is dedicated, and above this is a devotional Crucifixion, with St. John and the Virgin standing beside the cross. There are four narrative panels of the lives and martyrdoms of the two Virgins, and in the predella, on either side of the central panel, Christ in the Tomb, are represented half-length forms of Sts. George, Augustine (?), Anthony Abbot (?), and Sebastian. What is unmistakable upon a comparison of photographs is that this work is by the same master that executed the last five panels of the retable of the Tanners Guild. Not only is the technique identical, but so also is the particular manner of drawing the details of the features noted in the discussion of the Augustine retable. Likewise certain types may be positively recognized in both works. For instance, St. Rufina is none other than St. Monica of the Tanners altar, while the figure of Augustine (?) in the predella is the same model in both retables. St. Sebastian, too, is to be identified as the man sitting directly under the pulpit in the panel of St. Ambrose's preaching. The figure of Christ in the Crucifixion and in the Pietä is identical with the presentation of the Saviour in the altarpiece of Granollers. And this is perfectly consistent, since, as we concluded, the master of the Granollers Calvary must have executed the [

194]

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latter panels of the Augustine retable. This painter has been designated as Rafael Vergos. A further point of resemblance between the retable of Sts. Justa and Rufina and that of St. Augustine is the curiously tortured drapery, which is made to assume triangular and polygonal shapes without any concern for the revelation of form. By the same hand is another isolated panel of Christ in the Tomb in the Museum of Vich, a panel that has been associated with the names of Gabriel Guardia and Pedro Alegret; still another painting that I shall not stop over is a retablo of St. Peter in the Diocesan Museum at Tarragona with busts of saints in the predella, images that are closely related to the similar figures in the altar of Sts. Justa and Rufina. Another painting which Miss Richert would relate to Gabriel Guardia 2 is the retable of Sts. Sebastian and Thecla in the chapel of these saints in the cloisters of Barcelona Cathedral. We may dismiss this attribution by reiterating that Guardia never adopted the style of drapery handling which distinguishes this and the works connected with Rafael Vergos. This altarpiece was probably painted about 1490 for one Joan Andreu Sors, a canon of the Cathedral, who in 1480 established a benefice for St. Sebastian and in 1501 gave the altar for the saint's chapel.3 As further evidence that the work was done for Sors, we may see his escutcheon on the guardapolvos of the retable, and on the doors his patron saints, John and Andrew. The last item in the history of the retable is a record of its "restoration" in 1898, an event which may account for many of the altarpiece's shortcomings. Mayer ventured to propose [195]

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this altarpiece as a possible work by Huguet or at least from his atelier.4 For the attribution of this picture Sanpere 5 has created still another Gordian knot in ascribing it, for reasons not very clear, to Pedro Alemany, who is mentioned in documents in collaboration with Rafael Vergos. In a contract which these two signed for a retable at Teya are described scenes of the Martyrdom of St. Sebastian and St. Roque as Pilgrim that correspond fairly closely to the paintings of these subjects as actually portrayed in the lateral panels of the Barcelona retable. Furthermore, it is stipulated in the same document that Jesus, the Virgin, Joseph, and the shepherds should be portrayed " ab semblant gent qui sont en le retaule de Sant Marche de la Seu de Barcinona." 6 This would seem to be sufficient evidence to prove that Alemany and Vergos were active in Barcelona. For Sanpere, whose reasoning I am unable to follow, it is also sufficient reason to ascribe the retable of Sebastian and Thecla to Alemany alone. J . Sacs,7 with considerably more conviction, gives the altarpiece to Rafael Vergos, with Alemany as a collaborator. Certainly it is not difficult to see the hand of " a " Vergos at work. St. Thecla is the type of St. Monica in the Augustine retable and of the women in the Granollers Crucifixion. In other words, I favor Rafael Vergos as the author of this picture. Like all the principal actors in the paintings of the Vergos, her features are set down according to a perfectly schematized formula; the same type of mouth, eyes, and nose are easily recognizable, as is the familiar rope-like hair. The stiff and utterly [196]

VERGOSIANA

unconvincing drapery which we have noted as a characteristic of the whole Vergos atelier here resembles a curtain hung in front of the saints. A curious error in draughtsmanship occurs in the suggestion of the left knee under the drapery — this part of the saint's anatomy is so far in front of her and the drapery over it is so drawn as to suggest that she would need two joints instead of one. The characteristic drapery Sacs suggests as the contribution of Alemany — a not unsatisfactory conclusion considering its resemblance to the crinkly stuffs so favored by the Northern artists. 8 In the panel of Christ among the Doctors and the scenes from the lives of the saints are recognizable the usual Vergos types for soldiers, saints, angels, and wise men. All of these might be traced to types originally created by Huguet and here reproduced in a thoroughly stereotyped manner. It may be added that the smaller side panels resemble more closely the work of the painter whom we have called Jaume Vergos II than they do the style of Rafael, as I have designated the author of the central panel and of the better portions of the Granollers retable. The attribution to Alemany is considerably strengthened if we accept the signature "(A.) (Leman)" that may be discovered arranged anagrammatically on the pottery in a panel of the Annunciation in the Cathedral of Gerona. The Angel and the Madonna have the same oval, rather empty, countenances that we see in the St. Thecla and in various members of the crowd in the scene in the Temple. There is also distinctive in both panels a dry precision in the painting that does not correspond with the well-known Vergos manner. [

197]

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Closely related to the retable of Sts. Sebastian and Thecla and showing a thoroughly Flemish delight in still life are three otherwise undistinguished panels of Prophets in the Estruch Collection. In connection with these paintings I must mention a damaged and disassembled retable in the Diocesan Museum at Barcelona. The Virgin, Christ, and St. John — in the scene of the Crucifixion — are all three derived from the models employed in the Calvary of the St. Stephen retable, while the representation of the Saviour — in the panel of the episode on the Sea of Tiberias — approaches the likeness of Him in the latter panels of the Tanners retable. Furthermore, the gold background is a rather coarse imitation of the pattern of the Granollers retable. Among other technical hall marks of the Rafael Vergos manner is the curiously tortured drapery that was first identified in the consideration of the Crucifixion and predella panels of the St. Stephen retable. The rather provincial awkwardness of the poses, the coarseness of the painting of these two panels, — as of the two in Berlin, — force me to attribute the lot to countrified pupils — or possibly to a single peasant follower — of Rafael Vergos. In all of them, the ultimate derivation of the types from Huguet is too obvious to be deserving of further comment. There are also in the Diocesan Museum several panels that evidently formed parts of the same altarpiece as these, i. e., a damaged half-length of St. Michael, a St. Peter Enthroned, and a Death of the Virgin. All three are very countrified indeed. The design of the gold background resembles the figuration of the Granoller panels. [198]

VERGOSIANA

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York owns five panels forming a predella of the Passion. Mr. Roger Fry 9 has attributed these paintings to Jaume Vergos II. Certainly the style of painting, in a pale but none the less gay tonality, the polychromatic architectural settings, and particularly the stiff, crinkly type of drapery, are all echoes of the painter of the Liberation of the Lords of Pinos. In all the panels, however, the compositions are unpleasantly crowded and the drawing rather unsure — factors that lead me to describe these panels as early works of Jaume II or else as the product of an undistinguished pupil. These paintings have a certain interest in that they give some idea of the iconographical repertory of the Huguet atelier. Closer to the Huguet tradition, and consequently superior to the main part of the altarpiece, are the heads of prophets in medallions below the scenes of the Passion. Painted in thin, pallid tones with emphasis on sharp draughtsmanship rather than on chiaroscuro, these portrait heads suggest the work of Huguet prior to the period of the retable of the Constable. A painting of the head of a Prophet 10 in the Prado is close, in its draughtsmanlike style, to the heads of the Metropolitan altarpiece; it differs from these in that the scroll (bearing the patriarch's name ?) is not held in the prophet's hand.

NOTES FOREWORD ι The Gualino collection has recently been dispersed, and so I have no idea of the present location of this picture. ι Los Cuatrocentistas Catalanes. 3 E . Tormo, Cultura Espanola, No. 5, pp. 262 ff. 4 I have seen at least thirty and there must be a hundred more such retables, all bearing the impress of Huguet and the Vergds, in the tiniest hamlets from Saragossa to Barbastro and up into the furthest valleys of the Pyrenees. These paintings are so numerous and have been so little photographed that I do not feel capable of doing justice to them in m y present work. I ι Borghese e Banchi, Nuovi Doc. per la storia dell' Arte Senese. . . . 2 S. Sanpere y Miguel, Los Cuatrocentistas Catalanes. Barcelona, 1906, Vol. I I , Doc. X X X I I I , p. xlviii. 3 Ibid., Doc. X X X , p. xliii. II ι 2 3 1922. 4 tifs,"

Cf. J. Braun, Der Christlichte Altar, Munich, 1924. G . Rouches, La Peinture Espagnole, p. 155. Cennino, Cennini, The Book of the Art of Cennino Cennini.

London,

Rene, Bazin, " L e s Primitifs Espagnols au Musee des Arts DecoraGazette des Beaux Arts, January and February, 1929.

III ι C . R . Post, History of Spanish Painting (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1930), I I , 179. 2 Vol. I I , fig. 217. [ 200 ]

NOTES

3 For a very full and authoritative treatment of the followers of the Master of St. George, I recommend Chapter X X V I I I in C. R. Post's History of Spanish Painting, II, 393 ffl 4 Illustrated in P. Leprieure, Collection Martin le Roy. 5 E . Bertaux, " L e s Primitifs Espagnols," Revue de I'Art Ancien et Moderne (1908), I, 348-349. 6 Perhaps the greatest and most attractive of the works by the Master of St. George is a retable of St. Vincent recently added to the collection of the Museo del Parque in Barcelona. Cf. J. Folch i Torres, " E l Retaule de Sant Lloreng de Poblet," Buttleti dels Museus d'Art de Barcelona (June, 1931), p. 3; Folch has mistaken the iconography of the altar and has wrongly ascribed it to the Valencian School. 7 Professor Post has suggested to me that these panels may at one time have formed the predella of the St. Lucy altarpiece in the Martin le Roy collection. 8 " L a Peinture en Espagne au XIV® Steele," in Michel, Histoire de Γ Art, Vol. I l l , pt. 2, p. 798. IV ι The name is frequently spelled " U g u e t " in the Catalan documents; in its " H u g u e t " form it also appears in Aragon and Western Spain. 2 Soler i March, " M a t e u Ortoneda, Pin tor de Tarragona," Gaseta de les Arts, April, 1929. 3 It may be that Pere executed the fresco above the tomb of Mosen Borra, a decoration which is now too faded to permit of any accurate judgment other than that it seems to have been painted in the first half of the century (Borra died in 1433). The scene represented appears to be Christ Crucified attended by the Virgin and St. John; below is a painting of the Man of Sorrows with two angels. See Feliu Elias, La Catedral de Barcelona, p. 77, and Josep Mas, Notes Historiques del Bisbat de Barcelona, V I I I , 93. See also Elias Tormo y Monzo, Cultura Espafiola (1907), No. 5, p. 280, note 2, and J. D. Passavant, Die Christliche Kunst in Spanien, p. 75. 4 Soler i March. 5 This retable is now in the Diocesan Museum in Barcelona. [ 201 ]

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6 Mas, p. 256. The word feu is unquestionably a misprint for deu; which may be translated roughly as " g a v e " or " p a i d . " Mayer, in all his writings on Huguet, has misread this document as having reference to an altarpiece executed by Jaume in collaboration with his brother Antoni. 7 A . Duran i Sanpere," El Retaule dels Blanquers," Arts i Bells Officis, November, 1929, p. 197. 8 Sanpere, Vol. I I , Doc. X I I , p. xxa. 9 I have discovered two of these figures of Prophets in the Museum of Vich; see below, p. 160. 10 Durän, p. 197. A t present there is only a sculptured retable of the Baroque period dedicated to St. Anthony at Berga. 11 Ibid. 12 Ibid., and Sanpere, II, 18, note. A s in Florence the painters were associated with the Apothecaries Guild, so in Catalonia, by an equally inexplicable classification, they were enrolled in the Bridle-makers Guild. 13 A panel from the predella of this altarpiece is still in the possession of the Bridle-makers Guild. See below, p. 131. 14 J. Soler i Palet, " E l Retaule dels Sants Metges," Egara Terrassa, pp. 101 fF. (reprinted from Ilustracid Catalana, October 15, 1905). 15 Durän, op. cit., and Folch, " L o Questio Huguet-Vergos," Gaseta de les Arts, December 15, 1925, and April 15, 1926. 16 See above, p. 30. 17 J. Pallejä, Boletin de la Real Academia de Buenas Letras, Vol. X , No. 77, p. 197. 18 Josep Puiggari,"Noticia de Algunos Artistas Catalanes Ineditos de la Edad Media y del Renacimiento," Memorias de la Real Academia de Buenas Letras de Barcelona, I I I , 92; Sanpere, I I , 19. 19 Folch, " E l retaule de Sant Jordi de Jaume Huguet al Museu de la Ciudadella," Gaseta de les Arts, June 15, 1924, pp. 1 ff. 20 Sanpere, II, 17. 21 Ibid., p. 20. In the date as given in the document, Die veneris XX mensis Decembris anno a Naticitate Domini M. CCCC. LXX. . . ., the last cipher is illegible. Given the fact that Friday fell on December 20, it was possible, by means of an astronomical almanac, to determine that only in the years 1471 and 1476 of the decade 1470-80 did the day of the week and [ 202 ]

NOTES the day of the month thus coincide. See The Book of Almanacs, compiled b y August de Morgan, London, 1907. 22 Sanpere, Vol. I I , Doc. X V I , p. xxviii. 23 Puiggari,. Sanpere, I I , 19-20. T h e altar at present in the parish church of Monegre dates from the Baroque period. 24 Palleja, and page 145, below. 25 G . M . y M . Vinaza, Adiciones al Diccionario Historico de dan Bermudez, I, 79; Sanpere, I I , 20. The retable of St. Eligius, which was placed in the chapel shared by the Locksmiths and Iron-workers, was destroyed by fire in 1835; s e e C . Barraquer y Roviralta, Los Casas de Religiosos en Cataluna, I, 388. 26 Durdn, p. 198. J. Villanueva, Viaje Literario ä las Iglesias de Espana, X I X , 41, in describing his visit to Vail d'Hebron (Valdebron), mentions only the manuscripts and the heterogeneous collection of relics in the possession of the Jeronomite Fathers. 27 B. Bassegoda y Amigo, Santa Maria de la Mar, I, 408. 28 Folch, op. cit.; Durän. 29 Bassegoda, 1,408. This Geroni Huguet is also mentioned in a document of December 13, 1471; see Manual de Novells Ardits, Vol. II. 30 Neither Huguet nor Bermejo is mentioned again in the records of Sta. Maria de la M a r ; since the commission for the organ shutters was awarded to Pere Alemany and Rafael Vergos in 1498, it seems a reasonable conclusion that both Bermejo and Huguet died before they were able to fulfill the terms of the contract. A recently discovered document, however, shows that Bermejo was active in Vich in 1498.

V ι Soler i Pal£t, op. cit. 2 J. de Voraginus, the Golden Legend (Caxton's translation), I V , 141. 3 Α . V . Domenec, Historia General de los Santos y Varones Illustres en Santidad del Prtncipado de Cataluna, pp. 140 ff. 4 Ibid. Voraginus says that they were put to death with swords and lances. 5 Ibid. [ 203 ]

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6 Their popularity extended as far as Valencia and the Maestrazgo. 7 There is no way of distinguishing between the two martyrs; for convenience, I have taken the liberty of referring to the figure at the left as Abdon and to his companion as Sennen. 8 I I , p. 276. 9 Villanueva, undoubtedly referring to the present altar, mentions a retable of " t h e Transportation of the Relics of Sts. Abdon and Sennen" in S. Miquel, Tarrassa. See Viaje Literario α las Iglesias de Espana, X I X , 23. ί ο Domenec relates that as a precaution against a possible theft of the relics the Abbot Arnulphus had had constructed a barrel in three compartments, in the central one of which sections he placed the martyrs' remains and, as a blind, filled the two outer partitions with wine, a natural and plausible provision for the journey. In the present painting it appears that the relics have been distributed into two such casks. x ι " L o Questio Huguet-Vergos," Gaseta de les Arts, April 15,1926. 12 Attributed to Huguet in a later chapter. VI ι T h e Royal Chapel, all that remains of the former palace, is now the Provincial Museum of Barcelona. 2 11,44,55. 3 In Michel, Histoire de ΓArt, Vol. I l l , pt. 2, p. 801. 4 El Retaule del Condestable Obra d'en Jaume Huguet, Bol. de la Real Academta de Buenas Letras de Barcelona, X , 397 ff. 5 Ibid. 6 This altarpiece, long considered to be by Jacomart, by comparison with Reixach's documented retable of 1468 at Cubells has now been proved to be by the latter painter. This interesting problem will be treated in a forthcoming volume of Post's History of Spanish Painting. 7 II,6o-6i. 8 Vol. I I , Doc. X I I I . 9 Possibly by Pere Alemany, the collaborator of Rafael Vergos. See below, p. 197. 10 See below, pp. 69 ff. [204]

NOTES 11 For a discussion of the possible collaboration of Huguet's follower, Gabriel Guardia, in this panel and the Annunciation, see below, p. 186. 12 See above, p. 46. 13 Sanpere without much conviction seeks to compare these warriors with those of the Sarria panel of St. Vincent in Prison. In style the two works are totally different. Cf. below, p. 141. 14 This dictum actually appears on a scroll in the Crucifixion of the Escolapios retable; see below, p. 135. 15 An abbreviation for senatus populusque romanum. 16 In Michel, Histoire de Γ Art, Vol. I l l , pt. 2, p. 801. 17 Gaseta de les Arts, April 15, 1926.

VII ι Sanpere, II, 22. 2 Sanpere calls attention to the slight resemblance of the butcher in this scene to one of St. Vincent's tormentors in the Martyrdom of the Sarria altar (op. cit., pp. 22-23). 3 11,21. 4 I assume that Pere was the father of Jaume Huguet; there is no way of determining if he might have been an older brother. 5 See Post, II, 430. 6 See above, page 26. 7 Gaseta de les Arts, April, 1929, pp. 89 ff. 8 P. 91. VIII ι Number 1080-81 in the Barcelona Exposition of 1929; in the catalogue it is ascribed to Huguet, "1490 (?)." Cf. El Arte en Espana, Expos. Inter, de Barcelona, 1929-30. 2 So identified in the Catalogue of the 1902 Exposition; I believe this figure represents St. Dominic. I identify him by his black and white habit and the half-length effigy of the Saviour which he indicates with his right hand. There is at Ainsa (Aragon) a similar labelled representation of St. Dominic. [205]

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3 On the occasion when she repulsed the Saracens at Assisi. 4 Wrongly identified as St. Catherine in the 1902 Catalogue. 5 In spite of its many errors, I am indebted to the Catalogue of the 1902 Exposition (No. 132) for this iconographic description of the retable. 6 Von Loga seems to have been of this opinion, too, e. g., "Dürfen wir diesem Künstler (Cabrera) die alteren Teile des jetzt in der Sala Capitular aufbewahrten Retablo dieser Kapelle danken? . . . Die Tafeln mit den Legenden hat neben ihm einer der Vergos gearbeitet." Cf. Die Malerei in Spanien, p. 32. 7 The color reminded von Loga of the panels of Franciscan saints formerly in the Voss Collection at Berlin. See below, p. 167. 8 The composition is practically identical with that of the panel of the same subject from Huguet's altar of St. Stephen, painted in 1462; see below, pp. 131 ff. 9 Vessels of the same ware may be noted in the Annunciation of the Constable altar. 10 Spanische Malerei, I, 188. 11 This romantic tree is not unlike those in the central panel of the altar of St. Catherine by Ortoneda in the Soler i March Collection. 12 This retable, already mentioned, was on loan from the Sala Capitular of the Cathedral. 13 Bertaux believed both of these retables to be by the same hand: in Michel, Vol. I l l , pt. 2, p. 796. Post, II, 418 questions this. 14 Op. cit. 15 Cf. Post, II, 418 ff. 16 Sanpere, I, 296-297, and Mas, Notes Histortques del Bisbat de Barcelona, I, 50. The chapel where the retable was placed was ceded to Sancha in 1432 upon her contribution of three hundred florines to the cathedral fund. A year previous to this, her husband Arquimbau de Foix had founded a benefice for St. Clara. 17 The retable was moved to the Sala Capitular in the nineteenth century when the chapel was dedicated to St. Clement. 18 P. 297. 19 Mas, "Notes sobre Antichs Pintors a Catalunya," Boletin de la Real Academia de Buenas Letras, Vols. X I and X I I , Nos. 44-47. See above, Chap. I V , n. 3. [206]

NOTES

20 Mayer, in Thieme-Becker, Künstler-Lexikon, X V I I I , 98, writes, " D e r J. Cabrera zugewiesene retablo de SS Clara y Catalina steht dem jugendlichen Huguet sehr nahe; vielleicht mit Hilfe von Gesellen von ihm um 1450 ausgeführt." 21 A comparison of the Mourning over Christ's Body in the retable and the panel of the Bridle-makers altar of 1462 emphatically suggests a difference of at least ten years between the painting of the two. 22 The grill, painted by Cabrera, was made that very year by Joan Vilalta for the sum of 355 florines. 23 It has been proposed to move this as well as the other treasures of the Sala Capitular into the recently founded museum of the Pia Almoyna. 24 Die Christliche Kunst in Spanien, pp. 71 ff1. 25 Ρ· 73'· "Dass diese Art und Weise (that of gold-backed paintings) in das 16 Jahrhundert üblich war, erweiss sich durch den Retablo der heiligen Cosmus und Damian, indem das Ufficium fur diesen Altar erst im Jahr 1519 gestiftet worden ist, wie ich durch den hier fungirenden Geistlichen erfahren (!)." The exclamation mark is my own. 26 Villanueva and Ponz omit the works in the Cathedral of Barcelona. 27 Mas, Notes Historiques del Bisbat de Barcelona, I, 64. 28 Perhaps the healing of the Dame Palladia; cf. the representation of this subject by Fra Angelico in the Albert Keller Collection in New York. 29 Domenec, p. 212 (November 17). 30 It may be that Ffrancesch had in his possession a part of the saint's relics, which were piously partitioned in 1339. 31 For the sake of convenience I have so designated the figure of the martyr with the knife already at his throat in the predella panel at Tarrassa. 32 Mas, op. cit., I, 64. 33 Manual de Novells Ardits, Vol. II (1446-1478), under July 5, 1447: " L o dit die en Johan de Maella correu ana a cavalli per manament dels consellers a la torre de Mossenyor Ffrancesch dez Pia per fer lo vener assi en Barchinona. Ε torna lo dit die." 34 Mas, VIII, 50. 35 Manuel de Novells Ardits, Vol. I I . . Villanueva says he died July 30, 1453; See Viaje literario α las Iglesias de Espana, X V I I , 146. 36 Mas, VIII, 89. [207]

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Ibid;

HUGUET

CARNER DE MOSE FRAN CH DESPLA PREUERA BNE FICIAT DLA SEU DE BARCELOE HE DLS SE' ΑΫ

MCCCCXLV

38 Bertaux, Les Primitifs Espagnols, Revue de ΓArt, II, 108 ff. 39 1,27-28. 40 Gas etα de les Arts, November, 1927. 41 Sanpere, II, 58: " E l tipo de la Virgen no es flamenco en la de la Gloria, como es puro eyckiano en la de los Concelleres: el tipo es Catalan; de modo que en la Virgen de la Gloria, si nos encontramos de un lado con detalles mas flamencos que en el retablo de los Concelleres, esta falta en lo mäs caracteristico, en el tipo de la Vrigen, en el plegado de las ropas, etc., en tanto aparecen notas catalanas que no se encuentran en el retablo de los Concelleres, y , lo que es mäs, faltando en este de todo punto, todo lo cual evidentemente indica el trabajo de asimilancion de un estilo extranjero." 42 Ibid., 56. 43 There is in the face of the Madonna a suggestion of kinship with the St. Catherine of the retablo in the Sala Capitular which I have assigned to Jaume; it may be perfectly justifiable to assume, therefore, that Jaume collaborated with his father in the Muntadas panel as he did in the retable of Sts. Catherine and Clara. 44 It may be well to recall at this point that the Huguet family originated in Puigtinyos in the province of Tarragona. 45 See below, p. 198. 46 B. Rowland, Jr., " Unpublished Material on Jaume Huguet," Parnassus (May, 1931), p. 24. 47 Revue de ΓArt, X X I I , 344; this attribution is accepted by Bazin, Rouches, and Tormo. 48 The only other representation of this unusual scene that I know is a small panel, possibly of Catalan origin, in the museum at Bilbao. 49 In Thieme-Becker, Künstler Lexikon·, Tormo, Catalogo de las Τ ablas de Primitivos Espanoles de la Colecciin de la Excma. Senora J. Trinidad Scholtz-Hermensdorff, No. 7. [208]

NOTES

IX ι Sanpere, " E l Retaule de Granollers," Veil i Nou (August 15,1915), p. 5. 2 Sanpere, Los Cuatrocentistas Catalanes, Vol. II, Doc. X X X I I , p. xlvii. 3 Ibid., Veil i Nou. 4 Ibid., Cuatrocentistas Catalanes, Vol. II, Doc. X X X V I I , p. lvi. 5 Ibid., Veil i Nou. 6 Since the lower part of the panel of the Crucifixion is rounded in outline, it might be supposed that it originally surmounted a niche containing a statue of St. Stephen that is now lost; if this were the case, the panel of the exaltation of the Proto-martyr must have been placed in one of the lateral sections of the retable. 7 For this "family resemblance" between figures painted by the Vergos, cf. Sanpere, Vell i Nou, pp. 6-7. 8 The stipulation in the contract for Huguet's altar at Ripoll, "quatre mitges ymtges de profetes," leads me to believe that these half-figures may have served as models for Pau Vergos. Cf. Sanpere, Los Cuatrocentistas Catalanes, Vol. II, Doc. X I I , p. xxi and below, p. 160. 9 Sanpere, speaking of the Pinos panel, says: " L a taula de la liberacio del Pinos per Sant Esteve un regust d'arcaica molt exagerat. Per aixo hi he vist una obra del pare, d u n home que no s'havia assimilat l'art nou. . . . Lo dur del seu dibuix, la manca d'elegancia en l'agrupament de les figures, tot indica una obra de la velluria del pare i de l'art pictoric." 10 See Berenson, "Notes on Tuscan Painters of the Trecento in the Staedel Institut at Frankfurt," Studies in Medieval Painting (New Haven, 1930), pp. 96 ff. Perhaps the most famous of the Italian cycles of the Protomartyr's story is that by Fra Filippo Lippi at Prato; see Ferdinando Baldanza, Delle Pitture di Fra Filippo Lippi nel Coro della Cattedrale di Prato, Prato, 1835. 11 Another painting of this obscure subject may be found in Jaume Serra's retable from Gualter, now in the Plandiura Collection at Barcelona; see Post, II, 238, n. 1. 12 Künstler-Lexikon. 13 Gaseta de les Arts, December, 1925. 14 Op. cit. [ 209 ]

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15 Duran, Arts i Belle Officis, November, 1929. 16 Op. cit. 17 M . Serrano y Sanz, "Documentos Relativos a la Pintura en Arag6n Durante el Siglo X V , " Revista de Archivos, X X X I (1914), pp. 448 ff. 18 Cf. the figures of these saints on the doors of the Vergosian altar at L a Garriga. 19 Durän, op. cit. 20 These panels from the Passion are mentioned as still in existence by the seventeenth-century writer Massot; cf. Compendio historial de los ermitanos de San Augustine, Barcelona, 1699. 21 Gaseta de les Arts, December, 1925. 22 Ibid. 23 It is highly likely that the painter was still engaged on the altarpiece of St. Stephen for the Bridle-makers Guild, a work contracted for in 1462. 24 I I , 158 ff.; cf. Mayer, Span. Malerei (1922), p. 512. 25 Folch identifies the episode as St. Augustine expatiating on the Psalms, but this seems hardly likely since he has cast the books at his feet. A t any rate, it is an incident from his life before he was ordained bishop, since, although having a halo, he does not wear the mitre and robes. Professor Post, in his manuscript on this period of Spanish painting, has suggested that the scene intended may be that of St. Augustine discomfiting Fortunatus, the conniver of the merchant Firmus, or, what seems more likely, his refutation of the Donatists. Neither Professor Post nor I have been able to decipher the inscriptions in the books which might be expected to be significant to the interpretation of the subject. 26 The pattern of the brocade vestment of the bishop at the right is a virtual repetition of the robe worn by the younger of the two Magi in the retable of the Constable. 27 11,50. 28 Loc. cit. 29 La Peinture Espagnole, pp. 161 ff. 30 Bassegoda, Sta Maria de la Mar, I, 408: "fforen proposats dos caps, lo primer fou que pocha valria hauer fets tant bells orgues qui nouament son stats acabats si no eren fetes portes per tenir aquells en custodia. Ε qu'es veritat que per pintar les dites portes concorren dos pintors, co es Jacme [ 210]

NOTES

Uguet en Vermeyo e per co es demanat a quil donaran per pintar." On April I i , 1498, the contract was awarded to Pere Alemany and Rafael Vergos. Huguet and Bermejo apparently were never given the commission proposed eleven years previously. 31 "En Cataluna, influyo este (Bermejo) en los Vergos? Si y no; pues seria de una manera algo advenediza y ocasional, en el momenta oportuno de la asimilacion en la epoca de la educaci6n artistica: asi la reconozco solo en alguno de los ultimos retablos vergosianos." — Tormo, "B. Bermejo, Pintor," Archivo Espanol de Arte y Arqueologia (1926), p. 24. 32 The painting is now owned by Carreras' widow, Dna Rosa Coronas. 33 Cf. the Crucifixion of the Granollers altarpiece. 34 II, 174: "Cuan facilmente podria reclamarse para Bermejo, de no venir tan bien documentado graficamente como de Pablo Vergos!" He is, of course, speaking of the panel as a whole. 35 Illustrated by Sanpere, II, 105. 36 Illustrated by Tormo, Archwo Espaüol de Arte y Arqueologia (1926), fig· 54· 37 Ibid., figs. 58, 59. 38 A panel in the predella of the Granollers retable is an almost exact copy, though of vastly inferior quality, of the Carreras painting. Stylistically it is related to the work of the painter whom we decided to call Jaume Verg6s II. Since it was in 1495 that Jaume and Rafael took up the work where Pau left off, it must be taken for granted that Pau's Way to Calvary must have been already painted, since it served as a model for Jaume's version of the subject. 39 The pattern resembles most closely the tooling of the five Vergos panels of the retable of St. Augustine.

ι 2 3 1907. 4 5

X Vol. II, Doc. XVI. 11,21. The Book of Almanacs, compiled by August de Morgan, London, Vol. I, plate facing p. 142. Ibid., I, 158, note 4. [211]

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6 The portion of the document stipulating the subject of the central panel is lost. 7 In Michel, Histoire de ΓArt, Vol. I l l , pt. 2, p. 798. See also " E l Triptic d'en Pau Vergos de la Collecci6 Estruch," Veil i Nou, No. 198, pp. X 2-I 5 53· 8 Leroy, Materiales y Documentos de Arte Espanol, Vol. II, PI. V. 9 Sanpere, II, 20. 10 Sanpere, II, 17. XI ι Balaguer lists panels of the Crucifixion, of St. Michael and the Demon, of the appearance at Rome, and of a scene which he describes as St. Michael Dethroning Nabuco (Nebuchadnezzer). He mentioned also "other pictures of religious subjects" that presumably have disappeared; See V. Balaguer, Las Calles de Barcelona, II, 167. 2 II, 140 ff. 3 P. 71. 4 See below, pp. 154 ff. 5 Cf., for example, the "Master of the Virgo inter Virgines." 6 See below, p. 185. 7 I cannot agree with Miss Richert, who believes this painting to be by the same hand as St. Vincent at the Stake of the Sarria retable. See Richert, p. 72. 8 Nos. 46-49. 9 Such processions were not uncommon in Barcelona: see Puiggari, Garlanda de Joyelles, p. 107, for a description of such an event in 1482. 10 Folch, El Retaule de la Confraria dels Revenedors, Tresor Artistic de Cataluna. 11 Piferrer y Pi Marguli, Espana, sus monumentos y artes . . . Catalunya, I, 354· 12 I am indebted to Sr. D. Adolfo Mas for this valuable bit of information. No other panels of this altarpiece, formerly in the Cathedral, are known to exist. 13 Durän, p. 197. Sr. D. Joaquin Folch i Torres writes me that the panel was published by Duran as a work of Huguet's in a lecture at the Sorbonne [ 212 ]

NOTES in February, 1931. In the summer of 1931, the panel was kept in the Casa de l'Ardiaca; Sr. Duran assured me at that time that he hoped to secure it for the collection of the Museo de la Ciudadella. 14 Photographs of every panel in the retable, with the exception of the Temptation of St. Anthony, were published in Estudis Universitaris Catalans (1909), p. 247; cf. also Sanpere, II, 49 ff. 15 1 1 , 1 5 4 . 16 I know from experience with swine that, when provender is scarce, the sow as well as the boar, who is more usually guilty of this crime, does not scruple to eat her own litter. The blood of a sow that has feasted on her piglets is required for the diabolical mess by one of the wierd sisters in Macbeth (Act I V , Scene I): " Pour in sow's blood, that hath eaten her nine farrow." Perhaps the fact is that such a sow, eligible for the witch's brew, and hence possessed of diabolical potentialities, was introduced by Huguet as an object for St. Anthony's powers of exorcism. It may be, of course, that he simply wished to depict this attribute of the saint in one of its characteristic activities. 17 A colored reproduction of a detail of this panel was published in Museum, Vol. I, No. 1. In St. Athanasius' account of St. Anthony's life the power of exorcism was transmitted by St. Anthony from an upper window of his dwelling, whereas in Huguet's panel he is shown conferring this gift through contact with Martinianus' hand. The latter also seems too young to be the father of the lady represented in the other half of the painting. 18 Miss Richert believes this panel to be by the painter of St. Vincent at the Stake in the Sarria retable; I can see only a superficial resemblance in the types of the soldiers. 19 Sanpere published a detail of the Vision of Christ and His angelic attendants from this panel on p. 148 of the second volume of the Cuatrocentistas. 20 One is reminded to a surprising degree of those descriptions of demons in Flaubert's La Mentation de Saint Antoine\ cf. Edition Louis Conrad (Paris, 1924), pp. 406 ff. 21 II, 150. 11 Ibid. 23 Estudis Universitaris Catalans (1909), p. 247. [213]

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24 Museum, Vol. I, pt. 1, pp. 1-2. 23 Estudis Universitaris Catalans (1909), p. 247. 25 II, 152-153. 26 Geografia General de Cataluna; la Ciutat de Barcelona, p. 478. 27 II, 144 ff. 28 Noted by Miss Richert, p. 71. 29 Cf. G . G . King, Sardinian Painting, pp. 67 ff.; C. Aru, "Storia della Pittura in Sardinia, nel Secolo X V , " Annuari de l Institut d'Estudis Catalans, I V , 1911-1912. 30 See below, pp. 178 ff. 31 "Jaime Huguet y los Vergos," Bol. de la Soc. Esp. de Excursiones (1925), p. 212. 32 In the Museo del Parque, Barcelona. 33 Compare also the earlier version of this event in the retable of St. Vincent by the Master of St. George in the Museo del Parque. 34 In Thieme-Becker, Künstler Lexikon. 35 It has often occurred to me that the melodramatic gestures of Dacian and his ministers may, like their costumes, have been inspired by the action of a mystery play. XII ι The painting was once in the Miquel y Badia collection; further than that its history cannot be traced. 2 Post, III, 67; this picture represents the arming of the saint before the encounter with the dragon. 3 Bertaux thought that the covering of the armor and buckler was originally of silver. See op. cit., in Michel, Histoire de l'Art, Vol. I l l , pt. 2, p. 803. 4 Bertaux (with van Loga), Bilder Spanischen Quattrocentisten in Berlin, "Jahrbuch der königl. Preuss. Kunstsammlungen, X X X , 189. These paintings were formerly in the Simon Collection at Berlin. 5 Sardinian Painting, pp. 204 ff.; Bertaux was not sure whether this notion was of Flemish or Provencal origin. See op. cit., p. 189. 6 See below, p. 160. [214]

NOTES

7 A. Van der Put, " A Knight of the Jarra and a Dame of the Pilar," Burlington Magazine, X X I I I (1913), 213 ff. 8 Van Loga wrongly identified this pair as John II of Castile and his first wife, Mary of Aragon; op. cit., Jahrbuch, X X X , etc. 9 " E l retaule de Sant Jordi de Jaume Huguet al Museu de la Ciudadela," Gaseta de les Arts, Barcelona (June 15, 1924), p. 3. 10 Ibid. 11 See above, pp. 1 ff., for an account of Don Carlos' luckless career; consult also the memorials of the Prince in the verse of Fogassot and other Catalan troubadours. 12 This is a Ms. of Aristotle translated by the Prince himself; see Ticknor's History of Spanish Literature (Boston, 1864), p. 170 n. 13 Piferrer y Pi Margull, Cataluna (from the series Espana, sus Monumentos y Artes), I, 524. See also on p. 526 the lament of the poet Guillem Gilbert for the dead pretender, Jhesus beneyt, volgut no' n' has lexar Lo Karies bo, qui era nostra guia, Jhesus beneyt no l'has lexat regnar Perque Rey Sanct algu no Ί mereixa. 14 A t Charles' death, there was given to John II of Beaumont the Prince's brocaded cloak, reputedly endowed with miracle-working properties; his transportation of this relic for deposit in the Cathedral of Pamplona closes the last act in the tragedy of the Prince of Viana. Another Beaumont, John I, Prior de S. Juan de Navarra, was the preceptor of the Prince of Viana; cf. Ticknor, I, 378 η. I am indebted for this and other references to my friend Mr. C. R. D. Miller, of the Romance Languages department of Harvard University. 15

Jahrbuch, p. 189.

[215]

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XIII ι Sanpere, Vol. II, Doc. XII, p. xxi. ι Gudiol, the only critic who mentions these works, suggests that they may have been organ shutters; see El Museo Episcopal de Vieh, Museum, Barcelona, 1922, p. 21. 3 Genesis, xix, 19-20, and Hebrews, v, 6. 4 Hebrews, ix, 19-20. 5 In Michel, Histoire de ΓArt, Vol. I l l , pt. 2, p. 799. In 1902 this work, which I know only in a photograph, was still in the Guild house: see le Roy, Materielles y Oöcumentos des Arte Espanol, Vol. II, pi. 15. 6 Mas, Guia Itinerario de la Catedral de Barcelona, p. 73, and Obres del Bisbat de Barcelona, I, 45. 7 Information from a letter to Professor A. Kingsley Porter. 8 Although no Christian name was given, it seems likely that the artist intended was Pedro Alemany, who collaborated with Rafael Vergos, and was the most important painter of this name. 9 The words in parentheses are missing. I have no idea of the present location of this painting since the dispersal of the Gualino Collection; Sig. I^eonello Venturi informs me that two early Catalan paintings have been acquired by a Swiss collector. xo Durän, op. cit. St. Bernardine would naturally be an appropriate subject for such a Franciscan retable. 11 Offered for sale by A. S. Drey, New York City, in 1929; lent to the Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, in January, 1930; formerly in the collection of Pedro Anez in Barcelona, and, until 1927, in the possession of Professor Dr. George Voss; illustrated in the catalogue of the Voss Collection auctioned in Berlin at Paul Cassirer's galleries on November 23,1927 (Plate XI). 12 Their relics were brought to Coimbra by Pedro the Infante of Portugal. See Anal. Franc. Passio Sanct. Martyrum frat. Beraldi, III, 579-596; IV, 322-323. The artist has blundered in representing the martyred friars with their heads cloven by knives; it is known that they suffered death by decapitation. 13 So identified in Cassirer's catalogue. This identification is certainly erroneous since St. Wigbert, one of the seven companions of Boniface of Hesse-Cassel, antedated the foundation of the Franciscan Order by several [216]

NOTES centuries. From his attribute of a grape vine flourishing in a chalice, and his Franciscan habit, I take the saint here represented to be Brother Giles, one of the earliest followers of St. Francis and hence very properly associated with the three other early members of the Order. 14 The loggia at the left seems to be a clumsy imitation of the similar architectural feature in the panel of St. Vincent overturning the Idol, from the Sarriä retable. 15 They probably formed the doors leading to the sacristy behind the main altar. The dimensions of the Drey panels are 150 m. X 80 m; the panel of St. Bernardine is of the same width and 176 m. in height. If the former paintings served as doors it would seem that they must originally have been higher. 16 In JahrbuchderKöntgl. Preuss. Kunstsammlungen,XXX (1909),l79fF. Ibid., Die Malerei in Spanien, p. 32. These panels are at present (1931) in the hands of a dealer. 17 See above, p. 30. 18 Boletin de la Soc. Esp. de Excur., No. 33 (1925), p. 213. 19 J. Gracia, Un Retablo Inedito de la Catedral de Tortosa. 20 Op. cit., p. 74.

XIV ι Sardinian Painting. 2 Quoted in T ' s (Tormo's ?) review of Aru's article in the Anuar't of the Institut d'Estudis Catlans for 1911-12; Boletin de la Soc. Esp. de Excur. (1915), p. 240. 3 " E l Sr. Sanpere y Miquel (en conferencia en el Ateneo de Madrid) attribuyo en seco a Jaime Huguet." In Thieme-Becker, Künstler-Lexikon. 4 Storia dell' Arte Italiana, Vol. V I I , pt. 4, p. 112. 5 T . (Tormo ?), in review cited in note 2. 6 See above, p. 142. 7 Pp· 76-77· 8 " L e Pitture di Sta. Maria di Gesu, presso Palermo," Bol. (1927), pp. 404 ff. [217]

d'Arte

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HUGUET XV

ι Sanpere, Vol. I I , Doc. X X X V I I I , p. lvii. 2 I was told by the Archevist of the cathedral in 1929 that the formation of a museum for the treasures of the diocese was contemplated. For a more complete discussion of the whole problem of Gabriel Guardia with copious illustrations, I refer the reader to my article in the Art Bulletin for 1932. 3 A. Rohde, " D a s Geistliche Schauspiel des Mittelalters und das Gemalte Bild Bei Meister Bertram von Minden," Monatshefte für Kunstwissenschaft (1922), p. 175. 4 It was exhibited with the other sections in the Exposition of 1902; see Bufaroll, p. 35, Nos. 237-240. 5 See above, p. 126. 6 The saints are, from left to right,Andrew,Augustine (?), Ambrose (?)> and George; the last-named has been badly repainted. 7 See below, p. 195. 8 " E l Museo Episcopal de Vieh," Museum (Barcelona, 1927), p. 22. 9 See Stefano Bottari, "Ricerchi Intorno agli Antonelliani," Bolletino d'Arte (January, 1931), pp. 304 ffi The writer of this very competent article refers to " i volti femmenei (the angels in the panel at Reggio) improntati d'una grazia catalaneggiante," an observation which shows that he was not unaware of a possible relationship between Catalonia and Sicily in the painting of the fifteenth century. 10 Op. cit., II, 204. I quote also Sir Charles Holmes: " T h e Catalan School virtually ended with Gabriel Guardia, whose subjects and types were imported from Southern France" (Spanish Art, Burlington Magazine Monograph, "Painting," p. 32. London, 1927). 11 Op. cit., 1,100. 12 J. Guiffrey and P. Marcel, La Peinture Frangaise — Les Primitifs, Part I I , pi. 6; L . H. Labande, " L e s Peintres Nigois du X V et X V I siecle," Gazette des Beaux Arts, Vol. 8 (1912), pp. 158-159. 13 Ibid. 14 Lecoy de la Marche, Le Roi Rene, . . ., II, 95. 15 Labande, Gazette des Beaux Arts, IV 4 m e Periode, Vol. 7, 1912.

[218]

NOTES XVI ι Op. cit., p. 74. 2 Ibid. 3 Mas, Notes Historiques del Bisbat de Barcelona, I, 70-71, V I I I , 107. 4 In Thieme-Becker, Künstler Lexikon. Mayer felt quite differently about this in 1922; cf. Span. Maler. (1922), p. 91: " D i e Typen wirken absolut nicht spanisch . . . beiden Gestalten der Haupttafel erinnern stark an deutsche Typen," etc. 5 II, 207 ff. 6 Archivo de Protocolos de Barcelona, Manual de Marcos Busquets, numero 5. Could this have reference to a panel of the retable of Cobblers Guild which we have already studied? See above, p. 161. 7 " U n Bancal Gotic de la Collecio Estruch," Veil i Nou, (September 15, 19*8), PP· 349 ff· 8 It is of course debatable whether the name Alemany implies a Teutonic origin. 9 Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bulletin, M a y , 1907, p. 80. See also B. Berenson, Bulletin (March, 1910), pp. 76-77. 10 Prado, Don Pablo Bosch Coll., Roig, Photo. 51.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BIBLIOGRAPHY ARU CARLO. " Storia della Pittura in Sardegna nel Secolo X V , " Annuar't de Γ Institut d'Estudis Catalans, Barcelona, 1912, Vol. IV. BALAGUER, V. Las Calks de Barcelona, 1 vols.,, Barcelona, 1865. BARRAQUER Υ ROVIRALTA, C. Las Casas de Religiosos en Cataluna, 2 vols., Barcelona, 1906. BASSEGODA Υ AMIGO, B. Santa Maria de la Mar, 2 vols., Barcelona, 1925. BAZIN, GERMAIN. " L e s Primitifs Espagnols au Musee des Arts Decoratifs," Gazette des Beaux Arts, Paris, January and February, 1929. BERTAUX, EMILE. " L e s Primitifs Espagnols," Revue de Γ Art Ancien et Moderne, P a r i s , X X (1906),417; X X I I (1907), 241,339; X X I I I (1908), 269, 341. La Peinture en Espagne au XIV' Steele, in A. Michel, Histoire de Γ Art, III, 1, pp. 743-809; La Fin de la Peinture Hispano-Flamande, in A. Michel, op. cit., IV, 2, pp. 892-907. L'Exposition Retrospective de Saragosse, 1908. BERTAUX, EMILE, and VON LOGA, V .

" B i l d e r Span. Quattrocentisten in

Berlin," "Jahrbuch der Königl. Preuss. Kunstsammlungen, Berlin, 1909, XXX, 187 fr. BLASCO, L. S. " E l Pin tor Luis Dalmau," Cultura Espanola, Madrid, 1907, No. 6, pp. 553 ff. BUFAROLL Υ SANS, C. Cat&logo de la Exposiciön de Arte Antiguo, Barcelona, 1902. CARRERAS Υ CANDI, F. La Ciutat de Barcelona, in Geografia, General de Catalunya, Barcelona, 191-. CASELLAS, R. La Pintura G6tica-Catalana en el Siglo XV. Estado de la Cultura Espanola en el Siglo XV, Barcelona, 1893. La Ornamentalidad Dorado en los Retablos Catalanes, Barcelona, 1909. Catdlogo del Museo Arqueoligico artistico Episcopal de Vieh. Vieh, 1893 . CAXTON, WILLIAM.

See under Voraginus.

CEAN BERMUDEZ. Diccionario Historico de los Mäs Ilustres Profesores de las Bellas Arles en Espana, Madrid, 1800. DIEULAFOY, M . A. Art in Spain and Portugal, Ars Una, New York, 1913. [ 223 ]

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Historia General de los Santos y Varones I lustres en Santidad del Principado de Cataluna, Gerona, 1630. D U R A N I S A N P E R E , A . " E L Retaule dels Blanquers," Arts i Bells Officis, Barcelona, November, 1929, pp. 193 ff. El Arte en Espana, Exposicion Internacional de Barcelona, 1929-30, Barcelona, 1929. " E l Desparecido Retablo de S. Antonio Abad," Museum, Barcelona (1909), I, ι, p. i. " E l Triptic d'en Pau Vergos de la Colleccio Josep Estruch," Veil i Nou, Barcelona, April 15,1918, p. 152. E L I A S , F E L I U . La Catedral de Barcelona, Barcelona, 1926. F O L C H I T O R R E S , J . El Retaule de la Confraria dels Revenedors, in El Tresor Artistic de Catalunya, Barcelona, 1926. " E l Retaule dels Blanquers i lo Questio Huguet-Vergos," Gaseta de les Arts, Barcelona, December I and 15, 1925, April 15, 1926. " E l Retaule de Sant Jordi de Jaume Huguet al Museu de la Ciudadella," Gaseta de les Arts, Barcelona, June 15,1924. GRACIA, C . Un Retablo Inedito de la Catedral de Tortosa, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, 1923. G U D I O L , J . El Museo Episcopal de Vieh, Barcelona, 1929. (Reprinted from Museum, 1927, VII, No. 1.) G U I F F R E Y , J . and M A R C E L , P. La Peinture Frangaise. Les Primitijs, Paris, I9°4H O L M E S , S I R C H A R L E S . Article on Painting in Spanish Art, Burlington Magazine Monograph, London, 1927. JUSTI, KARL. Miscellaneen aus Drei Jahrhunderten Span. Kunstlebens, 1 vols., Berlin, 1908. K I N G , G . G . Sardinian Painting, Bryn Mawr Monograph, 1923. L A B A N D E , L . H. "Les Peintres Nigois du XV" et XVI" Siecle," Gazette des Beaux Arts, Paris, 1 9 1 2 , 1 , 280, 379; 1912, II, 63, 151. L A V A G N I N O , E. " L e Pitture di Sta. Maria di Gesu, Presso Palermo," Bol. d'Arte, Rome, 1927, pp. 404 ff. L E P R I E U R E , P. Catalogue Raisonne de la Collection Martin le Roy, ζ vols., Paris, 1906-07. L E R O Y . Materiales y Documentos del Arte Espanol, Barcelona, 1902. D O M E N E C , ANTONIO V I C E N T E .

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Les Esglesies romaniques de Terrassa, Tarrassa, 1929. LOGA, V. VON. Die Malerei in Spanien, Berlin, 1923. LOGA, V. VON and BERTAUX, E. "Bilder span. Quattrocentisten in Berlin," Jahrbuch der Königl. Preuss. Kunstammlungen, Berlin, X X X (1909)» 179-187.

Manual de Novells Ardits, Barcelona, 1892-1913. MAS, JOSEP. Guia Itinerario de la Catedral de Barcelona, Barcelona, 1916. Notes historiques del Bisbat de Barcelona, 10 vols., Barcelona, 1906-15. "Notes sobre Antichs Pintors a Catalunya," Boletin de la Real Academia de Buenas Letras, Barcelona, VI, 1911-12. "Noticias sobre Pintores Catalanes," Boletin de la RSal Academia de Buenas Letras, Barcelona, X I and X I I (Nos. 44-47). MAYER, A. L. Geschichte der Spanischen Malerei, 2 vols., Leipzig, 1913. Geschichte der Spanischen Malerei, Leipzig, 1922 and 1928. Gotik in Spanien, Leipzig, 1929. La Pintura Espanola, Barcelona, 1926. Huguet, Jaume I, in Thieme-Becker, "Künstler Lexikon," 1925. "Huguet y los Vergos," Boletin de la Sociedad Espanola de Excursiones, No. 33 (1925), p. 210.

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TORMO Y M O N Z O , E L I A S .

INDEX

INDEX NOTE.

References of special importance are indicated by italic figures.

Aleover, Iglesia de la Sangre, retable by Jaume Huguet and others, 32, 56,