Cathedral of Ciudad Rodrigo

Description

The construction of Ciudad Rodrigo Cathedral (Salamanca) began in the late 12^th century. In the 12^th century, the original Romanesque high chapel was demolished—the site where a Late Gothic altarpiece attributed to Fernando Gallego and Master Bartolomé was located. The twenty-six panels that still remained in Ciudad Rodrigo Cathedral as of 1879 were sold by the cathedral chapter that same year, which paved the way for their export abroad. Today, these panels are housed in The University of Arizona Museum of Art (Tucson, United States).

We know, however, that twenty-nine panels were preserved a few years prior to the 1879 sale. Of the three panels that were not part of the 1879 sale, Fernando Gallego’s Pentecost and Fernando Gallego’s St Paul have been identified in 2010 and 2026, respectively. The Pentecost is currently in the Masaveu Collection, managed by the Fundación María Cristina Masaveu Peterson, based in Madrid; it was put on public display in 2013 in an exhibition held at the Centro Cibeles de Cultura y Ciudadanía in Madrid. The St Paul is not so much a full panel as a half-panel, corresponding to the predella, whose panels depicted the apostles grouped in pairs. In 1958, Gaya Nuño proposed identifying it with a work of this iconography and of undisputed Gallego authorship that was circulating on the Madrid art market, which he knew only from a photograph. This work reappeared on the Madrid art market in 2011 and was auctioned shortly afterwards by the Galería Bernat as originating from the Ciudad Rodrigo altarpiece. However, its dimensions are incompatible with those of the Ciudad Rodrigo altarpiece.

In 2026, a genuine plot twist occurred when the prestigious London-based art dealer Sam Fogg revealed a St Paul by Fernando Gallego that, in this instance, did fit perfectly with the apostles from the Ciudad Rodrigo altarpiece. He unveiled it at TEFAF Maastricht 2026 and sold it to a private collector shortly afterwards at his London gallery, meaning its current whereabouts is unknown.

Curiously, this panel had been acquired at a Sotheby’s auction in 2025 for a very modest price as a late-15^th-century South German School work. At that time, the panel had undergone interventions that obscured its original appearance; once remedied by Sam Fogg through proper restoration, these allowed it to be recognized as a work by Fernando Gallego from the Ciudad Rodrigo altarpiece.

The provenance information gathered by Sotheby’s traces the history of Fernando Gallego’s St Paul back to the Belgian collector Mathieu Henri Léon de Somzée (1837–1901), who also owned the famous St Engracia by Bartolomé Bermejo now in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. According to the 1904 catalogue for the posthumous sale of the De Somzée collection, Fernando Gallego’s St Paul (which was listed in that catalogue as a work by Albrecht van Ouwater) came from the Spanish art market.

The identification of Fernando Gallego’s St Paul reduces to 1.5 the number of untraced panels from the original high altarpiece of Ciudad Rodrigo Cathedral that were still preserved after its dismantling in the nineteenth century. However, the nature of the intervention to which the St Paul had been subjected prior to its restoration by Sam Fogg, involving the replacement of the original background with a plain gold ground, invites a reconsideration of the provenance of the Saint writing in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Dijon, which shows a similar alteration. In principle, this panel appears somewhat larger than those from the predella of the Ciudad Rodrigo altarpiece, but it would be worth conducting a physical and structural analysis to confirm or rule this out. Should it be confirmed, it would represent half of another panel of apostles from the Ciudad Rodrigo predella and could be identified as St Matthew.

Bibliography

• GAYA NUÑO, Juan Antonio (1958): "Sobre el retablo de Ciudad Rodrigo, por Fernando Gallego y sus colaboradores", Archivo Español de Arte, vol. 31, nº 124, pp. 299-312.
• QUINN, R[oger] M. (1961): Fernando Gallego and the Altarpiece of Ciudad Rodrigo, The University of Arizona Press, Tucson (Arizona).
• YARZA LUACES, Joaquín (2006): "El retablo mayor de la catedral de Ciudad Rodrigo de Fernando Gallego", AZOFRA, Eduardo (ed.): La catedral de Ciudad Rodrigo a través de los siglos. Visiones y revisiones, Diputación de Salamanca, Caja Duero y Diócesis de Ciudad Rodrigo, Salamanca.