Title

Virgin and Child with Angels

Gonçal Peris Sarrià (?, ca. 1380 - ?, ca. 1451)

Generic classification

Object

Date

Century

Cultural context / style

Material

Technique

Iconography / Theme

Provenance

Current location

Inventory Number in Current Collection

Object history

Part of the main altarpiece of the cathedral of El Burgo de Osma.

Vitoria, Salazar Collection at the beginning of the 20th century.

Vitoria, Pedro Ruiz, before 1905.

Paris, M. de Blives, 1905.

Purchased by the Musée du Louvre in 1905.

Description

The panel shows the Virgin seated on a throne against a gilded background, dressed in a tunic and cloak, her head covered with a veil and crowned. She carries the Child, half-naked, on her lap and both appear on a throne treated as a small architecture, with flying buttresses that emerge from the back and end in small buttresses topped by pinnacles, in the intrados of the flying buttresses appear Gothic tracery continuing the sides of the throne with panels with lions in relief, which identify it with the throne of Solomon and ending in turrets. Before the protagonists kneel two angels, the one on the left dressed in a green tunic and pink mantle presents a tray with lilies, the one on the right, dressed in a blue brocade tunic and a green mantle, offers a tray of roses. Behind the Virgin and Child there are eight angels superimposed in two rows, some in a praying position and two with musical instruments, a harp and a lute. The style corresponds to the so-called international gothic, with soft and slightly shaded tones and abundant clothes that are folded softly extending on the floor.

The work presided over the old main altarpiece of the cathedral of El Burgo de Osma, replaced by the one made by Juan de Juni, Juan Picardo and Pedro Andrés between 1550 and 1554, which still presides over the presbytery today and which repeated most of the scenes of the 15th century work. It was a monumental ensemble that, according to the reconstruction hypothesis proposed by Francesc Ruiz i Quesada and José Gómez Frechina in 2014, consisted of a predella, four floors and seven streets protected by a polsera. The extreme streets were occupied by full-length images of saints, of which a St. Augustine, St. Dominic of Guzman (cathedral of El Burgo de Osma), St. Ambrose and St. John the Baptist (Paris, Musée du Louvre) are preserved, the intermediate ones by scenes from the life of the Virgin (the Annunciation to St. Joachim and Annunciation to St. Anne are still preserved in the cathedral of El Burgo de Osma) and in the central one were superimposed the panel now in the Louvre Museum with the Virgin and Child with angels, the Dormition of the Virgin, from the Museu Frederic Marès in Barcelona and perhaps the Coronation of the Virgin from the Cleveland Museum of Art, although this panel is not accepted by all scholars as belonging to the same set. The work was made by Gonçal Peris Sarrià and the so-called Master of Martí de Torres, whom it has been proposed to identify with García Peris Sarrià.

The image repeats the type created by Pere Nicolau, master of Gonçal Peris Sarrià, in the one that presided over the altarpiece of the church of Sarrión (Teruel) in 1404, disappeared in the Civil War but known through old photographs. In it the Virgin appeared seated on a complex throne with the Child on her lap, while with her left hand she pointed to her neck to indicate that through her throat did not pass the morsel of the fruit of the tree of good and evil and therefore was not affected by original sin. Both were flanked by angels with musical instruments, while two others at the foot of the throne presented baskets with flowers. In front of the back there was a brocaded cloth of honor and a baldachin simulated sheltering the protagonists. Pere Nicolau's workshop would adapt this composition in the central scene of the altarpiece of Santa Cruz de Moya (Cuenca, Diocesan Museum) and Gonçal Peris would do the same in the panel of the Louvre Museum although the Virgin shows her body turned to the left, instead of to the right as in the Sarrión panel. The typology can be traced back to the image of the chapel of San Miguel in the cloister of the Barcelona monastery of Pedralbes, painted by Ferrer Bassa between 1343 and 1346, so influenced by Sienese models and that would have important repercussions in the painting of the Crown of Aragon, from the Virgin of the Angels by Pere Serra (c. 1385, Barcelona, Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya) to the images painted by Blasco de Grañén, such as his Virgin of Mosén Esperandeu de Santa Fe, of 1439 (Madrid, Museo Lázaro Galdiano) or the Virgin with Child and Angel Musicians (c. 1450, Zaragoza, Museo Goya-Colección Ibercaja).

The commission to a Valencian workshop for such an important work may have been due both to the importance and quality of the workshops in the city of Turia at the beginning of the 15th century and to the absence of important workshops in Castile at the time, which would import other works such as the altarpiece of Santa Ursula from the convent of San Pablo in Palencia, with panels distributed today in different museums. It has also been recalled that at the time the altarpiece was commissioned, the bishop of El Burgo de Osma was Cardinal Alfonso Carrillo de Albornoz, grandson of the lords of Moya (Cuenca), a town for which Pere Nicolau's workshop had painted an altarpiece around 1420.

The great quality of the panel, in which almost no workshop collaboration can be appreciated and in which its correct drawing and complex shades in transparencies and shadings stand out, is explained by its leading role in the altarpiece.

Locations

• Unknown date

  cathedral

  El Burgo de Osma Cathedral, Burgo de Osma (Spain)

• 1905

  dealer/antiquarian

  Pedro Ruiz, Vitoria (Spain) *

• 1905

  dealer/antiquarian

  M. de Blives, Paris (France) *

• 1905 - present

  museum

  Louvre Museum, Paris (France)