Title

Saint John the Baptist with donor

Maestro de Portillo

Generic classification

Object

Century

Cultural context / style

Dimensions

Material

Technique

Iconography / Theme

Provenance

Current location

Inventory Number in Current Collection

Inscriptions / Marks

IVAN DE LA PENA

Object history

The Groeningemuseun in Bruges (Belgium) preserves a panel painting showing St. John the Baptist enthroned, dated at the end of the 15th century, which is attributed to an unknown master, who has been identified as Álvaro Sánchez, but recent research does not accept this and opts for the traditional attribution to the anonymous painter known as Maestro de Portillo.

The panel comes from an altarpiece placed in the parish church of San Miguel del Pino, a small town about 20 km west of Valladolid. On this point there is no doubt, since in the early 1930s the paintings were photographed by Cayetano de Mergelina, director of the Seminary of Art and Archaeology of the University of Valladolid, and the photographs are preserved in the Department of Art History of that University.

Mergelina noted the quality of the paintings, then quite deteriorated, and asked Enrique Lafuente Ferrari to carry out a study to try to find out their history. Lafuente fulfilled this task and in 1935 published an article entitled "Miscelanea de primitivos castellanos" (Miscellany of Castilian primitives), in which he repaired the panels of San Miguel del Pino together with others. This study revealed that the paintings had already attracted the attention of Tomás González, who was in charge of the Archive of Simancas at the beginning of the 19th century. The proximity between San Miguel del Pino and Simancas must have meant that González went to see them and, lacking specific knowledge of painting, contacted Ceán Bermúdez, who years earlier had published a detailed dictionary of Spanish artists.

In a letter from Ceán to Tomás González dated August 8, 1818, he acknowledged receipt of the letter in which the latter informed him of the discovery of the paintings, and accepted the possibility that they might have come from the monastery of Santa Clara in Tordesillas. Ceán asked him to find out more about the panels, and González must have made an effort but without finding anything relevant, except that he saw on the painting of St. John a cartouche on which one could read "IVAN DE LA PENA" (Juan de la Peña), which he considered to be the signature of the painter, when in fact it is the name of the donor who appears kneeling at the feet of the Baptist. In a letter dated October 17 of the same year, Ceán thanked him for the effort, which he reiterated in the last known letter on the subject, dated November 7.

When Lafuente saw the paintings, they were no longer part of one altarpiece, but belonged to two different ones. One, the one we are interested in, was dedicated to St. John the Baptist, whose central panel would be the one preserved today in Bruges, which was complemented by four others relating to the life of the Precursor, of which only one was missing, since only those of the Preaching of the Baptist, the Baptism of Christ and the Beheading remained in the church. In addition, two other smaller panels representing Saints Catherine and Magdalene and Saints Cosmas and Damian were preserved.

Thirty years after Lafuente's study, José María Caamaño returned to these paintings in an article in which he already assumed that the authorship, although anonymous, was due to the Master of Portillo, so called by Angulo because his main work was the altarpiece of the church of San Esteban in Portillo (Valladolid), although it was transferred to the chapel of the archbishop's palace in Valladolid. Caamaño collected the already growing bibliography on the anonymous painter and added new works to his catalog. When referring to the paintings of this master in San Miguel del Pino he follows Lafuente, but warns that of the sixteen panels that existed in the thirties, only seven remained. From the altarpiece of San Juan Bautista the main panel, the one of the Baptism of Christ and one of the two small panels representing the Holy Doctors had disappeared, so that only the Preaching of the Baptist, Decapitation of San Juan, and Santa Catalina and the Magdalena, which are the ones that have come down to us and have recently been restored, were preserved in the church. The other paintings belonging to the other group have also diminished their presence.

In the period between Lafuente's article and Caamaño's, a good number of panels were removed from their original location. In April 1957 a storm with important electrical apparatus affected localities on the banks of the Duero River. San Miguel del Pino was one of the most affected towns, as a lightning strike wreaked havoc in the church: it knocked down the belfry, affected the tower and lifted part of the roof of the temple, so that stones and rubble fell inside, destroying belongings and works of art. This might lead one to think that it was then that some boards were lost in the collapse, but this was not the case. In a report on the town by Manuel Fernández Areal and published in the Diario Regional on February 25, 1956, it is stated that the parish priest, Andrés Ramos Lores, began to repair the church, which was in very bad condition, in 1949, and due to the lack of resources decided to sell some paintings. The journalist clarifies that "in the church there were then sixteen boards with different motifs and good gilding. We have seen those that remain -some were sold in order to cover the repair expenses for the year forty-nine, with the permission of the archbishop-...". The archbishop at that time was Antonio García y García.

From a typewritten writing, without date, place or authorship, preserved in the neighborhood, we also know of the existence of the sixteen paintings and it is suggested that they must have come from the monastery of Santa Clara in Tordesillas, considering that San Miguel del Pino was the head of the bailiwick held by the abbess of Santa Clara, an argument that is not sufficient to determine their origin.

When the panel of San Juan Bautista enthroned was sold, along with others, the buyer was Rafael Cavestany de Anduaga, who was Franco's Minister of Agriculture between 1951 and 1957 and promoter of the National Institute of Colonization in Santa Espina, in the Valladolid municipality of Castromonte. According to the data held by the Gröningemuseum, in the 1960s the panel was in a private collection in Bilbao and later on the market in London. By 2000 it was in Madrid, apparently in the hands of the Caylus house, which lent it for the exhibition The Age of Van Eyck 1430-1530. The Mediterranean World and Early Netherlandish Painting, and was acquired by the Museum of Bruges in 2003, where it remains.

In the study of the panel in the exhibition catalog, the name of the town was confused - it is said to be San Juan del Pino - and only considerations are given about the anonymous author, but nothing is specified about its provenance, except that it was in a private collection in Madrid. Nor is there any information on the possible location of the other panels that left the town at the end of the 1940s.

The panel has been restored, as it had lost the pigmentation on the lower part and some on the sides. It is an excellent painting by a master who is confident in drawing and is able to give volume to the figure despite not knowing the laws of perspective. The face of the Baptist concentrates all the strength and shows a very marked realism. Although the canopy, the smaller size of the donor -which is clearly a later addition-, the treatment of the throne and the landscapes in the background, urban on the left and natural on the right, indicate the Hispano-Flemish affiliation of the painting, there are nods to the Renaissance in the columns with capitals flanking the canopy and in the interest in giving volume to the character. The Groeningemuseum declares Álvaro Sánchez as the author, considering that a 1991 study by Redondo Cantera wanted to see that name in an inscription on the nimbus of St. John the Baptist in the panel Preaching of the Baptist, a reading that today does not seem to be accepted, so the anonymous painter has been renamed Master of Portillo, a name given to him by Angulo and endorsed by Post.

Description

The panel has been restored because the lower part and the sides had lost part of the paint.

Locations

• ca. 1500 - ca. 1949

  church

  San Miguel Arcángel, San Miguel del Pino (Spain)

• Unknown date

  private collection

  Bilbao (Spain) *

• Unknown date

  private collection

  London, London (United Kingdom) *

• Unknown date

  auction house

  Caylus. Art Gallery, Madrid (Spain)

• post. 2003 - present

  museum

  Groeningemuseum, Bruges (Belgium)