Title

Saint writing

Gallego, Fernando (Salamanca. Active 1468-1507)

Generic classification

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Object history

This painting was donated to the musée des Beaux-Arts in Dijon in 1910 by Jules Maciet, who, apart from the works he acquired for his own collection, acquired others that he donated to museums all over France. There is no information about its provenance. Since there is consensus in its attribution to Fernando Gallego, it can be assumed that it comes from Castile and León, given that this artist, active in Salamanca, worked preferably for the southwest of the territory of the current autonomous community of Castile and León. However, his activity in Extremadura is also documented, so it cannot be ruled out that it comes from this autonomous community.

Description

The panel entered the museum in Dijon as a German work (in fact, in its upper left part there was an apocryphal anagram of Albrecht Dürer). In 1935, August L. Mayer noticed that it was a Spanish work and attributed it to Bartolomé Bermejo. In 1954, Diego Angulo finally attributed it to Fernando Gallego. In her monograph on the artist, Pilar Silva Maroto has highlighted the identity of the human type that appears in the work (a mature, bald man with a white beard) with the one used by Fernando Gallego in other works to depitct St Joseph or elderly men.

The panel shows an elderly man, depicted half-length, writing on the open book he holds in his left hand. The gilding of the background is altered, as are the colours of his clothes (which, originally, were not so dark), which, together with the absence of specific attributes, makes it difficult to identify the individual. It is assumed that he is a saint and several proposals of identification have been made (St Augustine, St Anthony, an evangelist...), but, in the absence of more characteristic elements, it is not possible to assign him an identity. Because of its format and iconography, it could have belonged to the predella of an altarpiece (taking as an example the altarpiece of the church of San Lorenzo in Toro, work of Francisco Gallego, it has also been proposed that it could have belonged to the upper part of an altarpiece).

Locations

• Unknown date

  region

  Possible origin from Castile and Leon, Castilla y León (Spain)

• 1910

  private collection

  Jules Maciet, Paris (France) *

• 1910 - present

  museum

  Museum of Fine Arts, Dijon, Dijon (France)