Title

Miracle of St Cosmas and St Damian

Alonso de Sedano [attributed to] (¿Burgos?, ca. 1465 - Burgos, ca. 1533)

Generic classification

Object

Date

Century

Cultural context / style

Dimensions

Material

Technique

Iconography / Theme

Provenance

Current location

Inventory Number in Current Collection

Object history

This panel was made known by Mayer in 1928. It was then in a private collection, without further specification, which surely indicates that it was on the art market (to be more exact, on the Spanish art market, according to Angulo's and Post's comments).

It must have originally belonged to the church of San Cosme y San Damián in Burgos. Post proposed so based, on the one hand, on the fact that, in this church, there was a modern copy of the panel (made, surely, in substitution of the sold one) and, on the other hand, on the fact that its style was consistent with that of an artist active in Burgos c. 1500 whom he initially called 'Master of Burgos' and whom he finally identified with Alonso de Sedano, author of important works in the city in the transition to the 16th century (especially the cupboard of the relics of the cathedral, which he made in collaboration with an anonymous artist who is conventionally called Master of Los Balbases). In addition, the theme of the panel coincides with the dedication of the church, which suggests that it may have formed part of its primitive high altarpiece (to which may also belonged a Mass of St Gregory by Alonso de Sedano that also belonged to this temple and was later sold).

Since when Sentenach undertook in 1921 the writing of the monumental catalogue of the province of Burgos, he no longer mentions the original panel, but the copy, its sale must have taken place before that date. It remained for some years in the Spanish art market referred to by Mayer, Angulo and Post, until 1930, when, according to the information provided by Young, it was acquired for its current destination. It must have been bought directly by Henry Wellcome, who was dedicated to the pharmaceutical industry and had a great interest in collecting objects related to medicine: the episode of Saints Cosmas and Damian performing an operation must have aroused his interest. This is how the panel became part of his private collection, which is now part of the Wellcome Collection, open to the public in London.

Description

When Mayer made known the panel in 1928, he presented it as the work of Fernando Gallego (as was often the case with practically any Hispano-Flemish Castilian panel), but it was immediately associated with the body of work of the Master of Burgos/Alonso de Sedano. Although the collaboration of this artist with the Master of Los Balbases has sometimes sparked debate as to which of the two is the author of the panel from the church of San Cosme y San Damián in Burgos, the authoritative opinion of Silva Maroto is inclined to maintain the attribution to Alonso de Sedano that Post once proposed. In fact, the presence of rigid human types with sharp-edged facial features and limbs is typical of this artist's work, as well as the incorporation of elements of the new Renaissance language (in this case, in the arch that frames the scene).

The panel depicts a posthumous miracle of Saints Cosmas and Damian that appears narrated in the Golden Legend by Jacobus de Voragine. According to this account, a servant of the Roman church of Saints Cosmas and Damian had one of his legs consumed by disease, so the saints came to him in his sleep to replace it with the leg of a black man who had been recently buried in a nearby church. The scene, which is extravagant to a contemporary sensibility and which has sparked interest and debate around ideas of race and otherness, was often depicted in Spanish art of the 15th and 16th centuries. In Burgos, for example, there is a panel with the same theme painted by Pedro Berruguete around the same time for the high altarpiece of the church of San Cosme y San Damián in Covarrubias. However, while Berruguete opted for a diagonal composition, Sedano opted for a less risky option, with a succession of planes parallel to the pictorial surface. In the present panel, the presence of angels as assistants to the surgical operation is curious, thus underlining the aura of prodigy of the event represented.

Locations

• XV^th c. - pre. 1921

  church

  Church of Saint Cosmas and Saint Damian, Burgos, Burgos (Spain)

• pre. 1921 - 1930

  dealer/antiquarian

  Spanish art market, Spain (Spain) *

• 1930 - 1936

  private collection

  Sir Henry Wellcome, London (United Kingdom) *

• 1936 - present

  museum

  Wellcome Collection, London (United Kingdom)