Master of Santiago. Artist from the circle of the Master of Palanquinos. (León and Astorga, circa 1500)

Master of Santiago. Artist from the circle of the Master of Palanquinos. (León and Astorga, circa 1500)
"The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian"
Tempera and gold on panel. This lot and the following one were part of the same altarpiece. Panel measurements: 89 x 62 cm.
Thanks to the research of Dr. Albert Velasco, it has been possible to ascribe this table and the subsequent one (lot 6) as from the Master of Santiago.
In his thesis “De la pintura Hispano-flamenca al primer Renacimiento en las antiguas diócesis de León y Astorga: El Maestro de Palanquinos y el Maestro de Astorga (c. 1480-1540)” (On Hispanic-Flemish painting of the early Renaissance in the former dioceses of Leon and Astorga: The Master of Palanquinos and the Master of Astorga (c. 1480-1540)), Marc Ballesté, in chapter 2.5, Collaborators and the Maestro de Palanquinos Circle, identifies a series of artists whose paintings were attributed to the Master of Palanquinos until that moment. One of these is the painter known as the Master of Santiago, because of the number of scenes he dedicated to the pilgrim saint. These panels, lots 5 and 6 in our catalogue, unknown until now, have thus been identified by Dr. Albert Velasco as being by the Master of Santiago, and they could in fact have belonged to the same reredos of the life of the saint as those mentioned by Marc Ballesté: “Finally, it is worth mentioning some panels which are all work of the same painter. On describing four of these, kept in Raimundo Ruiz’s collection in Madrid, Post does not only ascribe them to the Master of Palanquinos but also defines them as some of the artist’s greatest achievements. They represent scenes from the life of James the Great (Santiago), specifically the Drowning of the Persecutors of the Saint’s Disciples, the Sermon, the Decapitation, and the Removal of the body of Saint James.
A sign of its relation to these is the human form of the only figure in a frontal position in both panels, which is identical in its features. According to the photo library, the painting The Removal of the body of Saint James, can be found in E. García’s collection in Madrid. According to what can be seen in both images, we are disposed to refute the attribution put forward by Post. As in the paintings studied recently, the Master has something of the style of Palanquinos but does not share various elements with him. He shows, for example, a lack of control over proportions both of human and architectural forms, and introduces flat landscapes without gilded skies, and with scattered trees, definitively more naturalist and closer to the renaissance, which was yet to arrive. The way that he paints the characters’ eyes, with their certain, rounded shape framed by rather arched eyebrows deserves attention. Just like the Master of Valencia de Don Juan, the originality of the gold decoration of the haloes is also outstanding. There are two more panels, one in Dr. Esteve’s collection in Barcelona and the other in the museum at Astorga Cathedral, which are likely to have been painted by the same artist, which according to the number of scenes he dedicated to the pilgrim saint, we can call the Master of Santiago.”
We thank Dr. Alberto Velasco Gonzàlez, for his help in identifying and cataloguing this work.
Bibliography:
Ballesté Escorihuela, Marc: “De la pintura Hispano-flamenca al primer Renacimiento en las antiguas diócesis de León y Astorga: El Maestro de Palanquinos y el Maestro de Astorga (c. 1480-1540)”. Lleida, abril de 2017.