Master of Beck (¿Juan Arnaldín or Jaime Arnaldín I?)

Master of Beck (¿Juan Arnaldín or Jaime Arnaldín I?)
"Saint Apollonia"
Panel painting in tempera. Aragón. Circa 1430-1440. 157 x 95 cm.
According to Dr. Alberto Velasco Gonzàlez’s report dedicated to this painting, this is a previously unknown work by Beck, an artistic character created by Chandler Rathfon Post in his day in order to group certain paintings which pivoted around Blasco de Grañén, the great international gothic painter of Aragon. The last studies dedicated to the latter painter included a series of paintings among his work and that of his workshop which was stylistically slightly apart from the altarpieces documented as being by the master, which gave rise to talk of the existence of a collaborator with a strong artistic personality who, perhaps, was working at the time of Blasco de Grañén’s final period. The faces have more rounded and less harsh features than those of the latter artist, with well-defined cheeks, very powerful shading and mouths with fleshy lips. The ears are also very peculiar as they stick out quite far and are rounded.
Among the paintings that correspond to these characteristics we find a series of panels from a reredos dedicated to Saint Michael and Saint Thomas. A highlight from among these is a Saint Michael kept in Barcelona in the MNAC National Art Museum of Catalonia. The rest of the panels are in various private collections. There are six compartments dedicated to the Virgin Mary and Saint Michael in the same Barcelona museum, a Madonna and Child and angels which was in the former Martin Beck collection (New York), which is now in the Museum of Fine Arts of Valencia. There is a Saint John the Baptist in the Museum of Reus, Spain, which belonged to the same reredos as the previous painting. There is a Mary Magdalene which was in the former Mateu collection (Barcelona), and which was also possibly part of the same reredos. Guadaira Macías considered that these paintings should be attributed to a painter she called "Pseudo Blasco de Grañén", and she did this when writing about a panel of The Madonna and Child accompanied by angels and saints which is kept in the Delgado collection. All in all, this painting of Saint Apollonia does not appear to be by the same painter, which is why we consider it more opportune not to use that denomination and instead recuperate that which Post coined in his day to refer to the anonymous painter in Blasco de Grañén’s orbit, the Master of Beck.
In the still unpublished study of the Saint John the Baptist kept in the Museum of Reus which Dr. Velasco has undertaken, he proposes that two possible candidates for the identity of the Master of Beck could be the brothers Juan and Jaime Arnaldín I, who were active in Calatayud and Zaragoza and who have been documented on different occasions alongside Blasco de Grañén.
We thank Dr. Alberto Velasco for the identification and cataloging of this work.
The painting is accompanied by Dr. Alberto Velasco Gonzàlez’s report.

Bibliography on the painting:
- Alberto Velasco Gonzàlez, Mestre de Beck. Sant Joan Baptista, (Master of Beck, Saint John the Baptist) unpublished report commissioned by the Museum of Reus, 2021 (it mentions the Saint Apollonia).

Bibliographic reference on the painter:
- Chandler Rathfon Post, The Hispano-Flemish Style in North-Western Spain (A History of Spanish Painting, vol. IV), Cambridge (Massachusetts), Harvard University Press, 1933, pp. 642-644.
- José Gómez Frechina, "Obrador de Blasco de Grañén. Mare de Déu amb el Xiquet entronitzada i àngels", in La col·lecció Orts-Bosch al Museu de Belles Arts de València, Valencia, Generalitat Valenciana, 2006, vol. I, pp. 34-35.
- Alberto Velasco Gonzàlez, "Novetats del mercat d’art en relació amb la pintura gòtica aragonesa: Blasco de Grañén (doc. 1422-1459)", in Viatges a la bellesa. Miscel·lània homenatge a Maria Rosa Manote i Clivilles, Barcelona, Retrotabulum Maior, 2015, pp. 166-169.
- Guadaira Macías, "Pseudo Blasco de Grañén", in David Gimilio and José Gómez Frechina (eds.), La colección Delgado, Valencia, Museu de Belles Arts de València, 2017, pp. 28-30.