Spanish school circa 1440 workshop of Blasco de... Lot 3

Spanish school circa 1440 workshop of Blasco de Grañen (Zaragoza, circa 1400-1459) The Arrest of Christ The Resurrection Pair of resin panels, reinforced. Two elements of an altarpiece. Egg painting and gold background on rectangular wooden panels, lined, without frames. Height 84,5 Width 68,8 Thickness 2,5 cm for each panel. A ca. 1440 Spanish school pair of paintings by the studio of Blasco de Grañen depicting the Arrest of Jesus Christ and the Resurrection. Tempera paint and gold foil on wooden panels. The two scenes, with Christ at the center, take place outdoors, against a background of gold and wooded vegetation surrounding a wall in the Arrest scene and dominated, in the Resurrection scene, by an architectural ensemble representing the city of Jerusalem. Blasco de Grañen (ex Master of Lanaja), documented from 1422 to 1459, is one of the representatives of the "International Gothic" in Aragon in the early fifteenth century. He was first known as the Master of Lanaja, after an altarpiece dedicated to the Virgin, dated 1437-1438, which was preserved until his death in 1936 in the church of Lanaja (Huesca), and of which the Annunciation to St. Anne and the Adoration of the Magi, preserved in the Museum of Zaragoza, remain. C. R. Post, (A History of Spanish Painting, vol. VII,2, Cambridge (Mass) 1938, pp. 802-812) to have drawn up a first catalog of his work, which has been expanded by the various articles in the recent monograph by M.C. Lacarra Ducay, which has restored the artist's true identity. In the altarpiece of the Virgin surrounded by musician angels and Mosen Sperandeu dated 1439 (Madrid, Museo Lazaro Galdiano) and in the one of the same theme in Zaragoza (Museo de Bellas Artes), Blasco de Grañen adopts a refined and ornate style in the description of the engraved gold backgrounds and the draperies of the sacred figures. In Lanaja's panels, the realistic tendency combined with a fiery chromatic range is more accentuated, and the looks of the rustic, plebeian characters, with bulging eyes surmounted by heavy eyelids, emphasize this aspect. While retaining the intense coloring and ornamental aspect of the halos, armor and vegetation, but schematizing the line of the drapery and accentuating the harshness of the grimacing expressions, the anonymous author of the two panels, presented here for the first time, is in the style of Blasco de Grañen, who undoubtedly learned his craft in the mid-15th century. CONDITION Reverse side: Each panel is made up of four boards, the assembly of which is maintained by a horizontal crosspiece and two original cross-slats fixed with nails. Presence of xylophagous insect galleries. The upper part of the panels has been reinforced with modern laminated boards, respectively 23.7cm high for the Arrest and 24cm high for the Resurrection. Pictorial surface and gold background: restorations. Engraved and stamped aureoles: original.