Alta Época, Tesoros Coloniales y Relojes de Lujo
Large oil painting on board measuring 145 x 95 cm in outstanding state of conservation and polychrome of origin, the scene with which this work delights us represents a Bishop accompanied by two Cardinals in procession making their entrance to the fortress of a Castilian town from the end of the 15th century, in the upper right plane, the Guardian Angel of Paradise, raising his characteristic sword, welcomes them, most likely being a commemorative commission from the Archbishopric to the Palencia master to decorate a newly built church or cathedral. Maestro de Becerril is the conventional name by which an anonymous Renaissance workshop or master active in Tierra de Campos in the third and fourth decades of the 16th century is known. It owes its name to the panels of an old altarpiece dedicated to Saint Pelayo from the Palencia town of Becerril de Campos, assembled, when the primitive altarpiece was dismantled, into a baroque altar from the 18th century acquired around 1940 by the Cathedral of Malaga, where it is currently they are conserved. At a more advanced date, in the mid-1530s, and expanding the geographical framework of its initial activity, would correspond to the attributed altarpieces of Ventosa de la Cuesta and Íscar, towns in the south of the current province of Valladolid that belonged at the time to the dioceses from Ávila and Segovia respectively. Bibliography: Pérez de Castro, Ramón and Fiz Fuertes, Irene, “Precisions on some tables by the master of Becerril in Palencia and Becerril de Campos”, in Bulletin of the Seminar of Art and Archeology, University of Valladolid, LXXIV (2008), pp . 273-279. Provenance: important private collection from Madrid.
