JUAN DE LA ABADIA* (active 1493-1513)

Property from the PHILBROOK MUSEUM OF ART, sold to benefit its acquisitions fund

Details

JUAN DE LA ABADIA* (active 1493-1513)

A Retable: Saint Michael vanquishing the Devil; with scenes from the Shooting of the Bull at Gargano; the Crucifixion; the Woman and her Child miraculously saved from the Tides of Mont St. Michel; Saint Michael and the Dragon; and A Lady and four Gentleman entering a Church
inscribed twice on the reverse of the Guardapols 'JULIAN'--tempera on panel
overall 82¾ x 59 5/8in. (210 x 151.5cm.)

Provenance

The Parish Church, Bagüeste, Huesca Province, Aragon
with Wildenstein & Co., New York
William Randolph Hearst
Raimundo Ruiz; his sale, Clarke Galleries, New York, May 6-10, 1924, lot 845
with International Studio Art Corporation, New York, from whom purchased by the museum in 1942

Literature

C.R. Post, The History of Spanish Painting, 1941, VIII, part II, pp. 465-469, fig. 219, as the Almudévar Master

Lot Essay

Sold with a photocopy of a letter from Chandler R. Post, dated Cambridge, October 2, 1958, in which he identifies the Almudévar Master as Juan de la Abadia. As early as 1941, Post (loc. cit.) speculated as to whether the Almudévar Master's real name might be 'Julian' (or the Catalan form, 'Julia') based on a contemporary inscription in Gothic letters,'IULIAN', on the back of each of the two principal lateral uprights of the guardapols

Post (idem.) also speculates about the meaning of the lower left panel depicting a lady and four gentlemen entering a church. He suggests that it may be linked to the panel immediately above and was simply intended to galvanize devotion to the shrine on Monte Gargano. Alternatively, it may relate to the Miracle of Mont St. Michel, on the other side of the retable, and depictes the preganant Lady adoring at the shrine of the Archangel, before she was engulfed by the floods. However, in none of the three panels is her costume identical.