The Adoration of the Shepherds

For many years the artist Juan Mates lay undiscovered and a group of works identified as by one hand was attributed to the Master of Peñafiel, based on a pair of retables which were in the ermita at Peñafiel. Post (op. cit., VI, 1947, pp. 528-31) suggests that the Master of Peñafiel is very close in style to Luis Borrossa's pupil Gerardo Gener and includes amongst his oeuvre an altarpiece of the two Saint Johns in a private collection and the retable of Saints Martin and Ambrose, in Barcelona Cathedral. In his later volume (op. cit., VIII, 1947, pp. 597-601), Post adds to the artist's oeuvre the present painting as well as an Annunciation in the church of San Francesco in Stampace at Cagliari (idem, fig. 281) and a retable of St. James Major in the Diocesan Museum, Tarragona.

However, it was Juan Ainaud who actually identified the Master of Peñafiel as Juan Mates in Anales y Boletín de Los Museos de Arte de Barcelona, I, 1942, on the basis of a contract and receipts found for the Barcelona retable of Saints Martin and Ambrose. He also found the actual record of its installation and accordingly dated its execution to 1411-5. A native of Villafranca del Panadés, his activity in Barcelona can be dated back to 1400.

Post (op. cit., XI, 1953) tentatively agrees with Juan Ainaud that a pair of small pinnacles from a retable depicting The Annunciation and The Resurrection, both in private collections, France (see J. Guidiol and S.A.I. Bianchi, op. cit., p. 346, figs. 413-4) might derive from the same original assemblage as the present painting.