Another Gothic panel from the cathedral of Barcelona is up for auction | Catalonia

It is the same origin that a painting has that can be bought on next day 15 at the Madrid auction house Segre, for a starting price of 75,000 euros. In this case it is the representation of Saint Peter Martyr and the castaways, a table almost one meter high by 64 centimeters wide, representing the moment in which a dozen sailors, in a moment of anguish, in which their ship is leaking and they are throwing the merchandise overboard so as not to die drowned, they invoke this saint to save them from this extreme situation.

Unlike the February table, unpublished in the bibliography, the one that is now for sale has been known since it was included in 1950 by Chandler R. Post in his monumental history of Spanish painting, which made it known when he was in residence of Englewood (New Jersey) by Barons Cassel Van Doorn.

The work had been sold by the cathedral council before 1877, like many other Gothic paintings that had ceased to have value and had been replaced by other fashionable pictorial sets.

Before emigrating to the United States, he had gone through at least two collections in Barcelona; that of Josep Genescà and that of the doctor Joan Ramon Campaner, whose heirs kept it until 1891, when they sold their entire collection and it ended up dispersed. The painting returned to Spain, as the art historian Alberto Velasco has been able to establish in the report that accompanies the work, upon the death of the Barons of Cassel.

It was then that the Marquis Raül Roviralta, an industrial pharmaceutical collector of art and ship models, bought it and kept it at his residence in Santa Clotilde, in Lloret de Mar until his death. “He possibly bought it for its iconography, since Borrassà’s work represents very faithfully what a ship of the time is; a coca, an image that undoubtedly seduced him ”, Velasco highlights in a telephone conversation. The work preserves an inscription on the back where it says that Roviralta left the work to his children in 1981, a family that has kept it until now and has put it on sale in Madrid.

For Velasco the fact that a large number of borrassàs in auctions it does not devalue its importance. “He is one of the most valued and most documented Gothic authors, since there are about 300 documents about his life and work. We also know that he painted around 50 altarpieces, in Girona and, above all, in Barcelona, ​​although he also worked in Solsona and Sardinia ”, he recalls.

Velasco, following the reconstruction of the altarpiece that the also expert Santiago Alcolea has made, recalls that the panel that is sold, despite being from the same origin as the February one, is one of the few that are known of this altarpiece: “Only We know what five of the 20 panels in the set were like: the Calvary that crowned it and a scene with the three saints, both in private collections, and three of the six paintings dedicated to Saint Peter Martyr, but none of the six from Santo Domingo or from six o’clock in the predella of Santa Marta ”.

For the benefit of Cáritas

The work up for auction is exceptional, due to the quality and composition of the scene. “The scene of the ship is not usual, but the representation of the waves of the sea and the storm is very rare; created with a kind of glaze that required the skill of the master ”, says Velasco.

But there is another exceptionality. Everything that is collected from the sale of the table, from 75,000 euros upwards, will go to Cáritas in full. We do not know if the work of Sant Pedro Mártir served to save the sailors, but the acquisition of this Gothic painting from Borrassà will help, almost 600 years later, those most in need.

–