ANTONIO VÁZQUEZ | THREE PREDELLA PANELS: SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI; THE LAMENTATION; SAINT ELIZABETH OF HUNGARY WITH A DONOR

López Isar, Madrid, c. 1920-30;

Félix Valdés, Bilbao, c. 1940;

Private collection, Spain, from 1950;

Whence offered ('Property from a Private Collection, Spain'), London, Sotheby's, 7 July 2011, lot 263 (as Antonio Vázquez);

Where acquired by the present owner.

C.R. Post, The Beginning of the Renaissance in Castile and Leon, A History of Spanish Painting, vol. IX, part II, Cambridge (Mass.) 1947, p. 626 (as the Mambrillas Master);

J. Urrea, 'Contribución al catálogo del pintor Antonio Vázquez', in Boletín del Museo Nacional de Escultura, 4, 2000, p. 13, reproduced pp. 12 and 14 (as Antonio Vázquez);

A. Velasco Gonzàlez, Retablos: Spanish Paintings from 14th to 16th centuries, exh. cat., Sam Fogg, London, and Caylus, Madrid 2019–20, under cat. no. 19, pp. 172–73.

This set of Castillian Renaissance paintings by Antonio Vázquez, who was active principally in Valladolid in the first half of the sixteenth century, are datable to the 1530s. The sole securely documented work by him of 1536 is an extant retable made for the Alderete family chapel in the church of El Salvador, Simancas, that serves as an important point of reference for stylistic comparisons with the present panels, which are thought to predate it. In 2000 Jesús Urrea published them as the work of Antonio Vázquez; and at the time of the 2011 sale, Isabel Mateo Gómez endorsed the attribution to this master on the basis of photographs.

The principal panels, which all depict scenes from the life of Saint John the Baptist, would once have formed part of a large-scale retable, possibly flanking a central wooden sculpture or a larger painted panel, with the present panels making up the predella below, alongside images of The Adoration of the Magi and Saint Christopher.¹ The presence alongside Saint Elizabeth of Hungary of a donor figure here, perhaps a Franciscan nun, may indicate, as Post was first to suggest, that the altarpiece came from a convent of the order, probably in the area of Valladolid.

¹ For the other panels, see the 2011 sale: https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2011/old-master-british-paintings-day-sale-l11034/lot.263.html. For a possible main panel see A. Padrón Mérida, 'Nuevas pinturas de Antonio Vázquez', Boletín del Seminario de Estudios de Arte y Arqueología, 57, 1991, pp. 357–60, plate II, fig. 1.