JAUME CABRERA | VERONICA OF THE VIRGIN MARY

Private collection, Paris;

With Stefano Piacenti, until 2008;

Private collection, New York.

Requested for Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Crown of Aragon: the Art of Barcelona, Mallorca, Valencia and Zaragoza in the 15th Century, Philadelphia Museum of art, February - April 2010 (exhibition scheduled but cancelled). 

J. Gudiol and S. Alcolea, Pintura Gòtica Catalana, Barcelona 1986, cat. no. 260, reproduced fig. 464. 

Jaume Cabrera almost certainly trained under prominent Catalan painters Jaime and Pedro Serra who were active in the second half of the fourteenth century Influenced by contemporary Sienese painting, the brothers Serra were greatly influential in promoting the Italian Gothic style in Catalonia. Cabrera is considered one of the last representatives of this movement.

This icon-like image of the Virgin was popular in early 15th century Spain and known as the "Veronica of the Virgin Mary," an image considered to be a derivation of Saint Luke's portrait of the Virgin and associated with the image of Christ's face on Veronica's veil. The prototype for this image is a footed reliquary containing a drawing of the face of the Virgin Mary on parchment along with the comb of the Virgin within the bejeweled frame, and now in the Catedral Metropolitana de Valencia; it was donated to the church by King Alphonse in 1437.¹ There two other known versions of the composition by Cabrera: one painted for the Cathedral of Vic and now in the Museu Episcopal de Vic²  and another kept in the treasury of the Tortosa Cathedral.³ 

We are grateful to Antoni José i Pitarch for his assistance with the cataloguing of this lot.  

1. See M. Sureda i Jubany, "From Holy Images to Liturgical Devices," in Convivium, November 2017, p. 196, fig. 1, reproduced. 

2. Ibid., p. 196, fig. 2, reproduced. See https://www.museuepiscopalvic.com/en/colleccions/gothic/veronica-with-the-holy-face-of-mary-reliquary--mev-1885

3. See J. Gudiol and S. Alcolea, Pintura Gòtica Catalana, Barcelona 1986, cat. no. 244, reproduced fig. 444.