JOAN REIXACH | HEAD OF CHRIST

With L. Codosera Galeria de Arte Antiguo, Madrid, until 2008;

Private collection, New York.

Joan Reixach, a fifteenth century Catalan painter and miniaturist, was one of the leading artists of the Valencian Renaissance. By 1437, he had established one of the most prolific workshops in Valencia, where he was active for most of his career. Much of his repertoire displays the influence of Northern Renaisssance artists, Jan van Eyck in particular, but by the mid-15th century he had established his own distinct style.  His celebrated Altarpiece of Saint Ursula and the Eleven Thousand Virgins,¹ signed and dated 1468 in the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, serves today as a touchstone for dating and identifying many of his works. 

Reixach explored the present subject on a few occasions, and this is a particularly refined example. Its ornate and beautiful punchwork is characteristic of the artist's technique, as is the representation of Christ, with his frontal pose, bifurcated beard, and detailed strands of hair. It shares visual and stylistic similarities to Reixach's aforementioned Saint Ursula altarpiece as well as his retable of the Holy Trinity today in the Musée de Picardie, Amiens.²

This panel was once painted on both sides, with the reverse covered in stucco with tones of white and green to create an almost marble like effect. It would have been appreciated as a private object and used for domestic devotion, likely resting on a a piece of furniture. Remnants of the original paint are still visible in areas of the reverse.

We are grateful to Profesor Antoni José i Pitarch for endorsing the attribution on the basis of photographs and for his assistance in the cataloguing of this lot.  

^1. https://www.museunacional.cat/en/colleccio/altarpiece-saint-ursula-and-eleven-thousand-virgins/joan-reixach/015927-cjt

^2.  https://www.pop.culture.gouv.fr/notice/joconde/08120003296