Attributed to Juan Rexach and Workshop

With Arnold Seligmann, Rey and Co., New York, by 1933;

Mrs. Herbert S. Darlington, La Jolla, California;

Anonymous sale, Alameda, Auctions by the Bay, 8 June 2004, lot 1028 (as Attributed to Juan Rexach);

London, Bonham's, 8 December 2004, lot 62 (as Attributed to Juan Rexach and Studio);

Where acquired by the present collector.

The Art News 32, no. 1 (7 October 1933), p. 18 (as Attributed to Juan Rexach);

C.R. Post, A History of Spanish Painting: The Valencian School in the Late Middle Ages and Early Renaissance, vol. VI, Cambridge 1935, pp. 98-100, reproduced fig. 33 (as Workshop of Jacomart and Rexach);

California Pacific International Exposition, exhibition catalogue, San Diego 1936, p. 31, cat. no. 362 (as Juan Rexach, lent by Mrs. H.S. Darlington).

San Diego, Fine Arts Gallery, on loan, 1933 (lent by Arnold Seligmann, Rey & Co.);

San Diego, Palace of Fine Arts, California Pacific International Exposition, 12 February - 9 September 1936, no. 362 (as Juan Rexach, lent by Mrs. H.S. Darlington).

Dating to the fifteenth century, the present work is considered to be a collaborative effort of Juan Rexach and his workshop, possibly with the participation of Jaume Baço, called Jacomart (c. 1410–1461). The composition, depicting the Adoration of the Magi, follows Flemish and Italian examples with an emphasis on intricate detail and material splendor. The unusual presence of Saint Anthony, the patron saint of travelers (identified by the tau cross he holds in his left hand) suggests that this painting was commissioned by a private donor who, as the saint's namesake, requested that the artist include the figure as a proxy for himself within the biblical narrative.

Juan Rexach, or Reixach, was the son of a Catalan painters and he worked in the Valencia region in close collaboration with Jacomart, the court painter of King Alfonso V of Aragon. It is believed that he directed a substantial workshop, including his son, Jerónimo, though documents suggest that he produced about twenty independent works. The present painting probably formed the center of a retable for the altarpiece of a Valencian church; the treatment is a slight modification of the central panel of his Altarpiece of the Epiphany commissioned for the Augustinian nuns’ convent of Rubielos de Mora in Teruel.¹ Here Rexach reiterates many of the enriching details such as the patch of plaster torn from the wall, exposing the brick underneath. The young boy carrying a monkey on his shoulder in the left foreground introduces a new element in the atelier’s iconography of the subject, while the figures of Saint Joseph and the kneeling magi are exact repetitions of the artist’s types. As suggested by art historian Chandler Rathfon Post (see Literature), the principal sections may have been carried out by Jacomart and Rexach, while other passages could be attributed to their joint atelier.  

¹ Joan Reixach, Altarpiece of the Epiphany, circa 1469. Barcelona, Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, inv. no. 050621-CJT.