From the museum website
During the first decades of the fifteenth century, coinciding with the early Italian Renaissance but unrelated to that movement, Flanders became a centre of cardinal importance in the European painting scene. Resulting from the spread of Flemish artistic models, European Gothic art underwent an important stylistic change that manifested itself in a very remarkable way among the artists active in the Hispanic kingdoms.
In the territories of the Crowns of Aragon and Castile, the beginning and end of the Flemish journey can be ascribed to artists of the calibre of Lluís Dalmau and Pedro Berruguete. Between these two poles we can follow the evolution of the Flemish influence with painters like Juan de Flandes, Fernando Gallego, Alonso de Sedano, Miguel Ximénez or Jacomart, to mention but a few of the most important painters.
Within this artistic context, the work and personality of Bartolomé Bermejo, active in Aragon, Valencia and Catalonia, became especially relevant. The universality of this artist is clear to see in the exhibition, through some of his most outstanding works, like for example the Retable of Saint Engracia or the Triptych of the Virgin of Montserrat from Acqui Terme Cathedral.
Through pieces from private collections and from museums like the Musée du Louvre, the Museo del Prado, the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, the Museu de Belles Arts de València, the Szépmüvésti Múzeum in Budapest, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, the San Diego Museum of Art, the Fundación Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid and the collections of the organizers of the show, the Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao and the MNAC, the exhibition presents, on one hand, the Flemish influences in the work of the chief painters of the peninsular kingdoms and, on the other, it highlights the work of foreign artists who established themselves here.
Catalogue
Bartolomé Bermejo and Santiago Alcolea i Blanch, La pintura gótica hispanoflamenca: Bartolomé Bermejo y su época, Barcelona (Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya) and Bilbao (Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao) 2003. 592 pages.
ISBN 84-8043-107-5 (Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya).
ISBN 84-8718-106-7 (Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao).
Other venue
Bilbao, Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao (2 June-31 August 2003).