A Bishop Saint

c. 1480

Bartolomé Bermejo (Bartolomé de Cárdenas; Spanish, documented 1468–c. 1501)

Bartolomé Bermejo likely learned his meticulous oil-painting technique by studying Netherlandish works imported into his native Spain. Colored pigments become translucent when mixed with oil, necessitating many thin layers to be built up that result in rich colors, like the green jacquard lining this saint’s vestments, and radiant light effects, as seen in his jewel-encrusted miter. This captivating realism went hand in hand with a strategy in Netherlandish art called disguised symbolism, which imbued everyday objects with sacred meaning. Here, for example, the three-horned snail that appears as a decorative detail carved into the arm of the wooden seat is also a symbol of Christ’s Resurrection.

Status: On View, Gallery 202
Department: Painting and Sculpture of Europe

Artist: Bartolomé Bermejo
Title: A Bishop Saint
Place: Spain (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1475–1485
Medium: Oil on panel
Dimensions: 49 × 27.7 cm (19 5/16 × 10 15/16 in.); Framed: 54.7 × 32.4 × 5.1 cm (21 1/2 × 12 3/4 × 2 in.)
Credit Line: Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection
Reference Number: 1947.393
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/60514/manifest.json

Diego Angulo Iñíguez, “Una nueva obra de Bartolomé Bermejo,” Revista española de arte 12 (1934/35), pp. 302, 326 (ill.).
Chandler Rathfon Post, A History of Spanish Painting, vol. 7, pt. 2, Cambridge, Mass., 1938, pp. 874–75; vol. 10, 1950, pp. 352–54, fig. 143.
José Gudiol Ricart, Pintura gótica, Ars hispaniae 9, Madrid, 1955, p. 266. Juan Antonio Gaya Nuño, La pintura española afuera de España, Madrid, 1958, pp. 46, 111, no. 329.
Art Institute of Chicago, Paintings in The Art Institute of Chicago: A Catalogue of the Picture Collection, Chicago, 1961, p. 23.
José Camón Aznar, Pintura medieval española, Summa artis 22, Madrid, 1966, pp. 487, 493.
Herbert Friedmann, Bartolomé Bermejo’s “Episcopal Saint”: A Study in Medieval Spanish Symbolism, Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections 149, no. 8, Washington, D.C., 1966, pp. 1–21, figs. 1, 4, 8, 11.
Judith Florence Berg, “Bartolomé Bermejo,” Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1969, pp. 103–04, 305–06, no. 12.
José Gudiol, Pintura medieval en Aragón, Saragossa, 1971, p. 62.
Eric Young, Bartolomé Bermejo: The Great HispanoFlemish Master, London, 1975, pp. 46–49, 64, 74, 133–34, pl. 24.
Fabián Mañas Ballestín, Pintura gótica aragonesa, Saragossa, 1979, p. 170.
Gianni Rebora et al., Bartolomé Bermejo e il trittico di Acqui, Acqui Terme, 1987, p. 69, fig. 37.
Judith Berg Sobre, Behind the Altar Table: The Development of the Painted Retable in Spain, 1350–1500, Columbia, Mo., 1989, p. 51 n. 7.
Judith Berg Sobré, Bartolomé de Cárdenas, “El Bermejo”: Itinerant Painter in the Crown of Aragon, Bethesda, Md., 1997, pp. 64, 169–72, 176, 260–64.
Judith Berg Sobré in Martha Wolff et al., Northern European and Spanish Paintings before 1600 in the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, 2008), pp. 44-8, ill.
Edited by Figueras, Joan Molina, Bartolomé Bermejo, Exh. cat. (Spain, 2018) pp. 19, 45-46, 174-178, 201, cat. 9.
Judith Berg Sobré, Bartolomé Bermejo and the Painting Business in the Crown of Aragon in Late Gothic Painting in the Crown of Aragon and the Hispanic Kingdoms, edited by Alberto Velasco and Francesc Fité, Brill, Leiden and Boston, 2018, p. 168, n.76.

Bruges, Groeningemuseum, The Age of Van Eyck: The Mediterranean World and Early Netherlandish Painting, 1430–1530, 2002, cat. 109.
Barcelona, Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, and Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, La pintura gótica flamenco: Bartolomé Bermejo y su época, 2003, cat. 4.
Madrid, Museo Nacional Del Prado, Bartolomé Bermejo, October 9, 2018 - January 27 2019, cat. 9; Barcelona, Museu Nacional D’Art De Catalunya, February 14 - May 19, 2019.

Private collection, Spain, before 1931 [letter from Abris Silberman to Daniel Catton Rich, March 31, 1947, Art Institute Archives]; E. and A. Silberman Galleries, Vienna, as Saint Augustine by Simon Marmion, by January 1931 [note by Max Friedländer on the reverse of a photograph in the Friedländer Archive, Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie, The Hague]. New York art market, 1934 [according to Angulo 1935, p. 302; this was probably Silberman’s New York gallery]. Dr. Oscar Bondy (died 1944), Vienna and New York ; his widow, Elisabeth Soinig Bondy, until 1947 [the painting was not among the objects sealed in Bondy’s Vienna apartment in 1938; for this list see Sophie Lillie, Was einmal war: Handbuch der enteigneten Kunstsammlungen Wiens, Vienna, 2003, pp. 218-44; the letter from Silberman to Rich cited above indicates that the dealer had recently acquired the painting from Mrs. Bondy]; sold by E. and A. Silberman, New York, to the Art Institute, 1947 [purchased with deaccession funds].

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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