Prado strike: purchased masterpiece by Italian-Spanish Renaissance artist Paolo da San Leocadio

An important acquisition by the Prado Museum in Madrid , which secures a masterpiece by Paolo da San Leocadio (Reggio Emilia, c. 1447 - Valencia, 1520), theOration in the Garden, described as a work of “incomparable technical quality, whose chromatic and landscape richness recall the works of Mantegna of the 1550s.” With the Orationin the Garden, the Italian-Spanish painter’s works in the Prado’s collection become four: in fact, the new acquisition joins the Madonna of the Knight of Montesa, purchased in 1919 by popular subscription, and the panels with Our Lady ofSorrows and the Savior, which entered the Prado as part of the Bosch legacy.

TheOration in the Garden is an oil on panel measuring 161 x 121.5 centimeters and was purchased for 600,000 euros from the Bernat Gallery. The American Friends of the Prado Museum contributed 300,000 euros to the purchase of this piece, 50 percent of the amount.

Paolo da San Leocadio is almost completely unknown in Italy, despite his origins, because he worked mainly in Spain, particularly in Valencia, and was among the artists who helped introduce the Renaissance to the city overlooking the Mediterranean. His, for example, are the frescoes in Valencia Cathedral discovered in 2004, behind a Baroque structure that concealed them.

Trained in Ferrara-Padua, judging by the style of the early works attributed to him, Paolo di San Leocadio must also have been familiar with the Venetian painting of Bellini. He arrived in Valencia very young, in 1472, at the age of twenty-five, thanks to the protection of Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia, that is, the future Pope Alexander VI, and moved to the city along with fellow Neapolitan Francesco Pagano. The Madonna of the Knight of Montesa (c. 1475, Prado), the Sacra Conversatione in the National Gallery in London, and the Saint Michael in the Diocesan Museum of Sacred Art in Orihuela, which comes from the chapel of the Ducal Palace in Gandía, demonstrate, according to the artist’s file on the Prado website, how theart of Paolo da San Leocadio maintained its quality without the need for the supposed return trip to Italy hypothesized between 1484 and 1488 by the scholar Ximo Company, since the Italian sources of his art remain the same as when he arrived in Valencia in 1472. The best evidence of the fame he achieved with his painting, however, is the document dated in Castellón in 1490 on the occasion of the execution of the altarpiece for the high altar of the cathedral (a work unfortunately lost), in which Paolo da San Leocadio is described as “the most solemn painter in Spain.” TheOration in the Garden is a new, very high testimony to his art.

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Prado strike: purchased masterpiece by Italian-Spanish Renaissance artist Paolo da San Leocadio

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