Lluís Borrassà (1360-1425), master of the altarpiece and head of one of the most requested workshops during the late Middle Ages, received the last payment in 1406 for the realization of a set dedicated to saint anthony abbot for the Cathedral of Barcelona. 70 pounds of the time, 16,800 money, for, among other things, the painting of the rear sacristy. Little is known about the altarpiece, broken down and dispersed in later centuries, but a transcription of the contract that the painter signed has survived, stipulating three payments distributed on the festivities of Christmas, Easter and All Saints’ Day. The last, remember, 70-pound. 16,800 money.
Something less, 66 pounds of nothing, Borrassà paid in 1392 for the sale of Luke, Tatar slave who, unlike other slaves, also painted. What’s more: Lluc, the man with 66 pounds, is attributed, among other things, the altarpiece of Santa María de Copons, the Calvary of the Episcopal Museum of Solsona, the table of San Esteban of the Diocesan Museum of Barcelona, the altarpiece of Saint Michael the Archangel of the Antwerp cathedral, and the Lament over the body of the deceased Christ of Pollensa. “Borrassà bought it from a carpenter in Mallorca”, points out Cèsar Favà, head of the Gothic art area of the National Museum of Art of Catalonia (MNAC) and curator of the exhibition “Lluís Borrassà. The rediscovered colors of the Cathedral of Barcelona».
The exhibition, which can be visited until July 2, focuses on four altarpieces that the Catalan artist made for the Barcelona church, but also explains the operation of the workshops of the time and the very conception of work through stories such as Lluc’s. There is, for example, the purchase contract that attests to the arrival of an “18-year-old slave and the nation of the Tartars” at the Borrassà workshop. “He tried to escape twice,” Favà details. He had such a good hand, however, that he escaped more severe punishments thanks to his handling of the brushes.
narrative artifact
The Gothic, defends Pepe Serra, director of the MNAC, “is not understood without the altarpiece.” “It’s a first-rate narrative artifact,” he adds. This is where Borrassà becomes important, who for four decades directed one of the pictorial workshops most important of the time. A center for the production of altarpieces with collaborators, apprentices and, of course, also slaves. “He is one of the masters of Gothic, but he had a very little representation in the museum,” says Serra.
Two visitors observe pieces of the altarpiece of San Andrés
An anomaly that began to be resolved in 2020, when the Generalitat bought for the museum’s collection the panels of the ‘Vestición de san Pedro Mártir’ and the ‘Decapitation of the relatives of San Hipólito’. From there, «Lluís Borrassà. The rediscovered colors of the Barcelona Cathedral», an exhibition that draws on so remarkable loans such as the central panel of the altarpiece of Santa Marta, Santo Domingo and San Pedro Mártir, a piece donated to the Prado Museum last year and which is exhibited for the first time in Barcelona.
Parts of the altarpiece of San Andrés and that of San Lorenzo, San Hipólito and Santo Tomás de Aquino complete a tour that also airs contractual details, payments received and curiosities such as the verification that the decorative polychromy of the pulpit of the choir of the Cathedral of Barcelona was had done with lapis lazuli, the most expensive and valued pigment of the time. Thus, biblical scenes such as the death of Saint Peter the Martyr, the breaking of the teeth of Saint Hippolytus by a stone blow or the miracle of Saint Andrew and the fire put out share prominence at the MNAC with apprenticeship contracts, payment records and indications of the families behind the orders.
The exhibition also wants to be the starting point for the transformation of the gothic art collection from the Barcelona museum. A remodeling that, Serra advances, will keep a good part of the pieces now on display from Borrassà permanently. “You have to disclose the names of these great artists, well known in the academic field but little known among the public,” Favà unleashes.