Philadelphia Museum of Art - Collections Object : Panel from an Altarpiece

	Explore the Collections
	4 Related Objects This Artist/Maker Classification Curatorial Country of Origin

European Painting before 1900, Johnson Collection

Panel from an Altarpiece
Saint Otho [this side], Saint Bonaventure [other side]

Panel from an altarpiece; companion to a panel in the Philadelphia Museum of Art (EW1993-127-3a,b)

Made in Barcelona, Spain, Europe

Early 1490s

Pau Várgos, Spanish (Barcelona), died 1495

Oil and tooled gold on panel
68 x 39 inches (172.7 x 99.1 cm)

* Gallery 205, European Art 1100-1500, second floor

EW1993-127-4a,b

Purchased with the W. P. Wilstach Fund, the George W. Elkins Fund, and bequest (by exchange) of Anne Thomson in memory of her father, Frank Thomson, and her mother, Mary Elizabeth Clarke Thomson, and with Museum funds, 1993

Label

This two-sided panel comes from a large altarpiece depicting saints of the Franciscan order. The altarpiece was probably made for a church in the Spanish province of Catalonia.

Saint Otho was one of the first Franciscan martyrs. In 1219 he was executed in Morocco for preaching the Christian religion in the main mosque of Marrakech.

Saint Bonaventure holds the symbol of the Tree of Life, to represent the title of the book he wrote about Christ in the mid-1200s. The branches of the tree hold the chapter headings from the book.

Social Tags [?]

altarpiece [x] devoted [x] franciscain [x] gold [x] martyr [x]

[Add Your Own Tags]

* Works in the collection are moved off view for many different reasons. Although gallery locations on the website are updated regularly, there is no guarantee that this object will be on display on the day of your visit.