Healing Of The Paralytic. Oil On Panel. Castilian School, 16th Century.

Healing of the Paralytic. Oil on panel. Castilian School, 16th century. 
Partially rebuilt. 
A religious scene set in a prestigious interior, made of two-tone stone, depicting a series of male figures interacting with each other. Ten of them are standing, with golden halos engraved with architectural motifs (one of them carries a palm tree, another a walking stick); one rests a bare foot on a footstool, which also appears to hold the head or upper part of another figure, who appears lying down, looking up, with a bandaged foot. It is important to note the restorations on the panel, in which a series of elements have been drawn, continuing what was preserved where possible. Iconographically, this is an unclear issue: given the presence of a crutch in the hand, the bandaged foot of the recumbent figure is logical and, if Christ is the central character, we could be looking at a healing (perhaps that of the paralytic in Capernaum which took place in a house, or the healings in the temple of God mentioned by Matthew [21:14-15]...), although the presence of the palm suggests a burial (according to some apocryphal gospels, church fathers... an angel appeared to Mary three days before she died/ascended to give her a palm from Paradise which she was to give to the Apostles to take to her body) or a saint who has been martyred. Stylistically, the Flemish influences presented in the panel are clear (faces, fabrics, etc.), along with details more characteristic of Spanish Gothic painting (golden halos, architecture, etc.), which may place the work within the Hispano-Flemish movement. The oculus with two-tone red and white voussoirs was common in Spanish architecture, and this element in the panel can be compared with that of the Church of Santa María la Mayor de Abiesgo in Huesca (without colors), the Mudejar Church of the Virgin of Tobed in Zaragoza (with oculi with latticework in these colors), or the Church of San Pedro de Palencia (with an oculus with similar lines on the interior). Pink and green tiles (although not arranged as in this work) are found in The Virgin of the Catholic Monarchs, preserved in the Prado Museum, dated between 1491 and 1493 and linked to a Castilian Hispano-Flemish painter. The National Art Museum of Catalonia houses a Virgin of the Milk with a donor linked to León and dated to the second half of the 15th century. In it, Jesus wears a halo similar to those on this panel. Some see a strong influence of Pedro Berruguete (Paredes de Nava, Palencia c. 1450 - Madrid? 1503) in this panel; compare it with the Birth of the Virgin in the Altarpiece of the Church of San Martín de Becerril de Campos (circa 1495, Diocesan Museum of Palencia), the Lamentation over the Dead Christ (Palencia Cathedral, circa 1490), etc.  
· Size: 99x4x128 cm