Spanish school of the second half of the 15th century.
"Santa Faz" and "Baron de los Dolores".
Oil on panel painted on both sides (tabernacle door).
Conservation: crack in the wood.
Measurements: 54 x 33 cm; 67 x 44 cm (frame).
In this work belonging to a period of transition between the Gothic and the Spanish Renaissance, the two themes related to the Passion of Christ are developed respectively on each side of a tabernacle door. The "Man of Sorrows" was a pictorial genre related to the Ecce Homo, with Jesus depicted with his hands bound and wearing a crown of thorns, but a whole iconographic repertoire of the instruments of the Passion is added to the theme: the ladder to take him down from the cross, the nails, the dice with which the soldiers gambled with their clothes, the three-knotted rope, the whip or scourge, the cock that crowed after the third time Saint Peter denied Jesus. The gaunt torso and his head cocked to one side, with drops of blood trickling down his forehead, give an account of Christ's suffering on the Cross. Stylistically, it can be related to early Renaissance painting, close to Nordic rather than Italian models, with which Castilian art developed rich synergies in the period.
As for the panel on the reverse, the theme of The Holy Face refers to the episode of the Passion in which the image of Christ, carrying the cross, was imprinted on the canvas of the Veronica. In this painting there is no sign of pain or pathos, but rather a redemptive image. It is accompanied by the legend "hic est corpus", and is executed in a language indebted to Gothic, seeking formal stylisation through the drawing, which outlines the hair strand by strand, and in which Jesus' almond-shaped face conveys serenity. The divine countenance is enveloped in an eternalising aura.