Attributed to Gabriel Guardia

(active Manresa 1482-1501)

God the Father surrounded by the celestial hierarchy

Footnotes

Provenance
Probably Foresti Collection, Milan
Sale, Galerie Fischer, Lucerne, 23-26 August 1939, lot 1592 (as Catalonian School, 15th Century, unsold)
Private Collection, Milan, before 1947
Ludwig Losbichler Gutjahr, Barcelona, by 1955 (according to a photograph in the Amatller Archive, Barcelona)
Sale, Berkowitsch, Madrid, 15-16 February 1983, lot 159
Private Collection, Madrid
Sale, Sotheby's, Madrid, 11 November 1997, lot 4, where acquired by the present owner

Literature
C. R. Post, A History of Spanish Painting, IX, part II, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1947, pp. 862-864, fig. 369
J. Gudiol and S. Alcolea I Blanch, Pintura Gótica Catalana, Barcelona, 1986, p. 210, no. 696, ill. p. 464, fig. 1051 (as Catalan, second half of 15th Century)

This impressive panel very likely formed the central part of a large altarpiece or polyptych. God the Father sits at the very centre and behind him he is surrounded by the red Seraphim, at His feet are the blue Cherubim and the Thrones, or Ophanim, with each group identified by a scroll inscribed with their names in Catalan. Those closest to Him represent the highest order of angels in the hierarchy, according to the 5th century text De Hierarchia Celesti. Beyond these are further registers of angels, again, each identified in Catalan – to God's right the Dominations, the Powers and the Virtues and the Principalities, the Archangels and Angels to His left.

The rigid frontality of the figure of God the Father in the present work compares very closely with the analogous figure in Guardia's only documented work, the Altarpiece of the Trinity, painted in 1501 for the Collegiate Basilica of Santa Marta, in the artist's native town of Manresa.