Bermejo, the rebel genius

Bar­tolomé Bermejo must have had an ex­tra­or­di­nary ego. Like today’s elite foot­ballers who train be­hind closed doors or rock stars who will not per­form with­out a dress­ing room filled with oys­ters and French cham­pagne, he also made ec­cen­tric de­mands to paint. For ex­am­ple, no­body could enter his work­shop. And if there was some­thing he did not like he would leave the pro­ject half fin­ished – many of his pa­trons, who paid him for­tunes, cursed his name. Today he would surely at­tract sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments: ad­mi­ra­tion, dis­trust, envy and even fear. Why? Be­cause he was very good, and very dif­fer­ent.

Lit­tle is known about the life of the most tal­ented His­panic painter (and one of the best in Eu­rope) of his time, a 15th cen­tury stuck be­tween the old and the new worlds. But a small group of his paint­ings that have never be­fore been shown to­gether are now on dis­play at the Palau Na­cional until May 19.

The ex­hi­bi­tion pre­miered at El Prado in Madrid and its suc­cess has meant that it would have been un­for­giv­able if Barcelona had been left out of this ven­ture. The Cata­lan cap­i­tal was the final des­ti­na­tion of an artist who spent half a life­time flee­ing as a Jew­ish con­vert after leav­ing his na­tive Córdoba on an un­de­ter­mined date. In ad­di­tion, how­ever, this is where he did his great­est work, Pietà of Canon Luis Desplá, the last he is be­lieved to have painted, in 1490, at the re­quest of Archdea­con Lluis Desplà

In Desplà, Bermejo found an ac­com­plice for his cre­ative des­tiny. And in all like­li­hood the shield that some­one like him needed, being per­se­cuted as he was by the In­qui­si­tion. Desplà op­posed its in­tro­duc­tion in Barcelona, not due to any pro­gres­sive ide­ol­ogy, but to pro­tect his im­mense power from the Castil­ian Church. Bermejo re­turned the favour with a very unique paint­ing for his pri­vate chapel (pri­vate, but al­ways open to vis­its by no­table fig­ures), a work that was in­com­pa­ra­ble with any­thing done prior to then. And pre­cisely be­cause of this in­no­v­a­tive char­ac­ter of his, it would not be un­der­stood as a strictly re­li­gious paint­ing. “It’s a vi­sual spec­ta­cle,” says Joan Molina, cu­ra­tor of the ex­hi­bi­tion, and in­cludes an un­usual reper­toire of up to 73 dif­fer­ent an­i­mal and plant species. The paint­ing, which is owned by the cathe­dral, was re­stored a cou­ple of years ago thanks to the pa­tron­age of the Banc Sabadell Foun­da­tion, which has also now col­lab­o­rated on the ex­hi­bi­tion.

Bermejo’s vir­tu­os­ity shines with its own light at the MNAC, and more so when cast along­side the work of his con­tem­po­raries, which was “most in­fe­rior”, Molina says.