Pedro Díaz de Oviedo

(late 15th century – early 16th century)

St. Patientia

ca. 1498

oil on board

187 x 146 cm

Inv. no. P00413

BBVA Collection Spain



Like the panel of St. Orentius —also in the BBVA Collection—, it came from the church of San Lorenzo in Huesca, and it shares with it physical circumstances and tentative attributions, although it leans more towards the Renaissance than its companion in the treatment of the nude children that are represented in the throne chair, of greater anatomic precision than that offered by the Gothic tradition. However, the folds of the clothing and the plant ornamentation of the throne are of a pure Hispano-Flemish Gothic style.

The two panels were attached to the walls of the ante-sacristy until they were sold prior to 1910. They were part of the collection of the Duchess of Parcent, Trinidad von Scholtz-Hermensdorff, widow of Iturbe, who exhibited the panels along with the rest of her collection in the Real Academia de San Fernando in May 1911. They remained the property of the family until 1979, when the heirs of the Duchess, the Prince and Princess of Hohenlohe, had them auctioned in Sotheby’s as part of the contents of the family estate of El Quexigal. They were purchased on May 25 by the Banco de Huesca (which was later absorbed by Banco de Bilbao), and thus came to be part of this Collection.

The saint, mother of St. Lawrence, seated in a Gothic throne chair with its back upholstered in brocade, holds a prayer book in her hands. She is wearing a red tunic, a white headdress, and an ample dark blue mantle with a lavish pearl and gem fringe. The sides of the throne are decorated with the representation of fourteen
, four of whom are depicted defeating fantastic animals that are probably representations of evil. At the sides of the throne, in the background and represented at a smaller scale, stand St. Vincent Martyr, to the left, and St. Stephen, to the right, with their respective attributes (the millstone for the former, and the stones for the latter), each of them holding a palm branch in reference to their martyrdom.