Saint Barbara

Only the main panel of this altarpiece dedicated to Saint Barbara has been conserved, which Joan Gascó was commissioned to paint on November 25th 1516 for the chapel of Santa Maria in La Pietat in Vic. On this occasion, the painter offers a prototype female character of Italianate ascendancy that he was to use profusely throughout his painting career and which distances him from the first late-Gothic formulae, above all for the splendid modelling of the figure achieved by a masterful use of colour. We should also mention the backrest of the throne in the background, in the form of a niche, which distances it from previous Gothic-style solutions and which we find in other works by Gascó, like for example the Saint James from the predella of the altarpiece in the chapel of Saint John in the convent of La Mare de Déu del Carme in Vic (MEV 20781).