Discovering the fauna and flora in ʻPietàʼ, one of the masterpieces by the painter Bartolomé Bermejo
Around forty-three plants, three fungi (including two lichens) and twenty-two animals make up the inventory of animal and plant species identified by a team of members and collaborators of the Biodiversity Research Institute (IRBio) of the University of Barcelona in the painting Pietà, an allegory of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ dated back to 1490 and regarded as one of the masterpieces by the painter Bartolomé Bermejo.
Around forty-three plants, three fungi (including two lichens) and twenty-two animals make up the inventory of animal and plant species identified by a team of members and collaborators of the Biodiversity Research Institute (IRBio) of the University of Barcelona in the painting Pietà, an allegory of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ dated back to 1490 and regarded as one of the masterpieces by the painter Bartolomé Bermejo.
This study, which identifies a great illustrative part of the biodiversity painted in the work and improves knowledge on the fauna and flora of the period, counts with the participation of the experts Josep Vigo (Faculty of Biology); Xavier Ferrer and Gustavo Llorente (Faculty of Biology and IRBio); Joan Vallès and Jordi Rull (Faculty of Pharmacy and Food Sciences and IRBio); Marc Franch (IRBio collaborator) and Teresa Garnatje, from the Botanical Institute of Barcelona (IBB-CSIC-ICUB).
Pietà: a masterpiece by Bartolomé Bermejo
Bartolomé de Cárdenas, born in Cordova in 1440 and known under the nickname of “Bermejo” was an itinerant painter who developed his activity in Valencia, Daroca, Zaragoza and Barcelona. He is regarded as the most distinguished painter in the Crown of Aragon in the last third of the 15th century, and the highest representative with Flemish influence, using high technique quality in oil paintings, and related to pictorial works by the artists Petrus Christus and Dirk Bouts. In 1490, the canon Lluís Desplà asked Bermejo for a triptych of the Pietà for his private chapel, a Flemish-inspired work which became one of the masterpieces of the artist, who died in Barcelona in 1500.
The Pietà, representing one of the most fascinating landscapes of Spanish paintings, is full of a rich iconography related to the medieval Christian art (for example, the butterfly as the symbol of Christʼs resurrection). In this work, which pictures a lot of living beings, mostly plants, the team of experts and collaborators of the IRBio has identified species such as the cypress (Cupressus sempervirens), the date palm (Phoenix dactylifera), the elder (Sambucus nigra), myrtle (Myrtus communis), ladyʼs thumb (Polygonum persicaria), the barn swallow (Hirundo rustica), the sand lizard (Lacerta agilis), the firebug (Pyrrhocoris apterus) and the land snail (Otala sp). Interestingly and according to the experts, the good knowledge Bermejo had on the natural habitat of mallows is present: on the one hand, the author places these plants not very far from a corpse (a reference to the expression “pushing up daisies”), on the other, he represents both the plant (mallow) and its parasite fungus (the rust in mallows) and the insect associated with the plant species (the mallowʼs bug).
This painting, exhibited at the Sala Capitular of the Museum of the Cathedral of Barcelona, has been restored by the experts Ana Ordoñez and Mariana Kalho, from the Museum of the Cathedral of Barcelona, thanks to the patronage promoted in collaboration with Foundation Banc Sabadell and the Museum of the Cathedral of Barcelona.
More information here.