By all indications, this panel at the Museo del Prado with the signature FERNA[N]DO GALLEG[U]S is the earliest surviving work by that painter from Salamanca. While some scholars think he must have made it around 1480, the donor’s fashionable clothing, short hair and high cap suggest that the artist must not have painted this panel any later than 1470, and it very likely dates from a few years earl
On his throne, wearing a red tunic and holding the globe of the World in his left hand, Christ offers his blessing with his right. He is flanked by figures representing the Church and the Synagogue and surrounded by the Tetramorph. Christ is presented as the Savior of the world in this work that contrasts the figure of the Synagogue, with Moses’s tablets and a torn banner; and the figure of the Ch
The panel shows the moment when several angels shatter the spiked wheels on which Catherine of Alexandria was to have been torn into pieces after having rejected the advances of Emperor Maxentius and triumphing in a philosophy competition. The painter of this markedly expressive work belongs to the circle of Fernando Gallego and may have been Francisco, a member of the painter’s family.