CATALUNYA 1400. EL GÓTICO INTERNACIONAL., Museu Nacional D'Art de Catalunya, Sants-Montjuïc, Barcelona

Qué/Por qué:

We travel to one of the creative periods in art in Catalonia. During the 14th century, an exciting dialogue arose between the two poles of artistic modernity: on one side, France and the former Low Countries, and on the other, Italy. The result was a new style, the International Gothic Style, an art marked by contrasts: stylisation and naturalism, elegance and expressiveness, material luxury and technical skill. Catalonia enthusiastically adopted this new aesthetic code and became one of its most active production centres, with top-rate artists like Lluís Borrassà, Rafael Destorrents, Pere Joan and Bernat Martorell.

The MNAC has managed to gather a splendid collection of masterpieces from this fertile period. Among the most important are the panels from Bernat Martorell’s Retable of Saint George, kept in the Louvre, which can be admired in Catalonia for the first time more than a century after they were exported, and also a valuable selection of manuscripts with miniatures, items that are rarely made available to the public. They include the famous Missal of Saint Eulalia, from Barcelona cathedral, illustrated by Destorrents.

You are invited to steep yourself in one of the most intensely original moments in Gothic art and, especially, to enjoy all the details of these richly coloured works full of expressiveness and fantasy.