Bartolomé Bermejo: Master of the Spanish Renaissance
National Gallery, London
“It is a requirement that … Bartolomé Bermejo be made to swear an oath … on the cross and the four Holy Gospels and receive a sentence of excommunication from the officer, so that the said master Bartolomé completes and assists with the said work … within the said time and the said city.”
Excommunication seems an extreme way of enforcing a deadline, but the fifteenth-century Spanish master in question had already failed to honour an earlier contract for the church of Santo Domingo de Silos in Daroca. And there may have been another reason for the draconian measure: the Cordovan artist known as El Bermejo, “Red”, was a converso – a converted Jew.
