This lecture aims to challenge a prejudice that still persists in art historiography: the notion that 15th century Spanish painting was inferior to its contemporary Flemish counterpart. The discussion will focus on the second half of the 15th century and, more specifically, on the Crown of Aragon, examining how the reception of late medieval Flemish art (Ars Nova) and its models, renowned for their naturalism and meticulous attention to reality, gave rise to different pictorial responses according to cultural contexts, local tastes, and the demands of patrons.
Drawing on works from the Casacuberta Marsans Collection, and taking the Lamentation Triptych by the Master of the Legend of Saint Lucy as a starting point, the lecture will establish a dialogue between Flemish and Iberian artistic production. Through the analysis of works by artists such as Joan Reixach, Jacomart, Martín Bernat, and Bartolomé Bermejo, it will demonstrate that formal and stylistic differences should not necessarily be understood as differences in quality, but rather as the result of distinct ways of appropriating and transforming international pictorial languages.
About the Speaker
Elsa Espín holds a PhD in Art History from the Sorbonne University in Paris and the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (2022, Cum Laude / Extraordinary Doctoral Award from the UAB). Her doctoral thesis examined the presence and activity of French, Flemish, and German painters in the Crown of Aragon during the reigns of John I and Ferdinand the Catholic (1387-1516). As a result of this research, she collaborated on the project The Status of the Artist in Catalonia and the Balearic Islands from the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Century and received a predoctoral fellowship from Spain’s Ministry of Science and Innovation (FPI).
Between 2021 and 2023, she worked at the Louvre Museum as a curatorial assistant thanks to a fellowship from the Centro de Estudios Europa Hispánica (CEEH). She subsequently undertook postdoctoral research at the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB) with the support of the Fondation Périer-D’Ieteren.
Elsa Espín is currently a collaborator of the SOCIAMM research group (ULB).
Her main research interests focus on artistic and cultural exchanges between Northern and Southern Europe at the end of the Middle Ages, the circulation of artists and artworks, painting in the former Low Countries and the Iberian Peninsula, and the collecting of Spanish art in France.
