Fernando Gallego, a Spanish Painter?

Abstract

Fernando Gallego is a painter as famous as he is little known. His life and work in Castile between the 15th and the 16th century have been well documented and some of the works originally attributed to him are, despite doubts about their attribution, central in the traditional canon of Spanish Art History. This article asks how this canon of national culture has been constructed based on an analysis of the art historical publications on Gallego from the 18th to the 21st century. The analysis follows the retrospective construction of a figure that, even today, still determines educational programs and the work at museums and other institutions which are key in the production of collective identity. The critical deconstruction of the artist’s biographies emphasizes the weight of the historiographical narratives behind many of these texts. The analysis of central concepts such as style and nation reveals how the idea of a Spanish painter, who in these texts usually embodied both his individuality and his time, was central to present central national notions of what Spain was intended to be and guarantee a certain continuity of historical values.