PEDRET, Master of

Techniques

Fresco, with parts made in lime painting with tempera retouching. Use of inorganic pigments such as local aerinite for blue, goethite for yellow and haematite for red colour.

Profile and historiographical debate

Name given to a painter or a workshop active in the Pyrenean area between the ending of the 11^th century and the beginning of the 12^th century. It is a local travelling workshop, characterized by his figurative language still inheritor of Late-Antiquity and Byzantine illusionism, which is based on the Mediterranean pictorial traditions. Well aware of the artistic and cultural traditions in Catalonia in the time of Abbot Oliba, he renews his repertoire incorporating the innovations of the Gregorian Reform art. Besides constructing faces with the Byzantine technique of the three circles and the three-dimensional research attempt regarding to bodies and spaces, he is characterized by the representation of the archangels, Gabriel and Michael, with its standards and phylacteries, saying “peticius” and “postulatius”. The post quem term is been given by the representation of Llúcia de Pallars, Artau I de Pallars' wife, in the apse of Sant Pere del Burgal. Llúcia is in charge of the county, between 1081 and 1090, after her husband's death.  Otherwise, the ante quem term is given by the consacration of Saint-Lizier de Couserans Cathedral, in 1117. Nowadays, his name is considered an historiographical convention due to the fact that its most important and, maybe oldest works, might be Santa Maria d'Àneu (post. 1087-1088) and Sant Pere del Burgal (post. 1095), and therefore he could be called also “Master of Àneu-Burgal”. According to this profile, the Gregorian and ecclesiological roots of his iconographic programs have suggested he could have been a clericus vagante, which is an ecclesiastic painter.

According to the comparisons established by Ch. R. Post (1930) between Pedret and Galliano's paintings, J. Gudiol considered him “a team of traveling painters closely related with the fresco painters which, during the XI century, revitalized the Byzantine formulas of North Italy (1980: 26-27). This profile of a Lombard travelling painter was developed by Geza de Francovich, J. Ainaud, A. Grabar, B. Al-Hamdani, J. Yarza, E. Carbonell, J. Ottaway, E. Alfani i M. Pagès. Even though, recently, M. Guardia, C. Mancho (2009) and M. Castiñeiras (2009, 2010), have vindicated a closer relationship of his repertoire with the Roman and the Southern Italy paintings, following the intuitions of J. Pijoan (1907), D. Miller, Ch. L. Kuhn, E. W. Anthony. Besides his technique and artistic palette, they both certifie a good knowledge of the local resources. 

Works

Patrons

Artau I and Llúcia’s sons, Artau II, count of Pallars, and Sant Ot,  bishop of la Seu d’Urgell (1096-1122) seem to be related to  Àneu and Burgal's paintings.

                                                                                            Text : Manuel Castiñeiras