Pasqual Ortoneda

Pasqual Ortoneda painted the quiet drama of late medieval Spain. In 1437 he showed Saint Anthony lowering Paul the Hermit into the earth, the two figures half-lost in the brown earth of Valencia. The scene belongs to the same Gothic tradition that clothed saints in stiff drapery and crowded small panels with gold-leaf halos. Hunt down the same hush in the brooding folds of cloth and the muted gold that Ortoneda layered over every inch of Saint Anthony the Abbot Burying Saint Paul the Hermit.