The Virgin of the Consellers, Lluís Dalmau, 15th century. Oil on oak wood, 316 x 312.5 x 32.5 cm. MNAC - Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya. Barcelona.
The prestige of the courtly culture of Burgundy and of painter Jan van Eyck explain why in 1431 King Alfons el Magnànim decided to send his court painter, Lluís Dalmau, to Flanders to learn the new realist idiom first hand.
In 1443, Dalmau was commissioned to paint this altarpiece for the City Hall Chapel. In the Catalan context, this work was profoundly innovative in format, execution – it was painted in oils - and by virtue of the effect it creates of a figurative space in which that year’s five Councillors, taken from life, are depicted to the same scale as that of Our Lady and the saints.
