YANEZ DE LA ALMEDINA, Fernando

Yañez spent time in Florence and was powerfully influenced by Leonardo da Vinci, who had returned from Milan in April 1500. In fact, between 30 April and 10 August 1505, a certain “Ferrando Spagnuolo” received payments for assisting the master in the execution of the Battle of Anghiari in the Palazzo della Signoria. The painter in question must have been Yañez, as suggested by the recent attribution of the Madonna and Child with Infant St John of his Italian period. This picture combines motifs from the compositions by Leonardo, notably the Madonna of the Yarnwinder, and places them against a bright landscape derived from Flemish painting, an idea found in paintings of Raphael and Fra Bartolommeo. Yañez continued to draw on Leonardo’s vocabulary for the rest of his life, re-using motifs such as the extended, foreshortened hand of the Virgin until they became clich�s.

In 1507 Fernando Y�ñez de la Almedina and Fernando Llanos signed a contract for a series of 12 panel paintings that serve as shutters for the altarpiece in the sanctuary of the Cathedral in Valencia. The six exterior panels represent six of the Seven Joys of the Virgin, while the six interior panels depicts scenes from her life.

Both artists were influenced by Leonardo da Vinci although they interpreted Leonardo in different ways. The Rest during the Flight to Egypt is universally accepted as the work by Y�ñez.

Legend has it that in the reign of the Emperor Maxentius there lived a girl known as Catherine of Alexandria who was as intelligent and wise in debate as she was beautiful to look upon. During the last years of pagan Rome she emerged victorious from every verbal encounter with the Roman sages and it was for this reason that, at the Emperor’s order, on the 25th of November, in the year 307 A.D., she was broken on the wheel and then beheaded. Catherine’s emblems are therefore the wheel, the sword, the palm-branch and the book, the first two representing her martyrdom, the others her wisdom.

Both her life and her death were favourite subjects for paintings in the Middle Ages, chosen even by the greatest artists of the Renaissance when it was only possible to paint a beautiful woman in the guise of a saint. Thus in this painting by Y�ñez we are shown a gentle young girl with a Leonardo-like smile, colourfully dressed and posed against a richly detailed background. Y�ñez was an artist of the Spanish Renaissance who, though influenced by Italian art, retained the vivid colouring and meticulous detail of the Flemish tradition.