Master of the Conquest of Mallorca
Crown of Aragon · Gothic art, Medieval painting
The story
On 7 January 1961, restorers working on an old palace in Carrer de Montcada, the medieval merchants' street of Barcelona, uncovered paintings on its walls. They showed knights, ships and siege engines, and they told a story every Catalan knew. In 1229 King James I of Aragon, later called the Conqueror, sailed from the Catalan coast and took Mallorca from its Muslim rulers.
The painter of these murals has no recorded name, so scholars call him the Master of the Conquest of Mallorca. He worked around 1285 to 1290 in the house of the Caldes, a family of Barcelona merchants. His manner is the one known as linear Gothic, with heavy black outlines filled in red, blue and ochre. The scenes follow the king's own account of his reign, the Book of Deeds, and the chronicle of Bernat Desclot almost like an illustrated history: the barons meeting to plan the campaign, the battle at Portopí, the royal camp and the assault on the city. Several knights can be identified by their coats of arms, among them Guillem de Montcada, who was killed in that battle.
Similar siege scenes at Cardona and in the castle of Alcañiz have been linked to the same workshop. The murals from Barcelona were removed from the walls in 1961 and are now shown at the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya on Montjuïc.
