Juan de Flandes

Juan de Flandes (c. 1460 – by 1519) was a Flemish painter whose real name is unknown; the Spanish name means John of Flanders. He evidently trained in his home country, most likely in Ghent, and his work is close to that of Hugo van der Goes and Joos van Wassenhove. He is first documented in 1496 at the court of Queen Isabella I of Castile, where he was court painter by 1498 and stayed until her death in 1504. For the queen he painted portraits of the royal family and most of a series of small panels for a polyptych altarpiece, which Albrecht Dürer admired when he saw it in 1521. After 1504 he turned to church commissions, first in Salamanca and then in Palencia, where a large reredos survives in the cathedral. His work adapts the Ghent manner to Spanish taste, with refined, somewhat acid colour and a sophisticated feeling for space and light. Two works here: Christ and the Samaritan Woman and La Ascensión.