Saint Christopher Meets Satan; Saint Christopher before the King of Lycia

Martin de Soria · 1480–85

Medium

Tempera with oil glazes on panel

Original size

156.2 × 92.1 cm (61 1/2 × 36 1/4 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Italian Renaissance

This double-panelled work presents two pivotal moments from the legend of Saint Christopher with the flattened gold grounds, jewel-bright pigments, and hieratic dignity characteristic of late fifteenth-century Aragonese painting. Martin de Soria was among the leading painters of Zaragoza in the decades before the Renaissance fully reshaped Spanish taste. He worked in the Hispano-Flemish mode — absorbing the Flemish naturalism filtering into Iberia through trade and royal patronage while retaining the gold-ground conventions of earlier Gothic altarpieces. His tempera with oil glazes technique is notable: the underlying tempera gives crisp, stable outlines and opaque colour, while the oil glazes laid over the surface add luminosity and depth, particularly visible in the rich drapery folds and the modelling of faces. The painting originally formed part of a larger altarpiece dedicated to Saint Christopher, a format that was the primary vehicle for ambitious religious commissions in fifteenth-century Aragon. A hand-painted oil reproduction on canvas translates Soria's layered technique faithfully — the warmth of the original's glowing grounds, the precise linearity of the figures, and the quiet gravity that makes this work a rare surviving testament to a regional tradition too often overlooked in favour of the Spanish masters who followed.