Saint Anthony the Abbot Burying Saint Paul the Hermit

Pasqual Ortoneda's Saint Anthony the Abbot Burying Saint Paul the Hermit, dated 1437 and now in the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, depicts one of the most celebrated episodes from early Christian hagiography: the meeting of the two first Desert Fathers, Anthony the Great and Paul of Thebes, and Anthony's burial of Paul after his death. The story, told by Saint Jerome, was popular in the late medieval period because it combined the ascetic ideal with a moving human encounter. Ortoneda was a Tarragona-based painter working in the Catalan Gothic tradition as it was beginning to absorb the new Flemish naturalism that would transform Spanish painting in the following decades.

Ortoneda sets the burial scene in a rocky landscape that shows more naturalistic interest in the outdoor setting than the conventional gold-ground devotional image. The two aged hermit figures are rendered with unusual physical specificity. The colors are warm and clear in the Catalan Gothic manner.