Lot 16: Martin Torner (active Valencia 1480-1495)

Saint Jerome and Saint George
oil on panel
56 3/4 x 28 in. (144.1 x 71.1 cm.)

Little biographical or documentary evidence survives about the life of Martin Torner. He is first recorded in a contract, dated 1480, for a painting of the Last Supper in the refectory of the convent Santa Clara at Valencia, where he is described as 'the honorable Martin Torner, painter, native of the city and Kingdom of Majorca and now dwelling in the city of Valencia'.

This information has led scholars to propose the attribution of a number of works on that island to him, including the Annunciation and the Saint John the Evangelist in Parma Cathedral which have been dated to circa 1480. The present work is stylistically close to these but was more likely painted circa 1485, after the artist's move to Valencia since it also appears to show the influence of Juan Reixach, the leading artist in that city. Several other references to works by Torner which are now lost, survive, including the shutters of a new organ in the cathedral of Valencia of 1484-5 and a retable of the Baptist and Our Lady of the Angels for the Valencian town of Carcer in 1495.