Colnaghi Foundation Journal 03 - Magazine - Page 182
180
Onofre Falcó, a Spanish Renaissance master
Onofre Falcó, a Spanish Renaissance master
The personality of Vicente Requena “the Elder”
formulated by Benito on the basis of Alcahalí’s error is
thus fictitious.
Nonetheless, based on comparisons with the Saint
Stephen predella panels, Benito offered pioneering
attributions and analyses of various paintings by the
same hand, identifying a corpus of works by the painter
and broadly defining his stylistic qualities:
Fig. 2 / Onofre Falcó, Prayer
in the Garden, oil on panel,
114 x 126 cm, Valencia,
Parish of Saint Stephen.
Fig. 3 / Onofre Falcó,
Coronation of Thorns, oil
on panel, 114 x 126 cm,
Valencia, parish of Saint
Stephen.
His figures have elongated anatomies, with
slender hands and fingers. His faces, when
more worked up in large-scale figures,
generally have pronounced cheekbones and a
thin, straight or slightly aquiline nose which
gives them an air of gravitas, though almost
all his figures have small heads with defined
eyebrows and a small, normally closed
mouth, producing a slightly monotonous
effect that contrasts with the variety of
expressions of Joanes’s figures, which
display a diversity of rhetorical poses and
expressions. With regard to the treatment
of the fabrics, the “Anonymous Master
of Saint Stephen” resolves his volumes in
a somewhat simplified and geometrical
manner with straight folds that contrast
with the gentle, harmonious cadences of
Joanes’s brush.7
In his text Benito also classed as works by this
painter a number of panels formerly in the church
of Santa María in Requena, now only known from
photographs in the Mas Archive (C-17571 and
C-17573).8 Benito identified one of these as the Virgin
between Saints Cosmas and Damian.
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In reality, the twin saints wearing crowns and
bearing sceptres should be identified as the Blessed
Abdon and Sennen of Persian origin. The second
photograph records the altarpiece’s predella, which
was divided into three sections: from left to right,
Saint Catherine of Alexandria and Saint Nicholas of Bari;
Christ on the Road to Calvary; and Saint Martin Dividing
his Cloak for the Poor. Among the other works included
by Benito in his study are two doors from a triptych
depicting Saint Jerome and Saint Francis; a Pietà in
Valencia Cathedral; and a panel in the Musée des
Beaux-Arts in Pau depicting the Procession to Mount
Gargano (fig. 4a), which Albi had already associated
with the Ordination of Saint Stephen.9 Prior to entering
the museum in Pau in 1895, this work was included
in the 1877 exhibition on the sumptuary arts held in
Barcelona, which also included the panel of Christ on
the Road to Calvary by Vicent Macip (fig. 4b).10
