The oil painting that the Museum of the Ways of the Palace of Gaudí proposes as the piece of the month of February was part of the altarpiece dedicated to Saint Martin of Tours that presided over the León parish of Salas de los Barrios, which is dedicated to him.
This, as well as three others, formed the bench of the aforementioned altarpiece that still preserves other panels that narrate episodes from the life of the saintly bishop of Tours. Its primitive style, with a marked drawing character and very detailed in its finishes, suggests a local painter, unknown to this day, alien to the influences of figures such as the Maestro de Palanquinos, the most important figure of the Leonese Hispano-Flemish. Its chronology can be placed around the year 1500.
The apostolic college represented by the tables of this altarpiece show us the apostles in pairs, being this table the one found in the Provisorato of Gaudí’s Palace, a room dedicated to the Way of St. James and its iconography, due to the presence of St. James the Greater in it.
Santiago, identified by the text of the nimbus and by his usual iconographic attributes, i.e., wide-brimmed hat with the scallop decorating it, bushy beard with wavy ends, green tunic girded with a belt and angular mantle resting on his left shoulder, carries in his right hand the staff and with the other hand holds a book as a disciple of Christ and disseminator of his Word.
Saint Peter, also half-length, appears accompanying Saint James in this oil painting as an old man, with gray hair and beard before the papal tiara and carrying the two keys, of gold and silver, which identify him iconographically.
The background, without landscape, is resolved with a large presence of gold, of textile inspiration, which increases the decorative values, highly demanded by the commissioners and denotes an artistic inertia in its author still anchored in archaism. Since 1963 it has been part of the permanent collection of the Museo de los Caminos, which exhibits the chapter related to the iconography of Santiago de Compostela in the Sala Provisorato on the first floor of the Gaudí Palace. It can be visited, as well as the monument, every day from 10:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. in the mornings and from 4:00 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. in the afternoons.