Bermejo’s beginnings are unclear. Nothing is known about his youth and formative period, except that he was born in Córdoba. His earliest documented work is Saint Michael, dated 1468. Executed in Valencia for the parish church of Tous, it reveals an excellent knowledge of Flemish painting. The arrival of northern masters and the steady flow of imported paintings, drawings and prints made Valencia an ideal setting where a young, enquiring-minded painter, fascinated by the models of northern masters from Jan van Eyck to Hans Memling, could have assimilated the keys to their language. Bermejo acquired a perfect command of oil painting techniques, which enabled him to employ many illusionistic effects in his works – from delicate gleams and reflections of light on metal, gemstones, and gold and silver objects to surprising effects of transparency in gauze – and to combine colours skilfully to achieve a lifelike rendering of the properties of textiles, marble and paving. This is how the career of one of the most masterly painters of the fifteenth century began to take shape.

Following his stay in Valencia, Bermejo established himself in Daroca around 1472. His close relationship with a few members of the town’s community of converted Jews has led scholars to think he shared the same status. He married Gracia de Palaciano, a rich widow who was prosecuted years later for engaging in Jewish practices. Juan de Loperuelo, a wealthy merchant and a convert who was also tried by the Inquisition, is directly or indirectly linked to most of the retables Bermejo painted in Daroca and can therefore be regarded as his professional and personal agent. A further indication is the fact that he painted pictures on subjects that seem designed to satisfy new Christians’ expectations and alleviate their fears. In addition, Bermejo’s signatures are preceded by the initials ihs (Ihesus) – possibly a strategy for proclaiming his new Christian faith loud and clear and getting round the religious authorities, as the late fifteenth century was a particularly difficult time for Jews and converts. All this suggests that, like so many others, the itinerant Bermejo must have been a victim of the prevailing climate of religious intolerance and exclusion.

The introductory quote, taken from the contract for the retable for the parish church in the village of Romanos, near Daroca, shows to what extent the sophisticated colouring of some of Bermejo’s works – in this case the retable dedicated to Saint Engracia – aroused the admiration of spectators and clients, who took them as models for their own commissions.

Two of the six surviving panels of the Saint Engracia ensemble executed for the church of San Pedro in Daroca have been brought together in this room. A feature common to them all is the arresting, varied chromatic range Bermejo achieved thanks to his mastery of the oil technique and use of certain formulas – such as the application of lakes and glazes – to heighten the sensation of depth and the brightness of the colours, especially the reds and greens. This rich palette was no doubt one of the keys to Bermejo’s success. In fact, when he was hired in 1479 to execute the retable of the Virgin of Mercy, the leitmotiv of the notarial document was that he should employ ‘crimsons and greens and violets, all finished in oil’.

Bermejo must have been a difficult person, as he breached several of the contracts he signed. One was for the retable for the parish church of santo Domingo de Silos in Daroca, commissioned in 1474. Distrustful of him, his clients enlisted other painters – first Juan de Bonilla and later Martín Bernat – to supervise his work. When he abandoned the project in 1477 after painting the spectacular central panel, they decided to make him return by enforcing the excommunication clause included in the contract, which entailed certain work restrictions rather than spiritual punishments. A new contract was signed that year, but even that failed to ensure Bermejo complied with the established conditions: the two surviving side panels of the ensemble were executed mainly by the workshop of his partner Martín Bernat. Possible explanations for this non-conformist attitude are that he considered the job low paid, he was uncomfortable working with less qualified masters, or he was unwilling to conform to the clients’ conservative aesthetic criteria.

To get round the restrictions of the guild system Bermejo often had to team up with local masters living in the cities where he established himself: Juan de Bonilla in Daroca, Martín Bernat in Zaragoza and the Osonas in Valencia. Although clients always entrusted Bermejo with designing the compositions and executing the main figures, this method of working in tandem influenced the quality of the end result, which was compromised by his partners’ lesser skills and use of devices – such as gesso relief – that conflicted with Bermejo’s Flemish-style illusionism.

These partnerships did, however, facilitate the dissemination of the models designed by Bermejo, especially through the Aragonese workshop of Martín Bernat and Miguel Ximénez. This shows that he was respected and admired by painters and clients for his technical superiority and outstanding creativity. Perhaps this is why the chapter of Zaragoza cathedral (La Seo) had a lock fitted to protect his privacy by stopping people entering the old cloister where Bermejo was painting the doors of the retable for the high altar.

The Acqui Terme Triptych of the Virgin of Montserrat might be summed up as a triptych in Flemish format commissioned by an Italian merchant for the chapel of an Italian cathedral and executed by three Spanish painters in cosmopolitan Valencia. Bermejo’s painting, produced with the collaboration of Rodrigo and Francisco de Osona, draws even more intensely from Flemish sources: from the format of the triptych and use of an oak support to the adoption of formulas reminiscent of Jan van Eyck, Dirk Bouts and the Master of the Legend of Saint Lucy. It also shows that he and the Osonas also assimilated Italian devices such as the spectacular background seascape.

Like other Italian merchants, Francesco della Chiesa, who commissioned the triptych, had a penchant for Flemish painting. Established in Valencia, he must have regarded Bermejo as the ideal choice for painting a votive offering to the Virgin of Montserrat – perhaps in gratitude for being saved from shipwreck during one of his voyages between the ports of Savona and Valencia – to preside over the chapel he founded in the cathedral of Acqui Terme, his birthplace.

Around 1490 archdeacon Lluís Desplà (1444–1524) of Barcelona commissioned Bermejo’s last known painting: a Pietà that is absolutely unique in several aspects. Firstly, its fanciful expressionistic and symbolic landscape is designed to encourage meditation on the meaning of Christ’s sacrifice and redemptive role. Secondly, the presence of Saint Jerome is an indication of the humanistic leanings of Desplà, a churchman with an Italian cultural background and tastes. A third aspect is the ancient-style text engraved along the base of the painting, a testament to Desplà’s fondness for collecting antique inscriptions. We are therefore dealing with a work conceived jointly by a powerful humanist and the most talented Spanish painter of the time.

Following the completion of the Desplà Pietà the surviving records on Bermejo end in 1501. All that is known of this period is that he made preparatory drawings for a few stained-glass windows in Barcelona. What led the best painter of his generation to almost disappear from the art scene after executing his most important work? This is undoubtedly one of the main mysteries still surrounding the figure of Bermejo.