Joan-Artur Roura i Comas wants to transfer the Pere Mates altarpiece to the Girona Art Museum

Last February, the auction house La Suite in Barcelona auctioned an unpublished altarpiece attributed to the painter Pere Mates, one of the most prominent Renaissance masters in the country and linked to Sant Feliu de Guíxols.

The collector who acquired an unpublished altarpiece by the Renaissance painter, Joan-Artur Roura i Comas, wishes to give it to the Girona Art Museum, as Diari de Girona has reported, before it is exhibited in the rooms of the Girona museum . Roura is determined to recover works from the history of Catalan art, which is why he has already deposited some in the Museu de l'Empordà, the Museum of Medieval Art in Vic or the Museu de Lleida.

"When you see our works exhibited in the United States or Europe, in museums like the Louvre, you appreciate it, because they have been preserved in the best conditions and are accessible to visitors. And it gives you satisfaction, but at the same time, you have regret that this did not happen in Catalonia. Now there is much more care, but years ago the institutions were not sensitive enough and allowed the works to leave the country, and now I try, within my possibilities, that some of 'these can return', explains Roura i Comas to Diari de Girona.

The altarpiece attributed to Mates acquired by Roura i Comas, is a piece certified by the specialist Albert Velasco that comes from a private French collection. It is a predella (bench of an altarpiece) painted around 1525, divided into five compartments.