A 14th-century comic about the Virgin Mary in El Collado. The Altarpiece of the Virgin.

High in the Serranía mountains, in the quiet twilight of the church of El Collado, time seems to have stood still to safeguard a miracle crafted of wood and gold leaf. There, revealing its radiance to those who walk unhurriedly, rests the Gothic altarpiece of the Virgin Mary, a monumental work conceived around the year 1400 to preside over the high altar of the archpriestal church of Alpuente. It arrived in this peaceful hamlet in the 19th century, having been moved following neoclassical renovations and the devastation of the Carlist Wars in the parent town. It is, in and of itself, a prodigious survivor of history: it withstood plundering, neglect, and an uncertain odyssey that, during the Civil War, took its panels to the castle of Figueres and Barcelona in 1939, before quietly returning to El Collado and being restored to its definitive splendor at the end of the 20th century.

Hidden within its “golden streets”—as the different sections of an altarpiece are called—lies the mystery of two pictorial worlds. While the main body (dedicated to Marian devotion and the Evangelists) follows the Italian Gothic tradition of the circle of the Master of Villahermosa, the predella of the Passion reveals the vibrant brushwork and elegance of the Florentine artist Gherardo Starnina. This ensemble constitutes a key transitional work between the Trecento and International Gothic styles, and is also the only direct testimony to Starnina’s art preserved throughout the Valencian region.

The secrets of its technical execution seem to have been plucked from the pages of Cennino Cennini’s famous *Il libro dell’arte*. Infrared photography has brought to light the intimacy of the Tuscan workshop: the refined ink lines on the plaster, the use of verdaccio green to nuance the shadows of the flesh tones, and a noble palette rich in lapis lazuli, azurite, and orpiment. But the most moving discovery lies hidden beneath the painting *The Way to Calvary*: multispectral imaging revealed nine underlying annotations with initials in Italian—such as the “l” for “lacca,” a Tuscan term foreign to the Valencian “carmini”—with which the master guided his assistants on which pigment to apply to each cloak.

Although the winds of time have scattered part of the original collection to museums in Zaragoza or distant collections in Philadelphia, the panels of The Flagellation, Calvary, The Lamentation, and The Holy Burial that still reside in El Collado retain their emotional impact intact. Mary Magdalene’s restrained gesture and the serenity of the faces transform this altarpiece into a jewel frozen in time, where the sophistication of Florence and the quiet faith of the Alpuente mountains merge forever in an embrace of art and memory.