Image: Girona Museum of Art
The Girona Museum of Art is marking Sant Jaume day with free admission from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on 25 July, while also pointing visitors back to an art-historical study on four painted panels from a retable dedicated to Saint James. The museum’s announcement combines the public opening with a reminder to revisit research by Joan Bosch Ballbona on the works, which are listed as dating from 1599 to 1617.
The panels are presented on the museum’s ‘Un mes, una obra’ page under the title ‘Aparició de la Mare de Déu a sant Jaume i als seus deixebles; i altres’. The entry identifies the author as Giovanni Batista Toscano and describes the works as oil on wood. Each panel measures 47.5 by 31.5 centimetres, and the set is held in the Museu d’Art de Girona under registration numbers 137.089 to 137.092.
According to the museum’s online record, the four works form part of a deposit from the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya in Barcelona. The page also credits the study to Joan Bosch Ballbona and offers the article for download, placing the panels within a research-focused series that the museum uses to draw attention to individual objects from its collection.
The Sant Jaume-day open house is scheduled at the museum itself in Girona, with the hours limited to the morning and early afternoon. The museum’s notice does not add any separate programming or exhibition opening around the occasion, keeping the focus on the open doors and the accompanying invitation to read the study.
The works’ subject, as given in the title, links the panels directly to Saint James and to an apparition of the Virgin Mary. The museum’s notation also indicates that the paintings belong to a larger retable of unknown provenance, a detail that underscores the importance of the study in framing the fragmentary history of the ensemble.
The museum’s website places the object within its broader collection and research structure, alongside practical visitor information and its ‘Un mes, una obra’ series. For Sant Jaume day, the institution is using both the open-doors format and the online essay to highlight a set of early-17th-century paintings that remain part of its holdings in Girona.
