The Heroine of Peralada

The heroine of Peralada is an 1864 painting by the Barcelona painter of academicism-realism Antoni Caba i Casamitjana. It depicts the legend of Na Mercadera, a neighbor of Peralada who captured a French knight from the enemy army, entered the village and sold it for a ransom during the burning of Peralada in 1285 —as a crusade against the Crown of Aragon. On September 24, 2010, within the framework of the European Heritage Days, the new installation of this work was presented in one of the rooms of the Cultural Tourism Center of Sant Domènec, Peralada.Antoni Caba presented L'heroin de Peralada at the National Exhibition of Fine Arts in Madrid, 1864. It represented the first triumph of the painter who won a second-class medal and was acquired by the State. Currently, the work belongs to the Prado Museum, which twenty years ago deposited it in the City Council of Peralada and has now transferred it to the facilities of the Sant Domènec Cultural Center, in the same town.

The subject would know him as a result of the new publication of the Chronicle of Ramon Muntaner, in 1860. It should be noted that history painting was a demanding genre at that time, requiring documentation, complex composition, capture of the peak moment, etc. The painters thoroughly prepared their history paintings, which were criticized both for their aesthetic values and for their successes or documentary errors.