Two sculptors intimately associated with Gregorio Hernandez were Luis de Llamosa, who completed many of his master’s unfinished works, and Juan Francisco de Hibarne, his favourite pupil, to whom he gave his daughter Damiana in marriage. Carvings by these artists will be found in several of the churches of Valladolid.
But of greater fame was the Portuguese sculptor Manuel Pereyra, who, though reported to have studied in Italy, must certainly have been the pupil of Hernandez, if we may judge from the testimony of his works. They show no trace of Italian influence, and are inspired by the earnestness of Spanish devotion. We first hear of Pereyra in May 1646, when he carved in stone the statue of San Felipe for the convent of the saint at Valladolid. His reputation grew rapidly, and his statue of St. Bruno, executed for the Hostel of the Chartreuse del Paula, set the seal to his fame. The statue was so greatly admired that it is said that King Philip IV. ordered his coachman, on passing the door, to slacken the pace so that he might admire it at leisure. There is a fine replica of the St. Bruno in the Chartreuse of Miraflores. Like Hernandez, Pereyra used quiet colours, without gilding or damask effects. In his last years Pereyra became blind, but this calamity does not seem to have interfered with his carving. He died in 1667.
It would seem to be by the aid of Manuel Pereyra that the influence of Gregorio Hernandez was carried to Madrid. But in this work he was supported by Alonso de los Rios, a carver of intelligence, taste, and skill, who was born in Valladolid about 1650, and who early went to Madrid. In his studio worked Juan de Villanueva and his two sons Juan and Alfonso Rios, who directed the art of carving in the capital during the first years of the eighteenth century. Afterwards in the studio of Rios worked Luis Salvador Carmona, whose talent was so marked that on the death of his master he became its director. Under his guidance the Madrid school became so famous that Ferdinand VI. in 1752 transformed it into the Royal Academy of San Fernando. The greater number of Carmona’s carvings are at Madrid. They are single statues and bas-reliefs. He does not appear to have carved an altar-screen. For altar-screens, that had been required by the churches, had now fallen in the popular esteem, due to a weakening of the strong religious impulses that for so long had directed the expression of art. Carmona also executed forty-two small statues for the parish of Seguro in Biscay. But his finest works are his two statues at Salamanca. Both are in the cathedral—one, a Pietà, known as La Dolorosa, in the Capilla de San José (Plate 131); the other, a Flagellation of the Christ (Plate 132), is in the sacristy. These realistic and emotional groups are the works by which Carmona must be judged. They witness that he had through his masters inherited the traditions of Gregorio Hernandez, though his work is less sincere and without the Galician master’s fine truth to nature. In Spain Carmona is accounted a master, but this praise is too high. This much may be granted to him: his works have great, even surprising, merit when we take into consideration the period at which they were executed.
If the influence of Gregorio Hernandez speaks in the artists we have just considered, it is to the influence of the impassioned and dramatic Juan de Juni we must turn to account for those tragic representations of severed heads of martyrs, depicted with such strange delight in all the details of horror and putrefaction, of which we find many examples belonging to the late seventeenth century. Such heads, representing most frequently St. John the Baptist, St. Paul, or St. Anastasius, may be seen in many places—Nuestra Señora del Pilar at Zaragoza, the cathedral and hospital church at Granada, and the Monastery of Santa Clara at Seville are a few examples. The Museum of Valladolid possesses two heads of St. Paul. The finer one, taken from the Convent of St. Paul, is the work of Alonso Villabrille, a sculptor of Madrid who lived at the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries. It is perhaps the best example of these astonishing heads (Plate 133). The polychrome is carried out with great care, and the horror of the dissevered head is lessened by the beard which shields the severed neck.
The influence of Gregorio Hernandez did much to stay the deterioration which now, at the end of the seventeenth century, threatened the plastic arts of Northern Spain. The baroque style was introduced with disastrous results, and we find the ugly, overloaded, exaggerated decoration known as Churriguera. Perhaps the greatest evil was the destruction of many of the old Gothic and classic altar-screens, with their beautiful polychrome statues. Images were carved with apparatus for moving the head and eyes, and the mouth. These figures were really wooden dolls, with real hair and real dresses, in which only the head and hands were carved: they mark the lowest level of the plastic arts. A notorious example is the Transparente in the Cathedral of Toledo, executed by Narciso Tomé in 1752.
It is remarkable that side by side with these degraded works we find a number of bas-reliefs and statues in which the earnestness of the Spanish religious spirit has inspired the baroque form. We may mention as especially worthy of study, a Conception in Palencia Cathedral, and a superb monument let into the wall on the right of the great altar; a beautiful Virgin in the Chapel of Ayuntamiento, Pampeluna; the Madonna over the high altar of Cuenca; the kneeling figure of an archbishop in San Andrés at Avila; and the magnificent tomb of Cardinal Valdés in the Church of the Sala, Oviedo. This last work is a masterpiece.
CHAPTER VIII
THE SCHOOL OF ANDALUSIA—JUAN MARTINEZ MONTAÑÉS—SEVILLE AND ITS SCULPTORS
The Andalusian school of sculpture was an offshoot from the school of Castile and Aragon, though in some respects its history was different. The reason of its late development is not difficult to find. In Southern Spain the Moorish influence was stronger and more enduring than in the North; and for all their secular buildings the Spaniards adopted Moorish designs and Moorish methods of decoration. The Alcázar of Seville, in its original state before alterations, and the Casa de Pilatos, are very pure mudéjar monuments. There was no abrupt transition between the Persian architecture and the classic style of the Renaissance. It was in the churches alone that opportunity arose for the development of Christian architecture. We find Roman or Gothic structures according to the epochs of their building. But even the churches retained the minaret in the form of clock-towers, and other Moorish features, as, for instance, the Puerta del Perdon of the Cathedral of Seville.
It was the erection of these Christian edifices that brought the opportunity for the opening of studios of sculpture. Native carvers arose, who at first drew their inspiration from the more advanced art of the North. Then the fifteenth century opened with the building of the great Cathedral of Seville, an event which drew foreign artists to the Southern capital from Flanders and also from Italy. These foreigners trained worthy native pupils, and from this time we may date the rise and importance of the Sevillian school.
One of the first foreigners to arrive was Lorenzo de Mercadante, a Breton, whose power speaks in the monument of Cardinal Cervantes, in the cathedral, the earliest perfect portrait-statue in Southern Spain. In the cathedral, which is a veritable museum of polychrome art, we find graceful and charming statues, which show the influence of Mercadante. We may mention the beautiful Virgen de Madroñe (Virgin of the arbutus flower) and the Virgen del Reposo; both statues are polychromed, but the latter work has been to a large extent ruined by injudicious restoration. These Virgins are fine examples of the ideal treatment, expressing genuine beauty with dignity and sweetness, which the native artists achieved in representing the Mother of God. Spain is the land of the Blessed Virgin.