Sculpture in Spain

by Albert Frederick Calvert

A pupil of Jerónimo Hernandez was Gaspar Nicolas Delgado, who also studied with his uncle Pedro Delgado. He gained a higher reputation than his masters, and in Seville is accounted as one of the greatest sculptors. This estimate is misleading. His chief work, the St. John the Baptist in the Desert, which is in the chapel of the Nuns of St. Clemente though a bas-relief of real merit, the landscape especially being well represented, does not justify his position as a master. The merit of the work has gained from the fine polychrome, which was carried out by the artist Pacheco.

A third artist who worked at this period, and a carver of more personal talent, was Capitan Cepeda, a native of Cordova, who, like Torrigiano was in turn a soldier and artist. He served in Italy and afterwards came to Seville, being summoned there by the goldsmiths of the city for the special work of arousing a devotion for the Crucified Christ. With this object Cepeda modelled the Cristo de la Expiracion which now stands on the altar of the small chapel of the museum. It is a work of Spanish realism, finely executed, with every detail of sorrow expressed and accentuated by the violent attitude and gesture. Again we would emphasise the fact that such a work can only be estimated truly by remembering the Spanish religious spirit. Cepeda represents in Seville the style which Juan Juni made popular in the Northern schools. Like that artist, his interest rests in the individuality of his work, which is national and wholly Spanish, while his contemporaries, Jerónimo Hernandez and Gaspar Nicolas Delgado, followed the newer influences from Italy.

The Sevillian school had not yet produced a master. But the time was now ripe. In the closing years of the century there came to Seville the man who raised polychrome sculpture to its highest rank, and who was the greatest carver of Spain. His name was Juan Martinez Montañés.

Of the early life of this great artist we know almost nothing beyond the fact that he was the pupil of Pablo Rojas, a sculptor of Cordova. We first have definite information about him in the year 1582, when he with his wife came to the Monastery of Dulce Nombre de Jesus at Seville, where we learn they were granted free residence for life in recognition of an Image of the Virgin executed for the brotherhood. Two years later, in 1590, Montañés was at work for the Carmelite nuns. Nothing further of the artist’s life is known until the year 1607, when he completed a Jesus for the Santísimo Brotherhood of the cathedral. The record of this work proves that Montañés was then living in the Arquillo de Roelas with Catalina Salcedo y Sandobal. Thus he must have lost his first wife and again been married. He was at this time fifty years old. Such is the scant record of the first half of this great artist’s life. In truth he came late to the fruition of his genius, for it was after these fifty years of living, when the work of most men is already accomplished, that Montañés created the greatest of those works which are the glory of Spain.

It is fitting to say a few words about his art. Montañés occupies the same position in the Southern school that Gregorio Hernandez held in the North. Like that master, he drew his inspiration directly from Nature. He had the same respect for truth, the same simplicity, and, stronger even than these qualities, the same Spanish religious sentiment and noble idealism. It is true that he used and made his own the methods of the Italian Renaissance, which were dominating the Sevillian artists, and which he would seem to have imbibed from a study of the classical models in the Casa de Pilatos of the Duke of Alcala; but with this outside influence he retained a powerful personality. Thus his work is entirely removed from the Italian style, as it expressed itself in the Peninsula with its fantastic mingling of Christianity and paganism. In nobility of form and religious sentiment the statues of Montañés surpass all other works of their class. Once again, and more emphatically than the carvings of any other artist, unless indeed we except Gregorio Hernandez, they give an answer to those who would discredit the beauty of polychrome statuary.

From the year 1607 onwards, up to his death in 1649, Montañés carried out numerous orders for the churches, convents, and religious brotherhoods of Seville; the greater number of these works still remain in the city. But of some it must be said that, though doubtless executed in the master’s studio and bearing his name, they were the work of his pupils. Fortunately it is not difficult to distinguish these spurious pieces which have been fathered upon Montañés. We have in the archives of the churches an exact record, usually with dates, of most of his works. Thus we are able to follow chronologically the evolution of his talent.

The earliest undertakings of Montañés after the execution of the infant Jesus for the Santísimo Brotherhood were two portrait-statues of St. Ignatius Loyola and St. Francis Xavier (Plates 140 and 141) which were commissioned in the year 1610 on the occasion of the beatification of the former saint, and which are now in the University Chapel. Of these idealised portraits Professor Justi writes that they are “marked by noble severity of character and pathos of expression.”

The period between 1610 and 1612 was occupied with an important work, the designing and carving of the altar-screen and statues for the old monastery of San Isidoro at Santiponce, in the suburb of Seville. Montañés is noteworthy as a carver of altar-screens, and in this he returned to the methods of earlier artists. Seville owes to him three great retablos; those of Santa Clara and San Lorenzo in the city itself, and the one at Santiponce, which of the three is perhaps the most beautiful. It is in two registers with an attic. In the centre of the first portion stands the magnificent statue of St. Jerome, one of the finest figures of Montañés; placed on the right and left are St. John the Baptist and St. John the Evangelist, and two bas-reliefs of the Adoration of the Magi and of the Shepherds. The last group is especially beautiful. San Isidoro, Archbishop of Seville and patron of the church, occupies the centre of the second register, while the bas-reliefs on either side represent the Resurrection and Ascension of Christ. In the attic are figures of the Cardinal Virtues and an Assumption of the Virgin, which surmount a Crucifix and two kneeling angels.

In this great work it seems certain that Montañés must have been aided by his pupils. The St. Jerome, however, was carved entirely by himself. It was coloured by Pacheco, who was for many years the collaborator of the Sevillian master. The work is perfectly executed, indeed it is impossible to say more of this magnificent polychrome than that it merits the praise which has been lavished upon it.