In the year 1635, when Montañés was at least seventy-five years old, an age when the activity of most men is over, he was called to Madrid by the Grand Duke of Tuscany, to execute an equestrian statue of Philip IV. He modelled a masterpiece, but the mould being sent to Italy to be cast, was by some mischance lost. However, the master’s design served as a model for the sculptor Pietro Tacca, whose work now stands in the Plaza del Oriente, at Madrid.
It was during this two years’ sojourn in Madrid that Montañés renewed his friendship with Velazquez, and sat for that incomparable portrait which is one of the masterpieces of the great painter.
The last work of Montañés was an altar-screen for the Church of San Miguel at Cadiz. The commission for the work had been given as early as 1609, but Montañés had been occupied with the altar-screens of Santiponce and other commissions in Seville, and the work had been postponed. There was a second commission signed in 1613, but the work was not undertaken until much later, and was not finally achieved until 1640, after the visit to Madrid. The statue of St. Bruno which dominates the altar is very fine; the figure is seated, an unusual position for Montañés. The polychrome was executed by Jacinto Soto.
Montañés died in 1649. He left a number of able pupils, and though none inherited his genius, they carried on his work with merit, and sustained the high renown of the school of Seville. It will be well to consider their works in a separate chapter.
CHAPTER IX
THE DISCIPLES OF MONTAÑÉS IN SEVILLE
It is the fate of the followers of a great master that their talent is almost always expressed in imitation, rather than in original work. Occupied with the glory that has been achieved, they forget that personality is the only living quality in art; that, however capably they may follow, they cannot reach the height that has already been gained. Thus the result of imitation must always be decay.
But the renown of the Sevillian school was for a time maintained by a band of really capable sculptors, who, had they lived earlier, before Montañés instead of after, might have been masters and not merely followers. We must now consider their work.
The sculptors most immediately connected with Montañés were Solis, of whom we have spoken already; the Abbot Juan Gomez, one of his earliest pupils; Alonso Martinez, an architect and master carpenter of Seville Cathedral; Luis Ortiz, a sculptor of Malaga; and Alonso de Mena, who came from Granada. These five men all worked as pupils in the studio of Montañés, and to a greater or less extent adapted their talent to copying the qualities of their master. Indeed Solis and the Abbot Juan Gomez appropriated so well his style that considerable confusion as to the authorship of their works has arisen.
Born in Jaen, Solis came to Seville in the year 1617, and assisted Montañés in the execution of the statues of St. Bruno, the Virgin, and St. John the Baptist for the Carthusians of Santa Maria de las Cuevas, which are now in the Museum of Seville. It is probable, as we stated in the last chapter, that the statues were carved by Solis from the wax models of Montañés. La Justicia (Plate 148) and the Four Cardinal Virtues, executed for the same monastery, and now also in the museum, were the personal work of Solis: in this work he shows that, apart from his power of imitation, he possessed talent of his own which entitles him to recognition. It is a polychrome of real merit, well conceived and well executed.
Even greater confusion has arisen with regard to the authorship of the works of the Abbot Juan Gomez, of which Seville has numerous examples. Even Cean Bermudez places among the original works of Montañés a Jesus of Nazareth of the Convent of San Agustine, which to-day is in the Priory Church, although the archives prove the Abbot Gomez to be its author. This work is proof of the capability of the pupil. He does even greater credit to his master in his life-size Crucifixion, executed in 1616 for the town of La Campaña. M. Marcel Dieulafoy says of this work: “It is a faithful copy of those of Montañés, and like them extremely beautiful.” Unfortunately the carving has suffered greatly from bad restoration.