Page 116 - The mystery of faith

MIGUEL ADÁN

(Pinto 1532 – Seville 1610)

AND DIEGO LÓPEZ BUENO

(c. 1568 – Seville 1632)

10. The Transfiguration of Christ on Mount Tabor

Wood relief, polychromed and gilded
214 x 106.5 x 30 cm (84 ¼ x 41 ? x 11 ¾ in.)

PROVENANCE: Mariano Pericacho, Madrid

T his large high relief depicts the event reported in the Synoptic Gospels in which Jesus, having
chosen the Apostles Peter, James and John to accompany him to Mount Tabor, stood before
them transfigured ‘so that his face became like the sun and his white robe shone with light’,
and, according to the evangelists, the prophets Moses and Elijah spoke to Christ. Peter,
witnessing this awesome scene, started to make a sort of camp for Christ and the other Apostles, but
clouds covered the sun and the voice of God proclaimed Christ as his Son, who was beloved of him.
When the Apostles heard this they fell to their knees in fear, but Christ approached them and told them
to rise up and not be afraid, but to say nothing of what had occurred until he had risen on the third
day after his death.1

The Transfiguration was infrequently represented in Andalusian art. In fact, throughout the Mannerist
and Baroque periods Sevillian workshops produced only five known versions of the subject. The earliest
is a relief for the main altarpiece in the parochial church of the Divine Saviour (Cortegana Huelva,
1586–1657, destroyed), which was a collaboration between the architect and ensamblador Diego López
Bueno and the sculptor Pedro Fernández de Mora, although, due to its complexity, several other
sculptors also worked on this project and their names are as yet unknown. Although the work is
documented in written sources, we do not have photographs that allow us to study the work formally
or stylistically.

The second representation is an upright lateral relief from the second level of the altarpiece in the
Church of the Holy Trinity attached to the Convent of Saints Justa and Rufina in Seville (1600–1602).
This altarpiece was also built by López Bueno, with reliefs polychromed by Alonso Vázquez, of which
a single example survives, depicting the Adoration of the Shepherds (Fig. 1).2 Professor Jesús Miguel
Palomero reconstructed the altarpiece in plan (Fig. 2), with the original placement of the reliefs,
including a photograph of the sole surviving work in its original location. According to this plan, two
lateral reliefs depicting the Transfiguration and the Baptism of Christ, which correspond in form and
subject to the present relief and its pendant (Madrid, Coll. LL.A.; Fig. 3) were located on the second
level. Therefore, it is probable that these two works were part of the altarpiece that had been contracted
from López Bueno on 6 November 1600 by the Convent of Saints Justa and Rufina, devoted to the

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