Page 118 - The mystery of faith

Fig. 1 Fig. 2 Fig. 3

order of the Holy Trinity, in actual fact the Church of the Holy Trinity of the College of the Salesian
Brothers.3 The contract specified that all the sculptures should be of Havana cedar, or Segovian pine,
the latter being the material of the present relief. A year later, the Brothers contracted the Mannerist
artist Alonso Vázquez to execute all the polychromy, gilding and estofado decoration of the reliefs.4
These sculptures must have been completed by November of 1602, because the sculptors Juan Martínez
Montañés and Andrés de Ocampo appraised the work.5

The contract was made with López Bueno and consequently Professor Alfonso Pleguezuelo believes that
the artists worked as both ensamblador and escultor on this altarpiece. However, Lopez Bueno was
more of an architect than a sculptor. The style and technique of the present relief is very close to the
work of Miguel Adán. Several contracts exist that specifically stipulate which sculptor was to be
retained, such as the contract for an altarpiece for the main altar of the church attached to the Convent
of San Diego in Seville (1605), which specified that all the sculptures should be executed by Diego Daza
following models by Gaspar Núñez Delgado.6 While the iconography of the reliefs on the second level
is not specifically spelled out anywhere in López Bueno’s contract with the ‘Trinitarios’, thanks to
Vázquez we do know that it was specified that he should paint and decorate a Transfiguration and a
Baptism of Christ. The present relief, which depicts the former subject, has the more successful
composition of the two; it is both more complex and coherent than the Baptism of Christ relief in

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