Page 124 - The mystery of faith

JUAN MARTÍNEZ MONTAÑÉS

(Alcalá La Real 1568 – 1649 Seville)

11. The Infant Christ

Wood, polychromed, with rock crystal (eyes); the base of polychromed and gilded wood
85.1 cm (33 ½ in.)

PROVENANCE: Private Collection, New York

T he religious fervour that arose in Spain out of the Council of Trent gave rise to several new
cults devoted to the veneration of the Eucharist, and the veneration of Christ incarnate. One,
the cult of the Dulce Nombre de Jesús, employed imagery that exclusively depicted Christ as
an infant, often nude, and standing, with the right hand raised in blessing, the left arm often
supporting the cross or another symbol of the Passion.

The earliest documented Infant Christ in Andalusian sculpture is a late work by Jerónimo Hernández
(c. 1540–1586) made around 1582 for the Confraternity of Quinta Angustia in Seville and now in the
parish church of Santa María Magdalena (Fig. 1). In the past, scholars associated this subject of the
Infant Christ specifically with Hernández, an artist who trained with Juan Bautista Vázquez the Elder
and worked in Seville during the last third of the sixteenth century. However, this subject is now
understood to be almost iconographic of the work of the Sevillian sculptor Juan Martínez Montañés,
based on his masterpiece of the subject dated to around 1606, which is conserved in the Sacristy of
Seville Cathedral (Figs. 2a, b).1 In the years that separate this work from Hernández’ sculpture, the
subject of the Infant Christ apparently evolved from the former’s Mannerist boy–child figure to the
more naturalistic infant type formulated by Montañés. It is the latter artist’s treatment of the subject
that subsequent sculptors throughout the first third of the seventeenth century took as their model for
the Infant Christ.2

Juan Martínez Montañés was born in Alcalá La Real, a village in the province of Jaén, which was also
the hometown of the Rojas (or Raxis) family of painters. Indeed, Montañés was initially taught by Pablo
de Rojas, and possibly worked for him in Granada. Montañés moved to Seville in 1587 in order to obtain
his master’s licence for the opening of an artist’s workshop, and having married there, he remained in the
city for the rest of his life. He had arrived shortly after the death of Hernández, who had also been enticed
from his hometown (Ávila) to Seville’s vitality and artistic activity, and enjoyed a long and successful
career there. Famed as a technically brilliant sculptor in wood, and a profoundly religious man (though
reputed to be irascible and arrogant), Montañés also enjoyed a long and productive career in Seville and
made sculptures for the cathedral and various convents and monasteries. He also contributed to the
decorative renovation and adaptations of various church interiors to meet the demands of Tridentine
doctrine. Finally, and rather importantly, he made works for export to the Spanish colonies in the
Americas. This particular ‘boom’ industry in Spanish Baroque art was centred in Seville, and contributed
significantly to that city’s development as a thriving cultural and commercial centre.

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