Page 140 - The mystery of faith

FELIPE DE RIBAS

(Cordoba 1609 – 1648 Seville)

13. The Infant Christ and the Infant Baptist

Wood, polychromed and gilded, with inset glass eyes
59 x 24 cm (23 ¼ x 9 ½ in.)

PROVENANCE: Antonio Plata, Seville; Emilio Espinosa, Madrid

As previously discussed in the catalogue entry for the Infant Christ by Juan Martínez
Montañés (cat. no. 11), the development of this very empathetic religious subject occurred in
the wake of the Council of Trent and was particularly popular in Andalusian sculpture.
Tridentine doctrine now demanded that artists should reproduce sacred images, particularly
sculptures, with the goal of achieving the highest possible level of physical verism and immediacy of
expression. Therefore, instead of portraying Jesus Christ and John the Baptist as men, artists began to
interpret them as the children they once must have been. From an aesthetic point of view, this allowed
sculptors to take advantage of the inherent physical and emotional appeal of children. Moreover, it
enabled them to produce religious images that could foster the deep personal communion with the
faithful, which was now utterly compulsory in such objects, without resorting to the literal or the
didactic. In constructing this particular iconography of the sacred infant, sculptors based their facial
types and hairstyles upon models established by Juan Martínez Montañés, and, more particularly, by
José de Arce (Jodocus Aaerts), a Flemish-born sculptor who established himself in Seville in 1635 and
was largely responsible for the dissemination of this type. To this established model, Arce contributed
a softer interpretation to the form, and an added dynamism to the pose, in order to suggest both infant
energy and a sense of monumentality. Although less of a formal perfectionist than Martínez Montañés,
Arce recycled several characteristic details from the earlier artist, including, in addition to the specific
treatment of the hair, a strong sense of chiaroscuro. The stylistic synthesis of the models established by
both Martínez Montañés and Arce is visible in the present sculptures, which mark them clearly as the
product of the sculptor Felipe de Ribas.

Felipe de Ribas first studied under Juan de Mesa between about 1621 and 1625. After a five-year hiatus
when he returned to Cordoba to cope with a family crisis, Ribas went to Seville to join the studio of
Alonso Cano. By the beginning of the 1630s, Mesa, previously the most prestigious sculptor working
in Seville, was dead, and his master, the now aged Martínez Montañés, was still producing works that
mark the stylistic shift from Mannerism towards naturalism, as was Francisco de Ocampo. In only a
few years José de Arce would arrive in the city. Cano’s Seville studio at this time also hosted Jacinto
Pimentel, Martín de Andújar, Gaspar Ginés and Juan Remesal, all Andalusians who would comprise an
artistic diaspora, eventually leaving Andalusia to establish careers in Cadiz, Tenerife and even the
Americas.1 Along with Ribas, these artists adopted the new ‘smooth’ style, and their compositions

140