Page 154 - The mystery of faith

him); and ornamental, since he was the author of the main altar sculptures and the sculptures on the
facade. Bernales dated these sculptures to 1656.12

As with other works by Roldán, we have little supporting documentation. Based on stylistic analysis
and comparisons, we can support this attribution and will trace all existing testimonies about this Jesuit
school and its property. Such testimony attributes to Roldán the execution of the chapel’s layout as well
as the sculptural ornamentation.13 The starting point is the writing of one of his contemporaries, the
painter and essayist Antonio Palomino, who had firsthand knowledge of Roldán’s work, as well as that
of his famous daughter, Luisa Roldán.

In El Parnaso español pintoresco laureado, the third volume of his main theoretical work, Museo
pictórico y escala óptica, Palomino offers us valuable information and the biographies of the Spanish
Golden Age painters. Here, he introduces Roldán as an ‘eminent sculptor, painter and architect’, and
even goes on to note his work at ‘Las Becas’ as amongst the most famous in Seville: ‘And in Las Becas,
the Jesuit school in Seville, he made the plan for the temple, and the stone sculpture, and the
Inmaculada figure by the entrance’.14 The school, founded in 1598, had an ‘old church’ in addition to
the church built in 1622. The church was probably designed by Roldán as a result of destruction of the
former church,15 which was caused by the flooding of the Guadalquivir River on 24 January 1626. The

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