Page 172 - The mystery of faith

LUISA ROLDÁN, CALLED ‘LA ROLDANA’

(Seville 1652 – 1706 Madrid)

17. Saint Joseph and the Child

Wood, polychromed
45 x 23 x 22 cm (17 ? x 9 x 8 ? in.)
PROVENANCE: Private Collection, Córdoba

T he 2007 monographic exhibition in Seville entitled Roldana1 included a small sculpture
depicting Saint Joseph with the Child in gilded and polychromed wood (Fig. 1) that belonged
to the Clarite Convent of the Nativity in Antequera, outside Malaga. This magnificent work
dates from the final years of Luisa Roldán’s Madrid period, and as the exhibition was
arranged chronologically, appeared as the final sculpture in the museum’s display.

The exhibition also included another version of the same subject belonging to the Church of Saint
Anthony of Padua in Cadiz (Fig. 2). Despite later repaints in the 1960s this work had previously been
correctly attributed to La Roldana and her husband Luis Antonio de los Arcos and dated to their Cadiz
period (1687–1688).2 Recently, a third version has come to light in the Convent of Saint Anthony,
Granada,3 which, like the present work, is also small, but made of polychromed terracotta (Fig. 3).
These three works allow us to trace the evolution of La Roldana’s iconography, in which we can
recognize the progressive aging of Saint Joseph, who is depicted as middle-aged in the Cadiz and
Antequera versions, but elderly in the Granada version.4 What is also interesting is the fact that the
sculptures from Antequera and Granada both belong to her late Madrid period. To these three
examples we may now add a fourth: the small polychromed wooden sculpture exhibited here.

The subject of Saint Joseph, as the father and protector of Jesus, had special significance as a devotional
image in post-Council of Trent Spain. Formerly, images of Saint Joseph were incorporated into
compositions relating to Christ’s childhood, including the Nativity, the Adoration of the Magi or
Shepherds, the Presentation in the Temple, the Circumcision, the Flight into Egypt, or the scenes set in
Joseph’s Nazerene workshop.5 Other than these subjects, images of Joseph were featured only in
representations of the Holy Family. However, the Catholic religious orders that sprang up in the second
half of the sixteenth century, particularly the more reformist ones, such as the Carmelites, helped to
spread Joseph’s cult, and even dedicated convents to the saint . Equally, several late sixteenth-century
texts exalted Joseph’s life and role in Christianity, such as the Sumario de las Excelencias del glorioso
San José Esposo de la Virgen María, written in 1597 by the Carmelite priest Jerónimo Gracián de la
Madre de Dios.6

In their drive to humanize Christ’s divinity, Spanish Baroque artists generally represented Saint Joseph
and the Child in one of two ways: either walking together hand-in-hand, or with the saint standing and

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