Page 186 - The mystery of faith

Finally, in dating this sculpture, we must consider what would be its most likely subject: Saint Benito
of Palermo. Before the twentieth century, only five saints of recognized African origin were included in
the Sanctorum of the Church.9 In addition to Benito of Palermo, these were Saint Martin of Porres,
Saint Gregorio Moro, Saint Victor and Saint Maurice.10 With the exception of Maurice, none of these
saints had widely promulgated cults and therefore their attendant iconography is not often as
recognizable as that of other saints. Indeed, the original inclusion in the present work of an open book
and a quill does not in itself make it possible for us to identify this sculpture as an image of Benito of
Palermo, since both objects are fairly generic in representations of monastic saints. However, Benito’s
origins were apparently of special relevance to his hagiography, so much so he was also referred to as
‘Benito the African’.

Born in Messina in 1526 to Ethiopian slaves who were devout Christians, Benito or Benedict received
his manumission from their master in gratitude for their devotion and piety. While still a young boy,
Benito joined a newly formed confraternity of hermits, but when Pope Pius IV dissolved the association,
Benito entered the Franciscan Monastery of Santa María de Jesús at Palermo. Although he was only a
lay brother, his virtue so impressed his fellow monks that barely three years after entering the monastery
he was made superior, which he headed until his death in 1589. Though he was not beatified until 1743,
he was popularly revered in his own lifetime, and immediately following his death in 1589, a
widespread cult developed that was especially popular in Latin America, Italy and Spain.11 In 1611,
Phillip III commissioned a new shrine to Benito to be built in the friary church at Palermo, where he
was buried, and it was reported that when the monk’s remains were transferred to the shrine, they were
found to be uncorrupted, thus fuelling his veneration. As a Franciscan, Benito would have worn a
brown cassock, so the remains of the white polychromy on the draperies are initially somewhat
puzzling. Considered in connection to the Benedictines, however, we may recall that while the habit for
this Order was traditionally black, some reformed confraternities – the Cistercians, the Camaldolese
and the Olivetans – dressed in white robes. One final possibility is that this sculpture in fact represents
a fusion of two saints named Benito: the figure from Palermo and another, a Benedictine from Nursia,
thus combining the African features of the former with the monochromatic habit of the latter.12
Andalusian sculptors are well known for recognizing that changes or additions to the sacred canon
spelled fresh opportunities to create and produce new subjects, such as the life-size Saint Ignatius of
Loyola and Saint Francisco Xavier that Juan de Mesa sculpted for the Jesuit College of San
Hermenegildo in Seville around 1622, the year of the saints’ canonization.13

In short, while the iconography of this work may be somewhat inconclusive, its style is absolutely
defined. It evolved from seventeenth-century Andalusian models, which were then transformed by a
sensitivity and attention to expression that typifies the art of eighteenth-century Seville, and is utterly
autograph of José Montes de Oca.

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