Page 195 - The mystery of faith

the current reverence for the antique in order to promote his own
career, collaborating in the acquisition of antiquities for the nascent
royal collections. His knowledge of ancient art is also evident in the
style and techniques he employed in his own work. Along with
Alonso Berruguete, he was one of the first true Renaissance artists
working in Spain who fully appreciated and understood how to use
antique models to illustrate religious subjects, while maintaining the
essence of the ancient ideals without resorting to dry imitation.8

Villalón argued the pre-eminence of contemporary art over its Fig. 3
antique models and stated: ‘Sculpture in today’s Spain currently has Fig. 4
two masters: Felipe and [Diego de] Siloë, whose excellence
illuminates and clarifies our age, because neither Phidias nor
Praxiteles, the great sculptors of the antique, can be compared to
them’. Bigarny particularly stands out amongst the artists referenced
in artistic literature published during the first half of the sixteenth
century, and his work was highly praised in his own day. He
consorted with erudite humanists, contributed to the most esoteric
discussions on the nature of contemporary art and art forms and
knew several important collections of classical coins, sculptures and
artefacts that were being formed by Spanish humanists at that time.
One reference to Bigarny’s knowledge of ancient Rome relates to
Antonio de Guevara (1480?–1545),9 who was himself Burgundian, a
collector of art and antiquities, and one of the great authorities on
the antique. Guevara had close personal contacts to several of
Bigarny’s colleagues in 1530s Valladolid, and in his Epístolas
Familiares10 he recounts several archaeological curiosities and
references to current artworks, as well as a long-winded account of
Portia’s suicide (according to tradition, she swallowed live coals). It
was largely due to figures such as Guevara11 that Spanish artists like
Bigarny could reinterpret lesser known ancient subjects (like the
death of Portia) at this early stage of their Renaissance.12 Equally,
however, Bigarny’s appreciation of the antique must have been
informed by direct access to collections, such as those belonging to
the Dukes of Medinaceli and housed in their Palace of Cogolludo in
Guadalajara, near to Peñaranda del Duero.13 Not only did these
collections provide artists like Bigarny with models for architecture,
sculpture and painting, they also served to advertise the cultural
status and gravitas of their owner; such an informed and educated
figure as Bigarny would have been all too aware of how this latter
purpose might be used to his own advantage.

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