Page 236 - The mystery of faith

Fig. 1 Fig. 2

which recalls the facade of the old Alcazar in Madrid, albeit in a more sculptural manner than the
pictorial approach often used by sculptors when copying architectural elements from engravings.

The present work’s original provenance is unknown, and no specific reference to its creation is included
in the artist’s various biographies, nor anything that refers to its subject: Tota Pulchra, a precedent of
La Inmaculada. It is, however, signed and dated on an etiquette placed in the lower left hand corner –
Fr. Eugen ft. 1690 – with the Mercedarian blason in red, placed just above it on a rock. On the back
of the piece, a paper label inscribed in a seventeenth-century hand reads: ‘Fr. Eugenius Gutierrez de
Torices ordinis Bª Mª de Mercedes Redemptionis captiviorum in suo segobiensi monasteri fat. 1690’
(Fig. 3). This date is somewhat unclear and it is possible that it could be ‘1696’, which would make it
closer in date to the relief in Valladolid, which is also signed in the lower right – Fr. Eugen – with the
same Mercedarian insignia placed in the middle of the inscription, followed on the back of the work by
the word ‘fat’. According to Jesús Urrea, there is a second inscription on the verso of the Valladolid
piece which reads: ‘Fr Eugenius Gutierrez de Torices ordinis de Bª Mª de Mercedes Redemptionis
captiviorum in suo conventu segoviense fat Anno 1698’, and that, furthermore, one of the pieces in El
Espinar bears a similar inscription. Unfortunately, in the case of this last work, minor damages to the
piece now make it impossible to confirm whether the work maintains the signature and date of ‘1693’.
This date is just visible in a photograph taken of the work in 1990, in the space left by the figure of the
Madonna, which was by this date already lost. According to Casto Castellanos, this inscription reads,
albeit very faintly: ‘Fr. Eugenio Gutierrez de los F [illegible]… del monasterio segoviense 1690’,5 and is
placed above a drawing of the blazon.

A comparison of the relief in Valladolid (Fig. 1) and the furniture reliefs in El Espinar, specifically the
one depicting The Flight into Egypt (Fig. 4), which is among the better preserved examples, reveals

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