Page 260 - The mystery of faith

FRANCISCO SALZILLO

(Murcia 1707 – 1783)

29. Dolorosa

c. 1740–1755
Wood, polychromed and gilded

43 cm (approx. 17 in.)
PROVENANCE: Pascual Camacho y Cortés, Cienza, Murcia 1982; PRIVATE COLLECTION, Madrid

I n this small, but exquisitely detailed sculpture of the Dolorosa, the Virgin stands dressed in a
white tunic, cinched with a red girdle under a blue mantle, decorated throughout with estofado.
The head is tilted upwards and the face wears an imploring expression that is emphasized by the
pose of the arms with the hands extended. Her head is covered with the blue mantle, the border
of which is decorated in a foliate pattern applied in slip and painted, a technique that became very
popular during the eighteenth century.

The exhibited sculpture is a reduction of the definitive version preserved in the old parish church of
Santa Catalina in Murcia that is considered to be among the first works to have come out of the
Salzillos’ workshop (Fig. 1). According to José Sánchez Moreno, the latter work must date between
1732 and 1735 and, as he noted, it possesses ‘a beautiful Italianate flair, which still shows the
immediate influence of his father’s instruction’ (the drapery folds of the exhibited piece are identical in
many details to the work in Santa Catalina).1 José Sánchez Moreno concluded that, in his opinion, this
sculpture marked the pinnacle of Salzillo’s career and had already proposed a possible date of 1733,
based on its Italianate style, the delicacy of the silhouette, and subtle tones in the encarnaciones and the
drapery.2 The 1973 catalogue of the exhibition in Madrid retained the same dating for the Santa
Catalina Dolorosa and again noted the influence of Nicolás Salzillo.3 The catalogue borrowed from the
previous scholarship of Baquero Almansa, who has already noted the Italian influence in Salzillo’s style
as a reaction in favour of his paternal heritage over the prevailing French taste in eighteenth-century
Murcian art.4

Our work faithfully reinterprets the original in Murcia and includes many of the same features, such as
the delicate use of colour, the translucent tone of the skin, and the morphology of the subject. All these
features combined in the original to produce an innovative variant of his father’s style and iconography,
which itself was probably originally inspired by Neapolitan prototypes. These Italianate models,
filtered through Salzillo’s Spanish sensitivity, generated a new style that was completely unprecedented
in Spanish sculpture of the time.5

It was normal practice amongst Spanish sculptors of the time to make various rough preparatory
models, often in clay, to work out the contours and features of the final pieces. These bocetos allowed
sculptors to gain an approximate idea of the finished works, but also to weigh the various possibilities

260