Page 262 - The mystery of faith

afforded by even the subtlest of changes. The bocetos
were intended to be used as either a guideline for the
manufacture of other workshop versions, or to be
shown to the commissioning patron as a modello for
their approval of the final work. Collections of
bocetos functioned as a sort of three-dimensional
instruction manual for pupils and were a cornerstone
of sculptural apprenticeships. The Salzillo Museum in
Murcia preserves around fifty bocetos, from different
periods of his work. These works are instrumental in
ascertaining and confirming Salzillo’s hand,
technically, stylistically and intellectually.6 After
Salzillo’s death, these pieces, together with other
workshop tools, became part of the patrimony of the
Museo de Bellas Artes of Murcia, which, in turn,
donated them to be exhibited in the Salzillo Museum.
The bocetos document the artist’s initial ideas and are
evidence of Salzillo’s creative process, in terms of
those models employed for his personal use or given
as presents to friends and patrons, after having been
fully polychromed. Salzillo himself chose one version
of the Virgen de las Angustias that was kept in his
house until his death and later inherited by his only
heiress.7

The Salzillo Museum conserves a clay boceto of the
exhibited Dolorosa (Fig. 2). A further finished
polychromed version is in the Dominican Convent of
Santa Ana (Fig. 3) and was probably the modello
presented to the Peinado family for their approval,
Salzillo being a family friend.8 All of these works were
included in a 1940 exhibition illustrating the artist’s
creative and technical processes.9 Nicolás Peinado
had been a Dominican friar connected to the Convent
of Santa Ana. His wealthy family also funded the
Carmelite Descalzes Convent in Murcia that had been
opened by his brother Alejandro. The Santa Ana
Convent also retained Nicolás’s portrait, a reliquary
of the Virgen de la Leche (to which was attributed a
famous miracle during the War of Secession). Salzillo
had been commissioned to sculpt the Dolorosa for the

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