Page 269 - The mystery of faith

Furthermore, it testifies to these artists’ versatility and their willingness to meet the changing needs of
the various religious orders, either by producing sculptures of entirely new subjects, or by reinterpreting
more traditional subjects.

Accordingly, this sculpture presents us with the opportunity to appreciate how an artist such as Salzillo,
the most prominent figure in eighteenth-century Spanish sculpture, used and reused models in his own
workshop, since this Saint Francis of Paola cannot be entirely divorced from its antecedents, nor
perhaps was it Salzillo’s intention to disguise his source material. Certain features of this work show a
sophisticated modification of subject iconography, for example, the slight elongation of the head to
allow it to fit within the deep cavity of the hood without obscuring any view of the face. Also, by
maintaining the frontal pose and slightly raising the head Salzillo managed to communicate both the
ethereal nature of Francis’s rather severe spirituality, but also his more down-to-earth entreaties
towards humility, obedience and generosity. While the face is the expressive focus in this work, Salzillo
nevertheless included nothing superfluous, neither in the face, nor the pose, decoration, or iconography;
nothing in fact that might be unnecessary and therefore detract from a pure communication of this
saint’s particular brand of faith.

In this sense, Salzillo appears in the present work to have learned from his previous successes, such as
his 1746 sculpture of Saint Anthony (Fig. 1) now in the Parroquia San Francisco Javier, Ermita de San
Antón, Murcia. This was one of the sculptor’s contributions to the greatest religious commissions of
turn-of-the-century Murcia, the high altarpiece for the church attached to the monastery hospital of San
Antón. Here, Salzillo worked in close collaboration with Nicolás de Rueda and Jacinto Perales,
altarpiece designers and innovators in the genre, who were well versed in the latest sculptural
techniques and trends, both at home and abroad.2 Salzillo, who by this date had taken over his father’s
workshop, was in fact their personal choice to produce sculptures for the altarpiece and this
collaboration is considered to mark Salzillo’s entrance into the Spanish artistic canon of his century.
Although all Salzillo’s altarpiece sculptures have disappeared, this single work has been preserved. The
sculpture was dated by Baquero Almansa to 1746, a date that has since been unanimously agreed by
scholars.3 In the work, Anthony, a hermit saint of fanatical devotion, is portrayed caught at the very
moment of killing the dragon coiled at his feet. This pose expresses both the saint’s inner turmoil and
his physical tension, with all the strength and energy required to deliver the mortal blow. Here, again,
Salzillo achieved a sense of harmony linking the gesture of the saint’s hands with the arching pose of
his body, and uses the saint’s lush beard to frame and emphasize his sagely determined face. This
particular bearded facial type was one that Salzillo explored repeatedly in a series of clay bocetos, or
studies, conserved in the Salzillo Museum in Murcia (Fig. 2).4

This series of bocetos illustrate a direct formal and stylistic link between Salzillo’s Saint Anthony and
the present sculpture of Saint Francis of Paola. Equally, the stylistic consistency of the bocetos and their
repeated experimentation in how to render expression in bearded faces point towards the influence of
Roman Baroque sculpture, which Salzillo could have seen via the many pieces that arrived in Seville
from Roman workshops during the eighteenth century.5 The striking similarities between Roman

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