Page 33 - The mystery of faith

AWESTRUCK BY THE FIDELITY OF A SCULPTOR’S VISION

I n Andalusia, artists habitually combined image and dogma to enhance a sense of piety and the divine
in their subjects, which are, for the most part, very similar in form. In 1610, the sculptor Juan
Martínez Montañés, whose career in Seville spanned sixty-five years, carved a magnificent polychrome
wood figure of Christ Carrying the Cross for the Brotherhood of Jesús de la Pasión. Known as the Jesús
de la Pasión, this sculpture was intended to be dressed in a cloak, and rapidly achieved renown both
on account of its high artistic quality and the intense pathos its strong sense of realism inspired in the
viewer. A century after its completion, Antonio Palomino described this work as: ‘A most powerful
image [...] with such a sense of suffering [that] it cannot fail to draw devotion from even the most
lukewarm heart’.5 Palomino also related an anecdote that each year, while in Seville, Montañés never
missed an opportunity to gaze at his creation during the Holy Week procession and he was said to
repeat on each occasion that ‘it was impossible that he had executed such a wonder’.6

This particular sculpture was to serve painters of the Sevillian School as an example of Christian
humility right up until the end of the nineteenth century, and in fact the early twentieth-century artist
Joaquín Turina painted a composition depicting an elderly Montañés seated on the steps of a convent,
surrounded by devout gentlefolk, watching the monks and flagellants in the white habits of the
Mercedarian Order who assemble to bear his Jesús de la Pasión in procession through the streets.

Catholic historians have an admitted weakness for such anecdotes, but they serve to remind us that in
pursuit of the refined sense of realism that typified their School, Andalusian Baroque artists were, not
only well aware of classical precedents, but also familiar with the latest artistic developments outside
the Iberian Peninsula thanks to the diffusion of Flemish and Italian prints. Therefore, any examination
of Andalusian art should take into account how artists succeeded in uniting an aesthetic ideal with
technical quality to produce images that would manifest the spiritual objectives of Catholic doctrine to
the eyes of the faithful.

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I n 1692, Luisa Roldán, better known as ‘La Roldana’, was appointed court sculptor (escultora de
cámara) to Charles II, who commissioned from her a sculpture of Christ Carrying the Cross. Luisa
was born in 1652, the daughter of sculptor Pedro Roldán in Seville, and became one of the most
renowned artists of the Andalusian Baroque. She married another sculptor, Luis Antonio de los Arcos,
and they lived first in Seville, then Cadiz, before moving in 1689 to Madrid for the remainder of her
life. The Christ Carrying the Cross, which was completed during this last period, was destined for the
chapel dedicated to Saint Didacus of Alcalá in the Franciscan Convent of Alcalá de Henares. However,
some sources claim that the work was originally intended to be a gift from Charles II to Pope Innocent
XII. Palomino especially lauded this sculpture for its beauty and sense of compassion and noted that it
‘was admired and stunned the whole court’.7 When the king died in 1700, the sculpture was still in La
Roldana’s studio and it remained there until her death in 1706. An interval of five years followed before
the death of her husband, Luis Antonio de los Arcos, and during this period Palomino visited the house
in order to see the work. In his treatise Palomino remarked upon the sculpture’s enormous visual impact

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