Page 38 - The mystery of faith

For the completely gilded surface of the cassock, Montes de
Oca, or another skilled assistant, the dorador, would have
applied gold leaf using the water-gilding process.3 The gilded
surfaces were then burnished with a polished stone and could
then be incised with a burin in patterns of either floriate
motifs or narrow parallel lines (rajado). The same process
was employed in the decoration of the codex before black
pigment was applied over the gold leaf; the decorative design
was then revealed by using a burin to scratch the black
pigment away to reveal the gold. In the case of the estofado
decoration on the Saint Francis Xavier and Saint Francis
Borgia by Pedro Roldán (cat. no. 14) this same technique was
used, but in reverse. Here the gold leaf was applied over the
black pigment and then incised to reveal the thin black lines
of the estofado design.

Fig. 2 The head and neck of Saint Benito were carved separately
from the body. The neck was possibly carved with an

extension shaped to fit into a hollow within the trunk. Alternatively, the underside of the neck could
have been affixed within the high collar by a dowel; the modelled mass of heavily gessoed linen within
the collar effectively hides all evidence of this join.

The hands were carved separately and probably fixed within the sleeves either by means of a carved
tenon projecting from the centre of the truncated upper forearms, which would have been fitted into a
corresponding mortise inside the sleeve, or by dowels (Fig. 2). In either case, the hands would then have
been secured with strips of gessoed linen up the sleeves. The right hand is delicately carved in great
detail to show the creases of the palm and the suggestion of veins and tendons on the back of the hand.
The sculptor has also taken care to accurately model not only the various knuckles of each bent finger,
but also the fingernails, and even the cuticles. The left hand is carved integrally with the codex, and
though such detail was unlikely to be appreciated in the sculpture’s original placement, Montes de Oca
spared no element of realism and anatomical detail in the hand; he even decorated the cover of the
codex in incised black and gold estofado work to suggest richly tooled leather. The polychromy on the
hands is very basic, painted in dark oil pigments of black and brown with no encarnaciones.

The cranium and the neck were carved from a single block, including all the details of the tightly curled
cropped hair, the ears, and the tendons of the neck. On the back of the head, which is fully carved in
tight curls with no tonsure, a slit was carved out to hold an attached halo, probably of metal as in the
Inmaculada by Alonso Cano (cat. no. 6). However, Montes de Oca carved the face as a mask leaving
openings for the glass eyes and the teeth made from bone or horn. Once the eyes were inserted the two
pieces of the head were joined. The sculptor does not appear to have included eyelashes of animal hair,
as did José Risueño in his Dolorosa (cat. no. 9). This was a popular postizo addition in sculptures from
the later seventeenth century, but perhaps because such a detail would have been invisible against the

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