Page 50 - The mystery of faith

The present work, a reliquary of a saint protomartyr, is a good
illustration of the characteristic stiff composure of the Romanist
style, typical of the works of Pablo de Rojas. Carved as a bust or
torso, the saint is dressed in liturgical vestments, his arms hidden
beneath a dalmatic. The saint’s face wears a distant, inscrutable
expression, possibly to distance his image and its actual function of
housing his sacred remains from any sense of corporality. This
severity of mien is further emphasized by the straight, rigid fall of
the dalmatic. Professor Sánchez-Mesa Martín highlighted these
characteristics in his discussion of two sculptures attributed to
Rojas: the Saint Domingo and Saint Esteban which formed part of
the old altarpiece of the Virgen de la Antigua in Granada Cathedral
(Fig. 1).3 The distinctive facial features of the present work – the
broad head and seemingly tacked on ears; the large, wide-open eyes
with their piercing frontal stare – are also characteristic of Rojas’s
style. The combination of the constant gaze with the work’s stiff,
rigid pose evokes the image of a soldier on guard duty. The figure’s
hair is rendered compactly, combed forward, with few individual
locks except at the centre, and with a large tonsure at the back. The
polychromy incorporates the dark ‘five o’clock shadow’ of a
shaved beard that contrasts with the generally darkish flesh tones.
This reliquary has many similarities to the images by Rojas that are
preserved in the above-mentioned altarpiece in Granada Cathedral
and the characteristics of the piece, as well as its Granada
Fig. 1 provenance, reinforce the attribution to Rojas.

Our sculpture shows a deacon saint who had simply been ordained and thus wears the liturgical dress
that deacons might have used in great religious ceremonies: dalmatic, collar and elaborately knotted
gilded laces. In Spain, the deacon saints that had the greatest following were Saint Lawrence, Saint
Esteban and Saint Vicente. The first two lived in the third century and died during the persecution
instituted by Valerian; the third was martyred by Diocletian in Valencia at the beginning of the fourth
century. Reliquary-sculpture often lacks any attributes that permit identification to a specific saint.
Moreover, in some cases, as in depictions of the three aforementioned saints, the physical features are
also somewhat mutable: they can be represented beardless, with short hair, tonsured, and so on.
Occasionally, the decoration of the dalmatic represents a scene of martyrdom, such as in the Saint
Esteban from the old chapel of the Virgen de la Antigua in the Cathedral of Granada (Fig. 2), sculpted
by Rojas with polychromy executed by his nephew, the painter Pedro de Raxis.4 This iconographic
technique can also be seen in a painting by El Greco, Entierro del Conde de Orgaz, in which the
dalmatic of Saint Esteban also carries a scene of martyrdom.

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