Page 58 - The mystery of faith

Fig. 6 Fig. 7

Fig. 6); the fourth is in the Museo Nacional, Valladolid, hitherto unrecognized and unpublished
(Fig. 7).18 We can see the same pose, approach to drapery, use of a rich intense red in the mantle,
treatment of landscape motifs in the pictorial background and overall level of artistic quality and
technical execution. All of these versions have previously at some time been attributed to Alonso Cano,
largely on the basis of their exquisite quality and Cano’s strongly recognized fame as both a sculptor and
a painter in Granada. However, we would argue that these pieces, like the present sculpture, are
autograph works by the brothers and we would even venture to attribute several other versions of this
subject to the brothers and date them to the same period between 1619 and 1628. As we will see in
specific analyses of these four present sculptures, which are based on the methodology first applied by
Orozco Díaz, all of the present works correspond formally and stylistically with known works by the
brothers, artists who were active in Granada in the transitional period between Mannerism and the
Baroque. When we remember that Cano lived in Seville until 1637 in an artistic setting very different from
what he would encounter fifteen years later in Granada, this attribution becomes even more insubstantial,
a point we will examine in greater detail below in our discussion of the present Penitent Saint Jerome.19

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