Castilian School; XVI century. "Saint John the Evangelist and Saint Paul.

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DECORATIVE ARTS XV-XIX

By Setdart Auction House

Jul 13, 2021

Set Reminder 2021-07-13 07:00:00 2021-07-13 07:00:00 America/New_York Bidsquare Bidsquare : DECORATIVE ARTS XV-XIX https://www.bidsquare.com/auctions/setdart-auction-house/decorative-arts-xv-xix-7201
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• Lot Description
  Castilian School; XVI century. "Saint John the Evangelist and Saint Paul. Polychrome wood, and gilded. Presents xylophagous remains, missing in the sword of St. Paul and old restorations. Size: 72 x 24 x 20 cm (St. John; 75 x 29 x 24 cm (St. Paul). Sculptural pair starring two religious figures that, by their iconographic attributes, can be identified as St. John the Evangelist and St. Paul. John the Evangelist is usually assimilated to the figure of the "beloved disciple", and the writings tell that after the martyrdom of Peter and Paul he settled in Ephesus. Tradition has it that he was taken to Rome, where the emperor Domitian ordered him to be burned with boiling oil. He is not considered a martyred apostle according to tradition, since he was saved from martyrdom and was exiled to the island of Patmos, where he wrote the Apocalypse. St. John the Evangelist is one of the figures who appears most often in the narratives and plastic representations of the Passion of Christ. He is usually represented at the foot of the cross next to the Virgin, and it was he who leaned his head on the chest of Jesus at the Last Supper, being revealed to him the name of the disciple who would betray his master. St. Paul was a Hellenized Jew of the Diaspora, born in Tarsus. He was therefore Jewish by ethnicity, Greek by culture and Roman by nationality. He received the name Saul, which he changed to Paul after his conversion. Born at the beginning of the first century, he studied in Jerusalem with Rabbi Gamaliel, who was known for his hatred of Christians. One day, when around the year 35 he was on his way from Jerusalem to Damascus, he was dazzled by lightning and fell from his horse. Then he heard the voice of Jesus saying to him: "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? As a result of this experience, the saint went abruptly from persecutor to zealot of Christianity. After curing the blindness of a Christian from Damascus, he began his life as a missionary until he reached Jerusalem, where he came into contact with Peter and the other apostles. Spain is, at the beginning of the 16th century, the European nation best prepared to receive the new humanist concepts of life and art because of its spiritual, political and economic conditions, although from the point of view of plastic forms, its adaptation of those introduced by Italy was slower due to the need to learn the new techniques and to change the taste of the clientele. Sculpture reflects perhaps better than other artistic fields this eagerness to return to the classical Greco-Roman world that exalts in its nudes the individuality of man, creating a new style whose vitality surpasses the mere copy. Soon the anatomy, the movement of the figures, the compositions with a sense of perspective and balance, the naturalistic play of the folds, the classical attitudes of the figures began to be valued; but the strong Gothic tradition maintains the expressiveness as a vehicle of the deep spiritualistic sense that informs our best Renaissance sculptures. This strong and healthy tradition favors the continuity of religious sculpture in polychrome wood that accepts the formal beauty offered by Italian Renaissance art with a sense of balance that avoids its predominance over the immaterial content that animates the forms. In the first years of the century, Italian works arrived in our lands and some of our sculptors went to Italy, where they learned first hand the new norms in the most progressive centers of Italian art, whether in Florence or Rome, and even in Naples. Upon their return, the best of them, such as Berruguete, Diego de Siloe and Ordóñez, revolutionized Spanish sculpture through Castilian sculpture, even advancing the new mannerist, intellectualized and abstract derivation of the Italian Cinquecento, almost at the same time as it was produced in Italy.
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