Following models of JUAN MARTINEZ MONTAÑÉS (Alcalá la Real, Jaén, 1568 - Seville, 1649)., First half of the 17th century. Carved and polychrome wood.

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OLD MASTERS & SCULPTURE - Day 2

By Setdart Auction House

Jun 1, 2021

Set Reminder 2021-06-01 09:45:00 2021-06-01 09:45:00 America/New_York Bidsquare Bidsquare : OLD MASTERS & SCULPTURE - Day 2 https://www.bidsquare.com/auctions/setdart-auction-house/old-masters-sculpture---day-2-6999
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• Lot Description
  Following models of JUAN MARTINEZ MONTAÑÉS (Alcalá la Real, Jaén, 1568 - Seville, 1649)., First half of the 17th century. Carved and polychrome wood. It presents faults in the size and the polychromy. Precise restoration. Measures: 93 x 35 x 23 cm. The Gospels say of John the Baptist that he was the son of the priest Zechariah and Elizabeth, cousin of the Virgin Mary. He retired very young to the desert of Judea to lead an ascetic life and preach penance, and recognized in Jesus, who was baptized by him, the Messiah announced by the prophets. A year after the baptism of Christ, in the year 29, John was arrested and imprisoned by the tetrarch of Galilee Herod Antipas, whose marriage with Herodias, his niece and sister-in-law, he had dared to censure. Finally St. John was beheaded, and his head given to Salome as a reward for his beautiful dances. This saint appears in Christian art with two different aspects: as a child, a playmate of Jesus, and as an adult, an ascetic preacher. The adult St. John that we see here appears dressed in oriental art with a camel skin sackcloth, which in the West was replaced with a sheepskin that leaves his arms, legs and part of his torso bare. The red cloak he wears at times, as well as in the scene of his intercession at the Last Judgment, alludes to his martyrdom. In Byzantine art he is depicted as a large-winged angel, with his severed head on a tray which he holds in his hands. However, his attributes in Western art are very different. The most frequent is a lamb, which alludes to Jesus Christ, and he often carries a cross of reeds with a phylactery with the inscription "Ecce Agnus Dei". Here only the lamb appears as a small image that the saint shows over a closed book, an allusion to the Scriptures. The message "Behold the Lamb of God" is represented not by the cross of reeds, but by the gesture of the saint pointing to the lamb. This work is stylistically related to the Spanish baroque, it reveals a special influence of the great master of the Sevillian sculptural school of the XVII century, Juan Martínez Montañés. The material preferred by Montañés was always polychrome wood, counting on the collaboration of great painters, among them Francisco Pacheco, Velázquez's master. He enjoyed great fame and popularity, becoming known in Seville as "the god of wood" and in Madrid as "the Andalusian Lysippus". His art, which he transmitted to his disciples in his workshop, was inspired above all in the natural, denoting more classicist characteristics, at times, than baroque. However, towards the end of his career he evolved towards a fully baroque realism. Formally, classical elegance and harmony stand out, the basis of baroque works of mountain influence. It is, above all, a fully naturalistic work, idealized in terms of the subject matter, but of great verism and expressiveness. In the Sevillian environment, the seventeenth century was a time of enormous economic and, therefore, artistic boom.
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