School of ALONSO GONZÁLEZ BERRUGUETE (Paredes de Nava, c.1490-Toledo, 1561) "Saint John the Evangelist".

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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
  School of ALONSO GONZÁLEZ BERRUGUETE (Paredes de Nava, c.1490-Toledo, 1561) "Saint John the Evangelist". Carved and gilded wood. Precise cleaning. Measures: 76,5 x 24 x 16 cm. John the Evangelist is usually assimilated to the figure of the "beloved disciple", and the writings say 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. 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 the plastic forms, its adaptation of those implanted 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, would revolutionize 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. Berruguete was a painter, sculptor and architect. Berruguete achieved great recognition as a sculptor and is considered one of the references of the sculptural art of the Spanish Renaissance. Berruguete began his artistic training under the tutelage of his father who was a painter, although after his death, he moved to Italy to continue his training. Thanks to his stays in Florence and Rome, he was trained as a sculptor, being part of Michelangelo's studio as an apprentice. In the year 1517-1518 he returned to Spain where he was appointed painter and sculptor of the court of Charles V.
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