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Lot Essay
COMPARATIVE LITERATURE:
Alonso Cano (1601-1667) y la escultura andaluza hacia 1600, exhibition catalogue, Córdoba, 2000.
X. Bray, et al., The Sacred Made Real: Spanish Painting and Sculpture 1600-1700, exhibition catalogue, London, 2009.
Most likely created for private devotion, this sculpture has traditionally been attributed to the Spanish Baroque painter, sculptor and architect Alonso Cano (1601-1667). A leading artist in his native city of Granada, Cano was also active in Seville, where he formed a close and lasting friendship with Velázquez, and in Madrid, where he enjoyed the patronage of the Conde Duque de Olivares, first minister of Philip IV. Cano inspired a generation of sculptors who emulated his classicizing yet profoundly naturalistic representations of religious figures as well as his graceful and relatively simplified compositional forms.
The pose and general handling of Christ's drapery and anatomy, particularly the representation of his long, slender face and elegant torso, finds parallels in Cano's painted versions of the subject, such as his Flagellation of Christ (Academia de San Francisco, Madrid) and Dead Christ Supported by an Angel (Museo del Prado, Madrid). Comparisons to his sculptures are equally informative. Cano's head of Saint John of God in the Museo de Bellas Artes, Granada (Bray, pp. 86-89, no. 6) exhibits the same delicate and subtle application of its polychromy as the present sculpture. Especially suggestive is the nearly identical treatment of the transition from the sculpted hair to the skin, where the artist has used a fine brush to paint individual strands that extend onto the smooth surface of the figures' flesh. Although a definitive attribution to Cano may not be presently possible, the style of carving and painting clearly puts the present sculpture within the Spanish sculptor's circle.
Alonso Cano (1601-1667) y la escultura andaluza hacia 1600, exhibition catalogue, Córdoba, 2000.
X. Bray, et al., The Sacred Made Real: Spanish Painting and Sculpture 1600-1700, exhibition catalogue, London, 2009.
Most likely created for private devotion, this sculpture has traditionally been attributed to the Spanish Baroque painter, sculptor and architect Alonso Cano (1601-1667). A leading artist in his native city of Granada, Cano was also active in Seville, where he formed a close and lasting friendship with Velázquez, and in Madrid, where he enjoyed the patronage of the Conde Duque de Olivares, first minister of Philip IV. Cano inspired a generation of sculptors who emulated his classicizing yet profoundly naturalistic representations of religious figures as well as his graceful and relatively simplified compositional forms.
The pose and general handling of Christ's drapery and anatomy, particularly the representation of his long, slender face and elegant torso, finds parallels in Cano's painted versions of the subject, such as his Flagellation of Christ (Academia de San Francisco, Madrid) and Dead Christ Supported by an Angel (Museo del Prado, Madrid). Comparisons to his sculptures are equally informative. Cano's head of Saint John of God in the Museo de Bellas Artes, Granada (Bray, pp. 86-89, no. 6) exhibits the same delicate and subtle application of its polychromy as the present sculpture. Especially suggestive is the nearly identical treatment of the transition from the sculpted hair to the skin, where the artist has used a fine brush to paint individual strands that extend onto the smooth surface of the figures' flesh. Although a definitive attribution to Cano may not be presently possible, the style of carving and painting clearly puts the present sculpture within the Spanish sculptor's circle.