Spanish school, possibly Granada; late 17th century.

Spanish school possibly Granada; late seventeenth century.
"Ecce homo".
Modeled and polychrome terracotta.
Bibliography: Semblantes. Segovia, 2012.
It presents faults in the polychrome.
Measurements: 37 x 46 x 33 cm.
Devotional terracotta image in round bulk representing the bust of Christ, following the iconography of the Ecce Homo: covered his head with the crown of thorns, the theme refers to the episode of The Passion in which he is mocked by the guards and shown before the Jewish people, who will condemn him. With his gaze upward and his lips parted, his countenance suggests emotional pain. The hair has been modeled strand by strand. This is a work in which solutions are advanced as a careful anatomy and the serene beauty of the face. Here, in spite of transmitting the physical and psychological suffering of a dramatic moment, the sculpture has a contained dramatism in the treatment of the traces of suffering. The words "Ecce Homo" are those pronounced by Pilate when presenting Christ before the crowd; its translation is "behold the man", a phrase by which he mocks Jesus and implies that the power of Christ was not such in front of that of the leaders who were judging him there. In the works destined for private devotion, it was usual to summarize the scene in a single figure, that of Christ, which was normally represented as we see here. In this way the expressiveness and dramatism of the image is concentrated, touching the soul of the faithful who pray before it and preventing their attention from being dispersed in the details. It was a theme that developed especially after the Counter-Reformation and that fit very well with the ideals established in the Council of Trent, since it does not need a doctrinal interpretation.
Stylistically, it is clear the strong influence in the present work of models of the Baroque of the XVII century of the Granada school, and not only in the iconography, but also in the model chosen as an influence for it, in the decoration of the clothes, in the coloring, in the features of the face, etc. The Granada school, which starts from the strong influence of the Renaissance period, counted with great figures such as Pablo de Rojas, Juan Martínez Montañés (who was trained in the city with the previous one), Alonso de Mena, Alonso Cano, Pedro de Mena, Bernardo de Mora, Pedro Roldán, Torcuato Ruiz del Peral, etc. In general, the school does not neglect the beauty of the images and also follows the naturalism, as usual at the time, but it would always emphasize more the intimate and the recollection in some delicate images that would be somewhat similar to the rest of Andalusian schools in another series of details but that do not usually have the monumentality of the Sevillian ones. The work can be inscribed, specifically, in the stylistic circle of the Mora workshop (José and Diego). One of the most important workshops in Granada in the 17th century. The artistic legacy of this family of image makers, which spanned from the last third of the seventeenth century to the second half of the eighteenth century, was a milestone in the Granada school. Influenced by the work of both Alonso Cano and Pedro de Mena, an influence that led him to create a very personal and characteristic style.