Master active in Quito, XVIII century.

Master active in Quito; during the XVIII century.
"Christ".
Carved and polychrome wood with applications of vitreous paste simulating rubies.
Measurements: 71 x 36 x 13 cm.
Christ of four nails, made in carved and polychromed wood with applications of vitreous paste simulating rubies as blood. The quality and style of the Quito school, which knew its apogee in the baroque period, can be appreciated. Christ is represented already dead, with closed eyelids and half-open mouth, wearing a crown of thorns and the usual cloth of purity, which stands out for its subtle folds that reveal the skill of the sculptor, as well as the careful modeling of the limbs. We are before a dead Christ, who has stopped suffering, but the traces of martyrdom remain in his features. The veristic language is accentuated by the wounds and the blood that dots the torso, also pearling knees and arms. The carver executes here a well-worked sculpture, in which the pathos is vividly represented. The image is dramatized through the wounds and the polychrome of the skin itself, which in some areas looks bruised,
Technically and stylistically it is inscribed within the Quito school, one of the most important colonial hotbeds of religious art in the world during the Baroque period. Indigenous and mestizo artists were trained in the workshops of the convents of the Ecuadorian capital. In the seventeenth century, especially began to flourish a development of painting in the school of Quito, which is represented by four great masters; Hernando de la Cruz, Miguel de Santiago, Isabel de Santiago and Nicolas Javier Goribar, artists who started from a tradition from Spain, transgressing the imposed style and bringing an idiosyncratic language to his pictorial work. It is worth mentioning that, during the Spanish colonial domination, a mainly religious painting was developed, aimed at Christianizing the indigenous peoples. The local painters were modeled on Spanish works, which they followed literally in terms of types and iconography. The most frequent models were the harquebusier angels and the triangular virgins, however, in the early years of the 19th century, already in times of independence and political opening of some of the colonies, several artists began to represent a new model of painting with its own identity.