Valladolid School of the 16th century

Valladolid School of the 16th century.
"Virgin and Saint Anne".
Relief in polychrome and gilded wood.
Measurements: 84 x 35 x 2 cm.
Relief in carved and polychrome wood, with gilded details that enrich and clarify the composition. Rectangular in format, this is a clearly Italianate work in which the Virgin and her mother are represented. Both women are shown in the foreground, expressing their affliction and foreboding through a shared silence. Mary's lowered gaze, Saint Anne holding her hands and the grief reflected in her features speak for themselves.
Spain was, 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 plastic forms, its adaptation of those introduced 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 desire to return to the classical Greco-Roman world, which in its nudes exalts the individuality of man, creating a new style whose vitality surpasses mere copying. Anatomy, the movement of the figures, compositions with a sense of perspective and balance, the naturalistic play of folds, the classical attitudes of the figures soon began to be valued; but the strong Gothic tradition maintained expressivity as a vehicle for the profound spiritualist sense that informs our best Renaissance sculptures. This strong and healthy tradition favours the continuity of religious sculpture in polychrome wood, which 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 early 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 standards in the most progressive centres of Italian art, whether in Florence or Rome, and even in Naples. On their return, the best of them, such as Berruguete, Diego de Siloe and Ordóñez, revolutionised Spanish sculpture through Castilian sculpture, even advancing the new mannerist, intellectualised and abstract derivation of the Italian Cinquecento, almost at the same time as it was produced in Italy.