Juan Martínez Montañés Circle

Circle of JUAN MARTÍNEZ MONTAÑES (Alcalá la Real, Jaén, 1568 - Seville, 1649), XVII century.
"Child Jesus".
Wood carving and polychrome.
Base of the XIX century.
Measurements: 50 x 17 x 27 cm.

Devotional sculpture of the Infant Jesus blessing with his right hand, resolved in a naturalistic and classicist style that can be related to the Spanish clay. More specifically, it reveals a special influence of the great master of the Sevillian sculptural school of the XVII century, Juan Martínez Montañés. The material preferred by Montañés was always polychrome wood, with the collaboration of great painters, including Francisco Pacheco, Velázquez's teacher. He enjoyed great fame and popularity, becoming known in Seville as "the god of wood" and in Madrid as "the Andalusian Lysippos". His art, which he transmitted to his disciples in his workshop, was inspired above all in the natural, denoting characteristics more classicist, at times, than baroque. However, towards the end of his career he evolved towards a fully baroque realism. Formally, classical elegance and harmony stand out, the basis of baroque works of mountain influence. It is, above all, a fully naturalistic work, idealized in terms of the subject matter, but of great verism and expressiveness. In the Sevillian environment, the seventeenth century was a time of enormous economic and, therefore, artistic boom.