“Stained glass is French, the development of mural painting since the Trecento is Italian, but what have we contributed to the universal history of art? “The polychrome imagery is our great contribution.” Lapidary and fair words, which one can easily verify if you visit any of the exhibitions held in Valladolid, the former imperial capital and, for weeks, the epicenter of the best Spanish Baroque sculpture. The cathedral brings together the exhibition until the beginning of March The new art of making images, where the works of the greatest exponents of this period—Gregorio Fernández in Castilla and Juan Martínez Montañés, in the south—converse for the first time.
A few streets away, the National Museum of Sculpture of Valladolid hosts the first monographic exhibition of the sculptor Luisa Roldán, under the title Luisa Roldán. Royal sculptor. Both give shine to wood artists, perhaps not sufficiently valued or recognized from the perspective of the 21st century, buried by the extensive shadow of painting. The not so predictable discovery is that, incidentally, they also illuminate the names (much more anonymous) of those who were in charge of giving color to those images, fundamentally religious, laying the foundations of a canon that has not changed in the last 400 years. .
This is, at least, one of the main conclusions drawn by the creators of one of the most striking exhibitions at the end of 2024 and the beginning of 2025. Although the idea of Jesús Miguel Palomero and René Jesús Payo of bringing together in the same space The creations of Fernández and Montañés were forged before the break due to the pandemic, and had nothing to do with their definitive time frame. Paradoxes of life, the curators proposed for this exhibition to recover the historical context of 1600, where the plague claimed approximately 20% of the population in the two cities that the proposal links. The new art of making images: Valladolid, capital of the Castilian school of sculpture, and Seville, nucleus of Andalusian sculptors. Since the beginning of the project, a pandemic has caused the death of more than 121,000 Spaniards, and another catastrophe, the recent DANA, focused on the Valencian Community, has affected almost a million people, with more than 220 deaths. Now as then, society seeks answers in the midst of a crisis that has severely marked the lives of citizens.
Already back then, four centuries ago, our ancestors needed to define a new image of God, an alternative face that, instead of prolonging punishment, would instill hope in society. And in that period a generation of artists appeared who carved, gave a new form to that divinity. “What is the face of the Romanesque God? A punitive, apocalyptic one, which was no longer of interest to 17th century society because it implied that the plague had been a consequence of the sins committed,” explains Jesús Miguel Palomero, professor of Art History and one of the curators.
And this is how a temporary museum has emerged – taking advantage of the different spaces (nave and chapels) of the Valladolid cathedral – that brings together the pieces of the two greatest figures of baroque sculpture, along with outstanding works by colleagues of their generation, to put a face to this new God and document, before the eyes of the visitor, the change in iconography. A purpose that does not hide the differences between the way of making images of the south and the north. “Good Thursday and Good Friday are celebrated on the same day and at the same time in Valladolid and Seville; However, in the north we find the hardness of the plateau, the mature virgins and that dramatic Christ that the blood offers us, while in the south the blood is repugnant and the virgins are adolescents,” analyzes the expert. So the proposal illustrates differences and similarities of both territories, “with a baroque theatricality and a modern criterion”, through the staging carried out by the experienced Las Ages of Man foundation – 34 years of activity -, with the financial support of the Junta of Castilla y León.
“A spectacle”
In the opinion of the commissioners, the result of The new art of making images (title adapted from essay The new art of making comedies, by Lope de Vega) is “a spectacle.” The arrangement and workmanship of the works by Gregorio Fernández and Juan Martínez Montañés (in a set of 70 pieces, where there are also paintings, documents and other objects) underline, in the opinion of those responsible, the “turning point” that their contribution mark in the history of the country. “The prototypes that these two artists created in their time are the ones that we are maintaining at the present time; What draws our attention is that the strength of these men has imposed a criterion that we continue to respect,” explains Jesús Miguel Palomero. Both (and other colleagues of the highest level, such as Alonso Cano or Juan de Mesa) belong to a time in which sculpture looked into the eyes of painting, despite the fact that the latter ended up definitively imposing itself: the valuation that the time gave The two disciplines in the auctions were similar and, to the advantage of the size, as Palomero points out, “the aim was for the image to be real, that it could be touched.”
This close battle established by sculptors and painters (although the latter were more numerous) had its counterpart between the carvers themselves and the other gods of the time, practically anonymous today: the authors of polychromy. “How many images of magnificent carving are ruined by poor polychrome, and how many discreet ones are revalued when a master polychrome artist works,” reflects professor José Miguel Palomero, to focus attention on these specialists in painting, color and finish. From his point of view, the polychrome technique in this period is “the great universal contribution to art” of Spanish artists, and “this must be said.” These specialist painters earned such fame that they battled in court for an equitable distribution of remuneration. “At a certain moment, they want to charge the same as sculptors, fundamentally, because they use gold, and gold is expensive,” Palomero points out.
But there were those who did not agree with distributing benefits equally. Among them, precisely, the sculptor Juan Martínez Montañés. The genius from Jaén chose to contract the work jointly (carving and polychromy), reserving only 25% for the finishing, which he subcontracted himself. As the curators of the exhibition explain, this meant “violating, breaking, the ordinances of the guild.” An illuminating quote is attributed to the Cádiz polychromist Francisco Pacheco, who frequently worked with Montañés: “Let’s all go to the Court, because I am convinced that Montañés is a man like the rest.” A proclamation that defines the semi-divine status that was granted to artists of the moment, of the stature of the sculptor from Jaén. Therefore, quotes aside, it seems that Montañés, Fernández and others of their generation did end up winning another battle: that of popularity.
The immortal fame of the Roldana
Fame shared with other professional colleagues. With Luisa Roldán among the most powerful, despite her status as a woman in the 17th century. A few minutes walk from the cathedral of Valladolid, the National Museum of Sculpture opens its doors—until March 9—to the temporary exhibition Luisa Roldán. royal sculptor, first monographic exhibition on the author that brings together nearly sixty pieces (some have gone through the museum’s restoration workshop) around a work whose “greatest singularity, apart from its extremely high quality, was the dedication to a group of pieces made in materials other than wood, such as baked and polychrome clay, which she herself called sculpture jewelry.” The curator, Miguel Ángel Marcos Villán, defines this original production as “a type of art that is more decorative than devotional, although the themes remain religious, with pieces that found special accommodation in the court environment as sumptuous objects.”
Although her works were initially overshadowed by the figure of her father, Pedro Roldán, and by her gender in the distant 17th century, the curator maintains that the importance and fame of the popular Roldana are documented from early on, through the artistic contracts that she herself negotiates and signs with institutions. But, above all, thanks to the informative work of the prestigious researcher of the time Antonio Palomino. “The biographies of Luisa Roldán and Sofonisba Anguissola were the only ones that the writer dedicated to women among the more than two hundred that he wrote about Spanish artists in 1724,” says Miguel Ángel Marcos, who also cites two of the Sevillian works that caused impression and “astonishment” at the time due to its extraordinary workmanship: the San Miguel de El Escorial and the Nazareno from the Cuenca town of Sisante.
In the case of Luisa Roldán, it is not that the curator places polychromy at the level of wood carving or clay modeling, but as an inseparable part of the artistic process that, in this case, was always carried out in the same hands. “He had the collaboration of his brother-in-law, Tomás de los Arcos, a very competent polychromist, trained very closely with the painter Valdés Leal, adopting the techniques that were in vogue at that time.” For Marcos Villán, “one of the great successes of this sculpture in the courtly stage (Roldán was a chamber sculptor under the reigns of Carlos II and Felipe V) is that the workshop was reduced to her, her husband and her brother-in-law, which “It guaranteed absolute control of the artistic process and the final result, with a quality at the level of the demands of the monarchy and the high nobility.” Luisa Roldán’s fame, then, did not stop growing and expanding until her death in 1706 (and beyond), when her creations were already immortal.
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