The chronicles say that they did not cross paths in life, although they undoubtedly knew each other through hearsay. However, Martínez Montañés and Gregorio Fernández had a lot in common. Both were sculptors at the dawn of the Baroque – the first, in Valladolid; the second, in Seville. Both served the Spanish monarchy. And they even agreed on strange “trials”, such as the competition for the creation of the great altarpiece of the cathedral of Plasencia – which the Castilian finally won. However, if the revered artists, devout believers, agreed on anything, it was on their aesthetic, religious and stylistic assumptions. Since this Tuesday, Valladolid Cathedral has become “the great museum of polychrome imagery” to recreate a dialogue between these “two great colossi of 17th century Spanish sculpture”. Through nearly seventy works distributed in a preamble and six chapters, the exhibition ‘Gregorio Fernández-Martínez Montañés. The new art of creating images aims to “instruct, delight and excite,” said professors Jesús Miguel Palomero and René Payo, its curators. Both expressed satisfaction that a project they had started talking about in 2019 had come to fruition. A year later, the Seville Museum hosted a major exhibition by Martínez Montañés and it was then “that it became completely clear that we had succeeded. to try to contrast” the two figures. In 2022, upon taking office, the Minister of Culture and Tourism, Gonzalo Santonja, took up the challenge and transformed it into a legislative project which, despite the intrinsic difficulties, was able to see the light of day under the leadership of the Ages of Man Foundation. To understand how the two artists conceived their work, it is necessary to place them in their historical context, recalled the preamble “Two creators. of images, two workshops, two cities” is responsible for it, where we can see two portraits of the two artists made by Diego Valentín Díaz and Francisco Varela, as well as documents such as baptism and death certificates Photo by. family of authorities during the inauguration of the exhibition, a piece of the Castilian processional passage “The Elevation of the Cross” (Francisco del Rincón, 1604) and the head of Saint John the Baptist sculpted by the Sevillian Juan de Mesa in 1604. 1625 I. Volume With a population decimated by the plague, the society of the time needed to “get rid of” the representation of a God with an apocalyptic face and replace it with “a face that would regain the trust of men. Both the artist born in Sarriá (Lugo) and the Jaenese from Alcalá la Real began to represent a type “who, under a natural appearance, hid an idealization of the good”. They therefore wanted to represent this “goodness” with what they considered to be the canons of beauty: “Images of tall height and slender bodies because they had to follow a harmonious proportion, of beautiful men as synonymous with virility” and, above all, sizes that aroused emotion, because “this is the big difference between the sculptor and the creator of images”, recalled Palomero. The origin of both styles is what the title of the exhibition, which refers to “new art”, attempts to capture. to make comedies” with which Lope de Vega undertook to represent on stage “the reality that the spectator wanted to see”. Also the first chapter of the tour, “The origin of two styles”, which brings together the work of artists such such as Pompeo Leoni or Francisco Rincón, with whom image creators discovered new forms, compositions and techniques that shaped their artistic personality. For Payo it is an “essentially stylistic” exhibition, with which to propose a. route that goes from the origin of the two sculptors to the way in which they contributed to the creation of their own style, “what were the great types that they developed and who were their successors.” The goal, he adds, is to “contrast” two great characters “in their similarities, but also in their differences”, because “they had a different way of approaching this attempt to make the sacred real”. , by Gregorio Fernández EFE Their evolution, this transition which takes them from mannerism to naturalism, is captured in “chapter 2”, which contrasts an Andalusian “Saint Bruno” from the Museum of Fine Arts in Seville, with a Santo Domingo from Guzmán of the Convent of Valladolid of San Pablo and San Gregorio, or also one of the numerous “Ecce Homo” of the artist who settled in Castile with a San Cristóbal of the first. “Faithful to Trent” is the title of the third space of the exhibition, which refers to the “ideological context” in which the two artists evolved. Divided into three “subchapters” – History of Salvation, The Greatness of Mary and Models of Holiness – it includes scenes from the sacred texts both transferred to wood, as well as the iconography of Mary, then popular, and the saints. . In addition to the Virgin, the protagonists of this space are, among others, the Trinity, Saint Peter, Saint Paul and Saint Ignatius of Loyola. These are sculptures that help the viewer to realize the difference in styles – while the Castilian school abused the “bloody”, the Andalusian school was “rejected” -, as well as the “perfection” with which they were finishing their works, like Il which can be seen in a San Francisco, the only non-polychrome work in the exhibition. The penultimate chapter, number 4, deals specifically with the work of polychromes. Diego Valentín Díaz and Francisco de Pacheco were two of the painters with whom the masters worked closely in their workshops, and among them you can see two oil paintings of the Immaculate Conception and “The Breastfeeding of Saint Bernard “. From the dialogue between painting and sculpture, we perceive that “there was not only a transfer of polychromies but also of types”, say the curators. The No Andalucía standard abandons the sculpture of “San Bruno”, by Martínez Montañés, for. an exhibition in the Cathedral of Valladolid ABC The monographic exhibition, in which the Andalusian sculptor and Gregorio Fernández will dialogue, will take place in November within the framework of AR-PA Cultural TourismWith the ‘wake’ left by the masters in their apprentices Manuel Rincón and Juan de Mesa faces the last part of the exhibition, which ends with some of the reference works that they both created, such as the “San Jerónimo penitente” by Martínez Montañés, the “Descent from the Cross” by Gregorio Fernández or the impressive “Recumbent Christ”, by the same author, which is between the only two non-religious works: the praying figures of Alonso Pérez de Guzmán El Bueno and his wife María Coronel. The inauguration of the exhibition, which will run until March 2. brought together a broad representation of Valladolid society and institutions. There, the advisor emphasized that the determination of the Council and the commitment to dialogue and the sum of efforts and collaborations (Church, private collectors and institutions) allowed us to overcome what seemed to be an “impossible” and highlighted that this project will mark “a before and an after”.
