Juan Martínez Montañés
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Juan Martínez Montañés (c. 1580-1649), Spanish sculptor, was born at Alcalá-la-Real, in the province of Jaen.
His master was Pablo de Roxas. His first known work, dating 1597, is the graceful St. Christopher in the church of El Salvador at Seville. His boy Christ (dated 1607) is in the sacristy of the cathedral of Seville. His masterpiece, the great altar of St Jerome at San Isidoro del Campo, Santiponce near Seville, was contracted in 1609 and completed in 1613 [1]. Montañés executed most of his sculpture in wood, gessoed, polychromed and gilded.
Other works were the great altars at Santa Clara in Seville and at San Miguel in Jerez, the Conception and the realistic figure of Christ Crucified in Cristo de la Clemencìa, commissioned in 1603[1], in the sacristy of Seville cathedral (illustration); the figure of St John the Baptist, and the St Bruno (1620); a tomb for Don Perez de Guzman and his wife (1619); the highly realistic polychromed wood head and hands of St Ignatius of Loyola (1610) and of St Francis Xavier in the university church of Seville, where the costumed figures were used in celebrations.
Montañés achieved great fame in his lifetimes; he died in 1649, leaving a large family. His works are more realistic than imaginative, but this, allied with an impeccable taste, produced remarkable results. In 1635, in preparation for the bronze equestrian statue of King Philip IV, by Pietro Tacca in Florence in 1640, Montañés went to Madrid and spent seven months there modelling a portrait of Philip IV, which was to be sent to Florence and used by Pietro Tacca in his equestrian sculpture for Madrid..
He had many imitators, his son Alonzo Martínez, who died in 1668, being among them.
[edit] References
- B Haendeke, Studien zur Geschichte der spanischen Plastik (Strassburg, 1900)
- F Gomez, Historia de la escultura en España (Madrid, 1885).
[edit] External links
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
