THE RENAISSANCE, AND THE INFLUENCE OF MICHAEL ANGELO (continued)—THE SCHOOLS OF VALLADOLID AND MADRID After the middle of the sixteenth century a change came, or rather, a further step was taken in the use of Italian forms, and a style was evolved which may be said with sufficient accuracy to correspond to the developed Renaissance of Italy.
Gaspar Becerra was now the most prominent sculptor in Spain. Like Berruguete, whose rival and true successor he was, he received his artistic training in Italy; like him, too, he was a painter and architect as well as sculptor. It is said that Becerra worked in the studio of Michael Angelo, but Vasari, whose pupil he was, does not count him among the disciples of the great Florentine. He was born at Baeza, a small town in the kingdom of Jaen, in 1520. He was still quite young when he went to Italy. In Rome he{98} gained a position of importance working under the leadership of his master, Vasari, and under Daniele da Volterra in the Trinita de Monti, decorating in the Cancelleria. His skill in drawing, especially the human figure, was great, and he furnished the plates for Valverde’s “Anatomy,” printed in Rome in 1554. We know also that he was married in Rome in 1556. Five years later he returned to Spain, and like his predecessor he became painter and sculptor to Philip II. Becerra worked at the decoration of the Pardo palace, and painted frescoes in the Alcazar of Madrid, which were destroyed in the fire of 1734; in addition he designed, sculptured, and painted the altar-screen of the Convent of Dèscalzas Reales in the same city, working for the Infanta Do?a Maria, while for the Queen, Do?a Isabel de la Paz, he sculptured the statue of Nuestra Se?ora de la Solitude, which is worshipped in the chapel of the Minime fathers. This position as Court artist caused Becerra’s services to be eagerly sought, and carvings and paintings of his will be found at Zamora, Valladolid, Zaragoza, Burgos, Salamanca, and elsewhere. His masterpiece, and his last work, is the retablo in the Church of Astorga, on which he worked from 1550 to 1569. He died at Madrid in 1571,{99} when still young and in the height of his activity and power.
The merit of Becerra’s work is a feeling for ideal beauty, unusual in Spain, united with dignity and, to some degree, with strength. All his sculptures are in the style of Michael Angelo; and this has led to a confusion between his carvings and those of Berruguete. But this is a mistake. Berruguete, though a follower of Michael Angelo, was Spanish with a strong national accent, while Becerra was an Italian, completely renouncing the national traditions in favour of Renaissance forms. For this reason his work is far less important than that of his predecessor; it also opened the road for the degeneration of native sculpture. Becerra made the study of Michael Angelo and the antique the substitute for a study of nature, and possessing a happy knack of pleasing the eye, he was content to be an imitator, and therefore added nothing to Spanish sculpture.
A good example of Becerra’s art, and his best single carving, is the small polychrome bas-relief of St Jerome in the Desert (Plate 123) in the side altar of the Capilla del Condestable at Burgos. There are several copies of this statue, for, like many imitators, Becerra repeated his works; one, in white marble, is in the Church of{100} San Pedro at Huesca. On account of its likeness to the St. Jerome, M. Marcel Dieulafoy attributes to Becerra the statue of the prophet Elias in Santo Tomás at Toledo, the church that contains the masterpiece of El Greco. The retablo at Astorga, Becerra’s most important work, is an imposing erection, much praised in Spain. The effect is pleasing, but a closer examination leaves the spectator unsatisfied; the statues and carvings are all modelled on Renaissance types, and are without individuality. Still this retablo must not be neglected; it is a good example of estofado sculpture.
Contemporary with Berruguete worked Juan de Juni, who carried the Michael Angelo following to its furthest and most exaggerated development. Little is known about this artist; even his nationality is uncertain, some accounting him a Spaniard, others an Italian, or even a Fleming. Bermudez thinks he was an Italian. But though a pupil and close imitator of Michael Angelo, Juni, if not born in Spain, became a Spaniard by temperament and adoption, as the style of his work proves. In his carvings we find that search for expression at any cost, leading to exaggerated gestures and an over-accentuation of detail, as for example in depicting the sorrows of the Christ by gaping wounds{101} and the presence of blood—by which the Spanish artists sought to give dramatic reality to their religious representation. It is this that has caused Juni to be so highly estimated in Spain.
The details of Juni’s life are fragmentary and contradictory. For long he was said to have been born during the second half of the sixteenth century, and to have died at the beginning of the seventeenth century. In reality he lived earlier, and was born in 1507, while he died at Valladolid in April 1577. We hear of him first about the middle of the sixteenth century, when the Archbishop of Portugal summoned him from Rome to superintend the building and decoration of the Episcopal palace at Oporto. This he did, as well as constructing other buildings in the city. Afterwards he went to Osuna, then to Santoyo, and finally to Valladolid, where he settled, and remained until his death.
Juni has left a great amount of work, and his statues and bas-reliefs, always easily recognised, will be found in the churches and convents of Osuna, Segovia, Valladolid, Santoyo, Aranda de Douro, and Salamanca. His best-known altar-screen is the Descent from the Cross in Segovia Cathedral (Plate 124). In this surprising work we have well displayed both the qualities and defects of{102} Juni’s talents. Instead of the decoration being carried out in compartments, the carvings are in isolated groups, a change in construction which was the greatest service that Juni rendered to Spanish sculpture. The figures are all life-size; the finest is that of the Christ, which has real dignity, and is without exaggeration. The agitation and grief of the Virgin and the holy women is too much emphasised, while the attitudes of the fantastically attired soldiers placed on either side are so accentuated that one is left with a consciousness of insincerity. The dramatic power becomes theatrical and unreal. Contrast this Descent from the Cross with Berruguete’s rendering of the same scene in San Geronimo at Granada, and this becomes abundantly evident. The restraint in the latter work is strength, while Juni’s scene, with its over-acclamation, ends in weakness. But in Spain the Segovia screen is highly treasured. It is brilliantly coloured. We have no proof that Juni himself polychromed his statues, but we know that he was a painter of great talent, and the harmony which exists between his models and the colouring seems to prove that he must have superintended the polychrome. Documentary evidence shows that in some cases, at any rate, the colourisation was{103} done in his studio, under his direction, and that he himself painted the faces, the hands, and the feet of his figures.
The same model of the Segovia Christ can be recognised in another work of Juni’s, the Burial of Christ, executed for the Convent of San Francesco at Valladolid, and now in the city museum (Plate 125). Here we have an even stronger example of Juni’s art, in which the conception of woe is depicted with greater extravagance, and with what appears to us as futile exaggeration of the details of sorrow. Death is shown with startling reality in the body of the Christ, which is rigid with the muscles already contracted, and the reality is carried further by the colouring; the limbs and the face are mottled with livid stains. Blood flows from the wounds, which are laid open. The body is horrible with the sense of human corruption. The figures of the Virgin, St. John, and the Magdalen all express passionate and over-emphatic sorrow. But the work is perfectly sincere; to doubt this is to misunderstand the nature of Spanish art. It is the quality that meets us so often; a too dramatic, too emphatic effort to realise a scene exactly as it happened.
Another carving in the same style, with the same faults and the same qualities, is the Virgin of{104} the Swords in the monastery Capilla de Nuestra Se?ora de las Agustinas, also at Valladolid. It must be remembered that these works can be appreciated only by the student who understands Spanish art. Certainly Juni is more Spanish than Italian.
Juan de Juni opened the way for his successor Gregorio Hernandez, the sculptor who may be said to have inherited, and afterwards personally expressed, all that his predecessors had accomplished. For the great difference between Juni, Becerra, and even Berruguete and the great master of Galicia is that they, in greater or less degree, were content with imitation, while he, warned possibly by their extravagances, studied nature with patient care, and said what he had to say for himself, and in this way he purged the plastic art of scholastic mannerisms. This is why Gregorio Hernandez occupies the most important position in the history of Northern Spanish sculpture.
Gregorio Hernandez did not study in Italy, indeed it has been said that he never went from Valladolid. But this is a mistake. He studied and worked in that city, but we know that he was married in Madrid, and that in 1604 he was in Vittoria, executing the altar-screen for the Church of San Miguel. No actual mention is made of Hernandez{105}’ residence in Valladolid before the year 1605, when in certain contracts we find that he acted as assistant sculptor to the Italian artist Millan Vilmercati. M. Marcel Dieulafoy places the date of his first coming to Valladolid about 1601, the year in which a number of famous artists were summoned to the royal city by Philip II. and the Duke of Lerma.
Of the life of Hernandez we know few details. He was born in Galicia in 1570, a date furnished by the inscription on his portrait, now in the Museum of Valladolid. He died in 1636 at the age of sixty-six, as is shown by the register in the archives of the Church of San Ildefonso. It would seem that he never left Spain. His first known work undertaken as a sculptor was the altar-screen of San Miguel at Vittoria, but he must have executed earlier carvings, as is proved by the payments made for this work—4208 reals for the sculpture, and over 604 reals for the statues in relief—and also by the importance of the position he occupied. Hernandez directed the whole work, choosing as his assistants the master-carpenter Cristobal Velazquez, and the painters Francesco Martinez and Pedro de Salazar.
The activity of Hernandez was very great. From the date of this altar-screen we have a vast{106} number of carvings executed, or supposed to have been executed by him. His studio became the centre of the artistic activities of his day, for the amount of his work necessitated the employment of assistants. This has led to confusion, and there are many carvings attributed to Hernandez which cannot be accepted as the work of his own hand. It is fortunate that the distinctive qualities of his work make it possible to recognise at once those carvings and statues that have been fathered on his name. Hernandez placed special importance on the colourisation of his statues. In an interesting contract made with his habitual polychromist, Diego Valentin Diaz, we find the most minute details laid down, enforcing the care with which the work is to be carried out. The colours chosen “are to be those which are permanent”; “the flesh must be mate,” as, it will be remembered, was enforced by Pacheco, and “in each case the colouring must be suitable to the model painted,” as, for example, “Jesus the tint of an infant, the Virgin that of a young woman, St. Joseph that of a man,” while “the hair and eyes must also be in harmony.” Also, “gilded stuffs and damasked are to be avoided,” and “gold is to be used sparingly on laces and fringes only.” The effect to be aimed at is harmony and{107} truth to nature. It is by this restriction to a sombre and quiet scheme of colour, so different from the startling and tumultuous effects, glittering with gold, of Juni, for instance, that the polychromes of Hernandez may be recognised. His colours, always quiet, give an effect of having been worked on silver or ivory. The polychromes that do not manifest these tones are not by Hernandez; when they bear his name they must have been executed by his pupils apart from his direction. Examples of such spurious works are the immense and highly coloured Sta. Teresa in the Valladolid Museum, and also the Pasos, or groups from the Passion, highly praised by the Spanish writers and used in the religious processions of Valladolid, which have been attributed, certainly erroneously, to Hernandez.
Authentic works of Hernandez may be seen, first in the churches, convents, and museum of Valladolid, and also at Madrid, Palencia, Vittoria, Salamanca, Zamora, Pontevedra, Medina del Campo, and other towns. But in no case must the attribution to Hernandez be accepted without an examination of the works themselves. Those which do not display his qualities, especially in their colourisation, must be accounted as the work of his pupils.{108}
Hernandez continued the practice of Juni in carving his statues as separate figures or in isolated groups. Almost without exception he used wood as his material.
The Museum of Valladolid contains at least three authentic statues by Hernandez. The most important is the Pietà, executed for one of the dispersed convents of the city, a beautiful example of polychrome (Plate 126). The Virgin, whose sorrow is genuinely expressed, with dignity and without exaggeration, supports the dead Christ, a pallid figure finely suggesting death. She wears a red-brown robe partly covered by a blue mantle. The winding-sheet and her veil are white, and also the band attached to the Cross, and are coloured so skilfully that the texture of the stuffs is clearly discernible. M. Marcel Dieulafoy justly says: “The grace and freedom of the modelling is only equalled by the variety and discreet harmony of the painting.” The bas-relief of the Baptism of Christ (Plate 127), though very different, is a work of equal merit, but it has suffered greatly from the damage of time, which has especially injured the beauty of the polychrome. The St. John is a splendid figure of energy and savage strength, and in strong contrast with the Christ, and the con{109}trast is emphasised by the skilful colouring, the complexion of the prophet being browned by exposure to the sun, while that of the Christ is of delicate harmony. The third statue represents St. Francis (Plate 128), a fine and harmonious work. It is coloured in sombre shades, almost monochrome, which speaks for Hernandez’ authorship.
To Hernandez also is attributed the reliquary bust of St. Elizabeth in the museum. It is a work of supreme merit, but the polychrome is too brilliant to make it easy to accept it as the work of Hernandez. The vivid orange-brown of the cape with the blue lining, the violet-purple of the turban, the gleaming white of the veil, and the gold tracery of the breast ornament are not the accustomed tones of the Galician master. But though the statue is probably not by Hernandez—and this is the opinion of M. Marcel Dieulafoy—it is a splendid example of polychrome.
The most famed work of Hernandez is the Mater Dolorosa, preserved and most carefully guarded in the Capilla de la Cruz at Valladolid. The representation is very Spanish in its frank and detailed statement of sorrow. Probably no one who is not Spanish can wholly appreciate the statue. The tears, made of glass set in wood, the{110} reflected stains of blood on the yellow robe and on the sleeves, the pallid face and colourless lips, the deep-set eyes made tragic with bistre rings, the emphasised attitude especially of the hands, do not appeal to those to whom the divine tragedy represented is not a living reality—a part of human life, not an incident of belief. It is necessary to take notice of these things in judging the most Spanish of Spanish sculptures. In this Virgin Hernandez is nearer to Juan de Juni, but his representation of the Mother of Sorrows is much simpler, much nearer to nature—Spanish nature, not our nature, let it be remembered—and therefore his work leaves a deeper and more lasting impression. The Christ at the Column in the Convent of the Carmelites at Avila is another statue of a similar character which is attributed to Hernandez.
The influence of Gregorio Hernandez was far-reaching, and the native sculptors of the seventeenth century, not only in Valladolid but also in the newly-founded school of Madrid, followed in his traditions. Certainly it was his work, with its strong national accent, its sincerity and close following of nature, which in the Northern schools saved Spanish sculpture in large measure from the degradation which, at the close of the{111} seventeenth century, fell upon the sister art of painting.
Gregorio Hernandez had many pupils. We have mentioned Cristobal Velazquez, the master-carpenter who worked with him on the altar-screen of Vittoria. It is probable that he became the pupil of the Galician master. To Cristobal Velazquez must be attributed the beautiful altar-screen of the Church of Las Agustinas at Valladolid, which has been falsely ascribed to Berruguete and to Pompeo Leoni. The references made to Cristobal Velazquez in the contracts for the work, and the fact that he was charged with the “looking over and passing” of the screen after it had been set up, prove his authorship. No mention either of Berruguete or Pompeo Leoni is given, an omission unaccountable if these great artists had participated in the work, when the painters and sculptors are all carefully named. This altar-piece proves that Cristobal Velazquez was a great artist. In the central bas-relief of the Annunciation the Virgin kneels, while the Angel Gabriel, a figure of supreme beauty and nobility, stands upon her right side. Above is a fine Pietà, and to the right and left are the figures of St. Augustin and St. Laurent; while beneath are statuettes of the Evangelists, with two small{112} panels on either side, one of St. Joseph and the Child Jesus, the other of St. Ursula. The architecture, the ornaments, and figures are all finely executed, and the work is one of great beauty and harmony. Unfortunately the colouring, which was carried out by the painter Prado, an artist of great local celebrity who had already decorated the Chapel of Las Huelgas, Burgos, has become so blackened with age that it is difficult to judge its primitive merit.
Two sculptors intimately associated with Gregorio Hernandez were Luis de Llamosa, who completed many of his master’s unfinished works, and Juan Francisco de Hibarne, his favourite pupil, to whom he gave his daughter Damiana in marriage. Carvings by these artists will be found in several of the churches of Valladolid.
But of greater fame was the Portuguese sculptor Manuel Pereyra, who, though reported to have studied in Italy, must certainly have been the pupil of Hernandez, if we may judge from the testimony of his works. They show no trace of Italian influence, and are inspired by the earnestness of Spanish devotion. We first hear of Pereyra in May 1646, when he carved in stone the statue of San Felipe for the convent of the saint at Valladolid. His reputation grew rapidly, and his statue{113} of St. Bruno, executed for the Hostel of the Chartreuse del Paula, set the seal to his fame. The statue was so greatly admired that it is said that King Philip IV. ordered his coachman, on passing the door, to slacken the pace so that he might admire it at leisure. There is a fine replica of the St. Bruno in the Chartreuse of Miraflores. Like Hernandez, Pereyra used quiet colours, without gilding or damask effects. In his last years Pereyra became blind, but this calamity does not seem to have interfered with his carving. He died in 1667.
It would seem to be by the aid of Manuel Pereyra that the influence of Gregorio Hernandez was carried to Madrid. But in this work he was supported by Alonso de los Rios, a carver of intelligence, taste, and skill, who was born in Valladolid about 1650, and who early went to Madrid. In his studio worked Juan de Villanueva and his two sons Juan and Alfonso Rios, who directed the art of carving in the capital during the first years of the eighteenth century. Afterwards in the studio of Rios worked Luis Salvador Carmona, whose talent was so marked that on the death of his master he became its director. Under his guidance the Madrid school became so famous that Ferdinand VI. in 1752 transformed it into the{114} Royal Academy of San Fernando. The greater number of Carmona’s carvings are at Madrid. They are single statues and bas-reliefs. He does not appear to have carved an altar-screen. For altar-screens, that had been required by the churches, had now fallen in the popular esteem, due to a weakening of the strong religious impulses that for so long had directed the expression of art. Carmona also executed forty-two small statues for the parish of Seguro in Biscay. But his finest works are his two statues at Salamanca. Both are in the cathedral—one, a Pietà, known as La Dolorosa, in the Capilla de San José (Plate 131); the other, a Flagellation of the Christ (Plate 132), is in the sacristy. These realistic and emotional groups are the works by which Carmona must be judged. They witness that he had through his masters inherited the traditions of Gregorio Hernandez, though his work is less sincere and without the Galician master’s fine truth to nature. In Spain Carmona is accounted a master, but this praise is too high. This much may be granted to him: his works have great, even surprising, merit when we take into consideration the period at which they were executed.
If the influence of Gregorio Hernandez speaks{115} in the artists we have just considered, it is to the influence of the impassioned and dramatic Juan de Juni we must turn to account for those tragic representations of severed heads of martyrs, depicted with such strange delight in all the details of horror and putrefaction, of which we find many examples belonging to the late seventeenth century. Such heads, representing most frequently St. John the Baptist, St. Paul, or St. Anastasius, may be seen in many places—Nuestra Se?ora del Pilar at Zaragoza, the cathedral and hospital church at Granada, and the Monastery of Santa Clara at Seville are a few examples. The Museum of Valladolid possesses two heads of St. Paul. The finer one, taken from the Convent of St. Paul, is the work of Alonso Villabrille, a sculptor of Madrid who lived at the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries. It is perhaps the best example of these astonishing heads (Plate 133). The polychrome is carried out with great care, and the horror of the dissevered head is lessened by the beard which shields the severed neck.
The influence of Gregorio Hernandez did much to stay the deterioration which now, at the end of the seventeenth century, threatened the plastic arts of Northern Spain. The baroque style was{116} introduced with disastrous results, and we find the ugly, overloaded, exaggerated decoration known as Churriguera. Perhaps the greatest evil was the destruction of many of the old Gothic and classic altar-screens, with their beautiful polychrome statues. Images were carved with apparatus for moving the head and eyes, and the mouth. These figures were really wooden dolls, with real hair and real dresses, in which only the head and hands were carved: they mark the lowest level of the plastic arts. A notorious example is the Transparente in the Cathedral of Toledo, executed by Narciso Tomé in 1752.
It is remarkable that side by side with these degraded works we find a number of bas-reliefs and statues in which the earnestness of the Spanish religious spirit has inspired the baroque form. We may mention as especially worthy of study, a Conception in Palencia Cathedral, and a superb monument let into the wall on the right of the great altar; a beautiful Virgin in the Chapel of Ayuntamiento, Pampeluna; the Madonna over the high altar of Cuenca; the kneeling figure of an archbishop in San Andrés at Avila; and the magnificent tomb of Cardinal Valdés in the Church of the Sala, Oviedo. This last work is a masterpiece.