Castilian school; first half of the XVI century.... Lot n° 49

Castilian school; first half of the XVI century. "Santa Lucia". Carved and polychrome wood. Presents repainting and saints in the polychrome. Measurements: 74 x 54 x 31 cm. Due to the iconographic attribute of the eyes on the plate, this sculpture can be identified to Saint Lucia of Syracuse (283-304), who was the daughter of noble parents, who educated her in the Christian faith. She took a vow of chastity and consecrated her life to God, but her mother promised her in marriage to a young pagan. Finally, the engagement was broken, after her mother was cured of her illness by a divine miracle, but the suitor accused her before the proconsul Pascacio, denouncing her as a Christian. St. Lucy was then arrested and, refusing to offer sacrifices to the pagan gods, Pascatius ordered her to be taken to a brothel to be raped. However, the soldiers could not take her away, since the girl remained miraculously rigid as a stone. She was then condemned for witchcraft and taken to the stake, although the fire did not harm her. Her eyes were then gouged out, a symbol in the art of her martyrdom, but she retained her vision nonetheless. Finally, Pascacio ordered her beheading. Patron saint of the blind and protector of the poor and sick children, Saint Lucy is mainly venerated in Syracuse, Venice and Peter of the Mount, although important feasts are also dedicated to her in Scandinavia. Spain is, at the beginning of the 16th century, the European nation best prepared to receive the new humanist concepts of life and art because of its spiritual, political and economic conditions, although from the point of view of plastic forms, its adaptation of those introduced by Italy was slower because of the need to learn the new techniques and to change the taste of the clientele. Sculpture reflects perhaps better than other artistic fields this eagerness to return to the classical Greco-Roman world that exalts in its nudes the individuality of man, creating a new style whose vitality surpasses the mere copy. Soon the anatomy, the movement of the figures, the compositions with a sense of perspective and balance, the naturalistic play of the folds, the classical attitudes of the figures began to be valued; but the strong Gothic tradition maintains the expressiveness as a vehicle of the deep spiritualistic sense that informs our best Renaissance sculptures. This strong and healthy tradition favors the continuity of religious sculpture in polychrome wood that accepts the formal beauty offered by Italian Renaissance art with a sense of balance that avoids its predominance over the immaterial content that animates the forms. In the first years of the century, Italian works arrived in our lands and some of our sculptors went to Italy, where they learned first hand the new norms in the most progressive centers of Italian art, whether in Florence or Rome, and even in Naples. Upon their return, the best of them, such as Berruguete, Diego de Siloe and Ordóñez, revolutionized Spanish sculpture through Castilian sculpture, even advancing the new mannerist, intellectualized and abstract derivation of the Italian Cinquecento, almost at the same time as it was produced in Italy.