Circle of ALONSO BERRUGUETE (Paredes de Nava,... Lot n° 50

Circle of ALONSO BERRUGUETE (Paredes de Nava, c.1490-Toledo, 1561). "The Ascension of Christ". Carved and polychrome wood. They present faults in the carving and polychromy. Measurements: 43 x 32 x 11 cm (Jesus); 36 x 24 x 9 cm; 42 x 17 x 10 cm. This sculptural group formed by three freestanding figures, represents the iconographic theme of the Ascension of Christ, collected in the New Testament. An act that, according to the narrative, took place with the Apostles. This model, in which Christ ascends only towards the heavens, is already found in examples of the 11th century, and was the most common in Western art, being eclipsed to some extent by that of the Ascension of the Virgin during the 17th and 18th centuries. In this particular case the set only has the presence of two of the apostles, who are placed in an attitude of prayer before the devotional image of Jesus, who extends his arms towards heaven. All the figures that make up this work, present on the back the exposed wood, unworked, which indicates that they were conceived to be part of the ornamentation of an altarpiece, or of an architectural element that would house them. In fact, this same feature indicates that the original sculptural ensemble was probably larger, perhaps including all of the apostles. 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, would revolutionize 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. Alonso González Berruguete (Paredes de Nava, c.1490-Toledo, 1561) was a Spanish sculptor and painter, son of the painter Pedro Berruguete and one of the fundamental references of Spanish Renaissance sculpture. From 1507 he was in Italy expanding his knowledge of painting, mainly in Florence, where he must have arrived around 1512. The long years of his stay in Italy allowed him to become deeply acquainted with the masters of the Quattrocento and the models of classical Greco-Latin sculpture. He took up residence in Valladolid in 1523, where he founded his workshop and dedicated himself to the carving of altarpieces and images.