458. Juan Martínez Montañés (1568-1649), Spanish,

St. Ignatius of Loyola, c. 1610. Painted wood,

height: 167 cm. Chapel of the University, Seville.

 

 

Considered the “Phidias of Seville”, Juan Martínez Montañés undertook this sculpture for the beatification of St. Ignatius Loyola in 1610. Creator of the head and hands, he managed to soften the energetic face of the founder of the Society of Jesus, who organised his order in militias, while nevertheless producing a portrait striking in its realism. The painter Pacheco undertook the polychromy of the work, which is in the chapel of the University of Seville.

Later, Juan Martínez Montañés made a sculpture of St. Francis Borgia to balance the decoration of the chapel.

 

 

Juan Martines Montañés

(1568 Alcala-la-real – 1649 Seville)

 

Spanish sculptor, Juan Martínez Montañes was the pupil of Pablo de Rojas. His first known work (1607) is a Boy Christ, now in the sacristy of the capella antigua in the Seville cathedral. Montañes executed most of his sculpture in wood, coloured, and covered with a surface of polished gold. 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 the Seville cathedral; the figure of St. John the Baptist, and the St. Bruno (1620); a tomb for Don Perez de Guzman and his wife (1619); the St. Ignatius and the St. Francis of Borja in the university church of Seville. Montañes died in 1649, leaving a large family. His works are more realistic than imaginative, but this, allied with an impeccable taste, produced remarkable results. Montañes modelled the equestrian statue of King Philip IV, cast in bronze by Pietro Tacca in Florence and now in Madrid. He had many imitators, his son Alonso Martínez, who died in 1668, among them.