Читать книгу Sculpture - Victoria Charles - Страница 7

Sculpture in Spain was never as highly regarded as painting. One can hardly find any clue to its existence as Spanish sculpture could never rival the magnificent paintings of Velásquez, Murrilo or Ribera. The Arabs taught the Spanish much about architecture since the Koran speaks against other arts.

Victory Fastening Her Sandal

407–410

Marble, height 1.07 m

Acropolis Museum, Athens

It was two foreigners, Florentine Guerardo Starina and Flemish Pierre de Champagne, that would later bring over examples of more impressive sculpture. A disciple of Michelangelo’s, Torrigiano (1472–1528) fled Florence, became a soldier and won the right to teach. He returned to art traveling between Flanders, England, and then Spain.

Statue from Riace

5th century B. C.

Bronze, classical epoque, height 1.96 m

National Archaeological Museum, Reggio Calabria

In 1520, he built a terra-cotta statue of Saint Jerome in the convent of Buenavista, near Seville, which Goya considered better than the Moses by Michelangelo. Amongst the Spanish artists who went to Italy under the reign of Ferdinand of Aragon and of Charles V to take art lessons, there were only two who mastered all three arts:

Pan teaching the Flute to Olympos

350 B.C

Marble

National Archaeological Museum, Reggio Calabria

Alonzo Berruguete (1488–1561) and Gaspar Becerra (1520–1570). In 1635, Alonzo Cano (1601–1667), worked on the altarpiece in the church of Lebriya, one of the most beautiful works of its kind, where one can admire his statue of the Virgin Mary.