Spanish school of the second third of the 16th century. ALONSO BERRUGUETE Circle (Paredes de Nava, c.1490-Toledo, 1561).
"Saint Paul".
Sculpture in carved and polychrome wood.
The right hand is not original.
Measurements: 145 x 70 x 55 cm.
This sculpture shows the technical quality of Alonso Berruguete, and it could be a work of his circle. It is a high quality carving, monumental and majestic, which represents Saint Paul holding a book in his left hand, while in his right hand he would carry the sword that identifies him, which has not been preserved today. We can appreciate in this sculpture the strong personality of Alonso Berruguete, an artist who arrived in Italy as a painter and who returned to Spain as a magnificent sculptor. In Italy he was strongly influenced by classical statuary (with works such as Laooconte) and by the sculptures of Michelangelo, a morphological aspect that can be seen in the powerful anatomy and serenity that emanates from the saint's face.
In the early years of the century, Italian works arrived in our lands and some of our sculptors went to Italy, where they learned the new standards at first hand in the most progressive centres of Italian art, whether in Florence or Rome, or even in Naples. On their return, the best of them (Pedro Berruguete, father of Alonso Berruguete, Diego de Siloé y Ordóñez) revolutionised Spanish sculpture through Castilian sculpture, even advancing the new mannerist, intellectualised 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 key figures in Spanish Renaissance sculpture. From 1507 he spent time in Italy to broaden his knowledge of painting, principally in Florence, where he must have arrived around 1512. His long years in Italy allowed him to become deeply acquainted with the masters of the Quattrocento and the models of classical Greco-Latin sculpture. He settled in Valladolid in 1523, where he founded his workshop and devoted himself to carving altarpieces and images.