Attributed to Bartolomé Ordoñez and Diego de Siloé (1480, Italy - 1520, 1495, Spain - 1563)

Attributed to Bartolomé Ordoñez and Diego de Siloé (1480, Italy - 1520, 1495, Spain - 1563)“Christ”Sculpture in solid walnut wood, carved in one piece, except for the arms. 67,5 x 59 cm.This lot came from importation, so it has guaranteed export license from the Spanish Ministry of Culture.Included is the study by the Professor Rosario Coppel, Doctor in History of Art, dated February 2024, which we used to catalog the sculpture.As Dr. Rosario Coppel relates in her report, it is a sculpture of Christ Crucified in its natural walnut wood color, in spite of there being some paint residue that indicates that it had been polychromed in the past.The sculpture portrays Jesus Christ at the moment of death, with his mouth slightly open and his eyes almost closed. The body falls vertically, with the knees slightly bent.  The head collapses completely to the right side of the chest, buried between the shoulders.The face is oval in shape, with slanted eyes covered by drooping eyelids. The eyes are open just a slit, through which a part of the colored pupil is visible. The nose is straight and long, with flared nostrils, and the mouth is also straight and unsmiling.The hair, mustache and beard are deeply sculpted with wavy curls. One lock of hair is long, falling directly in front of the right shoulder, while the rest of the hair is pulled back and held in place at the left ear.As the author of the report notes, “The anatomical study is profound, masterfully carved, showing tension which is achieved by the carving of the sunken belly, the bones of the sternum, ribs and muscles, which are all very marked, the tension is also evident in the arms and legs.”The loincloth is small in size, hugs the body and wraps tightly around the hips, forming several fine folds.The back is less sculpted, as the Christ was designed to be placed on a cross, which is now lost. The profile of the image presents a bulging chest and a curve at the knees, barely visible when viewed from the front.The most outstanding personal features that distinguish the crucified figure are its classicism, its impeccable anatomical study and the elegance and serenity that it transmits through its expression.The sculpture is made of solid walnut wood and carved in one piece, except for the arms, which were made separately and assembled with nails placed internally.As the report states: “In the technical study, small traces of pigments have been discovered, which shows that it was polychromed.The iconographic prototype comes from Italy, where at the end of the 15th century and the beginning of the 16th century, very naturalistic models of the crucified Christ were created, but at the same time these were very classical, such as those of Donatello, Verrochio, Bruneleschi or Michelangelo”.As far as comparisons are concerned, giving consistency to the attribution of this Crucified Christ, the Professor's report mentions several artworks with clear similarities to this one. Among them, we highlight the following: the work on the reliefs for the San Benito monastery's choir, made between 1525 and 1529 and kept in the National Museum of Sculpture in Valladolid, Spain, on which Diego de Siloé collaborated by making three panels “for the decoration of the abbot's chair, with the themes of Saint John the Evangelist, Saint John of Burgos and the Beheading of the Saint”; there is also an “Ecce Homo” by Siloé, in the parish church of Santa Eulalia in Torquemada (Palencia, Spain), which, according to Coppel, bears a striking resemblance to this Christ.She also highlights two sculptures attributed to Bartolomé Ordoñez. The first, the group of the “Descent from the Cross”, is kept in the Federico Marés Museum in Barcelona, and has a similar model: “the detailed anatomical study, the oval face, the hair with deep locks, one of them loose and very long on the right side, the hands and feet with very long fingers”; and the second, the relief “Lamentation on the Dead Christ”, also in natural colored walnut wood, which is in a private collection. “The parallels with the Crucified Christ are great, although Christ's body is presented as lying down. The face, the hair and the way of sculpting the details of the anatomy are similar, although more softened as it is a relief and not an in the round sculpture.”Regarding the provenance of this lot, Rosario Coppel proposes the following hypothesis. The Crucified Christ is medium size, and is not as large as the Christs made for great altars, which could reach up to two meters in height.  Therefore, we can deduce that it could have been commissioned by a member of the church or the nobility as decoration for a funerary chapel or the oratory of a palace.As the report indicates, “there is a documentary reference to a Crucifix that was commissioned of Diego de Siloe by Bishop Juan Rodriguez de Fonseca. In the inventory raised at the death of his brother, Antonio de Fonseca, his universal heir, the following is recorded: “Cruçifixo de bulto, muy singular, metido en su caja de madera, que le hizo Sylohe”.(Crucifix in the round, very singular, in its wooden box, that was made by Siloé.)It is believed that the Crucifix was destined for the Chapel of Santa María de Coca (Segovia, Spain), where the family burial chamber of the Fonseca family was located.  The same inventory describes:"A large crucifix, in the round, in its box, which is for the service of Holy Week, which was given by my lord bishop."Neither of the two sculptures is currently in the church of Coca, but Luis Vasallo Toranzo has identified the second one mentioned, the one defined as large and processional, as the Christ of Injuries belonging to the Cathedral of Zamora.”As Dr. Rosario Coppel concludes, “the sculpture of Christ Crucified can be placed among the sculptures created by Bartolomé Ordoñez and Diego de Siloe. In the case of the former, there are no known free-standing sculptures of Christ on the cross, but it is known that, in his short artistic career, he was at the service of powerful personages of his time. The two sculptures of the Lamentation (whose provenance is unknown), must have had a private function. If the Crucified Christ was his work, it would have to be dated between 1517 and 1519, coinciding also with the reliefs of the choir of the cathedral of Barcelona.Diego de Siloe's artistic career was much longer, but due to the characteristics of style, this Crucified Christ is framed within the activity carried out during the nine years of his stay in Burgos, from 1519 to 1528. At that time, Siloe worked for influential ecclesiastics who could have commissioned the Crucifix for their chapels (in the case of Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca) or for their patronages (such as the commission of the Abbot of Burgos for the monastery of San Benito). In any of these options, it would not have been just any commission, because of its size and perfect finish. The person who commissioned it must have been a powerful personage in his milieu.It is a previously unknown sculpture, of great artistic and historical beauty, which reflects the taste for the new trends of the Italian Renaissance, technical perfection, and the religious atmosphere that Spain was going through at the time”.