Francisco Salzillo
Francisco Salzillo y Alcaraz (Murcia, May 12, 1707-ibid., March 2, 1783) was a Spanish Baroque sculptor, considered the most representative image maker of the Spanish 18th century and one of the greatest of the Baroque. Salzillo devoted himself exclusively to religious themes and knew how to convey to his style the changes that took place during the XVIII century, what was seen embodied in a transitional sculpture towards rococo and neoclassicism, as well as in various changes that took place in the workshop that he inherited from his father, also a sculptor and image maker Nicolás Salzillo.
His life was spent entirely in Murcia. Today it has a museum dedicated to his work, the Salzillo Museum, which houses some of his most characteristic works, such as the nativity scene or the eight steps that procession on Good Friday in the so-called procession of the Salzillos .
Biography
Francisco Salzillo was born in Murcia on May 12, 1707. His father, Nicolás Salzillo, was an Italian sculptor, from Santa Maria Capua Vetere, who had settled in Murcia a few years earlier. After beginning to study Letters with the Jesuits, it seems that he entered the Dominican Order as a novice, after which he had to take charge of his father's sculpture workshop on his death in 1727, when Francisco was only twenty years old..
He was the second of seven siblings, some of whom would work in the family workshop, specifically José Antonio and Patricio, born in 1710 and 1722 respectively, and possibly Inés, in charge of gilding and stewing the images made in the family workshop In 1746 he married Juana Vallejo y Taibilla, a marriage from which two children were born: Nicolás, born in 1750 and died the following year, and María Fulgencia. Francisco Salzillo's entire life took place in Murcia, where he made a name and fame that transcended the merely artistic. There is only one documented trip of his outside the city of Murcia, the one he made to Cartagena to deliver the images of the Four Saints in 1755. He rejected the invitation of the Count of Floridablanca to move to Madrid, which would have helped him to meet to know in court.
Over the years, his work became famous and he received many commissions from churches and convents in Murcia and the neighboring provinces: Alicante, Albacete and Almería. In 1755 he was named Official Sculptor of the Council of Murcia and inspector of painting and sculpture .
After the death of his wife in 1763, Salzillo's meetings with other Murcian artists and intellectuals became more frequent. In 1777 they founded the Royal Economic Society of Friends of the Country of Murcia, which served to create the Patriotic School of Drawing in 1779, whose first director was Salzillo. He died in Murcia on March 2, 1783. He was buried in the disappeared Convent of Capuchinas in Murcia, where his sister Francisca de Paula had professed.
Work
The illustrated art historian and critic Juan Agustín Ceán Bermúdez, in his Dictionary of teachers of fine arts in Spain (1800), named the sculptor as Francisco Salcillo and made him the author of one thousand seven hundred and ninety-two works. This is an exaggerated amount, since the figure was based on a publication in which Luis Santiago Bado, a contemporary Murcian journalist of the sculptor and his first biographer, declared:
He could count eight hundred and ninety-six works, exits from his hands: that, although only two figures were calculated each (because it was rare that, even if it were in one image, a group of angels, clouds, etc.) rose to a thousand seven hundred and ninety-two.
The processional groups had been considered as a homogeneous group, but the other works had been quantified without measure. Despite this, the truth is that Francisco Salzillo developed an intense activity between 1727 and 1783, a circumstance that Luis Santiago Bado himself described as:
Its unique agility and skill testifies in an irrefragable way to its tireless and uninterrupted application.
Unfortunately, the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) marked the destruction of many of his creations. Among those that are preserved, the majority are distributed throughout the Region of Murcia and some neighboring provinces.
Stages
The most outstanding productions of his youth, in which he had to take charge of his father's workshop, were the Dolorosa of the parish of Santa Catalina, the San José of Santa Clara, the Sagrada Familia of San Miguel and the Inmaculada of the convent of Verónicas, all of them present in the city of Murcia.
From 1740 his personal and well-defined style began to be appreciated more clearly. It was in this year that he achieved fame with La Piedad of the Brotherhood of the Servitas of the parish of San Bartolomé de Murcia, a model that he repeated for Lorca, Dolores de Alicante and Yecla. It was his first foray into passion iconography, of which he would become a great teacher. Other important works that followed this one were the San Antón of the hermitage of San Antón (1746), the San Agustín of the Convent of the Agustinas of Corpus Christi and the medallion of the Virgin of the Milk for the Cathedral of Murcia. The Italian influence can be seen in works from this period such as the images of San Francisco and Santa Clara from the Capuchinas convent. The movement and expression of his hands make them one of the main baroque works in the field of spirituality and mysticism.
From 1765 and with Roque López, the main one of his disciples, already working in his workshop, one can speak of a more industrialized production. Characteristic of this period are the Virgen de las Angustias of Yecla, the Virgen de la Aurora of Aledo, the Washing of the feet of Christ to the Prince of the Apostles of the Royal Salesas of Orihuela, or the Sagrada Familia of the Church of Santiago de Orihuela. Also noteworthy is the Cristo de las Isabelas or de la Buena Muerte or Cristo Yacente de las Clarisas de Orihuela (1774), the only sculpture in his entire production on this theme. The Dominican saints of the Church of Santiago de Orihuela (1775) also stand out.
Starting in 1776, a shift in Salzillo's production was observed, including some notes of neoclassicism. The image of Christ from the passage of Pretorio in Casa de Pilatos (1777) of the brotherhood of Ecce-Homo de Orihuela or the Christ tied to the column are characteristic of this period. (1777-1778) of the Brotherhood of Jesus of Murcia
Processional work
Many brotherhoods came to Salzillo when he had become an undisputed master of sculptural art in the Kingdom of Murcia. However, there are two that hold the greatest number of them: that of Nuestro Padre Jesús in Murcia, and that of Prendimiento (California Brotherhood) in Cartagena.
The Bethlehem
Among the varied production of the master, the Bethlehem occupies an outstanding place for its artistic quality and the fine observation of the peasant reality of the 18th century.
Carried out from 1776 on by order of his friend Jesualdo Riquelme y Fontes to decorate his palace, and completed by Roque López, the nativity scene is one of the most representative works of Francisco Salzillo's work. It is made up of 525 25-30 centimeter figures (166 human and 364 animals) made of terracotta, wood and cardboard. In addition to the landscape with its natural elements, there is an architectural framework made up of 8 buildings, including Herod's palace, the Jerusalem temple, the inn... which can be seen furnished with small items. Based on the Gospels of Saint Matthew and Saint Luke, Salzillo recounts the biblical story of the Birth of Christ, from the Annunciation to the Flight into Egypt, combining religious scenes with others of a popular or customary nature, being a faithful reflection of many of the traditions of the time. Originally based on the tradition of the Neapolitan crib, he would create an authentic school of nativity scenes that lasts in Murcia to this day.
The writer and scholar Javier Fuentes y Ponte was the author of the first descriptive catalog of this nativity scene in 1897. In 1909, the nativity scene left Murcia with the aim of being sold, being exhibited in 1914 at the National Archaeological Museum and appraised at 165,000 pesetas. The work returned to Murcia in 1915, when the Ministry of Public Instruction and Fine Arts authorized its purchase for the people of Murcia for 27,000 pesetas. At first it was located in the Museo de la Trinidad, being transferred in 1956 to the Salzillo Museum.
The Nativity Scene of Salzillo has been exhibited twice in the city of Madrid. The first was in 1961 at the National Museum of Decorative Arts, and the second in 1998 at the Royal Palace. Likewise, in 1999 an exhibition took place in the Braccio di Charlemagne room in Vatican City, where the main figures were shown. of the same.
Style
Francisco Salzillo worked exclusively on religious themes (processional and non-processional), and almost always in polychrome wood. His work is the result of a crossroads of influences and styles. Through his father, Nicolás received the influence of Italian sculptors such as Bernini and Andrea Bolgi, although the work of the French sculptor Antonio Dupar and the Spanish tradition were also present in his formation. The arrangement of the hands in some of his works was a significant trait that he inherited from his father: the left on the chest and the right extended, sometimes inverted. His works also served as inspiration for children's sculpture.
However, the Italian Baroque was what marked him the most, through prints, engravings and direct contacts with different artists and their creations. With all this, Francisco's personal style that would characterize his works stood out from an early age, with techniques such as finishing the hair with a chisel or its carving in the form of very fine grooves. Unlike the great authors of the 17th century, Like Montañés or Gregorio Fernández, Francisco Salzillo would not delve into the dramatic aspects of the scenes, delving into naturalistic concepts and idealized beauty that will already be the transition from the end of the Baroque to the Rococo and Neoclassicism.
Salzillo created a school, the so-called Escuela Murcia de Escultura, which transcended its time and has remained in force to this day, both its first followers and those that have followed one another to date, have perpetuated the iconographic and stylistic models and types of Francisco Salzillo.
Salzillo's workshop
Salzillo inherited his father's workshop after his father's death in 1727 and took over as director. It began as a family workshop, in which his brothers José Antonio and Patricio worked, and years later various disciples joined, of whom only the names of José López and Roque López are known. The first one began to work in 1753, when Salzillo was beginning work on the passion series for Good Friday and the workshop needed willing pupils for the most rudimentary work required by wood carving. For his part, Roque López committed himself by contract in 1765, the year in which Salzillo inaugurated his domestic academy. Likewise, it is known that the Salzillo workshop maintained contacts with the architect and sculptor Jaime Bort, although only in the world of altarpieces.
Work system
Francisco received from his father as an inheritance tools, drawings and works such as hermit saints, figures of women or children's models. Thanks to them, the author was trained as a sculptor and was building his own style. In the workshop, these pieces were frequently studied to see iconographic novelties, spatial solutions, anatomical forms, body twists or facial expressions before being taken to wood.
The sketches that are preserved in the Salzillo Museum have been a source of great value for understanding the organization of work in the workshop and the process prior to woodworking. After receiving a commission, Salzillo drew the original idea on paper, with its three-dimensional features suggested with the use of inks and shading. The next step was to model the sketch, for which he used materials such as clay, plaster or wax. Not all the sketches would be reflected in the final work, but sometimes they would only serve as experimentation, reasons for which they were like an instructional book for officials and workers during their learning process.
Work in the workshop was highly hierarchical. Salzillo, as legal representative, was in charge of it. Behind him he had the collaboration of various assistants who were in charge of the work prior to the carving of the wood and of intervening in various aspects of its execution process.
The members of the workshop were subject to the discipline of Salzillo, whose personality and quality as a sculptor were outlining the style to follow, with the result of a great uniformity in all the works that came out of it. His concept of image and color was reflected in all the steps to follow until reaching the final result. Aspects such as the sketch, the broken texture of the carving, the polychromy, the nuances or the glazes reflected the differential signs of his style. This Salzillesque model, characterized by the production of images in an easy-to-understand language, led to an increase in the number of commissions the workshop received around the 1740s.
Salzillo's Academy
In 1765, as a result of the frequent gatherings that the sculptor had with his enlightened friends, the so-called Salzillo Academy was born in an attempt to overcome the already outdated model of the solitary sculptor in charge of educating his disciples. Since the creation of the San Fernando Academy in 1752, various official academies were replacing the classic empirical and personal model with a method according to which study was the fundamental basis for acquiring new knowledge.
Salzillo continued as director of the workshop and the main person in charge of training his pupils but, following the trends of the Enlightenment, he began to worry more about the artistic education imparted to them.
In the city of Murcia there was no body in charge of regulating this type of education. Nor were there optimal models that indicated what should be done during the various stages of artistic knowledge, but by imitating what was done in other Spanish cities, Salzillo managed to get a complete renewal of the apprenticeship system started to take place, a demonstration of the sculptor's ability to understand the changes that took place throughout the 18th century.
Salzillo and the city of Murcia
Francisco Salzillo is considered one of the most famous people in the Levantine city of Murcia. The first recognition of him came during his lifetime, when he was appointed sculptor of the city in 1755. Currently, his name continues to be remembered in numerous points of it. A commemorative monument was erected for him in 1899 in the city's Plaza de Santa Eulalia, the work of Francisco Sánchez Araciel, as well as one of its main arteries, the Gran Vía, was named after him.
Salzillo Museum
The Salzillo Museum, located in Murcia's Plaza de San Agustín, is entirely dedicated to the sculptor's work. Although the first attempt to create it was due to Isidoro de la Cierva in 1919, this was materialized by Decree of May 30, 1941. The official inauguration was delayed until 1960. In 1962 it was declared a Historic-Artistic Monument. Inside it, on the occasion of the 3rd centenary of the author's birth, from March 2, 2007 to July 31, 2007, the exhibition Salzillo, witness to a century, was inaugurated by Juan Carlos I, King of Spain.
The steps of Salzillo during Holy Week in Murcia
During Holy Week in Murcia, a festival declared of International Tourist Interest, several pasos go out in procession in which the hand of Francisco Salzillo intervened:
- Dolores Friday. In the procession that takes place this day, the first of how many are celebrated, the steps are part of Blessed Mary of the Dolores (1741) and Most Holy Christ of the Amparo (1739), who receive worship throughout the year in the Church of St. Nicholas and are attributed to the hand of Francis Salzillo. However, recent studies date to the Dolorosa in the early 19th century, the work of some disciple, and the crucified as something earlier, due to the gubia of the French sculptor settled in Murcia, Antonio Dupar.
- Passion Saturday. Of the two processions that are celebrated on this day, the one organized by the Brotherhood of the Blessed Christ of Charity has the passage of Maria Dolorosa (1742).
- Palm Sunday. It is one of the days in which more works of Salzillo can be seen through the streets of Murcia; in particular, three: Repentance of Saint Peter (1780), The Dolorosa (1756) and Blessed Christ of Hope (1755).
- Good Monday. The Blessed Christ of Forgiveness, holder of the same name's confraternity (doing 1733); and San Juan (about 1737). Both, along with the Painful (Roque López, 1793) and Mary Magdalene (Francisco Sánchez Araciel, 1897) form a spectacular Calvary, a step created in 1896.
- Holy Tuesday. The procession organized by the Association of the Blessed Christ of Health, one of the two that are celebrated on this day, has the passage of the Blessed Virgin of the First Pain (middle centuryXVIII).
- Good Friday. In the procession that takes place in the morning, organized by the Brotherhood of Our Father Jesus Nazarene and popularly known as the “Procession of the Salzillos”, all the steps are the work of the murcian sculptor except the head of the institution, author of Juan de Aguilera (1601). Among them are some of Salzillo's most famous pieces: The Holy Supper (1763), Prayer in the Garden (1754), The Preference (1763), Jesus in the column (1777), The Holy Veronica (1755), The Fall (1752), San Juan (1756) and The Dolorosa (1755). In the afternoon, two more works of Salzillo can be admired in other processions: La Virgin of the Angustia (1740), holder of the Confraternity of Servants of Mary Most Holy of Angustia and the Holy Christ of Santa Clara the Real (1770), in the procession of the Confraternity of the Holy Sepulchre.
Gallery
Sagrada Familia. h.1735. San Miguel Church in Murcia.
The Fall, 1752, Salzillo Museum in Murcia.
Sta. 1755. Church of Sta Maria de Gracia in Cartagena.
S.Isidoro. 1755. Church of Sta Maria de Gracia in Cartagena.
S.Fulgencio. 1755. Church of Sta Maria de Gracia in Cartagena.
S.Leandro. 1755. Church of Sta Maria de Gracia in Cartagena.
San Jerónimo Penitente. 1755. Museum of the Cathedral of Murcia.
San Juan. 1756. Salzillo Museum of Murcia
Sleeping the prayer of the garden. 1759. Church of Sta Maria de Gracia in Cartagena.
The Besus or the Preference. 1763. Salzillo Museum in Murcia.
Detail of the Christ of the facistol, Museum of the Cathedral of Murcia.
San Francisco de Asís, Museo Nacional de Escultura de Valladolid.
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Filmography
- Salzillo (1983), documentary directed by Primitivo Pérez and José Antonio Postigo, and played by Francisco Rabal
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