Gregorio Fernández

Gregorio Fernández (Sarria, province of Lugo, April 1576 – Valladolid, January 22, 1636), was a Spanish Baroque sculptor. He belongs to the Castilian school of sculpture, the greatest exponent of the Castilian school of sculpture. Heir of the expressiveness of Alonso Berruguete and Juan de Juni, he was able to bring together these influences the classicism of Pompeyo Leoni and Juan de Arfe, so that his art was freed progressively from the Mannerism prevailing in his time to become one of the Baroque paradigms Spanish. He following the style of other great artists like Alonso Berruguete, Juan de Juni, Pompeyo Leoni and Juan de Arfe.

The most important collection of his work is in the National Museum of Sculpture, in Valladolid. Fernández worked for the Valladolid cofradías, and the museum cedes, as a singular museum fact, important pieces of their funds to the brotherhoods during the celebration of the Holy Week.

Probably the son of a homonymous sculptor who lived in Sarria at least between 1573 and 1583 and sculpted a Saint Lazarus for the parish of the same name. His mother contracted nuptials twice, he was born of his first marriage and his stepbrother Juan Álvarez of the second, who would be a very prominent assistant in his workshop.

He moved to Valladolid around 1600 or 1601, about 24 years old and practicing in the trade, entering the workshop of Francisco del Rincón who was at that time the most prestigious sculptor of the Castilian capital. That workshop was in Puentecilla de Bracers (today Bakers street). It became official or associated. In 1605 he opened his own workshop. To the death of the teacher (16 of August of 1608) Fernandez tuteló and taught the office to its eldest son, Manuel de Rincón.

He married Maria Perez Palencia in Madrid in 1605. That same year Gregorio, his first son, was born on 6 November 1605, who died at the age of five. In June of 1606 lived in the street of Sacramento (today Paulina Harriet), of Valladolid. He baptized his children in the Parish of San Ildefonso. In 1607 her daughter Damiana was born, who married successively with four husbands, two of whom were sculptors of the workshop of Gregorio Fernandez. In 1615 he acquired the houses where Juan de Juni had lived, for which he felt great admiration.

He attended in his own house an infinity of helpless and helpless. Famous and prestigious as a sculptor and revered for his virtue, he was considered almost a saint in life. Before work he prostrated himself in deep prayer, fasted, and submitted to penance. This mysticism was guided by the same principles of Bernini or Martinez Montanes; Sculpting a religious image was a commitment of faith.

He suffered serious and recurring health problems from 1624 until he died on Tuesday, January 22, 1636. He was buried in the Convent of Carmen Calzado, in front of the one who lived and for whom he had worked, who occupied the land where today the old Military hospital. According to Floranes (quoted in FJ Juárez, 2008), when the tomb was opened in 1721 to bury its new owners, the body of the sculptor was whole. The burial was located at the entrance of the temple: In the body of the church, together with the pile of holy water, lies that great statuary man Gregorio Hernández, a Galician of nation, very special in his faculty, as published by so many Handcrafts as they are distributed in Valladolid and other provinces.

Of Galician origin, settled in Valladolid, that was then the Court of the kings of Spain, between 1601 and 1606. It had a great workshop with many apprentices and collaborators. Among them were Agustín Castaño (f.1621), Mateo de Prado, Pedro Jiménez, Pedro Zaldívar, Luis Fernández de la Vega, Francisco Fermín, his brother Juan Álvarez and his sons Miguel de Elizalde and Juan Francisco de Iribarne. It was well known and appreciated throughout northern Spain, even in more remote regions such as Extremadura, Galicia, Asturias and the Basque Country.

It gives preference to the mystic about aesthetics, seeking to convey much more pain and suffering than sensuality. In his masterpiece spirituality and drama, almost always collected, on any other feeling. Choose colors and compositions of great naturalness and anatomical detail. The torment to which they have been subjected is manifested in all its details, with profusion of blood and tears, that slide on the body relief with great credibility. Its realism, a bit stout but not vulgar or morbid, can be seen in the deep expression of the faces, in the way of highlighting the most significant parts and in the elements it adds (inserts) to increase the sense of authenticity. He sometimes uses glass eyes, ivory nails and teeth, blood clots simulated with cork, or drops of sweat and tears of resin. However, he is refined in the anatomical treatment, in the simplicity of his compositions and in the containment of the gestures. Its schematic form of drapery of the garments is very characteristic, with rigid folds, pointy and pointed (“metal folding”).

He was the creator of fundamental models of Spanish baroque imagery, such as the recumbent Christs, the mercy or the crucified.

It was also decisive his contribution to the field of the altarpiece, creating excellent sculptural sets that are far from the esthetics Escurialense to approach the full Baroque. It is one of the best representatives, if not the most important, of the outstanding Castilian school of sculpture. He was also a great exponent of the spirit that prevailed in the counter-reform that was so deeply lived in Spain.

Gregorio Fernández worked closely with the Valladolid brotherhoods from his installation in Valladolid as capital of the Court until his death, following the works of Francisco del Rincón, whom many consider his teacher.

Crucified: Christ of Consolation (1610, Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulcher), Christ of Light (h. 1630, University Brotherhood of the Holy Christ of Light).
Virgins: The Sixth Angst (1619, Confraternity of the Angustias), Our Lady of the True Cross (1623, Brotherhood of the Holy Cross Vera), Fifth Angustia (1625, Brotherhood of Our Lady of the Piety).
Christ tied to the Column (1619, Brotherhood of the Holy Cross Vera).
Ecce-Homo: Ecce-Homo (1620, Brotherhood of the Holy Cross Vera), Ecce-Homo (1613, museum of the Cathedral of Valladolid).

Sculptural sets: Father, forgive them because they do not know what they do (1610, Brotherhood of the Seven Words), I thirst (1612-1616, Brotherhood of the Seven Words), Camino del Calvario (1614, Penitential Brotherhood of the Blessed Christ Stripped, Christ (1615, Confraternity of the Seven Words), San Juan and Santa María Magdalena at the foot of the cross (1619, Brotherhood of Our Lady of Sorrows) , The Descent (1623, Confraternity of the Holy Cross), The burial (1645, work of a workshop by Antonio de Ribera and Francisco Fermín, not complete, Brotherhood of Our Lady of Piety).

Fernández collected an iconographic theme already present in medieval and Renaissance sculpture (with outstanding examples such as those of Gaspar Becerra) and gave him a new treatment, more verista and pathetic, that reached great diffusion and fame, becoming one of his favorite subjects and One of the paradigms of baroque plastic in Spain. Among the many versions he made, which were repeated by disciples and followers, stand out:

The one of the church of San Miguel and San Julián of Valladolid, work dated to 1634, of round bundle, of great detail and patetismo, carved entirely (including the genitals, that are covered with a cloth). From a certain angle it is possible to see, through the half-open mouth, the veil of the palate. A divan is placed on a couch in one of the chapels of the church, at whose feet rests the crown of thorns, braided in hawthorn, and the three nails, on cushions. In Holy Week parades lighting by the Brotherhood of Descent.
The conserved in the National Museum of Sculpture of Valladolid, that dates from 1627. It was a commission for the Profesa House of the Company of Jesus in Madrid, happening to be property of the State with the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767. It emphasizes by a polychromy Clear, of which the painter Jerome of Calabria took charge, and a great refinement in the sheet and the cushion that support it, also carved in polychrome wood. The cushion has a polychrome that perfectly mimics the embroidery.
The Duke of Lerma commissioned for the Valladolid church of St. Paul, dating from 1615. It is placed inside a golden urn that rests on a pedestal. The figure of Christ is of great proportions, of slender and noble size. The head rests on two cushions carved and polychrome in gold.
The one that the king Felipe IV gave to the nuns of the Real Monastery of San Joaquin and Santa Ana of Valladolid. It is a work of the last stage, dated between 1631 and 1636 and has been the subject of debate as to whether it was a work of workshop or departure from the gouge of Fernandez. The figure is sober and gives off a deep pathos. You can visit in the museum of the monastery itself and in Holy Week is processed by the Brotherhood of the Holy Burial.
Valladolid also has three other places considered generally by Fernandez: the convent of Santa Catalina (little known because it opens its doors only on Holy Thursday); The one of the convent of Santa Isabel of Hungary (that also is only exhibited to the public in the church in Holy Thursday) and another, of somewhat smaller size than the natural one, dated towards 1627 and that was commissioned for an altar of one of the side chapels of The church of San Pablo.

Other reclining, with some variants these models, are the Cathedral of Segovia, the convent of Santa Clara de Lerma and the same Order in Medina de Pomar (Burgos), the convent of the Capuchins of El Pardo (Madrid), the Convent of the Franciscan Descalzas de Monforte de Lemos (Lugo) or the Cathedral of Astorga (León). The repetition of the motif for such disparate places demonstrates the enormous fame that this iconography acquired; The demand forced that some of these sizes were finalized by his workshop or repeated later by followers and disciples of Fernandez.

Another of the iconographies that Gregorio Fernandez cultivated with great success was the subject of the Piety, that is, Christ lowered of the cross in the lap of its mother. With a background in Mannerist Castilian escutura, such as those made by Francisco del Rincón or Juni himself, Fernández humanizes and at the same time makes the whole more monumental, insisting on the somewhat theatrical gesture of Maria, the rich folds of the mantles, and The correct anatomy of Christ. Between the different versions, they emphasize:

The Sixth Anguish (1619), National Sculpture Museum (Valladolid). Jesus rests on the Virgin, freshly lowered from the cross, placed her body diagonally, while her mother implores help by raising her hand and looking at the heavens. At their sides, St. John and Mary Magdalene contemplate the scene: she, weeping and looking at the figure of Christ, carrying in one hand a chalice and in the other hand a handkerchief with which tears dry; He, looking at the sky, carries in a hand the crown of thorns. The two thieves, crucified, flank the main scene. By placing Jesus in a perpendicular sense towards his mother, Fernandez knew how to break the typical triangular renaissance composition that previously and according to genius of Michelangelo had characterized the treatment of this type of works. The work was commissioned by the Confraternity of the Angustias, being ceded to the Museum in the mid-nineteenth century (at that time, Provincial Museum of Fine Arts). It proceeded until the 1930s, failing to do so because of its deterioration. In 1991, restored the set in depth, the images of San Juan and Maria Magdalena were re-exited in procession, the Archbishop’s denial of the processional departure of the Virgin and to remove the Confraternity of the Piety a carving representing the same scene. Since 2007 also appear in the step figures of the two thieves along with a naked cross.
The Fifth Anguish (1625), church of San Martín de Valladolid. More sober than the previous version, it dispenses with the scenography by focusing on the figures. Its similarity is evident with models of Francisco del Rincón, like the Piedad that carved for the greater altarpiece of the church vallisoletana of the Angustias. In the one made by Fernandez, the Virgin gestures raising both arms, while the body of Jesus is held unsteadily on the knee of his mother. It emphasizes the careful work of the clothes of the Virgin as well as the delicacy and idealism of the factions. Carried out for the disappeared convent of San Francisco, it happened to the church of San Martin. It is the main image of the Cofradía de la Piedad.
La Piedad of the convent of the Poor Clares of Carrión de los Condes (Palencia). It repeats without variations the previous version, although with greater sobriety and containment in the gestures.

Other works by Gregorio Fernández are as follows:

San Diego de Alcalá. National Museum of Sculpture, Valladolid. (C.1605)
San Antolín. Cathedral of Palencia. (1606)
Archangel Gabriel of Alfaro (La Rioja). (1611)
Santa Teresa. National Museum of Sculpture, Valladolid.
Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian. National Museum of Sculpture, Valladolid. (C.1615-1620)
Sacred Family. Church of San Lorenzo, Valladolid. Polychrome by the painter Diego Valentín Díaz.
Immaculate conception. Concatedral of Santa Maria de la Redonda, Logroño.
Immaculate Conception for the Cofradía de la Vera Cruz. Church of the True Cross, Salamanca.
Immaculate Conception at the Royal Seminary School of Corpus Christi in Valencia.
Christ of the Patience, for the Confraternity of the Christ of the Patience. Church of the Merced de Conxo, Santiago de Compostela. (1623)
San Pedro in chair. National Museum of Sculpture, Valladolid. (1625);
Baptism of Christ. National Museum of Sculpture, Valladolid. (1630);
La Piedad. Church of Santa María, La Bañeza, León.

The contribution of Gregorio Fernández to the development of baroque retablistics in Spain was essential. He counted on the accomplishment of these great and complex works with the collaboration of other artists, like Juan and Cristóbal Velázquez, vallisoletanos carvers, and a numerous pleiade of painters and gilders of great value that worked closely with the teacher.

Their retablos follow a clear order, of reminiscencias escurialenses, but gaining protagonism the relieves and exempt figures to the detriment of the architectural design. The figures stand out powerfully from the frame, by means of their gestures, their dimensions or by breaking the same frame sometimes. The rich polychromes and the golden ones increase the sensation of idealized truth that transmit the sculptures of Fernandez. Some of the most outstanding examples in this field are:

Altarpiece of the Monastery of the Royal Huelgas of Valladolid. One of his masterpieces, the traces were the work of Francisco de Praves.
Altarpiece of the church of San Miguel and San Julián de Valladolid, which stands out for its two imposing archangels.
Altarpiece of the new cathedral of Plasencia, one of its masterpieces, with an elaborate central group of the Assumption of Mary.
Altarpiece of the Convent of the Descalzas Reales de Valladolid. Only intervened in the completion of the auction, with El Calvario and two figures of Franciscan saints.
Altarpiece of the Cathedral of Miranda do Douro (Portugal).
Altarpiece of the church of San Sebastián de Braojos de la Sierra (Madrid).
Altarpiece of the church of San Miguel Arcángel de Vitoria.
Altarpiece of the convent of the Conception in Eibar.