Spanish school; ca. 1600.

Spanish school; ca. 1600.
"Pope".
Carved and gilded wood.
Measurements: 140 x 47 x 41 cm.
Baroque sculpture in carved wood, representing with verism and naturalistic will a Pope or bishop, richly dressed with tunic and mantle, touched with mitre and, probably, originally carrying a crosier. The tunic is undulated with vertical folds through which the play of chiaroscuro is enhanced. The serene face is framed by the miter, in such a way that it enhances the symmetry with which the figure is conceived, who has been created with one foot forward following the cannons of statuary of classical antiquity.
It is interesting to note the historical value of this work, since the representation of saints and religious figures proliferated during the XVII and XVIII centuries due to the splitting of the church. From the 1530s onwards and resulted in the decrees of the final session of the Council of Trent in 1563 to include brief and rather inexplicit passages on religious images, which were to have a great impact on the development of Catholic art. Previous Catholic councils had rarely felt the need to pronounce on these matters, unlike the Orthodox, which had often pronounced on specific types of images. The decree confirmed the traditional doctrine that images represented only the person depicted, and that veneration was rendered to the person, not the image, and further commanded that: "all superstition be eliminated ... all lewdness be avoided; so that the figures be neither painted nor adorned with a beauty that incites to lust ... let nothing be seen that is disorderly, or improperly or confusedly arranged, nothing that is profane, nothing unseemly, for holiness is proper to the house of God. And that these things may be more faithfully observed, the holy Synod ordains that no one be permitted to place, or cause to be placed, any unusual image, in any place, or church, whatever the exemption may be, unless such image has been approved by the bishop..."