Circle of Juan Martínez Montañés; 17th century.

Circle of JUAN MARTÍNEZ MONTAÑÉS (Alcalá la Real, Jaén, 1568 - Seville, 1649); beginning of the 17th century.
"Child Salvator Mundi".
Carved and polychrome wood.
Presents restorations.
Measurements: 70 x 30 x 30 cm.
Polychrome wood carving representing the Infant Jesus full body and naked, which indicates that he was possibly originally dressed in royal robes. The posture adopted by the body of the Child Jesus is close to the typology of the Triumphant Child, Savior of the World, which symbolizes the idea of Jesus as man and savior, lord of all the Earth, which he redeems with his death and resurrection. It is an iconography that combines divine power and grace with the happy innocence and humble condition of God incarnate: the omnipotence of the Son, being a child with the orb in his hand, like a little boy with his ball. This figuration is also characterized by the gesture of blessing and the absence of any painful trace.
This work is stylistically related to the Spanish Baroque, it reveals a special influence of the great master of the Sevillian sculptural school of the XVII century, Juan Martínez Montañés. The material preferred by Montañés was always polychrome wood, counting on the collaboration of great painters, among them Francisco Pacheco, Velázquez's master. He enjoyed great fame and popularity, becoming known in Seville as "the god of wood" and in Madrid as "the Andalusian Lysippus". His art, which he transmitted to his disciples in his workshop, was inspired above all in the natural, denoting characteristics more classicist, at times, than baroque. However, towards the end of his career he evolved towards a fully baroque realism. Formally, classical elegance and harmony stand out, the basis of baroque works of mountain influence. It is, above all, a fully naturalistic work, idealized in terms of the subject matter, but of great verism and expressiveness. In the Sevillian environment, the seventeenth century was a time of enormous economic and, therefore, also artistic boom.