Finial for altarpiece. Spain, 16th century

Altarpiece finial. Spain, 16th century.
"Angelito".
Carved and polychrome wood.
Measurements: 85 x 71 cm.

Round sculpture representing an angel that could be part of a top for a Renaissance altarpiece. Throughout Europe, the sculpture played an important role during the Renaissance and Baroque periods that was maintained throughout the centuries. It appears in public spaces, in palaces and private residences, in churches and cathedrals, government buildings, etc., and also reflects a wide variety of subjects, from saints, popes and heroes to famous people, statesmen, mythological figures... Formally these are works of very free compositions, always marked by their dynamism and by a marked tendency to instability in the representation, in accordance with the taste for the curved line. For this reason, we can observe in the figures, as we see here, a gesture of great theatricality, rupture of the compositional frontality, dynamic lines determined by the anatomy and its movement, etc.