RECURSOS
DIDÁCTICOS

SCULPTURE

The training rigorously subject to the canons emanating from the Academy of San Fernando, in Madrid, and from L’Escola de Llotja, in Barcelona, was largely responsible for the survival of classicism throughout the 19th century, giving rise in its central decades to a confusing period of transition to realism, which barely allowed a genuinely romantic sculpture to emerge, marked, when it occurred, by a costumbrist theme, of barely decorative interest, characterized by repetition and even a certain insignificance.

Religious sculpture was structured by the recovery of Baroque forms, and this situation can best be observed in portraiture, which moved from the idealized formulas of academic classicism to the realistic portraiture typical of the Restoration, without romanticism significantly influencing sculptural practice, which was generally aimed at satisfying official commissions to decorate administrative buildings.

However, from the Elizabethan period onwards it is possible to perceive certain changes in attitude in some authors, interested in providing their figures with more movement and also with increasing expressiveness, giving rise to works characterised by a certain idealised lyricism, sometimes almost stereotyped, but always at the service of the new values of liberalism.

The sculptors of the Elizabethan court

Among the court sculptors, Francisco Pérez del Valle (1804-1884) was perhaps the most outstanding in portraiture, as shown by his Isabel II (Madrid, Royal Palace) or the statue of the king consort, Francisco de Asís (Madrid, Museo del Prado, deposit of the National Library), both still indebted to a certain classicist taste, as can also be seen in those he dedicated to Narváez and Torrijos (Madrid, Army Museum).

José Piquer Duart (1806-1871), the last court sculptor to hold such a position, moved between the classicist tradition and the first influences of realism, already clearly perceptible in his statue of Isabel II (1855, Madrid, Museo del Prado, deposited by the National Library), in the marble portraits of the regent Maria Cristina (Madrid, Royal Palace) or in those, in bronze, dedicated to various generals (Madrid, Army Museum). Of historical character are his commemorative statues dedicated to Ferdinand the Catholic, equestrian, and to Columbus, both in Barcelona. However, his Saint Jerome Reclining on a Rock (1845, Madrid, Museo del Prado-Casón del Buen Retiro) is the fundamental piece of his production. In it, classicist principles are combined with a very romantic recovery of the Spanish tradition of imagery, as he would once again demonstrate in the series of sculptures of saints that he created between 1847 and 1850 for the church of Santa María de Tolosa.

By Ponciano Ponzano Gascón (1813-1877), an artist greatly influenced by the currents of the second European classicism, with which he came into contact during his stay in Rome, deserves mention, in addition to his mythological allegories, such as those of the bas-relief that covers the pediment of the Congress of Deputies (1848), various portraits, especially those dedicated to his protectors, the regent Maria Cristina, Isabel II and the Count of Toreno. One of his best works is the praying statue of the Infanta Carlota, destined for the controversial Pantheon of Infants of the church of El Escorial (1862-1888).

Clearly indebted to his Italian education, Sabino de Medina Peñas (1814-1879) made an important series of small portraits with a classicist air, several of which, like those of Gil de Zárate or Pascual y Colomer, They are kept at the School of Architecture in Madrid. However, perhaps The Nymph Eurydice Bitten by an Asp (Madrid, Museo del Prado-Casón del Buen Retiro), imitating Greco-Roman models, is his most successful work, without forgetting the monument to Murillo (1861), which stands today in the Plaza del Museo in Seville.

José Pagniucci (1821-1868), author of a statue of Antonio Cavanilles for the Romantic Garden and of an Isabel la Católica for the Congress of Deputies, also made several interesting portraits, such as that of the Dukes of Villahermosa.

The full-length statue of Juan Álvarez Mendizábal (1855), in Madrid’s Plaza del Progreso, destroyed during the last civil war, is often considered the most important work of the fully romantic sculptor José Gragera y Herboso (1828-1897), also the author of an outstanding statue of the botanist Rojas Clemente (1864, Madrid, Botanical Garden).

Other names worth highlighting that can be included in this group are Pedro Collado Tejada (1829-1887), Diego Hermoso (1800-1849), Felipe Moratilla (b. 1827) or Pedro Juan Santandreu (1808-1838).

L’Escola de Llotja in Barcelona

A precursor in the sculptural expression of the new romantic sensibility is the group of sculptors, mostly disciples of Campeny, who came from L’Escola de Llotja, in Barcelona.

One of its first representatives was Ramó Padró i Pijoán (1800-1876), who cultivated a certain neo-baroque tendency in his works, evident in some of his works.

Josep Bover i Mas (c. 1802-1866) moved from his initial Canovian influence, evident in Gladiator Wounded and Gladiator Victorious (1825-1828, Acadèmia de Sant Jordi, Barcelona), to reflect in his works a marked predilection for medieval themes, more akin to the ideals of the Renaissance. Good examples of this are his James I and, above all, the splendid Joan de Fivaller (1844, Barcelona, City Hall). Later and already fully romantic is the Sepulchral Monument to Jaime Balmes (1865, Vic, Cathedral).

The main Catalan sculptor of the time is surely Manuel Vilar i Roca (1812-1860). Influido durante sus estudios en Roma por la obra de los nazarenos alemanes, los trabajos de su etapa mexicana pueden considerarse ya plenamente románticos, como muestra la magnífica escultura de Tlahuicole (1851, México, Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes).

– Doménech Talarn i Ribot (1812-1901) is also notable for his sculpture of religious images and nativity figures.

Josep Anicet Santiagosa i Vestreten (1823-1895), minor sculptor, is worthy of being remembered for the iron column of Galcerán Marquet (1851, Barcelona, Plaza del Duque de Medinaceli).

It is also necessary to remember other authors such as Ramó Subirat i Codorniz (1828-1891), Joan Figueres Vila (1829-1881), Pau Riera (1829-1871) or the Venanci brothers (1826-1919) and Agapit Vallmitjana (1833-1905).

LITERATURE

ARIAS ANGLÉS, E. (1989) “La pintura. La escultura y el grabado”, en La época del Romanticismo (1808-1874). Las Letras. Las Artes. La vida cotidiana (Historia de España de Ramón Menéndez Pidal, t. XXXV/II), Madrid, pp. 269-511.

GARCÍA MELERO, J. E. (1998) Arte español de la ilustración y del siglo XIX. En torno a la imagen del pasado, Madrid, Encuentro.

GAYA NUÑO, J. A. (1966) Arte del siglo XIX, Madrid (Ars Hispaniae, t. XIX).

GÓMEZ-MORENO, Mª E. (1993) Pintura y escultura españolas del siglo XIX (Summa Artis, t. 35), Madrid, Espasa-Calpe.

MARÍN MEDINA, J. (1978) Escultura española contemporánea (1800-1978). Historia y evaluación crítica, Madrid, Edarcón.

REYERO, C. (1999) La escultura conmemorativa en España. La Edad de Oro del monumento público, 1820-1914, Madrid, Cátedra.

REYERO, C. y FREIXA, M. (1999) Pintura y escultura en España. 1800-1910, Madrid, Cátedra.

GARCÍA-MARTÍN, M. (1984-1986) Estatuaria pública de Barcelona (3 vols.), Barcelona.

MORENO, S. (1969) El escultor Manuel Vilar, México, Universidad Nacional Autónoma.

PARDO CANALIS, E. (1951) Escultores del siglo XIX, Madrid, CSIC.

RINCÓN, W. (1984) El escultor Antonio Palao, Murcia, Academia Alfonso X el Sabio.

RINCÓN, W. (1994) La escultura del Museo Romántico, Madrid, Asociación de Amigos del Museo Romántico.

VV. AA. (1989) Escultura catalana del segle XIX. Del Neoclassicisme al Realismo (Cat. Exp.), Barcelona Fundació Caixa de Catalunya