Prado Museum will show five recently acquired wooden sculptures to the public

Madrid. The National Prado Museum will show the public for the first time five recently acquired polychrome wooden sculptures within the framework of the exhibition ‘Shaking hands. Sculpture and color in the Golden Age’, which opens to the public on November 19.

Specifically, the pieces are ‘Good Thief’ and Bad Thief’ by Alonso Berruguete, ‘San Juan Bautista’ by Juan de Mesa and ‘José de Arimatea’ and ‘Nicodemo‘, belonging to a late medieval Castilian Descent.

Thus, as the gallery explains in a statement, the acquisition of these sculptures provides the opportunity to “enrich” the Museum’s exhibition panorama and contributes to offering “new readings” in a context that underlines the importance of polychrome sculpture for a comprehensive understanding. of Spanish art.

Both ‘Good Thief’ and ‘Bad Thief’, by Berruguete, belong to the group of a Calvary and are works of great plastic singularity in terms of their general configuration. The arrangement of both, one front and one back, and the fact that they are small-format works with an oratorio group typology, of which hardly any examples linked to Berruguete’s catalog have been preserved, make them “exceptional”, according to the Meadow.

On the other hand, ‘Saint John the Baptist’, by Mesa, represents the saint standing, holding the sacred book on which the lamb is placed, in his left hand, while his right arm is raised towards the viewer in a declamatory attitude.

The figure wears a camel skin tunic over which is arranged a vibrant red cloak, gilded over gold, worked with great profusion, in a wide border with vegetal and colorful motifs made with sgraffito and brush-point decoration.

Finally, the last two sculptures are representations of Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, linked together as part of a set representing the scene of the Descent from the Cross, from which the figure of Christ has not arrived at the time of the uncloaking.

The two characters who, according to the evangelical stories, ended up taking a very active part in the episode of the descent from the cross and subsequent burial of Christ, consolidate their image in pictorial and sculptural representations in Christian iconography with great success from the medieval world.

The importance surrounding this genre of primitive sacred theater compositions with a narrative purpose and to fulfill liturgical functions, the gestural repertoire and their particular characterization, makes the Museum classify them as of “singular interest.”