Salzillo comes out of the dust

Date:

The restoration of the San Francisco sculpture in a parish church in the Segovian town of Villacastín confirms that the author is the brilliant image-maker from Murcia

Francisco Salzillo (1707-1783) is to sculpture what Velázquez is to painting. So it is quite an event to discover a piece of the great Murcian statues. And that is what happened in the parish of San Sebastián, in the Segovian town of Villacastín. They knew their San Francisco was of exceptional quality, but not that it was Salzillo’s work, as the piece’s restoration has shown.

It was restorer Clara Delgado who discovered the Salzillo’s signature while working with the sculpture in her studio. Under the left foot and hidden by centuries-old layers of dust and sediment emerged “the signature and a damaged but recognizable date: Francisco Salzillo, year 1763.”

“We knew it was pretty good, but we didn’t expect it to be of this caliber,” Delgado said at the presentation of his work, the Diocese of Segovia said. He started working on the carving at the end of 2021, commissioned by Juan García Gorgojo, pastor of Villacastín, and with the support of his parishioners.

The statue came to the church of a vanished Franciscan monastery after the confiscation of Mendizábal in 1836 and was placed in a small altarpiece in the nave of the Gospel. The expert José Miguel Sánchez Peña suggested as early as 1986 the authorship which is now confirmed by the restoration. “We didn’t know anything, but I remember when I saw it I thought, ‘What a beautiful carving!’ exclaims the priest.

Delgado carried out an initial cleaning of the surface dust “and then the treasure appeared,” explains the restorer. After finding the signature and date, he proceeded to plug the cracks. He believes that the wood “wasn’t prepared for the humidity” of the mountain town, and that the dust that got into the cracks “impaired its preservation”. The Christ which the saint carries in his hand is the most punished part, because it is fastened to the hand with a stem.

Once the carving had stabilized, the restorer went on to restore the stucco to its original color. “Before the signature, the process was that of chromatic restoration, since that of the Murcian sculptor cannot be reproduced,” they indicate from the Diocese of Segov.

Delgado highlights “curiosities” of the piece, such as “glass eyes as if they were a light bulb”; are pebbles, “made of sticks -pine bark- glued together, clothed and polychrome”, and the saint’s girdle, “embedded with a nail” that cannot be removed. All details that confirm that it is “a jewel”.

Francisco, son of another sculptor and image maker, Nicolás Salzillo, is considered the best image maker of the Baroque period and devoted almost all of his artistic work to religious themes, transmitting the changes of the times with his style.

From his father he inherited the influence of Italian, French and Spanish sculptors and a characteristic arrangement of the hands in some of his engravings as an important feature of his work. Murcia has a museum dedicated to this genius with his own style, who created a school and in whose production also a nativity scene stands out.

Source: La Verdad

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