The institution will present in an exhibition this Wednesday a cast of the original made by Carmen Sánchez and a clay sketch of the Christ of the Arrest, both from the collection of photographer Juan Ballester
“History is precious,” says photographer Juan Ballester, friend and foe of artists, art critic and collector. The blood of a retired police officer continues to flow through his veins. In his early twenties he was already fond of antiques through his uncle, the painter Mariano Ballester. He showed a special predilection for Manises ceramics. “A rather old man, short and with very white hair, came into the tobacconist’s shop in Vistabella (Murcia) and asked if we knew anyone who bought fountains. And of course I bought fountains. “Myself!” I said to him. I accompanied him to his house, on the second floor of a block in Vistabella, and among the things he had, I saw half a head from Salzilles. He told me he was the widower of Araciel’s daughter, Carmen Sánchez Giner, and that he would show me a cast his wife had made of a virgin standing in Santa Catalina. It also had, the size of a palm, a head of a Christ, a sketch I thought was of the Araciel. used to be [una familia de escultores] He sold me both things for a hundred pesetas, which is now sixty cents. He practically gave them to me. The fountains were worth a thousand pesetas, and he gave no value to the rest.»
For example, Ballester tells LA TRUTH how Alonso Rubio, husband of sculptor and restorer Carmen Sánchez, son of sculptor Francisco Sánchez Araciel (1851-1918) and granddaughter of sculptor Francisco Sánchez Tapia (1831-1902), sold him two pieces that, after more over 40 years, this Wednesday (7 pm) they are presented in society, in the Salzillo Museum, such as the Immaculate Conception of Salzillo and a reconstructed sketch of Christ leading us to the passage of the arrest of Salzillo. An event for the institution’s director, María Teresa Marín, who confirms that the plaster cast of the head of what was believed to be the Dolorosa de Santa Catalina is in fact “a cast of the famous and lamented Immaculate Conception of the Franciscan Convent of the Plano de San Francisco This discovery is of great importance and would mean that for the time being it is the most faithful witness we have left of Salzillo’s work lost forever».
The statue, as remembered by the art historian and academic of Alfonso X, standing two meters high, “perished in the burning of the convent of San Francisco on May 12, 1931, the day of Salzillo’s birth, in the anticlerical revolts that took place on the month of the proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic «The formal features seem to take us back to antiquity, which indicates the great classicism of Salzillo’s sculpture, which was already emphasized by his first biographers, such as Luis Santiago Bado, who spoke of his ” heated imagination” which took him “to ancient Greece, to rich Rome and splendid Florence”.
Ballester recalls that when his children were small and he had little to do with Murcia, “one day I saw them painting Christ in the clay, they lived there with the works.” In the 1990s, when Cristóbal Belda Ballester entrusted the photos of the restoration of the Salzillos, which was carried out by the restorer Mari Paz Barbero, “I was there and I could see the Christ of the arrest face to face and I felt a proximity Because he looked like my little Christ I went on my motorcycle to get the piece, I brought it and in front of the museum lived the sculptor Sánchez Lozano, who was very old, who was in his nineties, and he took it in his hands and said without stopping: “The Master, teacher.” Another day Gaya looked at it and said to me: “If it ain’t from Salzillo, who the hell is it…”».
For some reason, Cristóbal Belda failed to authenticate it, and Ballester forgot and put the pieces back in their display cases. But for her series of portraits as a social mosaic of Murcia that survived the pandemic, the director of the Salzillo Museum stopped by her studio in La Alberca a few days ago. «I showed him both things, and he told me that the sketch could be from Salzillo, because it has the same invoice, and when he saw the Virgin, he remained as serious as he was, looked at her, without speaking , and said: ‘Juan, it is the Immaculate’. How the Purisima? If this man told me [Alonso Rubio, el vendedor] that it was a Dolorosa who was in Santa Catalina. By saying that it was the Purisima de Salzillo that was destroyed in 1931, both she and I have started researching and comparing old photos and have been able to conduct an identification search, police type, and there is no doubt about it,” confirms Juan ballerina .
“There are only three or four photos of the original piece left and it was considered a masterpiece by Salzillo. It has a very classic look. The face is life size, and it has merit because it is not an interpretation that Carmen Sánchez made, but a cast, and in sculpture it is an original. So we have an original.
What Francisco Sánchez Araciel’s daughter did with Salzillo’s Immaculate Conception is a cast: “He took it out in plaster and later gave it a wax patina,” explains Juan Ballester. “The beautiful story here is that a series of ups and downs and strange circumstances and things almost a hundred years later, gave rise to this destroyed image of Salzillo in 1931. Art has its times, its paths, it is not in a hurry, it finds its way”, confirms the collector. As if that wasn’t enough, when Ballester was in the living room of his house with the director of the Salzillo Museum, María Teresa Marín, he showed her an Immaculate Conception in bronze, “and he told me this is one too. ” According to the photographer, that other bronze Immaculate Conception is “an interpretation of the Immaculate Conception of Salzillo made by Clemente Cantos (1893-1955) in the 1930s. I obtained the original in clay and my bronze, which we made from the original in clay » The original piece of clay, which belongs to an uncle of Ballester, Francisco Pérez Beltrán, “my uncle told me that Juan González Moreno had given it to him.” is by Clemente Cantos.The exhibition that the Salzillo Museum opens today (7pm) consists of four pieces, in addition to a series of prints, postcards and photographs obtained from what remains of the missing Immaculate Conception of Salzillo.
Ballester has no doubt that the cast of Carmen Sánchez Giner, daughter of the sculptor Araciel, is a copy of Salzillo’s original statue. “What’s the difference with old photos? That image of Salzillo was polychrome. And the casting of Carmen is monochromatic».
The Araciel family is central to this story, as the director of the Salzillo Museum recalls that this saga of sculptors also owned other models of the great Baroque artist, sold in 1927 to the Provincial Museum, which is now in the Salzillo Museum. The small sketch of the Christ could not have been part of that lot that was sold to the museum, Ballester points out, because it was broken, badly destroyed. It was restored on his behalf by the restorer Mari Paz Barbero.
Source: La Verdad
I’m Wayne Wickman, a professional journalist and author for Today Times Live. My specialty is covering global news and current events, offering readers a unique perspective on the world’s most pressing issues. I’m passionate about storytelling and helping people stay informed on the goings-on of our planet.
