Spanish school; 17th century. ‘Virgin and Child’. Carved and polychrome wood. It presents faults, losses and repainting. Measurements: 82 x 53 x 62 cm. The carving presented here is an iconography that combines divine power and grace with the happy innocence and humble condition of God incarnate. The presence of the Virgin, despite the fact that none of the figures make eye contact with each other, conveys the bond between Jesus and his mother that allows Mary to act as an intermediary, as an advocate for the human race before Christ at the moment of the Last Judgement. Spanish Baroque sculpture is one of the most authentic and personal examples of our art, because its conception and form of expression arose from the people and the deepest feelings that nestled in them. With the economy of the State in ruins, the nobility in decline and the high clergy burdened with heavy taxes, it was the monasteries, parishes and confraternities of clerics and laymen who promoted its development, the works sometimes being financed by popular subscription. Sculpture was thus obliged to express the prevailing ideals in these environments, which were none other than religious ones, at a time when Counter-Reformation doctrine demanded a realistic language from art so that the faithful could understand and identify with what was represented, and an expression endowed with an intense emotional content in order to increase the fervour and devotion of the people. Religious themes were therefore the main subject matter of Spanish sculpture during this period, which in the first decades of the century was based on a priority interest in capturing the natural world, gradually intensifying over the course of the century in the depiction of expressive values.