116 - 16th century Spanish school.

16th century Spanish school. "Saint Andrew". Relief in polychrome wood. Measurements: 85 x 36 cm. Devotional image of Saint Andrew which presents the saint with the attribute of his martyrdom, the cross in a crossbuckle to which he was tied by order of the proconsul Aegeas. At the beginning of the 16th century, Spain was the European nation best prepared to receive the new humanist concepts of life and art due to its spiritual, political and economic conditions, although from the point of view of plastic forms, its adaptation of those introduced by Italy was slower due to the need to learn the new techniques and to change the taste of the clientele. Sculpture reflects perhaps better than other artistic fields this desire to return to the classical Greco-Roman world, which in its nudes exalts the individuality of man, creating a new style whose vitality surpasses mere copying. Anatomy, the movement of the figures, compositions with a sense of perspective and balance, the naturalistic play of folds, the classical attitudes of the figures soon began to be valued; but the strong Gothic tradition maintained expressivity as a vehicle for the profound spiritualist sense that informs our best Renaissance sculptures. This strong and healthy tradition favours the continuity of religious sculpture in polychrome wood, which accepts the formal beauty offered by Italian Renaissance art with a sense of balance that avoids its predominance over the immaterial content that animates the forms. In the early years of the century, Italian works arrived in our lands and some of our sculptors went to Italy, where they learned first-hand the new standards in the most progressive centres of Italian art, whether in Florence or Rome, and even in Naples. On their return, the best of them, such as Berruguete, Diego de Siloe and Ordóñez, revolutionised Spanish sculpture through Castilian sculpture, even advancing the new mannerist, intellectualised and abstract derivation of the Italian Cinquecento, almost at the same time as it was produced in Italy.