PEDRO DE MENA Y MEDRANO
(Granada, 1628 – Malaga, 1688)
“The Virgin of Solitude”
1660s
Carved, polychrome wood.
Image, 53 cm high. Base, 3cm high
This bust of a woman with a sad, serene and pale face makes use of a frontal,
symmetrical composition. It includes the head, shoulders and upper part of the torso, all
covered by a white veil and pale blue mantle. The only elements that are not completely
symmetrical are the slight inclination of the head towards its left, the number of folds in
the veil and the breadth of the mantle falling on each side. Were it not for its religious
significance and devotional purpose, this could be a genre depiction of woman stoically
enduring extreme suffering, given that the image lacks any symbolic and iconographic
elements that would enable the viewer to identify the subject. It was this realist
language and extremely naturalistic and accessible type of depiction that captivated
Pedro de Mena’s clients. The artist expressed religiosity through restrained emotions
and poses, concentrating his expressive resources on the image’s head through the
expression of the face, eyes and mouth.
It was Pedro de Mena who popularised life-size or small-scale bust-length sculptures,
normally displayed in urns or glass display cases, as they are referred to in some
posthumous inventories. The fact that they were enclosed in such cases, with a wooden
backboard and the other three sides of glass, has meant that they are often well
preserved. Busts of Christ and the Virgin were commissioned from all over Spain and
even from South America, including places such as Lima and Mexico, as well as other
European locations including Vienna.
From his studio in Malaga this Granada-born sculptor produced a large number of busts
of the Virgin Dolorosa, some as individual figures and others forming pairs with Ecce
Homos. Mena’s sculptures can be classified as falling into three groups: 1 short, bustlength images that represent the head and start of the bust, focusing attention on the
face, as in the present image; and two different half-length or prolonged bust formats,
one with the figure truncated at the height of the breast but including the hands, such as
the Virgins in the church of La Victoria in Malaga and in Cuenca cathedral, and another
type that has the bust cut off below the hips and which includes the arms with the hands
joined or separated. This latter type has a more dramatic expression, for example the
two in the convent of the Descalzas Reales in Madrid.
This year (2014) marks the 100th anniversary of the publication of the first monograph
on Pedro de Mena, written by the Malaga-born art historian Ricardo de Orueta. 2
Among the works that he catalogued, the only bust-length Virgin Dolorosa without
arms is the one that was in the collection of José Lázaro Galdiano and which the present
author identified as this Virgin of Solitude. 3 Since Orueta’s text, various studies and
exhibitions have allowed for a better appreciation of the merit of this sculptor’s work,
his extensive outlet, the importance of his clients and the influence he exercised on
artists of his own day and on subsequent generations active in Malaga, Granada and
Madrid. Twenty years after the identification of this work, Professor Diego Angulo
published another very similar version that formed a pair with an Ecce Homo which he
saw in the sacristy of the Jesuit church of La Profesa in Mexico City, now the church of
San Felipe Neri. 4 This second Virgin has the face of a much younger woman with her
eyes raised. In his article Angulo compared the present Dolorosa with the one in the
Lázaro Galdiano collection and completed his commentary by referring to the existence
of another similar pair in the church of San Luis in Seville, also a former Jesuit church.
With regard to the theme of the Virgin Dolorosa, fifty years after Orueta’s publication
Professor Emilio Orozco analysed this iconography and the expressive resources
deployed by Mena, 5 also discussing the devotional function of bust-length images of
this type of Virgin and drawing a distinction between the Virgin Dolorosa and the
Virgin of Solitude. 6 It is now considered that these different depictions reflect the
Virgin at different times during the Passion of Christ: Suffering, Anguish, Mercy and
Solitude.
The number of images of the Virgin Dolorosa and the Virgin of Solitude attributed to
Mena have increased over the past century with the growing number of studies on the
artist. There are four known images that form pairs with an Ecce Homo (former Jesuit
churches in Seville, Mexico City 7 and Lima, Peru); convent of the Descalzas de la
Piedad in Cadiz; 8 the church of the Palace of San Telmo, Seville; and the Museo
Diocesano and Catedralicio, Valladolid. 9 The other versions are individual ones: in
addition to the present one, they are to be found in: the church of San Nicolás in
Madrid, 10 the church of the Holy Trinity in Vienna, 11 the Museo Nacional de Escultura
in Valladolid, 12 the Museo Conventual de las Descalzas in Antequera (Malaga), 13 the
Basilica del Gran Poder in Seville, and one in a private collection. 14 Presented frontally,
these youthful Virgins have half-open mouths with their eyes (either open or half
closed) looking upwards, with the exception of the present example, which is older,
looks down and reveals a higher quality modelling. These busts are all approximately
50cm high except the ones in the church of the Palace of San Telmo, which are smaller.
In addition to this list of wood, polychrome figures, reference should also be made to a
pair of small-scale, carved ivory busts of the Dolorosa and Ecce Homo. These are in the
style of Pedro de Mena but are of average quality (Museo Nacional de Artes
Decorativas, Madrid).
The origins of this type of bust have been explained in different ways but art historians
agree that it represents a Baroque updating of 16th-century models. Diego Angulo was
the first to note with regard to these images that Mena “preferred the Renaissance bust
type.” Emilio Orozco pointed to precedents in the vigorous realism of the figures
painted by the Carthusian Sánchez Cotán, the half-length reliquary figures carved by
Mena’s father Alonso de Mena y Escalante, and the versions modelled by the García
brothers 15 and by the Sevillian sculptor Gaspar Núñez Delgado. Orozco did not refer to
all of Mena’s Dolorosas nor to the present version as his discussion focused on the
small-scale image of the Virgin of Solitude that the Spanish State had acquired for the
Museo de Bellas Artes in Granada.
It is possible that Mena was familiar with the half-length Virgins painted by Titian, El
Greco and Luis de Morales, but only El Greco depicted her in the short bust format
without arms and wearing a blue mantle and white veil. Nonetheless, for the present
author the precedents closest to Pedro de Mena are the Dolorosas by the García
brothers, Granada-born sculptors active in that city in the late 16th and early 17th
centuries, who produced pairs of relief busts of the Ecce Homo and Dolorosa (Ricardo
Sierra collection, Seville; and Galería Coll y Cortés, Madrid). These sculptures allow us
to correct the opinion of the art historian María Elena Gómez-Moreno in her study of
the iconography of Mena’s works when she states that: “We thus arrive at the final
subject: the Virgin Dolorosa, which has no precedents in sculpture from Granada.” 16
Orueta only catalogued a single short-length bust of what he termed the Dolorosa type,
which is in fact the present version, at that point in the collection of José Lázaro
Galdiano. While the present-day Museo Lázaro Galdiano is based on part of his
collection, this sculpture did not enter its collections. Orueta described it as a “beautiful
sculpture, conceived in a monumental manner and with such serene majesty. The
drapery, which is perfectly observed, falls in a simple, natural manner. This is a very
beautifully realised work.” 17 The sculpture conveys the Virgin’s solitude after the death
of her son. This is the moment just after Christ’s burial when his mother is prostrate
with grief. Her face reflects her exhaustion following such great suffering. The three
tears that fall down each cheek were added in the last restoration, despite not being
visible in the old photograph published by Orueta. Mena does not include the hands
joined in prayer with the weeping eyes that witnessed the suffering of the Virgin’s son,
nor the arms outstretched in a gesture of supplication for him. Rather, the artist has
reduced the expressive element not only to a state of solitude but also to a simple,
modest depiction, using a frontal format and omitting any element that might distract
the attention of those praying before this image. The Virgin’s head, which is slightly
elongated and has a pointed chin, is framed by her brown hair, by the white veil that
meets at its two lower points in the centre of the lower part of the bust, and by the blue
mantle that flanks the image, falling vertically at its lower edge and revealing the veil
and the curved neck of the tunic.
The Virgin’s face is serious, possibly the most serious depicted by the artist. The skin is
created through soft modulations in the cheeks and on the lips, while her almost closed
eyes define a sinuous line framed by the swollen eyelids. The slightly pointed eyebrows,
with a faint line between them, emphasise her sadness. The eyes are made of glass and
the sculpture still shows traces of the eyelashes on the upper eyelids. Her hair clearly
reflects Mena’s style: dark brown and close to the head, with a centre parting that also
functions to frame the face. The figure wears the typical white veil and blue mantle of
Mena’s Virgins. The mantle is extremely naturalistically carved, its ample, voluminous
folds narrowing to a crease at the front and to a beautifully finished area of large, soft
folds on the back. In addition, the rest of the mantle adapts itself to the form of the
shoulders in an extremely soft manner. The outstanding quality of the back reveals how,
despite the fact that the image was intended to be seen from the front and displayed in
an urn with a closed back, Mena focused on the smallest details of his sculptures, which
are thus worthy of being seen from all viewpoints. The front view reveals the artist’s
skill in creating empty spaces between the mantle, the veil and the Virgin’s head, which
he achieved by separating the entire head and the clothing into two blocks, a back and a
front one, which he positioned, joined and stuck to the head once he had carved and
polychromed it. This technique results in a highly realistic effect, creating depth around
the head and thus producing a range of shadows and a crepuscular effect depending on
the intensity of the light falling on the image.
The tunic is purplish in tone with the remains of painted decoration. However, this is
very probably an alteration of the aubergine red habitual in Mena’s Virgins. There is no
information to confirm that Mena executed the polychromy of his sculptures, but we do
know that his images have a characteristic painted finish, from which it is possible to
deduce that if he did not paint them himself, he fully supervised the final results. For the
clothing of this Virgin of Solitude, Mena combined various textiles, as in his other
Virgins, contrasting the heavy texture of their smooth surface and broad folds with that
of the white wool veil. For the latter, the artist created the texture of the weave with
small drops of oil pigment that produce a detailed linear and horizontal relief.
This sculpture can be considered a magnificent image of the Virgin in her solitude, in
which the artist achieved an enormous degree of expressivity through a pairing down of
resources. The distant, lowered gaze and flaccid face, almost devoid of striking features,
conveys the sense of exhaustion after prolonged weeping. Due to this soft modelling of
the face, the sculpture should be dated to the 1660s and the present author agrees with
Orueta that it was made between the Virgin of Bethlehem in the conventual church of
Santo Domingo in Malaga and the Calvary group in the former Jesuit church of the
Casa Profesa in Madrid (subsequently the cathedral of San Isidro), both of which were
lost in the political and military upheavals of 1931 and 1936. We know now that Mena
carved the latter in 1671 for the Colegio Imperial of the Jesuits in Madrid, whose church
became the cathedral of San Isidro in the 19th century. 18 For this reason Lázaro Gila’s
suggestion that the short-length bust Dolorosas date from the end of the artist’s career,
between 1679 and 1688, should be rejected.
Pedro de Mena’s Virgin Dolorosa and Virgin of Solitude figures should be
distinguished from those made by José de Mora (Granada, 1642-1724), who produced
other versions of this image. Thirteen years younger than Mena, Mora was also a pupil
of Alonso Cano. He carved bust-length images of the Virgin without arms of the
Dolorosa or Solitude type. Examples include the one in the Museo de Bellas Artes de
Granada, following the Virgin of Solitude type of the Order of Minims, 19 and the one in
the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. 20 However, Mora’s Virgins have more
expressive faces and his modelling is softer and more sinuous. When analysing Mora’s
Dolorosa figures in conjunction with the exhibition on Pedro de Mena held in Malaga,
Professor Sánchez-Mesa of the Museo de Bellas Artes de Granada defined the formal
traits of these two Granada-born artists: “Mora’s Dolorosas become poetic through their
idealisation and soft forms, and Mena’s through their piercing, direct realism, using a
smoother, harder modelling.”
In conclusion, the formal features of this magnificent Virgin of Solitude correspond to
the style of Pedro de Mena y Medrano while its quality and type of modelling allow the
work to be dated to the 1660s. Finally, this is the only known version to date with the
gaze lowered and depicting the Virgin as an older woman in comparison to the young
girls of the other versions.
Fig.1
Fig.2
1.- ROMERO TORRES, José Luis: “Dolorosa, Pedro de Mena y Medrano, Iglesia de la
Victoria, Málaga”, in El Esplendor de la Memoria. El Arte en la Iglesia de Málaga, exhib. cat.,
Sala de Exposiciones del Palacio Episcopal de Málaga. Seville, Consejería de Cultura de la
Junta de Andalucía, 1998, pp. 182-183, cat. 50. GILA MEDINA. Lázaro: Pedro de Mena.
Escultor (1628-1688). Madrid, Arcos Libros, 2007, pp. 183-184. María Elena Gómez
Moreno studied Mena’s iconography but did not clearly categorise the different models of
the Virgin Dolorosa that she described. GÓMEZ-MORENO, María Elena: “Pedro de Mena y
los temas iconográficos”, in Pedro de Mena. III centenario de su muerte, 1688-1988, exhib.
cat., Malaga, Consejería de Cultura de la Junta de Andalucía, 1989, pp. 94-95.
2.-ORUETA Y DUARTE, Ricardo: La vida y la obra de Pedro de Mena y Medrano,
Madrid, Centro de Estudios Históricos, 1914. That same year Orueta expanded his
catalogue of Mena’s works in an article published in an art magazine. ORUETA Y DUARTE,
Ricardo de: “La vida y la obra de Pedro de Mena y Medrano”, Museum (Barcelona), vol. 4,
no. 4 (1914), p. 142.
3.- While María Elena Gómez Moreno, Lázaro Gila and other experts refer to this
Virgin as the work in the Museo Lázaro Galdiano, according to that museum the sculpture
did not enter its collections from that of José Lázaro Galdiano.
4.-ANGULO ÍÑIGUEZ, Diego: “Dos Menas en Méjico. Esculturas sevillanas en
América”, Archivo Español de Arte y Arqueología, vol. XI, 1935, pp. 132-136, fig. 1.
5.-OROZCO DÍAZ, Emilio: “Devoción y barroquismo en las Dolorosas de Pedro de
Mena”, Goya, no. 52 (1963), pp. 235-241.
6.-GUTIÉRREZ DE CEBALLOS, Alfondo R.: “La literatura ascética y la retórica
cristiana reflejados en el arte de la Edad Moderna: el tema de la Soledad de la Virgen en la
plástica española”, in Lecturas de Historia del Arte. Vitoria-Gasteiz, Ephialte, 1990, pp. 8688.
7-ANGULO ÍÑIGUEZ, Diego: “Dos Menas en Méjico. Esculturas sevillanas en
América”..., pp. 132-136, fig. 1.
8.-BANDA Y VARGAS, Antonio de la: “Dos obras de Pedro de Mena en las Descalzas
de la Piedad”, Boletín del Museo de Cádiz, no. 2 (1979-1980), pp. 87-88.
9-GARCÍA DE WATTENBERG, Eloisa: “Virgen Dolorosa. Pedro de Mena,
atribución”, in Pedro de Mena y Castilla, exhib. cat., Valladolid, Museo Nacional de
Escultura, 1989, pp. 42-43.
10.-GÓMEZ-MORENO, María Elena: “Pedro de Mena y los temas iconográficos”…, p.
95.
11.-PÉREZ SÁNCHEZ, Alfonso Emilio: “Piezas inéditas y nuevas consideraciones
sobre la interpretación estética de Pedro de Mena a comienzos de nuestro siglo”, in Actas
del Simposio Nacional Pedro de Mena y su época. Malaga, Consejería de Cultura, 1989-1990,
pp. 308-309.
12.-HERNÁNDEZ REDONDO, José Ignacio: “Dolorosa. Taller de Pedro de Mena”, in
Pedro de Mena y Castilla, exhib. cat., Valladolid, Museo Nacional de Escultura, 1989, pp. 4647.
13.-ROMERO BENÍTEZ, Jesús: El Museo Conventual de las Descalzas de Antequera.
Antequera, 2008, pp. 49 and 51.
14.-JIMÉNEZ, María Teresa: “Unas obras desconocidas de Pedro de Mena”, in Actas
del Simposio Nacional Pedro de Mena y su época. Malaga, Consejería de Cultura, 1989-1990,
pp. 444-446.
15.-OROZCO DÍAZ, Emilio: “Los hermanos García, escultores del Ecce Homo”,
Cuadernos de Arte (Granada), 1934.
16.-GÓMEZ-MORENO, María Elena: “Pedro de Mena y los temas iconográficos”…, p.
94.
17.-ORUETA Y DUARTE, Ricardo: La vida y la obra..., pp. 154-155, fig. 49.
18.-LLORDÉN, Padre Andrés: Escultores y entalladores malagueños. Ensayo
histórico documental (siglos XV-XIX). Ávila, Ediciones Monasterio El Escorial, 1960, pp.
125-126.
19.-SÁNCHEZ-MESA MARTÍN, Domingo: “Dolorosa, José de Mora, Granada, Museo
de Bellas Artes”, in Pedro de Mena. III centenario de su muerte, 1688-1988, exhib. cat.,
Malaga, Consejería de Cultura de la Junta de Andalucía, 1989, pp. 136-137.
20.-TRUSTED, Marjorie: Spanish sculpture. Catalogue of the post-medieval Spanish
in wood, terracotta, alabaster, marble, stone, lead and jet in the Victoria and Albert Museum.
London, Victoria and Albert, Museum, 1996.
JOSÉ LUIS ROMERO TORRES
Art historian and curator of cultural heritage