LUISA ROLDAN, CALLED LA ROLDANA

This splendid terracotta comes from the hand of Luisa Roldán (1652–1706), one of the most remarkable sculptors of Spain’s siglo de oro. Born in Seville, she learned her craft from her father, Pedro Roldán, who ran a major workshop and executed important projects there. She subsequently embarked on an independent career in which she created figures for altarpieces, processional images, and small devotional groups. After beginning in her native city, she turned her attention to Cádiz carving major statues for the cathedral there (1684-1687), before moving to Madrid in 1688 or 1689. In the capital, King Charles II granted her the title of Royal Sculptor – Escultor de cámara – an unprecedented achievement for a woman artist at the time.

In this terracotta, Roldán portrays a favourite Spanish subject, the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception, the doctrine which affirms that Mary was conceived without original sin. She wears a white robe under a blue mantle onto which her hair falls. Holding her arms crossed over her chest, she stands, almost motionless, on a crescent moon which three putti support. These angelic creatures add a playful note as they turn and look at each other. With his upraised arms, the one in the middle causes the Virgin’s robe to move in response to his gesture. The contrast between the energetic cherubim and the serene figure above them underscores Mary’s rapt absorption, as if lost in prayer.

The Immaculate Conception not only shows Roldán’s characteristic delicacy of touch, but it is her only known depiction of the subject. This stands out even more when one considers that she spent her career creating religious images exclusively. Although scholars have not established a date for the piece, it probably comes from her years in Madrid (1688/1689-1706) when she turned to terracotta as a way to market her art. In this medium, she expressed moments ranging from idyllic sweetness to religious ecstasy or bloody violence. Because previous authors often overlooked this variety, they frequently underestimated her achievement (for surveys in English of her work at this time, see Leneghan 2016 and Hall-van den Elsen,2021, ops. cit.). A sculpture such as this attests to the greater breadth of her career, while also revealing how she reworked subjects to offer her version of a recognised type.

When Roldán created the Immaculate Conception, the subject had an iconography which the clergy, the faithful, and artists all accepted. The path by which they reached this consensus during the seventeenth century offers a glimpse into popular devotion and changing aesthetic preference. In the late fifteenth-century, many selected the meeting of the Virgin’s parents at the Golden Gate, the moment when the church taught that she was conceived without original sin. But over the course of the sixteenth century, it gradually lost ground to images which represented the Virgin more directly. In these, artists joined the Assumption of the Virgin (in which she ascends to heaven after her death) with the woman who appears in the Book of Revelation, ‘clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars’ (Revelations 12:1). Gradually, a type emerged which depicted her floating in heaven and accompanied with prescribed attributes. In his treatise, Arte de la Pintura (1649), Francisco Pacheco, Diego Velázquez’s father-in-law and a painter in his own right, outlined this formula: a young girl of twelve or thirteen years with beautiful features, crowned with stars and standing on a crescent moon (Pacheco, op. cit., pp. 481-484).

From this point, Spanish sculptors would follow Pacheco’s formula while recasting it within their style. Roldán could thus have seen many examples not just in her native Seville but throughout Andalucía, including those by artists such as Juan Martínez Montañés (Seville Cathedral), Alonso Cano (Granada Cathedral) and Pedro da Mena (Cordoba Cathedral).

Like these artists, Roldán renders the established type faithfully yet distinctively. She imbues the central figure with graceful elegance and youthful innocence. By depicting a younger woman than usual, she evokes Mary’s serenity and purity. Unlike so many contemporary examples whose draperies billow out while she clasps her hands in prayer, Roldán’s figure seems motionless, as if transfixed, as she holds her arms across her chest.

These features stand out more when one compares the terracotta to paintings by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (Madrid Museo del Prado, Seville Cathedral Chapterroom). Although he portrays a young woman, he fills the scene with an almost ecstatic energy that contrasts vividly with Roldán’s sculpture.

Although today some may find such differences overly subtle, a viewer at the time would almost certainly have noticed them given the strong devotion to the Immaculate Conception. While the doctrine found adherents throughout Spain in the fifteenth century, the intensity picked up in the seventeenth century when the energetic (and litigious) archbishop of Seville, Pedro de Castro Vaca y Quiñones (1534-1623) actively promoted the cause in his diocese and eventually persuaded Philip III to petition the papacy in favour of the doctrine. As the king and his descendants, Philip IV and Charles II, increasingly identified themselves as Catholic monarchs defending the faith, they championed the Immaculate Conception, advocating that it be made official dogma. This would finally reach its ultimate affirmation when Pope Alexander VII officially declared 8 December to be the feast day of the Immaculate Conception and confirmed a ban on any opposition to the doctrine.

In such a climate, the Immaculate Conception would have elicited powerful emotions from contemporary viewers. Rendering the subject exquisitely and distinctively, Roldán shows the Virgin lost in quiet prayer, while the playful cherubim below her evoke a heavenly setting and her virtue. In doing this, the sculptor creates her own interpretation of the subject so that even if few people today appreciate the fervent devotion that the artist and her contemporaries felt for this doctrine, we can all admire her splendid artistry.

Patrick Lenaghan.
The Hispanic Society of America