12 St Onuphrius the Anchorite
c. 1570–74
Juan de Anchieta (c. 1533–1588) Museo Nacional de Escultura, Valladolid, ce2884 Ministerio de Cultura del Gobierno de España White alabaster, possibly from a quarry in Aragon, 74 × 28.50 × 24 cm Provenance Early provenance unknown; art market, 2009. Select bibliography Sáenz 1639, fols. 75v, 78v; Lamana 1713, fol. 171v; Catálogo 1863, p. 7v, no. 136; Catálogo 1867, p. 85, n0s. 166, 145; Museo 1929, p. 80; Beltrán Lloris 1976, p. 184; Janke 1984b, pp. 77–84; Criado Mainar 1989, pp. 309–50; Checa 2000, p. 245, no. 58; Beltrán Lloris 2009, p. 9; Morte García 2009b, pp. 249–51; Arias Martínez 2009, pp. 166–67; Arias Martínez 2012, pp. 48–49; Arias Martínez 2015a, pp. 164–65; Morte García 2019b, pp. 33–34.
The Egyptian anchorite saint (d. c. 400) appears in these two sculptures as a hermit who renounced worldly goods on his path to attaining holiness and devoted himself to prayer and penance. The medieval devotion to St Onuphrius grew in the 16th century with the aim of emphasizing the importance of penance, as opposed to its denial by the Reformation. His popularity increased when he was invoked against sudden death without confession. The saint’s physical appearance is especially striking: as the hagiography describes, he covered his naked body with his beard and hair, which he never cut. These two sculptures are an excellent example of how his appearance was adapted to the plastic language of each period. They do not portray an ascetic’s body, as in the Middle Ages, but adhere to the Renaissance anatomical canon and, in turn, reflect the different times at which they were made: the one by Damián Forment is slender and elegant, while that by Anchieta is characterized by its muscularity, following the new artistic sensibility that arose in Rome under the influence of Michelangelo. Neither is carved on the back, as the original point of view was frontal. The Museo de Zaragoza’s expressive St Onuphrius was attributed with certainty to Damián Forment by R. Steven Janke, based on its stylistic relationship to other works by Forment. We find its typology in the impressive figure of the pilgrim St James in the central group of the Assumption in the main altar of the Cathedral-Basilica of Nuestra Señora del Pilar in Zaragoza (1509–18) and in the image of an apostle from the high altar of the Cathedral of Huesca, contemporary with this St Onuphrius. Other elements, too, link the figure to Forment’s style, such as the flexible rhythm of the contrapposto, the detailed study of the anatomy, the hands and feet, and the close attention to the furrowed brow. Forment again demonstrates his skill in working in alabaster, achieving an effect of full volume although it is carved only on the front, and stabilizing the figure with the wide head of hair. The work came from the demolished Convent of the Dominican Order of Preachers in Zaragoza and entered the museum collection between 1836 and 1848. It can be identified as the one described by the Dominican father Sáenz (1693), in a niche in the left wall of the main chapel (pantheon of the Castro-Pinós family) of the convent’s
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