Reliquary Retables of San Diego

When the court was in Valladolid, between the years 1601 to 1606, the Duke of Lerma, copying the king, worked as new patron of arts, supporting the foundation of new convents whose ornamentation, sparing no expenses, he paid. For the convent of San Diego, two reliquary retables were ordered that were dismantled during the Ecclesiastical Confiscation of Mendizabal, but now again with their original setting. Made imitating the big reliquary cabinets from the monastery of El Escorial, they have a simple classicist design, made by a bench with paintings on a panel, a body with two Corinthian semi-columns and an architrave finishing and front. Both are protected by two big doors with painted scenes: one, the Annunciation , and the other the Stigmata of Saint Francis of Assisi, being this one double and the same scene is repeated in the inside part of the doors. The sketches of both retables were made in 1604 by the architect Francisco de Mora and the assembler Juan de Muniategui whose workshop would be in charge of its manufacture; the gold from the retables was paid in 1606 to the painter Vicente Carducho, who finished the paintings possibly designed by Bartolomé, his elder brother. The inside of the body of both retables had reliquaries in half-body shapes, arms or pyramids with an elevated plastic quality.