Santa Ana and the Virgin

Thanks to the patronage of Dom João V, the sculpting of figures in the round was to experience a period of renewed interest in Portugal, through the activity of Italian and French sculptors in the first half of the 18th century, reaching its greatest peak in the imitations of the classical style included in the works that were undertaken at the court in Mafra. However, the international baroque style inspired by the works of Bernini did not enjoy a sufficiently wide geographical coverage to enjoy any significant influence in the panorama of Portuguese sculpture at that time, with most works maintaining a naturalistic and traditional formal discourse, in which the innovations emanating from classical repertoires were more acutely felt in the structures of altarpieces and in the decorative programmes of gilded woodcarving – the so-called “Joanine style” of the reign of João V – with the introduction of Solomonic columns, valances and canopies, and a decorative vocabulary of palms, garlands of flowers, festoons, atlantes and allegories. This period marked the apogee of the baroque aesthetics in Portugal. While questions of an iconographic nature continued to dominate figuration, it still remained evident, however, that sculpture in the round was gaining a greater awareness of space and taking on more human forms, so that the spaces in which these figures were inserted became much larger in size, displaying greater monumentality and producing scenographic effects through the language of their gestures, while conquering for themselves a more powerful artistic and formal discourse. Their forms became much more dynamic, abandoning the closed structure of the previous century, becoming more artistic and more compact in the way in which their anatomy was twisted and in the multiplication of the volumes and rhythms of their garments, now more skilfully executed. All of this drew attention to this other reality – the sacred – which was highlighted through the pathos of the immanent light of the figures in action, in other words no longer evoking just a dignifying episode of holiness, but acting in such a way that they expressively revealed their sacred dimension. The images were always depicted in movement – representing a memorable episode from the life of the saints, conveyed with a certain veracity. The dynamics of the new taste had repercussions on the different regional interpretations throughout the country, a phenomenon that also spread to the diocese of Viseu. Taking advantage of the region’s economic prosperity and political stability at that time, the cathedral chapter became fully involved in the cultural policies of artistic renewal, financing bold and costly programmes for the production of altarpieces for Viseu Cathedral. During the period when the see remained vacant, from 1720 to 1741, approval was given to an ambitious iconographic and decorative programme, with some of the most highly regarded woodcarvers being called in to work on these transformations. One of the main foreign sculptors to become established in Portugal in the reigns of Pedro II and João V was the Frenchman Claude Laprade, from whom the chapter commissioned three sculptures for the altarpieces in the side chapels – two of which still remain in place, those of St. Peter and St. John the Baptist – as well as the sculptural group of St. Anne and the Virgin Mary, from this collection, a work that was sculpted for the altar of St. Anne, in 1723, but which had already been removed and replaced by 1758, due to the altar’s invocation being changed at that time to that of Our Lady of the Rosary. St. Anne and the Virgin Mary is a sculptural group modelled three quarters in the round, with its back having been hollowed out, which was intended to be observed from just one single frontal viewpoint, as happened with countless religious sculptures designed for placement on altarpieces, in which the later finishing work was much more synthetic. The garments of these figures, pleated and curvilinear, are enlivened through the creation of a sense of movement, reinforced by the inclination of the saint’s head and the text of the Holy Scripture, placed diagonally over her left leg. The theme of the Virgin’s education, which was widely interpreted in the 18th century, highlights the primacy that was given to religious teaching and Christian virtues in the education of humankind, with the believer being brought closer to an intelligible reality and an awareness of his own dimension.