The Transfiguration of Christ on Mount Tabor

(Miguel Adan)

MIGUEL ADÁN
(Pinto 1532 – Seville 1610)
AND DIEGO LÓPEZ BUENO
(c. 1568 – Seville 1632)
10. The Transfiguration of Christ on Mount Tabor
Wood relief, polychromed and gilded
214 x 106.5 x 30 cm (84 ¼ x 41 ⅞ x 11 ¾ in.)
PROVENANCE: Mariano Pericacho, Madrid
This large high relief depicts the event reported in the Synoptic Gospels in which Jesus, having
chosen the Apostles Peter, James and John to accompany him to Mount Tabor, stood before
them transfigured ‘so that his face became like the sun and his white robe shone with light’,
and, according to the evangelists, the prophets Moses and Elijah spoke to Christ. Peter,
witnessing this awesome scene, started to make a sort of camp for Christ and the other Apostles, but
clouds covered the sun and the voice of God proclaimed Christ as his Son, who was beloved of him.
When the Apostles heard this they fell to their knees in fear, but Christ approached them and told them
to rise up and not be afraid, but to say nothing of what had occurred until he had risen on the third
day after his death.1
The Transfiguration was infrequently represented in Andalusian art. In fact, throughout the Mannerist
and Baroque periods Sevillian workshops produced only five known versions of the subject. The earliest
is a relief for the main altarpiece in the parochial church of the Divine Saviour (Cortegana Huelva,
1586–1657, destroyed), which was a collaboration between the architect and ensamblador Diego López
Bueno and the sculptor Pedro Fernández de Mora, although, due to its complexity, several other
sculptors also worked on this project and their names are as yet unknown. Although the work is
documented in written sources, we do not have photographs that allow us to study the work formally
or stylistically.
The second representation is an upright lateral relief from the second level of the altarpiece in the
Church of the Holy Trinity attached to the Convent of Saints Justa and Rufina in Seville (1600–1602).
This altarpiece was also built by López Bueno, with reliefs polychromed by Alonso Vázquez, of which
a single example survives, depicting the Adoration of the Shepherds (Fig. 1).2 Professor Jesús Miguel
Palomero reconstructed the altarpiece in plan (Fig. 2), with the original placement of the reliefs,
including a photograph of the sole surviving work in its original location. According to this plan, two
lateral reliefs depicting the Transfiguration and the Baptism of Christ, which correspond in form and
subject to the present relief and its pendant (Madrid, Coll. LL.A.; Fig. 3) were located on the second
level. Therefore, it is probable that these two works were part of the altarpiece that had been contracted
from López Bueno on 6 November 1600 by the Convent of Saints Justa and Rufina, devoted to the order of the Holy Trinity, in actual fact the Church of the Holy Trinity of the College of the Salesian
Brothers.3 The contract specified that all the sculptures should be of Havana cedar, or Segovian pine,
the latter being the material of the present relief. A year later, the Brothers contracted the Mannerist
artist Alonso Vázquez to execute all the polychromy, gilding and estofado decoration of the reliefs.4
These sculptures must have been completed by November of 1602, because the sculptors Juan Martínez
Montañés and Andrés de Ocampo appraised the work.5
The contract was made with López Bueno and consequently Professor Alfonso Pleguezuelo believes that
the artists worked as both ensamblador and escultor on this altarpiece. However, Lopez Bueno was
more of an architect than a sculptor. The style and technique of the present relief is very close to the
work of Miguel Adán. Several contracts exist that specifically stipulate which sculptor was to be
retained, such as the contract for an altarpiece for the main altar of the church attached to the Convent
of San Diego in Seville (1605), which specified that all the sculptures should be executed by Diego Daza
following models by Gaspar Núñez Delgado.6 While the iconography of the reliefs on the second level
is not specifically spelled out anywhere in López Bueno’s contract with the ‘Trinitarios’, thanks to
Vázquez we do know that it was specified that he should paint and decorate a Transfiguration and a
Baptism of Christ. The present relief, which depicts the former subject, has the more successful
composition of the two; it is both more complex and coherent than the Baptism of Christ relief in Madrid, particularly with regard to the pose and arrangement of the Apostles in the lower foreground.
Having said this, however, the almost Apollo-like figure of Christ standing in the River Jordan is
particularly beautiful, and shows a plasticity of modelling that strongly reflects the influence of ancient
Roman sculpture.
The third well-known example of this subject is a canvas (1633) painted by the Flemish artist Pablo
Legot (1607–1637) for the main altarpiece in the Baroque Church of the Colegial del Salvador in
Seville,7 designed by the architect Miguel de Zumárraga, and constructed by the ensemblador–escultor
Juan de Oviedo with his sculptures polychromed by Legot (1607–1637). The fourth example is a relief
carved between 1641 and 1644 by Juan Martínez Montañés for the central section of the main
altarpiece in the parish church of San Miguel de Jerez of the Border in Cadiz.8 Finally, the fifth example
is the later series of large reliefs carved between 1770 and 1778 by the ensemblador–escultor Cayetano
de Acosta for the altarpiece of the Church of the Colegial del
Salvador in Seville.9
To these documented works, of which only three survive (the
works by Legot, Montañés and Acosta), we can add the
present exhibited relief by Adán, a sculptor who was active
in Seville during the late sixteenth century through the early
seventeenth century. We may support this attribution by
comparing the formal and stylistic characteristics of this
relief with another relief by the artist depicting the Baptism
of Christ that formed part of the altarpiece belonging to the
Convent of Las Dueñas and which is now in the Seville
Museum (Fig. 4).
Raphael’s famous canvas of the Transfiguration (1516) and
Federico Barocci’s composition of Christ’s Entombment (c.
1581) were both well known to later artists through
engravings,10 and were primary sources of inspiration for
Mannerist and Baroque artists in creating compositions of
this subject. In both paintings, the figure of Christ is
dynamically suspended in mid-air, his mantle fluttering
around him. However, neither of these works appears to
have influenced Adán in the execution of this relief. There
are two accounts of Christ appearing amidst clouds in the
New Testament – the Transfiguration and his Ascension up
to Heaven, There are also testimonies of saintly visions,
outside of the holy writ, but in most cases Christ is described
in the active beatific pose codified by Rafael in the Vatican
painting, which is the model specifically adopted by Legot in the Seville painting.11 The Apostles, who witness Christ’s transformation, are, in both paintings, shown
seated or kneeling in attitudes of awe and fear, as related in the Gospels, and in Legot’s work there is
also a sense of their recognition of Christ’s divinity. In both canvases, the composition was divided into
two registers – the celestial and the terrestrial – with, naturally, Christ in the former and the Apostles
relegated to the latter.
Here, the figure of Christ is depicted standing calmly upon clouds, backed by a corona and wearing
only a white tunic. His hands are raised elegantly; the right hand in blessing and the left gesturing
slightly downwards. He is flanked by Moses on the left and Elijah on the right. The composition of the
three standing figures, arranged side by side but with slight variations to scale, alludes to the power
shift from Moses to Christ as the primary figure of veneration, and this use of hieratic scale harkens
back to the medieval traditions of Byzantine and Greek icons, or even to the religious subjects painted
by Gentile Bellini. Decades after this relief was made, Martínez Montañés arranged these same three
figures in a similar manner in an altarpiece in Jerez, with the slight variation that one of the prophets
is actually kneeling upon the clouds. In the lower register, Adán placed the figures of Saint Peter,
kneeling on the left, with Saint James, also kneeling, and Saint John standing behind in a scenographic
arrangement that frames the scene. All the Apostles have their faces raised to the clouds in expressions
and gestures of astonishment: for example, the hand pressed to Saint Peter’s chest, Saint James’s raised
hands, and so on. The composition of the Apostle figures does not follow traditional models for their
inclusion in this subject. Instead they appear more in keeping with similar figures in an Ascension or
an Assumption of the Virgin, although Adán could also have adapted them from the multitude of
figures in the lower register of Raphael’s work, such as the bald man in the foreground, or the imploring
woman and man in the lower foreground pointing up to Christ. Although there are evident technical
differences in the carving between Adán’s relief and the one by Montañés, such as the greater focus on
volume and overall refinement in the present work, the two artists used a common source of inspiration
since both reliefs include a partial tree trunk on the left that disappears into the clouds.
While we have ample documentation regarding the life of this sculptor, only recently has a work come
to light and scholarly assessment can now enable us to begin to define his style. The Museo de Bellas
Artes in Seville conserves the relief of the Baptism of Christ that Adán made for the Dueñas Convent
(Fig. 4). This relief corresponds in form and subject to the description in the commissioning contract,
as does the relief’s provenance. In the work the faces of the Baptist and Christ share the same
physiognomy, with slightly lowered eyes, and the hair and beards are given the same smooth, compact
treatment, with the characteristically pointed beards that can also be seen here in the exhibited work in
the faces of Christ, Saint John and Saint James. The two reliefs also show the same approach to
depicting grey-bearded patriarch figures, such as God the Father in the Baptist relief and Moses in our
relief. Equally, there is a strong similarity in the treatment of drapery. In both reliefs this is carefully
arranged in narrow, almost calligraphic folds. Another technical similarity is the smooth modelling of
the clouds in both reliefs, although those in the Seville relief are so stylized and incidental they recall
the relief in Jerez, which is known to be a late work executed when the sculptor was quite old and
dependent on excessive workshop participation to complete his commissions.

Adán was born in Pinto in 1532, and studied under the sculptor Esteban Jamete in Cuenca and with
Juan Bautista Vázquez the Elder in Toledo. When Vázquez moved to Seville around 1558–1559, he
took Adán with him along with the sculptor Jerónimo Hernández. Over the next forty years they,
together with other artists, comprised the early School of Seville, which evolved from those Mannerist
artists working in Seville who were informed largely by the work of Montañés, but increasingly focused
on naturalism. These artists were further connected by their relationship to the architect Hernán Ruiz
II, who facilitated most, if not all, of their major contracts.12 The School of Seville later became
galvanized through various family connections, such as Juan de Oviedo the Elder, who was the uncle
of the sculptor Juan de Oviedo. Oviedo then became father-in-law to the painter Diego de Salcedo, and
from 1596 engaged his son-in-law as his main painter. These artists lived and worked in the heart of
Seville and, along with Gaspar del Águila, were to become closely influenced by the work of Montañés.
They worked together on some of the most important main altarpieces of the old kingdom of Seville
(Alcalá de Guadaíra, Palomares del Río, Sanlúcar de Barrameda y Utrera), but their style is not clearly
identifiable because they often worked on such complex projects together and, moreover, several of
these artists overlap in style throughout differing phases of their career.
Amongst Adán’s followers were Juan de Oviedo and Luis de Haya. In 1610, Adán died in Seville,
shortly after Gaspar Núñez Delgado, bringing to an end the early Mannerist phase of the School of
Seville and opening the way to the new sculptural language of Baroque naturalism as typified by
Montañés.

1 Matthew 17:1–9.
2 J. PALOMERO PÁRAMO, El retablo sevillano del
Renacimiento: análisis y evolución (1560–1629), Seville
1983, pp. 438–440. See also A. PLEGUEZUELO, Diego López
Bueno, ensamblador, escultor y arquitecto, Colección Arte
Hispalense, 64, Seville 1994, pp. 38, 39, 65 and 66.
3 C. LÓPEZ MARTÍNEZ, Desde Martínez Montañés hasta
Pedro Roldán, Seville 1932, p. 65.
4 C. LÓPEZ MARTÍNEZ, Retablos y esculturas de traza
sevilliana, Seville 1928, pp. 128–130.
5 LÓPEZ MARTÍNEZ, Desde Martínez Montañés cit., p. 237.
6 Ibid., p. 67.
7 E. GÓMEZ PIÑOL, La Iglesia Colegial del Salvador, Seville
2000, pp. 92–94, and pl. 476.
8 J. LUIS ROMERO TORRES, Martínez Montañés, escultor,
Madrid 2009 (forthcoming publication).
9 GÓMEZ PIÑOL, La Iglesia Colegial del Salvador cit., pp.
309–313, pl. 395.
10 B. NAVARRETE PRIETO, La pintura andaluza del siglo XVII
y sus fuentes grabadas, Madrid 1998, p. 287, pls. 290–291.
11 PALOMERO PÁRAMO, El retablo sevillano del Renacimiento
cit., p. 364.
12 Ibid., pp. 207.

Mariano Pericacho, Madrid