A Spanish carved and polychrome painted wood Christ Child, 17th C.

H 50,7 cm

This engaging and finely carved polychromed wood Infant Christ is indebted to the models created by the early 17th-C. Sevillian sculptor Juan Martínez Montañés, known as 'El dios de la madera' (the god of wood). Montañés established the canonical depiction of the Sevillian Infant Christ with his Christ Child in the Cofradía del Santísimo Sacramento, Seville, of 1606 (see Proske, op. cit., fig. 31). (link)