PhD Program in Historical studies
Gregorio Fernández’s “Saint Teresa of Jesus”
María Bolaños Atienza, Director of the National Sculpture Museum, shows us one of the most important works preserved in the permanent exhibition at the Museum.
The transfer of the court from Madrid to Valladolid in the early seventeenth century, converted the new home of the monarch into a center of attraction for writers, intellectuals and artists. Among the latter, Gregorio Fernández also came to Valladolid. The sculptor created several works for the convents of the city, and some of them are preserved in the National Sculpture Museum. Among the subjects represented, of particular importance was the figure of the great mystic Teresa of Ávila, who, in those years, not long after her death (in 1582), was proclaimed a saint (by Pope Gregory XV in 1622). Fernández represents Saint Teresa of Jesus in the climax of a mystical vision. The book she has in her left hand is a clear reference to works written by the saint in life.