Christ in ivory carved in the round, fragmentary, black past - Lot 132

Christ in ivory carved in the round, fragmentary, black paste inlays. Head looking up to the sky with a suppliant expression, eyebrows furrowed and mouth open; beard bifid, openwork locks with strong waves of hair falling on the shoulders; elongated torso with realistic anatomical rendering, visible ribcage, prominent abdomen and venous networks; short perizonium with jagged edges held by a cord, tied on the right hip with a rounded flap returning to the front; it hugs the buttocks on the back with date 1634 on the flap. Spain, Castile, attributed to the Master with the monogram JAG, first half of the 17th century, 1634 H. 19.5 cm - Weight: 266.5 g (visible accidents and missing parts) CIC certificate issued 03/12/2024. A number of ivory Christs from the late 16th to the first third of the 17th century have come down to us, featuring a perizonium that closely follows the fall of Christ's loins, and several of them bearing dates, signatures or monograms on the back, inscribed on the linen flap. Among this production, two categories can be distinguished: one, Cristo morto type Christs with a rather athletic body, signed with the letters I.A.G.F. or G.A.G.F., (for Johannes or Giovanni Antonio Gualterio fecit), sometimes GVATERIVS, dated 1599 or 1600 (Grüne Gewolde, Dresden, inv. II 269 eee, fig.a; Madrid collection of the Dukes of Rivas; Sotheby's London sale, lot 55, fig. b); a second, much more numerous group of Cristo vivo type Christs, with longer bodies, more visible bones and emaciated faces, belonging to private collections or Spanish religious buildings, dated from 1607 to 1632 - for those catalogued to date - some of them signed with the letters JAG. Works consulted: - M. Estella Marcos, "Puntualizaciones sobre obras de marfil. Un grupo deCristos fechados por los mismos anos" in AEA, 1971, p.430-435 - M. Estella Marcos, "Un Cristo de marfil de Gualterius y otros dos ejemplares del maestro de la sigla J.A.G" in AEA, 1975, pp. 133-136. - M. Estella Marcos, La escultura barroca de marfil en España, Madrid, 1984, vol. 2, cat. 57 and 58, p. 46-47, vol. 1, fig. 78-79. - E. Schmidt, "Cardinal Ferdinando, Maria Maddalena of Austria, and the early history of ivory sculpture at the Medici court" in Collecting sculpture in early modern Europe, Studies in the History of Art, vol. LXX, Washington, 2008, pp. 159-183. - E. Schmidt, "Christ in the Counter Reformation. A signed and dated ivory by Giovanny Antonio Gualterio" in Storia dell'Arte, 2008, 119, n. 19, pp. 5-20. Confusion has arisen over the authorship of all these Christs, with museums and the art market attributing them all to the Italian sculptor Gualterio, originally from the town of Gaete in Lazio, known for having made ivory crucifixes for the Medici. However, the great specialist in Spanish ivories, Margarita M. Estella Marcos, has published several books and articles on these I.A.G.F and JAG monogrammed Christs since 1971. In her studies, she distinguishes between two sculptors, one being Giovanni Antonio Gualterio, a Counter-Reformation artist active from around 1582 to 1615, and the other, hitherto anonymous, known only by his monogram JAG, probably Castilian, active, according to the dating of his works, from 1607 to 1634, taking into account the one presented here. The art historian studied a corpus of nine Christs attributed to this ivory-maker, focusing in particular on the one in the Culebras church, the one in Cuenca Cathedral and the one in the Tarragona diocesan museum, dated 1629 and from the same workshop (fig. c). Apart from their reverses, they all have the same stylistic features: head raised to the sky, open mouth exhaling, wavy locks separated from each other resting on the shoulders and a short perizonium with a highly original design, the end of which returns to the front, forming a rounded shape emphasized by parallel folds, the cord supporting it disappearing under the linen. Several examples, taken mainly from pieces that have come onto the art market in recent years, show this particular arrangement of the perizonium, as well as the signatures and dates of the JAG Master (fig. d).