SAINT ALOYSIUS DE GONZAGA (TO DRESS UP). POLYCHROMED WOOD, ETC. SPANISH SCHOOL, 18TH CENTURY.

San Luis Gonzaga, dressing room. Polychrome wood, etc. Spanish school, 18th century. A sculpture made of polychrome wood, which shows, on a rectangular base, a young man without a beard, with a black body and a polychrome face, neck, hands and part of the arms. This treatment is common in sculptures created to be dressed (note also the arms articulated at two points each – shoulder and elbow). Attached to one ankle is an old piece of metal and two nails in the feet, which could be an old reinforcement that, in turn, suggests that the work was carried in a procession (there is another piece with screws in the head). As is common in this type of work in the Spanish school since the Baroque, the eyes are made of glass. Saint Aloysius Gonzaga (Castiglione delle Stiviere, 9 March 1568 – Rome, 21 June 1591) was an Italian Jesuit priest canonised in 1726 by Benedict XIII, who declared him patron saint of youth. While in the service of Philip II, he married a lady of Queen Isabella of Valois; he also served in the Spanish court as a page to Prince Don Diego, heir to the monarch, but ended up ceding his rights as first-born to his brother to enter the Society of Jesus (novitiate in Rome in 1583), despite his father's efforts to prevent it. He died after caring for people affected by the plague in this Italian city. He is represented as a young man dressed in a black cassock and surplice or as a young page. His attributes are a lily, referring to his innocence; a cross, referring to his piety and sacrifice; a skull, referring to his early death; and a rosary, referring to his devotion to the Virgin Mary.

· Size: 39x26x134 cms.