Title

Effigy of Elvira de Zúñiga

Maza, Francisco de la (Meruelo, ca. 1540 - Valladolid, ca. 1585)

Generic classification

Object

Date

Century

Cultural context / style

Material

Technique

Iconography / Theme

Provenance

Current location

Object history

In the province of León, to the south of La Bañeza, there remains evidence of what was once the Cistercian monastery of Santa María de Nogales. Founded by the counts Vela Gutiérrez and his wife Sancha de Cabrera in 1150, the community was originally Benedictine, but only ten years later they abandoned the monastery and the countess, already a widow, handed it over to the Cistercians, who moved from the monastery of Santa María de Moreruela (Zamora).

The present ruins give a glimpse of what was once a prosperous settlement, which saw its end with the Disentailment. The church, with three naves, housed funeral chapels of the founders, their descendants and other members of the nobility, including Suero de Quiñones and his wife Elvira de Zúñiga.

Doña Elvira, daughter of the Duke of Béjar, died in 1565 and her husband, as her executor, signed an agreement with the monastery on April 16 of the following year so that the chapel of the Kings, previously known as the chapel of Santa Catalina, next to the altar on the gospel side, would become the burial chapel of the couple. The agreement detailed that a sepulcher with "a bundle or two" should be placed in it, which indicates that at that date the monument had not been contracted. In 1579 Suero de Quiñones contracted with the Valladolid-based sculptor Francisco de la Maza to make the altarpiece for the chapel, where it was placed a decade later.

We have no news of the commission for the sepulcher, which may have been made after the death of Don Suero in 1590. The effigies, sculpted in marble, are somewhat larger than life-size lumps. Don Suero, knight of the order of Santiago, as shown by the cross on the left side of his chest, carries a sword, while his consort carries a book in her right hand. The authorship of the sepulcher is unknown, but its style points to an Italian way of doing or at least imbued with Italianism. At first it was attributed to Pompeyo Leoni or his circle, and nowadays it is thought that it could be the work of Francisco de la Maza himself, due to the similarity between the face of the knight and one of the Magi sculpted by him in the altarpiece.

As a consequence of the disentailment of Mendizabal (1835-1836) the monastery was exclaustrated and abandoned. The altarpiece was eventually dismembered and the sepulcher was sold. Gómez-Moreno on June 25, 1904 wrote to his parents from the nearby town of Santa Marta de Tera, and the next day from Benavente to his wife, Elena Rodríguez-Bolívar, indicating that he had visited the monastery, which was in ruins. In the Monumental Catalog of Spain. Provincia de León (p. 364), which was published in 1925, Gómez-Moreno acknowledged that he had not seen the tombs because "The white marble recumbent statues of D. Suero de Quiñones, knight of Santiago, and D.ª Elvira de Zuñiga, beautiful works of Italian art of the first half of the century XVI, that were in a chapel, were sold a few days before my visit to the monastery and I did not manage to see them: they are in New York, in the Museum of the Hispanic Society".

It seems that after their sale they traveled to Paris where they were acquired by Archer Huchtington. This one had for norm not to buy works of art in Spain, although it is not clear how they went out and if they did it by his order, but the effigies of the monastery of Nogales perhaps he did not see them in situ, or at least not in the trip that he made by the north of Spain in 1894 and of which he has us a diary, he was not in Santa Maria de Nogales, which is not enough so that he could see them in the successive trips that he made in 1900 and 1903. Once in his possession, he installed them in his foundation, the Hispanic Society of New York, in 1913, where they are today.

Description

Full body sculpture in good state of preservation. At the feet appears the coat of arms of the character.

Locations

• XVI^th c. - Early XX^th c.

  monastery

  Monastery of Santa María de Nogales, San Esteban de Nogales (Spain)

• Early XX^th c.

  dealer/antiquarian

  Art market, Paris, Paris (France) *

• Early XX^th c.

  private collection

  Archer Milton Huntington, New York (United States) *

• ca. 1913 - present

  museum

  The Hispanic Society of America, New York (United States)