"Archangel". Carved, gilded and polychromed sculpture. Colonial School. Peru. 17 - 18th century.

"Archangel". Carved, gilded and polychromed sculpture. Colonial School. Peru. 17 - 18th century.
Superb sculpture of one of the three archangels, Saint Michael, vanquisher of the devil and leader of the Army of God. He is represented following the typical iconography, which is inspired mostly by the Apocalypse, with a breastplate and armed with a sword.
At his feet the devil he is defeating is represented by a grotesque figure. The sculpture rests on its original polychromed and gilded plinth.
This carving is undoubtedly the work of a Master sculptor. Saint Michael is depicted as young and beautiful with delicate features. His face is so sweet that it looks like the face of the Virgin Mary. The polychrome of the skin tones, clear and brilliant, the excellence with which the very expressive face is sculpted, joined with the typology of the wings and the chromatic richness, leads us to situate the sculpture in New Spain, from the workshops in Lima.

Saint Michael is wearing a Roman tunic with wide sleeves over which he wears a breastplate. Under this is a short skirt with brush work decoration which leaves both legs exposed, very much in baroque style. He wears calf-length boots that reveal his toes.
The saint wears a plumed helmet. In his right hand he carries his sword and in the left he would have held a shield, which has not been preserved.
The overall result is harmonious and homogenous, with the mastery of the carving combined with extremely beautiful decoration of great chromatic richness and attention to the smallest detail. There is not one fold, or a centimeter in the whole sculpture that is not sculpted and polychromed.
In spite of the saint’s vertical position, an imaginary diagonal line can be observed from the right hand to the folds and the extreme left of the skirt, giving movement to the sculpture.

This image was most certainly created to be placed in an important and obvious place, and be contemplated from all sides, as the back has been worked and treated with the same rigour.
The refined Spanish techniques and sgraffiti reach their maximum splendour in this sculpture, as we can see in the decoration of the breastplate and the clothing.

There are three different types of ornamentation:

- The breastplate of the armour displays estofado technique and pricked leaf and flower patterns in gold, with the edges decorated with brushwork on a blue background strewn with minute gold stars. There is identical decoration on the calf-high boots on his feet.
- The tunic has an ivory background and brushwork flowers, edged with a pricked gold border that looks like brocade. At the front it is held together with jewelled brooches in a gesture that shows the ruby red colour of the inside of the tunic.
- Finally, there is the fantastic cape, which is knotted at the left side, making two large and voluminous folds. The upper one displays the interior of the cape polychromed in green tones and the lower one displays the external part with marvellous red and gold estofado technique forming leaves and flowers and an enormous braid that edges the cloak.

Images of Saint Michael of comparable quality, typology and size are, for example, the magnificent Saint Michael at the Santa Cruz church in Seville, the Archangel Saint Michael at Quito Cathedral by Bernardo Legarda and the magnificent example by La Roldana that is kept at the Royal Monastery at El Escorial.

161 x 115 x 101 cm.