"Saint James the Pilgrim". Carved, polychromed and gilded wooden sculpture. Castilian School. Late 16th century.

"Saint James the Pilgrim". Carved, polychromed and gilded wooden sculpture. Castilian School. Late 16th century.
Total measurements: 105 x 48,5 x 43 cm.
This sculpture is doubly interesting due to its exquisite quality, which is further emphasised by the gilding which inundates the clothing and also the fact that on its back is a niche closed by a small door with period ironwork, which would have stored and protected some extremely valuable element, perhaps a reliquary which would have contained a relic of the Patron Saint of Santiago de Compostela.
The saint is depicted as standing, with his face lost in thought, a forked beard of enormous ringlets, a wide moustache and a mane of long hair that falls in various locks both on his shoulders and his back. He has been portrayed with the typical attributes of the pilgrim. Thus, we can observe the scallop or pilgrim’s shell on the front of the pilgrim’s hat on his head, which is the icon of the "Camino de Santiago" or Way of St. James. The left hand grips the pilgrim’s staff, on which the gourd is fastened for keeping water for hydration whilst walking on the paths. The right hand holds a book which confirms his condition as apostle. He also wears the typical pilgrim’s attire, known as the sanrocchino: a long tunic that reaches the feet, cinched at the waist with a chord and a cloak fastened at the chest which covers his back. Both garments are gilded and, moreover, on the lower part of the tunic the polychromer has painted a border with vegetation motifs in various colours. The hands have been carved independently of the body and are joined to it with rods. It gives the impression that these hands are not original -in fact the way in which they are worked suggests this- but were substituted at a later moment, perhaps when it was decided to make the niche in the back and hide it with the vertical, rectangular door. This interior space appears to have a type of plinth inside the lower part, a large niche, and in the lower part of this is a hollow which is even deeper, which suggests to us that the element that was kept inside would have had large dimensions and that the drilling had been finished in a way meant that the unknown object would have fitted perfectly inside the saint’s interior.
As we have mentioned, the sculpture has been restored. One restoration is the hands, but the staff and the hands also seem to be posterior, as well as, perhaps, the hollow in the saint’s back. While the image could be dated to the late 16th century, as the wide Roman-style moustache suggests, as well as the ample vertical folds in the tunic, the restoration work could have been done in the late 17th century or even in the following century.
We would like to thank Javier Baladrón, doctor in History of Art, for identifying and cataloguing this piece.