Culture buys two works by Luisa Roldán that will go to the National Museum of Sculpture in Valladolid and the Prado

The Ministry of Culture has acquired the sculptural groups ‘The Virgin learning to read‘ y ‘Rest in the flight to Egypt’ of Luisa Roldan. The works will be destined for the National Museum of Sculpture and the National Prado Museum respectively.

The acquisitions, which have been made through the exercise of the right of first refusal for an amount of 275,000 euros each, They belong to the series of works that the artist created when she settled in Madrid, before her appointment as chamber sculptor in the service of monarchs Charles II and Philip V.

Her establishment at the Madrid court meant a substantial change for the artist’s work both in the materials – she left wood aside to work with fired and polychrome clay – and in the formats, which became small groups, meticulous modeling and detailed polychromy, designed to decorate the palatial rooms and galleries and which she herself defined as ‘sculpture jewels’.

‘The Virgin learning to read’ It is a sculptural group made of fired and polychrome clay that sits on a black painted wooden base with moldings and carved and gilded acanthus leaves that decorate its corners as legs. In the center of the composition, Saint Anne, seated in a large armchair with a royal crown, holds the book of Proverbs on her lap which the Virgin girl reads sitting next to her.

With this purchase, the National Museum of Sculpture, a state-owned museum located in Valladolid, reinforces the presence of the Sevillian artist in its collections, currently considered one of the greatest figures of baroque sculpture, and whose representation in the museum has increased significantly in recent years.

Luisa Roldán is one of the museum’s main artistsalong with Alonso Berruguete, Juan de Juni and Gregorio Fernández. Since 2017, the following works by Roldán have been incorporated into the museum’s collections: ‘Virgen de Atocha’, ‘Cabalgata de los Reyes Magos’, ‘Virgen con el Niño y San Juanito’, ‘Madonna with the Child’, ‘The Child Jesus, Saint Joseph, The Virgin Mary and a Page’ and ‘Ecstasy of the Magdalene’, acquired in 2024.

All of them could be seen in the exhibition ‘Luisa Roldán. Royal Sculpture’ that closed in March of this year at the National Museum of Sculpture and was visited by nearly 40,000 people.

Besides, ‘Rest in the flight to Egypt’ It will go to the National Prado Museum. This sculptural group made of fired and polychrome clay represents the rest of the Holy Family during the flight to Egypt. Like the previous group, it has a base different from what is usual in Luisa Roldán’s Madrid production, with carved and gilded plant elements, in the Neapolitan taste.

It will be the first work by the artist to enter the collections of the National Prado Museum.which will enrich its collection of baroque sculpture of this devotional genre, as well as offer a more complete overview of the situation of the plastic arts and the interaction between disciplines in Spain at the end of the 17th century and the beginning of the 18th century.