Besides these works, the retablo in the Cathedral of Santo Domingo de la
Calzada, a small town twelve miles west of Najara, has been attributed
to Forment. But this is a mistake. Not only the style of the carvings
but the records of the date of the work prove that it cannot be by
Damian Forment. The confusion has arisen from its author having the name
of Forment; he seems to have been an important _imagerio_, or
image-maker. We owe the clearing up of this error to M. Marcel
Dieulafoy, to whose admirable work we once more gratefully acknowledge
our debt.
The same learned authority thinks that the admirable tomb of the Marquis
Vasquez de Arco, which is in an annexe of the Sigüenza Cathedral, may,
in spite of certain difficulties about dates, be the work of Damian
Forment. For there seems no other artist working at this time who could
have executed it. Forment left a considerable fortune, which would point
to there having been many anonymous works of his; his four altar-screens
not being sufficient to account for the amassing of this wealth. The
Sigüenza tomb is one of the earliest monuments to show the decisive
influences of the Renaissance. The figure is represented reclining, the
attitude is new and free, the expression of the face is charming, and
all the details are carried out with great perfection. The only colour
that to-day remains is the crimson cross of Santiago. Behind the tomb an
inscription on a slab of marble inlaid into the wall gives the history
of the young hero, who was killed during one of the many sieges which
preceded the conquest of Granada.
There are some very curious and very interesting bas-reliefs in the
lower section of the retablo of the Royal Chapel of Granada (Plate 75)
belonging to this period, which show markedly the Italian Renaissance
forms. They depict the Surrender of the City and the Baptism of the
Moors. Unfortunately the author of these works is unknown.
In 1520, the same year in which Forment began the altar-screen of
Huesca, a Catalan artist, Bartolomé Ordóñez, went to Geneva to chisel
from Carrara marble the tomb of Cardinal Ximénez, which is now in the
Cathedral of Alcalá de Henares, but was formerly in the University
Chapel of the city. The tomb had been already designed by the Florentine
Domenico Alexandro, but on his death in 1520 Ordóñez was chosen to
complete it. With him worked two Genoese artists, Thomas Forne and Adam
Wibaldo, and Ordóñez assimilated so completely the Italian style that on
his return to Spain he became one of the chief channels for introducing
the new forms.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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