Spain Guide
Castilla y León and La Rioja
Museo Nacional de Escultura
Opening time: Tues– Sat 10am–2pm & 4–9pm, Oct to mid-March afternoons 4–6pm, Sun 10am–2pm
Price: €2.40, free Sat pm & Sun am
Website: museoescultura.mcu.es
Housed in the sixteenth-century Palacio de Villena, the beautifully presented Museo Nacional de Escultura contains a renowned collection of Spanish religious sculpture of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, including some of the most brilliant works of the Spanish Renaissance – often commissioned for churches and monasteries, rarely do you see such vibrant pieces at these close quarters.
Sixteenth-century artists such as Alonso Berruguete (1486–1561), Diego de Siloé (1495–1565) and the Frenchman Juan de Juni (1507–77) adapted the classical revival to the religious intensity of the Spanish temperament, and the results are often magnificent and sometimes quite beautifully brutal, as weeping wounds, agonized faces and rapt expressions echo around the galleries.
There are good English notes throughout, and you can pick up a leaflet at the desk detailing the highlights, while in an extraordinary flourish at the last you're confronted by a remarkable sculpted Nativity tableau – in an eighteenth-century Neapolitan street, between the hanging laundry, itinerant musicians and fruit sellers, the three Wise Men troop towards the manger on camels. The city's processional Easter figures, or pasos, are also part of the museum's remit – they're on display in a separate building, to which you can be directed from the front desk.