Education of the Virgin

The earliest documented female sculptor in Spain, Luisa Roldán (1652-1706) created sculptures for the king and queen among many other important Spanish patrons.  In The Education of the Virgin, she captured a tender, everyday moment between the young Virgin Mary (future mother of Jesus Christ) and her parents, saints Anne and Joachim. Standing at Anne’s feet, Mary peers over her mother’s lap as they practice reading a religious text together. Joachim leans on the arm of Anne’s chair, observing and encouraging the lesson.  By including both Mary’s mother and father in the miniature figural group, Roldán emphasized the important role that parents play in the spiritual and moral education their children. 

Although The Education of the Virgin serves as an earthly reminder that our parents are our first teachers, the many angels who wait on Mary and her family also confirm the religious significance of the subject and the exceptionality of the Virgin Mary within the Catholic tradition.  In fact, painted on the cushion of the chair behind Anne’s back is an image of Anne and Joachim’s embrace at the Golden Gate, a moment that, according to non-Biblical Christian religious texts such as Jacopo da Voragine’s Golden Legend, occurred after the angel Gabriel announced to Joachim that Anne, his elderly wife, had immaculately conceived a child.  Mary’s miraculous conception was an important Catholic theological point because, her soul having not been conceived through sexual intercourse, she was born without original sin (the innate tendency of all human beings to disobey God) and was therefore able to bear Christ, the Christian incarnation of God on earth. Roldán also referenced Mary’s birth at the bottom right corner of the sculpture, where a small, chubby angel presents a roll of fabric for swaddling Mary as a newborn, a birthing cushion for her mother Anne’s use during labor, and a woven basket filled with cloth that served as Mary’s bassinette--indeed, these elements also foreshadow Mary’s future role as mother of Christ. In this way, Roldán refers to three phases from the life of the young Virgin at once: her Immaculate conception, her angelically attended birth, and her upbringing by two devout people.  The sculpture thus not only imagines a tender scene between parents and daughter but also affirms Mary’s extraordinary position within the Catholic tradition and her worthiness to become the mother of God.

In the 1600s, this kind of small, painted terracotta (baked clay) sculpture would have been used in private devotion, usually placed on a table inside of the home, reminding its viewers both of the importance of obedience to one’s elders and to God as well as the need for parents to provide religious and moral education to their children, including girls.  This is especially interesting given that, at this time, women were becoming increasingly literate and exercising greater (although still extremely limited) cultural and political authority than they had in earlier periods of Spain’s history.  Also significant is that, until the modern era, women were not allowed access to professional artistic training and the few women who became artists almost always learned their craft from their fathers. The Education of the Virgin, which is an image of instruction between parent and child, may thus have had personal significance for Roldán, who was taught how to sculpt by her father, Pedro (1624-1699), an artist from Seville.

Due to the fragile nature of terracotta, few of Roldán’s sculptures survive today. The Blanton’s example was conserved in 2019, which revealed that the top of each woman’s head has a small hole where a metal crown would have been inserted.  Additionally, at Joachim’s feet are the four paws of a now-lost cat, which may have been competing with the book on Anne’s lap for Mary’s attention. Furthermore, Roldán may have roughened the patch of clay at the center-front of the composition to attach a small dog, which is included in a similar sculpture of the same subject that is now in a private collection in Spain. Even without these elements, Roldán’s Education of the Virgin is an important example of her late work, of which only about twenty examples still exist in the world.