MONTAÑEZ, JUAN MARTINEZ. - Spanish sculptor and architect, b. at Alcalá la Real (Jaén) on 16 March 1568 and d. at Seville on 18 June 1649.
He was among the greatest representatives of Andalusian polychrome sculpture; initially active in Granada, he spent most of his life in Seville. Among his best-known sculptures are the “retablo” of S. Isidoro del Campo at Santiponce near Seville (1609–12), the Christ on the Cross in Seville Cathedral, where a fine Immaculate Conception is also preserved; he also executed numerous statues of saints, and in all his works there is evident great plastic perfection and a profound expression of inner life.
BBL.: Laboratorio de Arte, Univers. Sevilla, s. V. in Thieme-Becker, XXV (1931), p. 81; F. Jimenez Placer, La labor de M. en el retablo de S. Miguel de Jerez, in Archivo español de arte, 1941, pp. 517–41; id., M. y Arte en el retablo de S. Miguel de Jerez, ibid., pp. 345–64; D. Angulo Iniguez, M. M. y su escuela en Honduras y Guatemala, ibid., 1947, pp. 285–91; E. Gomez-Moreno, Bellezza y realismo en M., in Rivista de ideas estéticas, 29 (1950), pp. 3–16 (in the same issue, numerous other writings on M.).