He is among the greatest representatives of Andalusian polychrome sculpture; after beginning his career in Granada, he spent most of his life in Seville. Among his most famous works is the altarpiece of St Isidore of the Field at Santiponce near Seville (1609–12), the Crucifix in Seville Cathedral, where a fine Immaculate Conception is also preserved. He also produced numerous statues of saints, and in all his works one notes a great plastic perfection and profound expression of inner life.
BIBL.: Laboratorio de Arte, Univers. Sevilla, s. V. in Thieme-Becker, XXV (1931), p. 81; F. Jiménez Placer, La labor de M. en el retablo de S. Miguel de Jerez, in *Archivio español de arte*, 1941, pp. 517–41; id., M. y Arce en el retablo de S. Miguel de Jerez, ibid., pp. 345–64; D. Angulo Íñiguez, M. M. y su escuela en Honduras y Guatemala, ibid., 1947, pp. 285–91; E. Gómez-Moreno, *Belleza y realismo en M.*, in *Revista de ideas estéticas*, 29 (1950), pp. 3–16 (in the same issue numerous other writings on M.). Gilberto Ronci