Two Spanish Terracotta Reliefs in the Collection of Sir Brinsley Ford

Abstract

This paper describes two terracotta reliefs now in the collection of Sir Brinsley Ford which were originally bought in Seville in 1832 by his great-grandfather, the famous traveller and writer Richard Ford. The two
reliefs depict St. Catherine of Siena and the Christ Child and the Infant John the Baptist respectively. The style shows clear influences of the work of Juan Martínez Montañés, and they are likely to have been made in
Seville, and to date from about 1620-50. These two pieces are also the first works of Spanish sculpture to be reproduced in early photographs or Talbotypes (named after William Henry Fox Talbot) and were among the
first photographs to be included in a book of art history, the fourth volume of William Stirling's Annals of the Artists of Spain, published in London in 1847.