Christ of the Grao of Valencia
Ca. 1650. Grey-brown wash, Grey-brown ink, Grey ink, Pencil ground, Aguada gris, Pencil on laid paper.Not on display
A story in which sculpture offered greater narrative and wondrous possibilities is that of the Christ of the Rescue in Valencia. The image had been intercepted by pirates and taken to Algiers, where it miraculously survived being burned at the stake. The Medinas, a Christian family originally from Valencia, were also being held captive in Algiers. In order to rescue the Christ, they offered to pay its weight in silver – which strikingly turned out to be only 30 coins, the symbolic amount Judas was paid for his betrayal. The fact that the carving directly evoked the living body of Christ lent greater authority to the miracle. The event, which occurred in 1539, became newly popular at the beginning of the seventeenth century and gave rise to a publication telling the stories of the other two Valencian Christs which had arrived by sea in different but equally extraordinary circumstances, the one venerated in El Salvador and the one in El Grao. This drawing of the latter by Andrés Marzo (c. 1605–c. 1671) in which the sculpture appears with the ladder on which it miraculously reached the coast.
Arias Martínez, Manuel, Darse la mano. Escultura y color en el Siglo de Oro, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado, 2024, p.65
