Roaming Tales

Spain is packed with religious artworks - some of them more quirky than others, such as these Jesus statues from Barcelona and Sevilla.

Spain is an intensely Catholic country and has been ever since the Moors were expelled in the Middle Ages and the fearsome Spanish Inquisition in the centuries that followed. So it’s not surprising that the country is brimming with beautiful cathedrals and religious paintings and statues from the medieval and Renaissance periods. Sometimes the endless paintings and statues of Madonna and child can seem a bit repetitive so I like to look for the ones that are a little different.

For example, it’s not too often you see statues of the Virgin Mary breast feeding the baby Jesus, such as this Medieval sculpture from the Frederic Mares Museum in Barcelona.

Those Medieval sculptors also liked to imagine Jesus as a playful child. From the same museum, here are examples of Jesus playing with his mother, and another of Jesus riding on the shoulders of Saint Christopher.

And at Sevilla Cathedral, we see Jesus with his stepfather Joseph and Jesus as a young boy. Not quite unorthodox but certainly less common themes than Mary and the infant and Jesus on the Cross.