Unknown Maker, Spanish

This shallow carving was originally set above the portal of the church of Santa Marta de Tera in northern Spain’s Leonese region. Renowned as a place of miraculous cures, the church was a station along the pilgrimage route to the shrine of Saint James of Compostela.

This youthful, beardless Jesus holds a book and raises his right hand in blessing. His pose derives from Roman representations of the god Apollo, but the massive, flattened figure and linear drapery distance this depiction from the naturalistic forms of classical sculpture.