Luisa Roldán: The Groundbreaking Career of Spain’s First Woman Sculptor

La Roldana

Luisa Roldán, known as La Roldana, was surrounded by sculpture from an early age. Born in Seville in 1652, she grew up in the workshop of her prominent sculptor father, Pedro Roldán (1624-1699), where she and her siblings trained alongside his apprentices. Barred from attending formal academies, Roldán learned to draw, paint, and work wood all within the walls of her family’s shop. It was also there that she would meet her future husband, Luis Antonio de los Arcos, a fellow apprentice.

The two married in 1671, against the will of Roldán’s father—leaving Roldán to appeal to ecclesiastical authorities for permission to marry. According to scholar Catherine Hall-van den Elsen, “Luisa’s agency in relation to her marriage, which pointed to her ability to defy social mores in order to satisfy her own convictions, may have been a biographical inconvenience in the discussion of an otherwise highly regarded woman.”¹ Together, Roldán and her husband had seven children, only two of whom survived to adulthood.

Luisa Roldán would soon become the principal sculptor of the couple’s own independent workshop in Cádiz, where she created large-scale polychromed wooden sculptures for the town’s Cathedral and council, in her own distinctive style. Characterized by their intense realism, her figures feature thin arched eyebrows, rosy cheeks, and lips slightly parted. Unable to sign her own contracts because she was a woman, the earliest mention of Roldán’s name in relation to a work was in a note found inside the head of her sculpture of a flagellated Christ, Ecce Homo (1684), in the Cathedral of Cádiz.

Court Sculptor

A move to Madrid in 1688 would be pivotal in forging her path as an independent artist. There, Roldán petitioned for the post of court sculptor, with what Hall-van den Elsen describes as an “entrepreneurial spirit.”² Reaching the top of her profession, Roldán worked as the sculptor to the Royal Household for the Habsburg King, Charles II, and maintained this appointment even after his death, under the new Bourbon King, Philip V.

Roldán’s St. Michael and the Devil from 1692 was her first large-scale work executed for the King upon her arrival to the Imperial city. St. Michael reigns victorious over the tormented devil in a composition that represents the triumph of the Catholic church over the threat of Protestantism. Roldán portrays St. Michael–arm aloft over a disarmingly human devil–as the unvanquished defender of Catholicism and the triumph of Spain. Meticulously rendered, the sculpture spares us no detail.

Flowers, Fabrics, Flesh

It was in Madrid that Roldán began working in terracotta, creating private devotional pieces for the noble class, which she referred to as alajas, or jewels. Featuring a masterful assemblage of flowers, fabrics, and flesh in a multitude of colors, these statues prefigure Rococo porcelain groups. Yet, the subject matter Roldán tackled was by no means frivolous.

As an artist of the Spanish Counter-Reformation, Roldán was to depict not only the joys, but the suffering and martyrdom of the Holy Family and saints. Art was to elicit an emotional reaction in the viewer, in adherence to the recommendations of the Council of Trent. Roldán’s polychrome terracotta figural groups would become her trademark, their naturalism a testament to her command of human anatomy.

Female Literacy

The education of the Virgin was a motif to which Roldán would return at least three times during her tenure at the Spanish court. A rhythmic multitude of adorers and winged putti feast their eyes on a young Mary who learns how to read from her mother, Anne.

The subject’s popularity was due in large part to the Inmaculista movement, which arose in Seville in the early 17th century and focused on Mary’s innate purity. It upheld that the infant Mary was so righteous that she insisted her mother teach her Scripture before she entered the Temple. Thanks to her tireless study, she would understand the words spoken to her years later by the Archangel Gabriel at her Annunciation.

One has to wonder if Roldán’s choice of subject matter might also have been a thematic nudge in favor of the education of girls—an opportunity reserved for only a privileged few in a time of mass illiteracy. As Hall-van den Elsen reminds us, “The education of women was a simmering issue throughout the early modern period.”³

Roldán’s Resurgence

Despite reaching rare levels of success in her lifetime, Roldán struggled financially, leaving behind no worldly goods. In 1706, on the very day of her death, Roldán was awarded the title Accademica di Merito by the prestigious Roman Academy, Accademia di San Luca, for her significant achievements. As irony would have it, the sculptor had issued a personal Declaration of Poverty just days earlier—a bleak reminder of the difficulties faced by women professionals in 17th-century Spain.

In 1724, Roldán’s legacy was immortalized by painter Antonio Palomino (1655-1726), who featured her among the few women in his treatise, An Account of the Lives and Works of the Most Eminent Spanish Painters, Sculptors, and Architects. Her sculptures would go on to find homes in some of the most important international museums, including Spain’s Museo Nacional de Escultura (Valladolid), the Royal Collections Gallery (Madrid), the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York City, NY), The National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC), the J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles, CA), and the Detroit Institute of Arts (Detroit, MI).

Throughout her life, Roldán upended convention and pushed boundaries. Hers is a story of passion and perseverance. Nevertheless, she still finds herself among the numerous female artists who have been relegated to the margins of art history. Now, thanks to a renewed interest in her contributions to the canon of Baroque art, Luisa Roldán is emerging from history as a trailblazing female professional who broke new ground in the world of sculpture.