Plácido Zuloaga

Plácido Maria Martin Zuloaga y Zuloaga[1] (5 October 1834 – 1 July 1910)[2] was a Spanish sculptor and metalworker. He is known for perfecting damascening, a technique that involves inlaying gold, silver, and other metals into an iron surface, creating an intricate decorative effect.[3] He exhibited his art works at international fairs and was recognised with multiple awards. Zuloaga came from a family of Basque metalworkers. He was the son of damascening pioneer Eusebio Zuloaga, the half-brother of the painter and ceramic artist Daniel Zuloaga,[2] and the father of the painter Ignacio Zuloaga.[2] For a long time he made artworks for the English collector Alfred Morrison. Many of these items are now in the private collection of the British-Iranian scholar and philanthropist Nasser D. Khalili.

Plácido Zuloaga
Plácido painted by his son, Ignacio Zuloaga
Born(1834-10-05)5 October 1834
Madrid
Died1 July 1910(1910-07-01) (aged 75)
NationalitySpanish
Known fordamascening
Spouse(s)Lucía Zamora y Zabaleta, Francisca Gil y Lete

Early life

Plácido was born in 1834 in Madrid to Eusebio and Antonia Zuloaga. His father was the director of the Spanish Royal Armoury and a pioneer of damascening.[2] The Zuloaga family had been based in Eibar and producing armaments as far back as 1596.[4] Plácido learned in his father's workshop from an early age.[2] At fourteen, he visited Paris where he learned from the armourer Lepage. In Dresden, he studied under Antoine-Louis Barye and Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux.[2] In 1867 his father let him take over administration of the family factory in Eibar.[2] It is thought that he had already been carrying out his father's commissions for a decade at this point.[5] The workshop's royal commissions ended in 1868 when the queen was exiled and Eusebio lost his position in the royal household.[6] Plácido contacted the English art collector Alfred Morrison, heir to a textile fortune, whom he had met at the 1862 International Exhibition in South Kensington.[6] Over a twenty-year period, Zuloaga and his workshop worked almost exclusively for Morrison,[6] adapting the factory to make damascened art works rather than armaments.[2] From 1860 to 1890, Zuloaga trained more than 200 artists in damascening.[7]

Works

Many of Zuloaga's works are so intricate they could not feasibly be made by one person; he led a team of specialist artisans who carried out his designs, each object being produced by eight to twelve individuals.[7] Damascening involves indenting the iron surface, then pressing fine gold wire and heating the surface so that the gold forms a solid shape.[8] Whereas modern damascening uses acid etching to create the indentations, Zuloaga and his workshop did so with hand tools.[9] Zuloaga worked when gold was relatively abundant, and his works make greater use of it than later Spanish damascene.[10] His objects are so delicate they would be damaged by ordinary use as containers. Zuloaga's goal was beauty rather than practical utility.[11]

The Fonthill Casket: forged iron cassone, 1871

More than a hundred pieces of Spanish damascened metalwork, including 22 signed by Zuloaga, have been collected by the British-Iranian scholar and philanthropist Nasser D. Khalili, forming the Khalili Collection of Spanish Damascene Metalwork.[12] Included in these are the Fonthill Casket, a 201-centimetre-wide (79 in) iron cassone with gold and silver damascening, decorated with white enamel ornament in black.[13] Its artistic and decorative intent is revealed by it being elaborately decorated on the inside as well as out.[14] Commissioned by Alfred Morrison, it acquired its name from Fonthill manor, Morrison's family home. Zuloaga and his specialists took two years to construct the casket,[13] which was described in 1879 as "a triumph of skilled workmanship".[11] Also commissioned by Morrison are a pair of amphora-shaped urns, 108 centimetres (43 in) high, from 1878 whose style imitated the medieval Alhambra vases.[15] Covered in intricate Hispano-Arabic decoration, possibly drawn from contemporary engravings of a specific Alhambra vase, these were exhibited in Paris before delivery to Morrison.[15]

A writing desk dated 1884–1885 has 44 drawers in a wooden case, each with enamelled floral patterns and a damascened metal button-pull.[16] Not a woodworker himself, Zuloaga would have subcontracted out the preparation of the wood and veneer.[16] A 47.3-centimetre-high (18.6 in) iron shrine dated 1880 recalls Gothic architecture in its overall shape, but the intricate damascened decoration is more suggestive of Art Nouveau.[17] It contains a cast silver figure of the Virgin and Child in a Gothic style.[17] Other objects signed by Zuloaga include a revolver[18] and snuff boxes, caskets, and containers of various dimensions.[19]

Around 1872, Zuloaga's workshop was commissioned to make the monumental sarcophagus for General Juan Prim. Work began in Eibar, but due to the civil war of 1873 he moved his workshop across to the border to Saint-Jean-de-Luz in France where the work was completed. Prim's tomb now resides in the cemetery at Reus.[20] Around 1900, Zuloaga was commissioned by the Society of Jesus to construct an altar for the Sanctuary of St. Ignatius at Loyola. This was the last major project that he completed, referred to sometimes as his "posthumous" work, although in fact the altar was completed and installed at Loyola in 1909 while he was still alive.[21] It has since been described as "one of the greatest works ... that has been produced in Eibar."[22]

  • Pair of iron urns, before 1878
  • Iron shrine with virgin and child, 1880
  • Writing or document desk, 1884-85

Personal life

With his first wife Lucía Zamora y Zabaleta, he had ten children, five of whom survived to adulthood, including Ignacio Zuloaga, who would become a noted painter. After Lucia died in 1900, he married Francisca Gil y Lete.[2]

Recognition and legacy
Iron table clock, circa 1880

Zuloaga died in Madrid at the age of 76 on 1 July 1910 and is interred in the cemetery at Canillejas.[7] Several of his trainees continued as noted artists, and Eibar continued as the centre of Spanish damascene production until the Spanish Civil War.[7]

During his life, Zuloaga was awarded the Officer of the French Legion of Honor, Knight Commander of the Order of Isabel the Catholic, Knight of the Great Cross of Charles III, Knight of the Great Cross of the Lion and Sword of Sweden, Cross of King Leopold of Belgium, Knight of the Portuguese Order of St. James, Grand Cross of Santiago of Portugal, and Knight of the Order of Maria Teresa of Austria.[2][7] He won many gold and silver medals at national and international exhibitions.[7]

The critical reception of Zuloaga's art, and of Spanish damascened metalwork generally, has changed greatly over time. In 1872, the Keeper of Art Collections in the South Kensington Museum (later renamed the Victoria and Albert Museum) wrote that a Léonard Morel-Ladeuil vase decorated by Zuloaga "will be regarded as one of the greatest Art productions of the century".[23] An 1879 article said that his works showed a patience and effort that "take one into an era when the fine arts producer devoted himself solely to the cause of his métier, apart from the commercial considerations of time, trouble and expense."[11] Early twentieth-century art critics took a more negative view of the Zuloaga family's works, but a new wave of interest and critical appreciation emerged in the last decades of that century.[23] Nasser Khalili, who writes that "Spain [has] always led the West in its beauty and quality of its damascene production", describes Zuloaga as "the supreme damascener of [his] family".[24]

Exhibitions
Bronze gilt and enamelled casket, 1891–1892

Zuloaga exhibited his works at the 1855 Paris International Exposition (where he was awarded a Medal of Honour)[2] and at the Madrid and Brussels International exhibitions of 1856, then at the Great London Exposition of 1862.[2]

More recently, the following exhibitions have featured his work:[25]

Plácido Zuloaga: Spanish Treasures from The Khalili Collection

El Arte y Tradición de los Zuloaga: Damasquinado Español de la Colección Khalili

Plácido Zuloaga: Meisterwerke in gold, silber und eisen damaszener–schmiedekunst aus der Khalili-Sammlung

Metal Magic: Spanish Treasures from the Khalili Collection

References
  1. Lavin 1997, p. 42.
  2. "Plácido Zuloaga y Zuloaga | Real Academia de la Historia". dbe.rah.es (in Spanish). Retrieved 9 April 2020.
  3. Lavin 1997, p. 37.
  4. Lavin 1997, p. 41.
  5. Lavin 1997, p. 43.
  6. Lavin, James. "Catalogue note". Sothebys.com. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  7. Lavin 1997, p. 63.
  8. Lavin 1997, p. 45.
  9. Larrañaga, Ramiro "Damascene as part of the Engraver's Art" in Lavin 1997, p. 37
  10. Larrañaga, Ramiro "Damascene as part of the Engraver's Art" in Lavin 1997, p. 38
  11. Lavin 1997, p. 57.
  12. "Spanish Damascene Metalwork". Khalili Collections. Retrieved 9 April 2020.
  13. Lavin 1997, p. 71.
  14. Lavin 1997, pp. 59, 71.
  15. Lavin 1997, p. 83.
  16. Lavin 1997, p. 108.
  17. Lavin 1997, p. 104.
  18. Lavin 1997, p. 102.
  19. Lavin 1997, pp. 90–114.
  20. Lavin 1997, p. 58.
  21. Lavin 1997, pp. 62–63.
  22. Celaya, P.; Larrañaga, R.; and San Martin, J. (1981) El damasquinado de Eibar quoted in Lavin 1997, p. 63
  23. Blair, Claude "Introduction" in Lavin 1997, p. 9
  24. Khalili, Nasser D. "Foreword" in Lavin 1997, p. 8
  25. "The Eight Collections". nasserdkhalili.com. Retrieved 9 April 2020.

Sources

 This article incorporates text from a free content work. Licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0. Text taken from The Khalili Collections, Khalili Foundation, To learn how to add open license text to Wikipedia articles, please see this how-to page. For information on reusing text from Wikipedia, please see the terms of use.

  • Lavin, James D. (1997). The art and tradition of the Zuloagas : Spanish damascene from the Khalili Collection. Oxford: Khalili Family Trust in association with the Victoria and Albert Museum. ISBN 1-874780-10-2. OCLC 37560664.

Further reading
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