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During the 1570s Pompeo received important commissions for marble sepulchral effigies: the kneeling figure of Joanna of Austria (1574) for her tomb in the convent of Las Descalzas Reales, Madrid; the sensitive and naturalistic portrait of the Inquisitor General, Cardinal Diego de Espinosa (1577), in the church of Martín Muñoz de las Posadas, Segovia; and the elaborate Italianate tomb of Fernando de Valdés (1576) at the collegiate church, Salas. However, all private work stopped in 1579 with the commission from Philip II for 15 bronze statues for the colossal retable of the Capilla Mayor at the Escorial, near Madrid. Pompeo travelled to Milan in 1582 to collaborate on the project with his father. He returned in 1589 and installed the statues in 1591.
The picture shows the retable in the Capilla Mayor, the most highly decorated part of the church. Behind the altar is a three-tiered reredos, or altar screen, made of red granite and jasper, nearly twenty-eight metres tall, adorned with gilded bronze statuary by Leone Leoni, and three sets of religious paintings commissioned by Philip II. To either side are gilded life-size bronzes of the kneeling family groups of Charles V (left) and Philip II (right), also by Leoni with help from his son Pompeo.
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