UNKNOWN MASTER, Spanish
(active around 1500 in Toledo)

Doña María de Perea

1499-1505
Alabaster, 34 x 66 x 200 cm
Victoria and Albert Museum, London

This effigy of Doña María de Perea (d. 1499) is a pendant to that of her husband, Don García de Osorio (d. after 1502). Both effigies were originally placed in the church of San Pedro at Ocaña near Toledo in Spain, but they were removed when the church was declared structurally unsound in 1906. Doña María holds a rosary, an indication of her piety.

Doña María's simple dress, reminiscent of a nun, also implies her lack of ostentation and her religious devotion. Although the author of the tomb is unknown, he is likely to have been a sculptor active in Toledo, and the skill with which the dress and portraits are rendered on both this effigy and that of don García Osorio (doña María Perea's husband) suggests an experienced Castilian sculptor perhaps influenced by Netherlandish prototypes, in the tradition of Gil de Siloe.