A Mourning St. John in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts

A figure of St. John in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts has been identified as Tuscan and dated to the 14th century. A recent technical analysis of the work and a wider search for its stylistic sources have shown that the figure is Spanish and can be dated to the second half of the 13th century. Comparisons with figures from the Cathedrals of Burgos and León demonstrate how closely wood carvers followed the current styles of monumental sculpture. In analyzing two generations of Castillian sculpture it is apparent that, like their contemporaries in outlying regions of France and the Rhineland, Spanish sculptors responded to High Gothic style by pressing its realistic tendencies to new levels of expression.