Artist

(b. 1614, Porreras, Mallorca, d. 1684, Granada)

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Details

Spanish sculptor. He probably began his training in Baza (Granada) in the workshop of Cecilio López Criado, with whom he collaborated until he moved to Granada in 1650 to begin working with Pedro de Mena and to direct his workshop. When Alonso Cano arrived in Granada in 1652, both Mora and Mena became influenced by his work. Mora's earliest surviving sculpture is the Ecce homo (1659; Granada, Capilla Real), a half-length figure in polychromed wood of a type commonly used by Mena, to whom the piece has been attributed. Mora's work is not documented again until 1665, when he collaborated with his son José de Mora in the execution of the grey marble sculptures on the façade of the Basilica de Nuestra Señora de las Angustias, Granada. After the departure of Pedro de Mena in 1658 and the death of Cano in 1667, Bernardo de Mora's workshop was the most important in Granada. In 1675 he executed his most significant work, the polychromed wooden figure of St Michael for the Ermita de San Miguel el Alto in the Albaycin district of Granada. The influence of Cano is evident in the treatment of the face and in the general conception of the figure of the triumphant archangel, shown from the front. Cano's style is also seen in Mora's last works of c. 1679, such as St John of God, St Raphael the Archangel and the Virgin as a Child, all in San Juan de Dios, Granada; however, their immediate realism and the sumptuousness of their clothing gives them a certain banal quality. In general, his sculpture is modest and impersonal, qualities that often make his work difficult to identify. //

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Category	Artists
Artists by letter	M
Artist nationality	Spanish