Dismas and Gestas

In the older rites of the Church on the Wednesday of Holy Week it is the tradition to read the Passion from the Gospel of Saint Luke. One of the most beautiful passages from this account are the words that passed between Jesus and Saint Dismas, the penitent thief who was crucified with him: ‘and he said to Jesus: Lord, remember me when thou shalt come into thy kingdom. And Jesus said to him: Amen I say to thee, this day thou shalt be with me in paradise.’

These two polychrome processional sculptures of Dismas and the unrepentant thief Gestas were made by Luisa Roldán and Luis Antonio de los Arcos (1652-1711). Although contracted to her husband because of the legal limitations on women, much of the work was undertaken by Luisa. Processional sculpture was a complex genre due to their sizes and the way in which these scenes were viewed by devotees. The two thieves, with their rangy anatomies and pronounced bones, naked except for a scanty cloth, are all the more remarkable as they show the outstanding knowledge of anatomy achieved by Luisa despite the impediments imposed on women by the artist’s guild and the Sevillian Academy.