St Bruno

This ivory statuette represents Saint Bruno and is made in Spain in about 1800 - 1820. St Bruno (about 1032-1101) was the founder of the Carthusian Order. Although never officially canonised, he is recognised as a saint, as the Holy See approved his cult for Carthusians in 1514, and this was extended to the Universial Church in 1674. He is usually portrayed in Carthusian habit holding a lily and with a skull. Although somewhat neo-classical in style, and so likely to date from the early nineteenth century, the present figure is stylistically related to seventeenth- century Spanish and Portuguese sculpture in wood, such as the work of Manuel Pereira (1588-1683), whose life-size polychromed wood figure of St Bruno was made for the Carthusian monastery of Miraflores outside Burgos before 1635.