El entallador placentino Francisco García y su obra en la provincia de Cáceres

The article reconstructs the career of the Plasencia carver Francisco García (active between 1539 and 1571) as a key figure in the introduction of the Renaissance altarpiece in the diocese of Plasencia, within an Extremadura still marked by a “renewed Gothicism” and by the slow reception of Italianate forms. On the basis of extensive notarial documentation, the study defines his training in the workshop of Francisco de Angulo, his insertion in a dense family network of carvers and goldsmiths, and the continuity of the workshop through Baltasar García. It delimits the geographical scope of his activity —mainly the diocese of Plasencia, with documented work in Coria, Seville and Madrid— and distinguishes three artistic phases, conditioned by his Sevillian sojourn and by the assessment of the altarpiece in bishop Vargas Carvajal’s chapel at San Andrés in Madrid. The article catalogues his principal documented works (high altarpieces of Sanchotello, Casas de Millán, San Martín in Plasencia, Gargüera and Tejeda de Tiétar, together with commissions in Coria Cathedral) and analyses the adoption of a wooden architectural language based on the baluster and Roman decorative repertoires, with Franco-Flemish expressive accents that define him as a leading exponent of early Renaissance retable-making in northern Extremadura.