El entallador placentino Francisco Gómez de Aguilar y el retablo mayor de El Torno (Cáceres)

The article reconstructs, on the basis of parish and notarial sources, the history and formal analysis of the main altarpiece of the parish church of El Torno, created by the Plasencia carver and sculptor Francisco Gómez de Aguilar. It first explains the existence of an earlier altarpiece, commissioned in 1706 from Melchor González de la Cruz, whose poor-quality pine (chilla) rapidly deteriorated under woodworm attack, forcing the parish to commission a new structure. The new altarpiece, agreed for 2,800 reales and executed between 1735 and 1736/39 in Gómez de Aguilar’s Plasencia workshop, is carefully described: a stone socle, predella, single main body with plain-shaft columns and lateral estípites, and a curved attic with trilobed arch, cornucopia and dense vegetal carving framing the niches. The central bay houses the late Gothic image of Our Lady of the Pietà, while the attic contains an eighteenth-century painting of Ecce Homo. The study also examines the gilding and polychromy carried out from 1742 by José Redondo and completed by Fernando Álvarez, together with the later addition of a rococo tabernacle in 1762, gilded in 1778 by Juan Bautista Mangino. Finally, the work is presented as one of Gómez de Aguilar’s earliest documented commissions, anticipating his later activity on major altarpieces in the diocese.