Recognised for his technical abilities, Marco Augusto creates works able to adapt to great Cathedrals.
Marco Augusto Dueñas has created monumental sculpture in Carrara marble for two Spanish cathedrals: the Almudena Cathedral in Madrid and the Cathedral of Santa María in Tortosa, Tarragona. Carving for a cathedral imposes demands of its own: a scale conceived to read clearly from tens of metres away; integration with historic architecture, whose proportions, niches and iconographic programme are fixed in advance; and command of Carrara marble, the material of Europe’s great religious sculpture since the Renaissance.
For the Almudena, the sculptor carved the archangels Saint Michael and Saint Gabriel and the relief of the Voto de la Villa; for Tortosa, the Virgen de la Cinta, which in 2021 crowned a façade left unfinished for centuries. Together these commissions place Dueñas among the Spanish sculptors sustaining the tradition of religious sculpture in marble today.
La Almudena Cathedral
Madrid, Spain
Saint Michael
Saint Gabriel
For the Cathedral of Santa María la Real de la Almudena in Madrid, Dueñas carved the archangels Saint Michael and Saint Gabriel: two four-metre figures in Carrara marble. The cathedral also holds his relief of the Voto de la Villa, measuring 230 × 200 cm in white marble, and a coat of arms in marble — an ensemble conceived in dialogue with the building’s architecture.
Tortosa Cathedral
Virgen de la Cinta
On 31 August 2021, the monumental sculpture of the Virgen de la Cinta, patron saint of Tortosa, was installed in the central niche of the main façade of the Cathedral of Santa María de Tortosa. Carved by the sculptor in Carrara marble, the figure completed a façade that had stood unfinished for centuries — a work of contemporary religious sculpture giving the cathedral’s principal front its final form.