Showcasing the 50 most influential characters of the city’s history

Córdoba, by the Spanish sculptor Marco Augusto Dueñas, is a series of forty-seven sculptures in white Carrara marble portraying the fifty most influential figures from the city’s two thousand years of history. Commissioned by the Córdoba businessman Rafael Gómez to support Córdoba’s bid for European Capital of Culture 2016, the series was carved between 2003 and 2008 under the historical supervision of Miguel Salcedo Hierro, official chronicler of the city. Each statue stands more than three metres tall — three of the works pair two figures — and together they compose a collective portrait of Roman, Andalusi, Jewish and Christian Córdoba.

The cycle spans twenty centuries of civic memory: from Seneca, Julius Caesar and Lucan to Abd al-Rahman, Almanzor, Averroes, Maimonides and Ziryab, and onward to Saint Eligius, Juan de Mesa, Góngora, the Gran Capitán, Saint Ferdinand and Columbus. This page presents six of these figures — Séneca, San Eloy, Juan de Mesa, Gonzalo, Abderramán III and Góngora — in which religious sculpture and historical portraiture converge, and which give the measure of this monumental undertaking.