Mariano Benlliure

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Mariano Benlliure (Grau, Valencia, September 8, 1862 - November 9, 1947) was a Spanish sculptor, the most famous twentieth-century sculptor from Valencia, who executed many public monuments and religious sculptures in Spain, working in a heroic realist style.

His earliest sculptures featured bullfighting themes, modeled in wax and cast in bronze. At the age of thirteen he showed a wax modello of a picador at the Exposició Nacional de Belles Arts, 1876. Pursuing the thought of becoming a painter, he went to Paris his expenses paid by his master, Domingo Marquès. A trip to Rome in 1879, revealing at first hand the sculptures of Michelangelo convinced him to be a sculptor. In 1887 he established himself permanently in Madrid, where in that year's Exposició Nacional his portrait sculpture of the painter Ribera won him a first-prize.

His portrait busts and public monuments are numerous. His monument to San Martín was erected in Lima, Peru. is detailed naturalism allied to an impressionistic spontaneity