The sculpture was discovered two weeks ago in the Sar River on the outskirts of Santiago de Compostela by an angler looking for trout. What appeared to be a slimy rock at first sight could turn out to be a 700-year-old piece of Spanish religious history.
“I was out fishing when I tripped on a stone,” Fernando Brey told the Voz de Galicia newspaper.
“I noticed the stone was square – which is odd in a river – and then I looked at its lines, at the cape and at the shape of the head. And I said to myself: ‘There’s something here’.”
On Monday morning, the statue was taken from the river to be examined at the city’s Pilgrimage Museum.
Photo: xunta.gal
“On both sides of the Virgin, by each of her shoulders, are two angels or putti,” the regional government of Galicia said in a statement. “They’re fairly worn away, but you can still make out each of their faces and a hand holding up an object or the Virgin’s own cape.”
The base of the sculpture is decorated with a four-petalled flower and interwoven acanthus leaves.
Initial investigations suggest the piece is carved in the local Galician gothic style and may once have decorated a wall.
