• Juan has always had a vocation in medicine and anatomy
• He is Associate Professor at the University of Seville
• He wrote a book called The Holy Shroud: Art and Mystery

The tense muscles and tearful countenance of Juan Miñarro’s religious sculptures overwhelm with realism. For this Sevillian imaginero, his works have to compel. “There has to be an inner soul to the figures,” he says. He achieves this through a masterful representation of anatomy. Juan recalls his vocation in medicine before deciding to study at the Academy of Fine Arts of Seville, where he specialised in sculpture and graduated in 1978. His thesis, The study of artistic anatomy for the iconography of Christ crucified in sculpture, paved the way for the following decades of his career: dedicated work, study, teaching and a passion for archaeological forensics that led him to collaborate with the Spanish Centre for Sindonology. Juan is now Associate Professor at the University of Seville, Doctor in Fine Arts, and Numerary Academic of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary. His studying of the Shroud of Turin has enabled Juan to capture the realism of the crucifixion in his works as in Córdoba’s Sindonic Christ, one of his masterpieces.