Mariano Benlliure

He was born in the Lower Street of the Carmen neighborhood of Valencia. His earliest sculptures featured bullfighting themes,[3] modeled in wax and cast in bronze. At the age of thirteen he showed a wax modello of a picador at the Exposición Nacional de Bellas Artes, 1876. Pursuing the thought of becoming a painter, he went to Paris his expenses paid by his master, Francisco Domingo Marqués. 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 Exposición Nacional his portrait sculpture of the painter Ribera won him a first-prize.[2]

Benlliure's style is characterized by detailed naturalism allied to an impressionistic spontaneity. His portrait busts and public monuments are numerous, and include:

• the tomb of Práxedes Mateo Sagasta in the Pantheon of Illustrious Men, Madrid
• monument to José de San Martín, Lima, Peru
• the monument to Álvaro de Bazán, Plaza de la Villa, Madrid.[4]
• the monument to Isabella the Catholic,[5] Granada
• the monument to General Cassola,[6] Parque del Oeste, Madrid
• the monument to Maria Christina of Bourbon, Madrid
• the bronze equestrian statue of the monument to Alfonso XII, in Madrid's El Retiro, the centerpiece of a memorial designed by architect José Grases Riera.
• the monument to Agustina de Aragón, in Zaragoza.
• the monument to Castelar, in Madrid.
• the monument to Arsenio Martínez Campos, in El Retiro.[7]
• the monument to Miguel Primo de Rivera, in Jerez de la Frontera.[8]
• the monument to Antonio Maura, in Palma de Mallorca.[9]
• the monument to Cuba, in El Retiro, with help from Miquel Blay, Francisco Asorey and Juan Cristóbal (completed by 1930, unveiled in 1952).

He was depicted on the Spanish 500 ptas banknote in the 1950s, with his sculpture "Sepulcro De Gayarre en el Roncal" on the reverse.

His brothers José and Juan Antonio were also painters.