[citation needed] Francisco Salzillo worked exclusively on religious themes, and almost always in polychromed wood.

At the age of twenty he completed the statue of St Agnes of Montepulciano, which had been begun for the Dominicans at Murcia by his father.

In the Ermita de Jesús in Murcia may be seen Salzillo's scenes from the Passion of Our Lord, a vast work in which all the sculptor's qualities and defects are revealed.

The attribution of the stone sculptures on the facade of St Nicolas's Church in Murcia to him, is purely conjectural.

Unlike the great sculptors of the 17th century, like Juan Martínez Montañés or Gregorio Fernández, Francisco Salzillo did not dwell overly on the dramatic aspects of the scenes he depicted, but explored naturalistic concepts of idealized beauty that heralded the transition from the Baroque style into the Rococó and Neoclasicism.