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Arts & Communication Spanish art and its enemies

possible causes for this as well as to claim that through scene, the doomed duchess, imprisoned by her brothers –
the hostile criticisms of Spanish art, British art criticism one of whom is a cardinal – is shown wax effigies of the
has itself become a different medium. One unexpected corpses of her husband and child, which she assumes to
development is how the work of such a famous figure as the be real. Here is not so much the Sacred Made Real as the
Aragonese artist Francisco Goya (1746 – 1828), regarded tragic and forensic in brutal display. Her veneration of
as a transgressive producer of horrific images as well as a these supposed corpses is said to make her “plagu’d in art,”
revolutionary in the 19 and 20 centuries, - resulted in a possible reference to sculptural effigies of dead kings
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the Spanish school inspiring new forms of creativity in the and martyrs used in funeral rites, recalling the tradition of
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20 and 21 centuries specifically among young British making imitation corpses in the 16 and 17 centuries. In
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artists. this context too, the polychrome wooden figure of the dead
tortured Christ, which dominated the 2009 exhibition with
2. The Sacred Made Repellent: Confronting shocking immediacy, and seemed to imitate the disturbing
images of martyrdom in London (2009) illusion of waxen effigies, became the glory of the Spanish
school of sculpture in the 17 century. Those exhibits
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On October 21, 2009, an exhibition opened at the National alone retained the power to evoke even in the 21 century,
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Gallery in London, The Sacred Made Real; Spanish painting feelings of grief and revulsion.
and sculpture 1600 – 1700. It remained on show until
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January 24, 2010. A late 20 -century critical analysis of The Duchess of
Malfi has claimed: “Images of the dead—the corpse, the
The exhibits were drawn mainly from convents and severed body parts, and the skeletal remains—are such
churches throughout Spain, with only a few sourced from notable features of this play as well as of 17 -century
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private and national collections in other countries. The theatre and culture in general.” 2(p.277)
nature of the artworks was devotional; that is, images and
objects originally intended to inspire faith and meditation On the Jacobean stage, the reactions of the actors reflect
in the beholders. these sensations: The Duchess of Malfi kisses a wax hand,
which she believes to be the hand of her dead husband.
Hung in the modern wing of the National Gallery’s Severed body parts appeared in the 2009 exhibition,
Sainsbury Centre, the exhibits were spotlit and subjected where a truncated head of John the Baptist transfixed
to shadowy backgrounds. Unable to reproduce original viewers with its accurate anatomical details. “This could
ecclesiastical settings, the curators relied on dramatic be sculpture as an object of a salacious curiosity, a kind
lighting that gave the illusion of closed-off spaces. The of gory relic,” commented another modern reviewer. In
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Independent’s art critic summed up the effect in a startling Jacobean times, the link between the corpse and belief was
allusion: “In the first room…it invites you in, as if to a strong: “…seventeenth-century Catholic tracts privilege
chamber of horrors…” 1 the corpse not only for its ability to contain the sacred but
This reference to “a Chamber of Horrors” does not also for its capacity to underwrite cultural and institutional
simply recall the exhibition of waxwork images of French certainty.” 2(p.279)
victims of the guillotine which Madame Marie Tussaud The result of divorcing such emotionally expressive
(1761 – 1850) opened at the Lyceum Theatre in London in and powerful artworks from their ecclesiastical settings
1802 and which is now one of the most popular exhibitions and displaying them to the public provoked different
established permanently in London’s Marylebone Road. The reactions from many quarters of the modern society that
reference also derives from a far older source: One which viewed them. Referring to Webster’s play, one historian
evokes the popular waxwork shows in England and even has written: “In the waxworks scene, it is the corpses that
the controversial English dramas of the 17 century, with are displayed.” 4(p.23) The word “displayed” suggests that the
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their exaggerations of the horrors of Roman Catholicism. scene conjures the illusion of an exhibition. Similar figures
The polychrome sculptures of dead Christs and Christian of martyrdom, mostly of the tormented and bleeding,
martyrs in 2009 transported the modern spectator back to dominated the London exhibition of 2009 – 2010, not
another age. made in wax but in wood, glass, cork, ivory, and bone.

The most notorious example of a dramatic involvement These polychromatic images also enhanced the vividness
with waxworks appears as a climax to what has been of the contemporary martyrdom paintings by Francisco de
called the “glorious cruelties” of the Jacobean theater. The Zurbarán (1598 – 1664) and Diego Velázquez.
famous Act Four, Scene One of the Duchess of Malfi by The image of bodily torment, thus separated from the
John Webster (c.1578 – c.1632), generally referred to as the mysticism of ecclesiastical purpose and conveyed to the
“waxworks scene,” is a horrific moment in the play. In this theatre or an exhibition venue, might, in the 17 century,
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Volume 3 Issue 2 (2025) 2 doi: 10.36922/ac.3604