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Arts & Communication Spanish art and its enemies

have been seen as strengthening the effect of Jacobean claim that Shakespeare’s mistake was not only to attribute
tragedy. However, the exhibits of 2009 in the London sculpture to Giulio Romano, which “makes of this famous
Gallery had been taken out of their original settings and painter a statuary… but what is worst of all, a painter of
positioned in a modern surround, where atmospheric statues.” 10
lighting conferred a surreal illusion on each object, In the age of neoclassical art theory and monochromatic
color, and line, as if on a stage. The Sacred Made Real sculpture, painted statues) – even the tomb effigies
was an exhibition regarded as unique and unprecedented of Shakespeare’s day) – were held to be low art. The
in London. It is, therefore, intriguing that the popular appearance of a painted statue again evokes memories
journalism of 21 -century reviewers reverted to the of effigies of dead royalty made for funerary celebrations
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language and rhetoric of a past age. Such reviews may be and religious votive statues. Their colors and “deathlike”
secular but still retain associations with English historical illusions also, however, recall sensations achieved by
religious confrontations. popular waxwork shows and the theatre. The fact that such
The display of Spanish church art from the 16 and rhetoric still exists in the 21 century demonstrates how
st
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17 centuries seems therefore to have evoked references long it takes for pre-judices to dissipate. “The visibility of
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to theatrical presentations, waxwork shows, and funeral the body in pain is systematic rather than personal; not
rites from a controversial period of history, traditionally the issue of an aberrant exhibitionism but formed across
designed to thrill spectators with horror. “Rendering The the whole surface of the social as the locus of the desire,
Sacred Made Real is certainly what the dead Christ does. the revenge, the power, and the misery of this world.” 4(p.23)
It is disconcertingly, even horribly, lifelike – or rather, This comment from Francis Barker’s writing in the 1980s
deathlike.” 5 summarizes the random effects of both theatre and art
The phrase “horribly lifelike – or rather, deathlike” exhibitions in relation to effigies of the dying and dead.
of this critical comment objectifies the naked body Other Spanish images, both ecclesiastical and secular,
and bloody wounds of a wooden corpse, with cork and have also drawn their share of critical bile in Britain.
pigment arranged like seeping blood. This induced in some
spectators a sense of shock, even giving rise to words like 3. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century
“pornographic.” Above all the sallow coloring of the skin – opinions
for which such images, both in sculpture and in painting, The 2009 – 2010 London exhibition, although largely
were famous 6(p.46) – suggests that these polychromed successful, thus encountered negative reviews of a
devotional figures were not so much sculpture as effigies, peculiarly historical type. This was not the fault of the
similar to waxworks, summoning up the ambiguous curators, but removing religious artworks from their places
status of replicas of human bodies poised between life and within ecclesiastical settings also removed their functional
death. 7(p.852) The exhibition was summarized by one reviewer role as devotional images and made their significance
who referred to it as a “superbly dark gorefest,” and a more hard for foreign spectators to understand. This issue was
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upmarket critique which nevertheless in seeking to praise emphasized two centuries earlier by the greatest British
could not resist commenting that this was “highly emotive 19 -century commentator on Spain, Richard Ford (1796
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art…a form of excess.” 9(pp.12-13) – 1858), who wrote: “Can it be wondered that such works,
For some, therefore, viewing this exhibition was a now torn from their original shrines and desecrated in lay
moving experience. For others, the emotional content and galleries, should loom gloomily and out of place…?” 6(p.57)
realistic depictions of martyrdom were repulsive, and that The Directors’ Foreword, published in the
feeling had behind it several centuries of psychological accompanying 2009 exhibition book, pre-empted much of
distaste when viewing much of the Catholic art of Southern the possible hostile reactions to the exhibition by referring
Europe.
back to the 18 century, when such works became
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Disapproval of the waxwork museum, which seems to especially unpopular: …what has been assembled here…
have affected some viewers of the polychrome sculptures demonstrates that Spanish polychrome wood sculptures are
in The Sacred Made Real, can also be traced back to worthy of the same attention as the paintings by Zurbarán,
Enlightenment perceptions of bad or low-class sculpture. Murillo, and Velázquez that are displayed beside them. The
This, too, recalls critical comments from the 18 century. exhibition is designed to address neglect that has its roots
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Even Shakespeare could not avoid criticism. Scene III, in the disdain with which the Enlightenment regarded
Act V of The Winter’s Tale, when Queen Hermione, long these devotional works of art as objects of superstitious
believed to be dead, is presented as a living statue attributed veneration; a distaste that was often mingled with the
to Giulio Romano, provoked one 18 -century critic to Protestant distaste for Mariolatry and martyrs. 11(p.7)
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Volume 3 Issue 2 (2025) 3 doi: 10.36922/ac.3604