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Arts & Communication Spanish art and its enemies

The mixed reception provoked by Spanish devotional moral criticisms of Enlightenment writers. This also
art was not, therefore, confined to the Enlightenment contrasts between Catholic imagery and the more somber
alone. Indeed, at certain times, similar hostility was applied Protestant esthetic. The later Romantic development of the
to Spanish art in general. Popular newspaper reviews of horrific and grotesque, so vividly condemned by Hamerton,
th
the 2009 The Sacred Made Real at the National Gallery in anticipates the 20 -century perception of the artist as a
London gave the event more coverage and notoriety than transgressor – an increasingly influential role played out
th
they did to the Golden Age exhibition 33 years earlier, which in 20 -century exhibitions. With regard to Goya, and,
garnered few popular reviews. In fact, apart from one or specifically his graphic art, the essays by Hamerton appear
two academic articles in journals such as The Burlington to anticipate how Goya would become the inspiration for a
Magazine, the reaction to the show seems to have been new generation of artists and art historians.
mainly indifference. Sentimentalizing or making fictional narratives from
th
Much of the popular critical rhetoric of the 2009 show the qualities of Spanish art that 19 -century writers had
was derived from this historical background. While it deplored signaled a change in academic approaches.
might seem to revert to long-established traditions, it is also In 1977, in his ground-breaking publication Goya and
something of an anomaly, given that the huge publishing His Critics, Nigel Glendinning examined the Aragonese
th
market for biographies of Spanish artists such as Velzquez, artist’s critical legacy from his own day to the 20 century,
Goya, Picasso, and Dalí never ceases to dominate the emphasizing the subtleties of Goya’s work and the variety of
art-historical market with different biographies, primers, criticism – from hostility to fictional narratives and poetic
analyses, and commentaries. tributes. Emphasizing especially the violent reactions to
some of Goya’s more extreme works, Glendinning chose
New research also continues to come to light, with films to make Hamerton’s diatribe the longest Appendix in the
and biopics of the most famous Spanish artists winning book. 29(pp.296-301) Such emphasis on the violent outpourings
many admirers. Nevertheless, the traditional British of a Victorian critic about a Spanish artist demonstrates
suspicions about the art of Spain continue to appear among how important Glendinning felt Hamerton’s contribution
critics and reviewers, particularly about ecclesiastical as was to the historiography, not just of Goya, but of Spanish
well as secular imagery. culture itself. The generalizations about an art that is far

The polychrome sculptures of dying martyrs and the more nuanced and varied than such criticism might imply
atmospheric portraits of Saint Francis or Saint Serapion, are delicately dissected. Just as Glendinning had tried to
commissioned by devout worshippers, were only part of introduce Spanish art of the Golden Age to the British
the glories of the Spanish school. As Glendinning had public, he established the originality of a national style in
pointed out, there were many other subjects at which all its varied forms.
Spanish painters excelled and many different types Nevertheless, the mixed reactions toward Goya as a
of patrons in Spain. However, even when Spanish art printmaker are still somewhat reflected in the approach to
encompassed secular imagery of classical or contemporary the graphic arts of Spain in a wider context. Despite the
subject matter, the images produced in Spain were often fact that Spain had produced several of the most innovative
regarded as strange and unacceptable. print artists in the history of graphic design, such as Goya,
The most popular and detailed outlining of the history Pablo Picasso, and Salvador Dali, even present histories of
of great art, Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation, broadcast on printmaking reveal suspicion of the Spanish achievements
BBC television in 1969, was an influential series of six in this specialized discipline. “It must be admitted that
films championing the history of serious art from the Dark Spain’s contribution to the history of Western printmaking
has been less significant than that of the Netherlands,
Ages onward. It is significant that, in the entire series and Germany, Italy, or France,” This comment appeared in an
the accompanying publication, there are only two brief exhibition catalog published in 2021. 30(p.16)
references to the art of Spain. The 17 -century context
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of Velázquez and his contemporaries is dismissed as “the However, the idea floated by Hamerton that Goya and
superstitious, convention-ridden court of Philip IV.” 28(p.213) his art had poisoned the visual culture of Europe and was
spreading to England offers a strangely ironic prophecy –
6. A gift to posterity? one of which Glendinning, in his 1977 book, may well have
There are still reviewers who reflect the limited taste and been contemplating as he concluded his study of Goya
outright condemnation of the art of Spain in ways that critiques with Hamerton’s diatribe as the finishing touch.
recall not only the anti-Catholic bias of Jacobean theatre Yet another significant exhibition opened in London
but also the change in art criticism referring back to the exactly 4 years before The Sacred Made Real: Jake and Dinos

Volume 3 Issue 2 (2025) 8 doi: 10.36922/ac.3604