Art review: Spanish spirituality glows in Boston exhibit
The souls of Spain’s spiritual giants come alive in 16th-century artIt is rare to encounter an art exhibition in a secular museum so wholeheartedly devoted to Catholic art as the one currently on view at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts: “El Greco to Velazquez: Art during the Reign of Phillip III.”
Bracketed between the two most famous artists of Spain’s Golden Age, the museum has gathered stunning art works by many names less well-known today. The content is overwhelmingly religious, in keeping with the spirit of the time it documents, from 1598 to 1623.
Since people of Hispanic origin are the fastest growing group of American Catholics, this exhibit opens a welcome window on the cultural roots of Spanish Catholicism. During the reign of Phillip III — a king perhaps unfairly dismissed by historians as weak — the great Spanish reforming saints of the 16th century, led by Teresa of Avila and Jesuit founder Ignatius Loyola, came into their own and inspired countless poems, dramas, paintings and sculptures.
Both those saints, along with Francis Xavier and Isidore the Farmer, were canonized in 1622. Spanish culture blossomed under the blessing of these national saints.
Painters for the mystics
Philip III’s more famous father, the austere Phillip II, viewed Spain as the defender of Catholic doctrine against the twin threats of Protestantism and the Ottoman Turks. Religious art had been overwhelmingly focused on reinforcing the Mass and the sacraments. But under Phillip III, a sunnier, less defensive outlook prevailed. Instrumental music was introduced into the Mass, and the visual arts became more sumptuous, more emotional — and more down to earth.
The father never liked El Greco, the Greek-born artist Domenikos Theotokopoulos who settled in Spain in 1577; the son became his patron. Today El Greco is considered the ultimate Catholic artist, so much so that two of his pictures are among the 15 images selected by Pope Benedict XVI to illustrate the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church in 2005.
El Greco was close to the mystics like Teresa of Avila, who once had been suspected of heresy. St. Teresa emphasized the importance of love in achieving mystic union with Christ. St. Ignatius, in his Spiritual Exercises, laid out a program of self-examination, prayer and penitence that could open up an active spiritual life to the laity. The Carmelite mystic, St. John of the Cross, heard the voice of Christ speaking to him as he knelt before a painting of Christ carrying the cross.
The Boston show features El Greco’s ecstatic late paintings, such as the visionary “Annunciation” made for a Madrid convent, a picture so large that walls had to be cut out to make room for it in the Boston galleries. It originally was part of an even larger retablo, a multipart altarpiece that filled the apse from floor to ceiling with sacred stories and mysteries of the Faith. In the heavenly vision above the Virgin and Gabriel, angels play contemporary musical instruments like those used by the composers of the age.
The other famous name, Diego Velazquez, became known for his court portraits under Phillip IV, but we meet him here as a young master of realism in intimate paintings like “The Adoration of the Magi,” where simple Sevillian peasants served as the models.
Both of these masters painted Apostolados, a new genre made up of 13 individual pictures of the 12 Apostles and Christ. El Greco’s unfinished “St. James” shows the saint as a unique individual defined by his personality and not attributes (the “props” earlier painters used to distinguish saints). Velazquez, who seems to have taken to heart St. Teresa’s words that, “The Lord walks among the pots and pans, helping you both internally and externally,” found his model for St. Thomas in the streets of Seville.
Between El Greco and Velazquez the visitor will discover many artists who deserve to be better known. One is sculptor Gregorio Hernandez, described in the audio guide (rent it for the information and the period music) as the “Michelangelo of Polychrome Sculpture,” the painted wood statuary favored in Spain.
Vicente Carducho and Eugenio Cajes painted Christ Himself in meditation before His crucifixion, a popular theme that reflects the growing interest in meditation by lay people stimulated by the writings of Ignatius and Teresa. Hung side-by-side, these two pictures invite comparison and indeed, meditation by the viewer.
A section of the exhibit is devoted to the Immaculate Conception, a teaching promoted by the Spanish monarchy long before it became dogma in 1854. The first statue of the Immaculate Virgin by Montanes is on display, along with the many paintings it inspired, among them a masterpiece by the barely 20-year-old Velazquez.
Hamerman teaches Art and Catechesis at Christendom’s Notre Dame Graduate School in Alexandria.
If you go
“El Greco to Velazquez: Art during the Reign of Phillip III”
Boston Museum of Fine Arts
Boston, Mass.
Till July 27
Next stop: Nasher Museum, Duke University, N.C.
