Wherever the Spanish and Portuguese colonizers went, they were followed by missionaries. The Hispanic World section of this show gives visitors the untarnished glory of Catholic art adapted to a new audience. There is charm, ingenuity, and an absence of disparagement of Catholic input. The Jesuits and other orders are, for a change, given credit for encouraging creative activity while trying to shield the indigenous populations from the excesses of the conquistadors and their successors. The spirit of the Robert De Niro/Jeremy Irons classic “The Mission” hovers gently over the Church in the New World. The secular colonizers are the villains here, depicted in maps, portraits, and other paintings that show their ambition, usually at the expense of the conquered peoples.
The sacred art of the Hispanic Empires is full of splendor, power, and pain. At this exhibition there are none of those Spanish-inspired crucifixes that surpass the reality of Christ’s death with Kensington gore galore. The only crucifixes on display are from the Old World, in monochromatic precious metal. Paintings are another matter. Whether from Spain or the Spanish empire, they are intense and deeply spiritual. Strangely, there are no painted images of the crucifixion. Instead, the subject matter ranges from the sorrowful austerity of St. Peter of Alcantara and St. Theresa (Bolivia, 1720s) to the Immaculate Conception, with Mary surrounded by a profusion of cherubic angels (Mexico, 1640). In Spain, El Greco’s tortuous figures from the late 16th century are continued 300 years later in a painting by Ignacio Zuloaga showing a group of penitents carrying an image of Christ so vivid and severe it seems to have just been taken down from a cross.
There is an absence of depictions of what might be the most reproduced Christian image of all: Our Lady of Guadalupe. The original is not, of course, by any human hand. The Aztec convert Juan Diego was given the divinely decorated cloak by the Virgin Mary herself in 1531. Within the textile are symbols of pre-Christian belief, not least the crescent moon under Our Lady’s feet — thought to represent the triumph of light and goodness over the old Aztec god of darkness.
Both the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Royal Academy provide reminders that Catholicism was a religion committed to visual stimulation, especially for those who couldn’t read. Whether it was Roman antiquity or pre-Conquest Latin America, the universal Church was pragmatic enough not to cancel everything from the pagan past.
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