It came about because I’d gone on a biking holiday to Guatemala, graded easy to moderate, so I thought it’d be a cinch. Peering out of the aeroplane window though, trepidation set in, as the mountains just rolled and rolled and didn’t stop. Everyone else, it turned out, had understood the grading was bullshit and trained hard in preparation. Anyway, I’ll get to the point, I had to stay back in Antigua, while the others went off, as there was no way I could cope crawling up hairpin bends at steep gradients. Going down was hair-raising and brakes all the way. So I had ten days. By myself. Until they came back for me. Painful. I did miss the boat trip along the mosquito-infested river though.
Surrounded by billowing volcanoes, Antigua was the colonial capital founded by the Spanish in 1524 and has at least a dozen churches built in the Renaissance style. For lack of anything else to do, it became my daily routine to visit these churches, one by one. Inside were the most exquisite hypnotising life-like statues I had ever seen, often staged dramatically, like in underground crypts or to-the-side grottos. I spent so much time with them, they became my friends.
First of all, you need to really sit with a piece of art before you can actually see it. If you sit long enough a good one will come to life. That’s magical. A crying Madonna, really does begin to cry. A crucified Jesus, begins to murmur. When in front of Saint Ignatius, you’re on edge because he’s about to rebuke you. At another angle, you see that he is actually kindly and contemplative. One can easily be fooled into thinking the clothes which adorn the statues are made of real material, so it comes as a shock when you realise it is just painted wood. They’re over four hundred years old, yet more convincing than any waxwork. I felt like I’d been given a time travel machine, entering into the flabbergasted minds of the people who first set eyes on them.
A few years later I visited Valladolid in Spain, which has many examples of these works in churches, and a museum, so I learnt a bit about their production. It was a big business and strictly regulated, separated out between the Guild of Carpenters and the Guild of Painters, meaning that none of the works are the product of a single artist. All subjects had to be appropriately dressed, only Biblical stories could be represented (nothing apocryphal), the requisite number of nails needed to depict a crucifixion, etc, were all governed by strictly enforced regulations. The threat of the Inquisition ensured compliance, however many famous painters, like Francisco Pacheco (a master), were also censors. On the whole though, the Inquisition was more concerned with the art entering Spain from other countries, over the art it was putting in its own churches.
The statues were produced from several interlocking hollowed-out blocks of wood, cut from of a single piece with the sap removed and nailed together. Unlike Greek sculptors, who went for much larger-than-life, I note the Spanish sculptors often went for slightly larger-than-life, which gives them a surreal quality but not obviously so. However, it was the expert decoration which really brings them to life. Linen was glued to the wood and covered by other preparatory mixes before painting. Glossy skin tones were achieved using oil-based paints, whilst egg-tempura provided the matte effects required for clothes. Glass was used for eyes, animal hair for eyelashes and horn for teeth and nails. Contemporaries of Caravaggio, they wanted to make their subjects as 3D as possible and anatomically accurate.
Few people could read at the time and the liturgy was in Latin, so paintings and sculptures really were important methods of communication. The aim was to make the sacred real, to communicate that which transcends language. Despite the strict regulations, the works were also communicating something radical: Empathy with suffering and an invitation to have a personal relationship with the Divine. But they were also asking: What is real?
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