Spanish sculpture during the Baroque period may be described as taking on a “national character” (Weisbach 22). While Italy reveled in influences from humanism and orientation towards the antique, Spanish sculpture strayed from portraying classical mythology. Instead, Spanish sculptors took inspiration from the ideals of the High Renaissance, specifically the Italian Mannerism, and combined that with individual taste and the religion and traditions of the Spanish people. The Spanish Church, deeply rooted in preserving Catholicism, employed sculpture as a basic tool for providing representations of its doctrines and as a means to inspire devotion. The large quantity of devotional works emphasis the importance of religion in everyday life. The most recognizable role of sculptural in Spanish religious life was the formation of Holy Week processions. During these ceremonies series of sculptures would be removed from their decorative setting and carried throughout the town representing important religious scenes for the public to view. These ceremonies allowed religious art to interact in a new way with its viewer-sculptures became moving scenes of Christian doctrine. As a result of the Spanish trend to use images to promote or symbolize the doctrine, sculptors employed wood as their medium in order to create more life-like figures. This medium could be painted and even manipulated through accessories like wigs, glass eyes, and clothing to heighten the reality of the sculptural experience. Here, we will look at the sculptors Gregorio Fernández and Juan Martínez Montañés as a way to examine how Spanish Baroque sculpture developed from a more classical style emphasizing idealized figures and decorative treatments to a distinctive Spanish Baroque style which displayed a balance between the classical and naturalistic model conveying emotional and spiritual tension.
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