This post began as a joke ("what would happen if I copied the whole thing and pasted it here?") But, ehh, it's what I've been pondering for the past 12 months, so here you go.
Image and Imagination in Devotion: The Impact of the Counter-Reformation On Religious Painting in Spain, 1577-1678
Of all the tumultuous religious conflicts in sixteenth century Europe, the controversy over the place of images in the church especially contributed to the environment of high tension for both artists and intellectuals. Dramatically, the iconoclastic Protestants (e.g. John Calvin, Ulrich Zwingli, Andreas Karlstadt, and others) accused the Catholic Church of idolatry and declared that images had no beneficial qualities, no place in churches, and no power to communicate transcendent truth. Ecclesiastical authorities countered with reassertions that images were both useful and beneficial, and that they played an irreplaceable role in communicating the truths of Christianity.
In the Catholic realm of Spain, this development took a particularly interesting turn. This reassertion of Catholic authority intermingled with the uniquely Iberian atmosphere of inquisition, mysticism, and reform, to foster unprecedented artistic developments. A brief exploration of some of the trends in the visual art of the Catholic Counter-Reformation in that country, focusing on specific examples of religious art from the late sixteenth to early seventeenth centuries, illuminates how the Church affirmed the useful role of images in worship, both in devotion and in teaching Christian content.
By 1563, the Council of Trent soundly reaffirmed that “the images of Christ, of the Virgin Mother of God, and of the other saints, are to be had and retained particularly in temples, and that due honour and veneration are to be given the cult of images and the cult of the saints.”
It stated the legitimacy of such veneration in a way that countered the charges of Protestantism and addressed the need to clarify the teachings on images within the Church itself. The council declared that religious images were useful and honorable:
…not that any divinity, or virtue, is believed to be in them, on account of which they are to be worshipped; or that anything is to be asked of them; …but because the honour which is shown them is referred to the prototypes which those images represent; in such wise that by the images which we kiss, and before which we uncover the head, and prostrate ourselves, we adore Christ; and we venerate the saints, whose similitude they bear: as, by the decrees of Councils, and especially of the second Synod of Nicaea, has been defined against the opponents of images.
Largely, the Church reiterated the 8
th century arguments presented by John of Damascus during the iconoclastic controversy,
including Basil the Great’s foundational assertion that “the honor given to the image passes to the archetype.”
For John of Damascus, the use of images of God the Father became a matter of discernment. Of course, he pointed out, such depictions can only show God symbolically, or allegorically. However, he pointed out, Jesus Christ came as the visible manifestation of God, in tangible, physical form. Therefore, he reasoned, visual representations of God are not only acceptable, but also natural and helpful.
Hieronymus
Emser, too, one of the most prolific Catholic writers to counter the first generation of Protestant Reformers in Germany, drew on the tradition developed during the iconoclastic controversy of the eighth century. In his defense of the Church’s position on images, he clung to the declarations of the second Council of Nicea: “Christians do not believe that the venerable images of their beloved saints are gods, nor serve them as gods, not expect salvation or consolation from them, but only in meditation and reflection venerate and worship those whom the images represent. They offer divine veneration… neither to images nor any created thing.”
In his treatise written specifically to counter iconoclastic Reformer Andreas Karlstadt and his radical calls to destroy all visual art, Emser utilized multiple arguments about the profitability of displaying images in churches. For instance, he asserted, they teach information, provide examples of the good works of the saints, stimulate viewers to righteousness, and remind them to worship God rightly. They also distinguish church buildings as holy places. Emser notes somewhat amusingly, “if there was no image in the church, one would not know whether it was a church or a dance hall.”
In many of his arguments, Emser provides typical examples of the historical Catholic attitude toward art and its confidence in the ability of images to communicate transcendent truth and provide a useful tool for Christian teachings. This attitude is deeply rooted in a basic belief that contact with the realm of physical creation leads worshipers to the realm of the spirit. Accordingly, this mindset affirms the value of physical creation (e.g. visual art). But, at the same time, it is ideologically opposed to materialism and its pernicious manifestation in idolatry. The efforts of the Church to simultaneously defend its value of images while correcting excesses and abuses largely reflects a “spiritual anxiety” about the misuse of images that was characteristic of the Counter-Reformation. This concern led to a renewed attention to spiritual health that affirmed the use of images as aids of meditation. Richard Viladesau summarizes the effect that this change wrought on religious art, when, “art begins to be involved in struggle against heresy.” The result is that “it is no longer serene and balanced, like the art of the early Renaissance, but is ardent, impassioned, partisan, engaged in struggle.”
Challenge and Opposition: The Reformers Depart from
Catholic Attitudes Toward Christian Visual Culture
Some of the Protestant Reformers, however, rejected this tradition and instead championed an approach of radical iconoclasm. Andreas Karlstadt, contemporary of Martin Luther, condemned the Church for the decadence of the early modern period, blaming idolatry as the root of the matter. He produced scathing iconoclastic writings, in which he proclaimed, “because of this scandalous state of affairs [in the Catholic Church]… all images should be dragged down to the Devil.”
His unfettered attacks on images prompted his followers to destroy much sacred art.
For Ulrich Zwingli and John Calvin, too, images and idols become synonymous. For Zwingli, 1 John 5 was a crucial passage of scripture on the topic, because he interpreted it as, “dear Children, be on your guard against
images!’” Both Reformers focused, also, on lengthy expositions of the Biblical condemnation of idols. However, their arguments failed to acknowledge a difference between a neutral painting or statue and an idol that is actually worshiped. In that sense, their arguments merely reiterated that idolatry was wrong, a fundamental truth of Christianity that Catholics, too, believed. The iconoclasts consistently failed to see that both groups condemned idolatry. Instead, they insisted, as in Calvin’s words, “any use of images leads to idolatry.”
Martin Luther provides a unique point of view because he, unlike the other Reformers, did not endorse the wholesale destruction of all visual culture. Indeed Luther wrote specifically against Karlstadt’s iconoclastic arguments. In his treatise, “Against the Heavenly Prophets,” he commends those who had demolished images at sites where people had been making pilgrimages to worship them whenever such practices were “truly idolatrous.”
He says that Karlstadt’s idea goes too far in condemning people who do not demolish them as sinners. The use of images in worship, Luther reasons, is an issue of Christian liberty, and “Christians… do enough when they fight and struggle against idolatry with God’s Word.” In cases where the people still practice idolatry through ignorance, Luther advises, “appoint a preacher who will instruct the people… or arrange to have them removed in an orderly way, not with tumult and riots.”
His solution, then, comes neither by blindly following precedent nor hastily destroying the wealth of visual culture in the Christian tradition, but by teaching people how to use visual art to worship God rightly.
A Case Study: El Greco Navigates Heightened Artistic Tension in Spain
The Spanish Counter-Reformation created strict rules for visual art, and the infamous case of the rejection of El Greco’s first commissions in that country provides a key example. The Catholic authorities in Spain, with the guidelines of the recent Council of Trent (1545-1563) freshly in their minds, reacted so strongly against two important paintings in particular that the resulting squabbles and court battles between El Greco and his clients continue to interest (and irritate) Spanish historians and art historians to this day. However, these seemingly hypercritical restrictions did not reflect a disdain for art, but rather affirmed the Catholic respect for the instructive power of images in the face of the iconoclastic Reformers’ argument that art was useless in religious instruction.
The earliest document mentioning El Greco’s arrival in Spain pertains to his first important commission there: a large painting for the vestry of the Cathedral of Toledo. He worked for two years on his first masterpiece in his new country, entitled El Expolio, or The Disrobing of Christ, depicting the moment before the executioners divest Christ of his garment and nail him to the cross. Christ himself appears as the central figure, and in a brilliant carmine-red robe he dominates the scene, looking serenely to heaven in anticipation of his sacrifice. A crowd of dirty, violent-looking men, including a Roman soldier in sixteenth-century armor, surrounds him menacingly, while one prepares a nail hole in a beam of the cross. Mary Magdalene, the Virgin Mary, and another woman look on in distress from the lower left corner of the painting.
Unfortunately for the newly arrived painter, however, the Cathedral chapter disliked the painting and refused to pay him for the commission. After several years of litigation, El Greco only received a fraction of the promised and appraised price for the painting. The rejection, according to the contemporary writer Fray José de Sigüenza, resulted from the Cretan’s attention to style at the expense of content.
First, Christ’s position in the center of the canvas meant that the heads of the violent throng crowded over him, thus violating an iconographical rule that honored the savior by granting him the highest place in a composition. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, the presence of the three Marys looking on so near to Christ at this point in the Passion story lacked scriptural or even apocryphal support. No written account mentioned their presence until the crucifixion itself, and even then, the representatives of the Cathedral pointed out, Mark 15:40 and Matthew 27:55 both said that the women watched à longe, from a distance. Clearly, the Cathedral’s representatives understood the importance of visual interpretations of biblical events and fought fiercely to insure that they respected the scriptural record.
In the midst of the Counter-Reformation, then, the Spanish Church manifested the heightened artistic sensitivities engendered by the council of Trent. Indeed, El Greco experienced a prime example of the consequences of the mood of the age. The Cathedral rejected his
Disrobement of Christ based on two factors: inappropriate iconography and scriptural inaccuracy. In response to the challenges of the Reformation, the Church upheld the authority of its traditions (hence the insistence on elevating the figure of Christ and giving him the iconographic respect set by precedent) while it came down hard on innovations that could be decried as unscriptural, such as the unaccounted-for presence of the Marys at the disrobing of Christ.
Soon after El Greco’s 1577 arrival in Toledo (a more important cultural center than nearby Madrid in that epoch), he received an important commission from Phillip II, then one of the most powerful monarchs in the world. The Spanish king had just completed his monumental all-in-one palace, monastery, and cathedral at El Escorial, and he offered an important opportunity for royal patronage of artists in the decoration of the massive interior. The creative stimulus of the project provided the circumstances for El Greco’s masterpiece The Martyrdom of St. Maurice, which he undoubtedly hoped would secure him further royal patronage.
His hopes were dashed, however, when the king disdained El Greco’s version of the scene, relegating it to a less important corner of El Escorial and choosing another artist to create a replacement more in line with the martyr-praising spirit of the times. Apparently, Philip II objected to the overall composition: El Greco’s removal of the actual decapitation of St. Maurice to the background, as if it were a side note. Instead, he had brought to the foreground the group of leaders of the Theban Legion: St. Maurice and his companions calmly discussing their decision to die as martyrs rather than reject their Christianity. Again, the way the painting deemphasized the Martyrdom resulted in its placement not in the sacristy, but in an obscure hall upstairs near the library of the monastery.The substitute commission honored the actual martyrdom in the foreground, and therefore received the place of honor in the sacristy of the Cathedral originally intended for El Greco’s work.
These cases illustrate the criteria of the Spanish authorities for religious commissions. The Catholics who rejected the
Disrobing of Christ valued historical verisimilitude and iconographic seemliness. This required compositions that emphasized content so that the painting could make the Scriptural account clear to even uneducated viewers. In the interest of preserving the affective impact of the painting, “there must be no improper figures, anecdotal or indecent elements; and above all, the painting must move the soul of the believer and incite it to devotion.” In effect, El Greco’s version of the Disrobing of Christ was objectionable primarily because it obscured the content of the biblical account. His St. Maurice was too cerebral to be used to inspire proper worship or to provide uneducated viewer with an accurate visual communication of the story itself.
Roman Catholic Concern for Clarity in Scriptural Interpretation
Part of the Reformers’ condemnation of the ecclesiastical use of visual art came from their persuasion that the Church had neglected its duty to instruct congregants in the basics of the gospel message. Ulrich Zwingli voiced this concern in
A Short Christian Instruction in 1523, half a century before El Greco arrived in Spain. He firmly opposed the use of visual art in churches, saying, “It is also wrong that the pictures teach us. We should be taught solely by the word of God. Instead, the idle priests, who should have taught us unceasingly, have painted the teachings on walls for us. And we poor simple people have therewith been deprived of the teaching and have fallen to images…”
Calvin, too, addressed this issue at length. In his
Institutes of the Christian Religion, he wrote, “the common people… are defrauded of that doctrine which alone was fit to instruct them… Indeed, those in authority in the church turned over to idols the office of teaching for no other reason than that they themselves were mute.”
These Reformers accused the Church of negligence and indifference regarding its duty to educate Christians. They viewed visual art almost as a deception intended to shroud Christian truths and history in mystery, keeping the laypeople in a helplessly ignorant dependence on the hierarchy. The episode of the St. Maurice, however, indicates that just a few decades later, even the most powerful monarch that had yet controlled the bellicose Spanish empire cared about the educational tone of the paintings in his cathedral. In fact, he cared enough to reject a major commission because it obscured the essential moral of the theme it portrayed.
Granted, Philip may likely have supported Tridentine policy because its goals coincided so neatly with those of imperial dominion. Probably, the two motives, religious and political, both played an important role and are so intertwined as to be almost indistinguishable. In any case, the king’s actions make sense when seen as an effort to correctly instruct worshipers in the history and values of Christianity. This calls into question the accusations that Catholics turned to images to shirk their educational duty. In this era in Spain, at least, they aimed to help people’s comprehension, not obstruct it.
As a result of his royal rejection, El Greco retreated from Madrid and El Escorial southward to Toledo, where his career flourished for several reasons. Some scholars who emphasize the artist’s Byzantine allegiance point out that Toledo still bore the mark of the medieval interplay of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish cultures, and thus was more receptive to his “oriental style.”
However, other factors were probably more instrumental in his success there, especially his distinction as one of the most technically skilled painters in the area and the fact that many of his patrons, themselves upper-class intellectuals, intended to place commissions (e.g. altarpieces and paintings for personal meditation) in small, private locations.
Furthermore, El Greco himself “was thoroughly committed to the Counter-Reformation ideal of art in the service of religion,” and “the themes of his paintings typically embody the doctrines emphasized in the reaction against Protestantism: the saints, intercession, penitence, Mary.”
Indeed, later inventories of the artist’s belongings in Spain show that El Greco owned a copy of the publication of the proceedings of the council of Trent in his personal library.
As Harold Wethey, an important scholar on the painter points out, “it seems unlikely that he would read the documents and dogma of the Catholic Counter Reformation if he held no belief in them whatsoever.”
Moreover, many of the major themes that the artist painted indicate that he aimed to align his topics and compositions with the values of the Counter-Reformation.
Alliance of Church and State in El Greco’s Allegory of the Holy League
Interestingly, El Greco did produce one painting in this early Spanish period for Philip II that the king accepted. The strange and unique composition has caused some historical confusion regarding the theme of the piece, which is sometimes titled
The Adoration of the Name of Jesus, The Allegory of the Holy League, or the Gloria (1578-79, Monasterio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial). The leaders of the Holy League of the 1570s (Doge Alvise Mocenigo of Venice, Pope Pius V, and King Philip II) kneel in the lower half of the picture and with the angels in heaven all worship the name of Jesus, which has appeared in the clouds as the letters IHS. Philip II appears as the pious victor, with imagery not unlike Constantine’s vision at the Milvian Bridge. Greco here interpreted the appearance of the name as a visible sign, in keeping with the artistic sensibilities of the Catholic Counter-Reformation.
The Adoration of the Name of Jesus demonstrates that El Greco aimed to fall into step not only with the philosophy of the Counter-Reformation as a whole, but also with the political atmosphere of the Spain of Philip II. By portraying the king like a modern Constantine, he paid homage to the Spanish military victory over the Turks at Lepanto and attributed the success of the Holy League to the leaders’ defense of Catholicism itself. Just as “In hoc signo” assured Constantine success in an earthy battle, so the appearance of the sign IHS in the painting reinforces the Catholic King’s reputation as a powerful emperor and a military victor with God’s endorsement. The theme shows a major characteristic of the response to the Reformation in the implicit joining of earthly and heavenly authorities. It clearly conveys the message that the power of the Catholic monarchy came not merely from military dominance, but by divine blessing as a reward for defending the true expression of Christianity.
Major Trends in Religious Art Linked with the Main Concerns
of the Counter-Reformation
Examples like these show a general relationship between the artistic nuances that patrons valued most and the defining characteristics of the Counter-Reformation. Indeed, the most popular and prevalent themes in art include, among a diverse array of Bible stories, the cult of the Virgin and of the saints, the Holy Family, penance and suffering (even for saints not previously associated with those themes), and the Passion and cross of Christ.. To disseminate these ideas via visual art, a medium they regarded as authoritative and educational, they drew on the well-established Catholic tradition of valuing images as a means of communication.
A Brief Exploration of the Catholic Tradition of Images as Books of the People
The Catholic belief that images should be used as books for the uneducated populate went back to the tradition begun by Gregory the Great. He emphasized the usefulness of paintings for teaching the illiterate,
reasoning, “what writing offers to readers, a picture offers to the ignorant who look at it, since in it the ignorant see what they ought to follow, in it they read who do not know letters…”
He also explained that churches displayed pictures “in order that those who do not know letters may at least read by seeing on the walls what they are unable to read in books.”
This way of thinking saw images as a form of text, as useful for recording and communicating about biblical events and the lives of the saints as books and sermons.
John of Damascus expounded on this use of images as teaching tools in his
Defense of Images, written in response to the eighth century iconoclastic controversy. He believed, as Gregory I did, that “images are books for the illiterate.” [32] Because of this, he argued that paintings in churches lead viewers to think rightly about God and worship him. Just as humans need analogies to aid comprehension of “the invisible things of God,” he reasoned, they need images as a starting place for understanding certain aspects of Christian truth. Here, he cited Romans 1:20 as biblical evidence of how physical nature provides a picture of God’s invisible nature. Moreover, John of Damascus described how images and memorials in the Bible acted as a “recollection of divine activity.” Using these physical objects as teaching tools, he pointed out, enabled the Israelites to explain God’s nature and historical activities to their children.
Again, Hieronymus Emser relied on this tradition to refute the iconoclasm of the Protestant Reformers, especially in his treatise
That One Should Not Remove Images, written to respond specifically to Karlstadt. He outlines three main purposes of images: memoria (to cause reflection), excitatio (to excite imitation), and biblia pauperum (to provide a visual book of the laity).
The Catholic tradition shows an intense awareness of the importance of these visual depictions in shaping the viewer’s understanding of theological themes. For pictorial narrative, it understood that “their visual portrayal of the scriptural and apocryphal accounts is far more than mere illustration, it presents the stories in a new guise and invites us to interpret them afresh.”
[37] Because the Church understood and respected this power, it paid particular attention to how artists interpreted these biblical accounts throughout the Renaissance and Counter-Reformation, and developed a strong respect for the sacred record and the importance of interpretation. One result was that Post-Tridentine Catholic art tended to value the accurate portrayal scriptural accounts. This helps explain, at least partly, why the Cathedral of Toledo reacted so strongly against El Greco’s
Disrobing of Christ.
Within the Catholic tradition, artists had to balance carefully between working from writings and from imagination. Freedom and creativity, of course, were both necessary to a certain degree, even for those under the intense scrutiny of the Inquisition. However, authorities often had to tolerate artistic deviation from precedent and tradition when such changes did not conflict with scripture or tradition.
Calls for Reform from Within the Church: Spanish Reformers and Mystics
One of the characteristic developments of the Catholic Reformation involved the rise of new religious orders, particularly the Carmelites and the Society of Jesus. In Spain in particular, these monastic orders played an essential role in revitalizing and reshaping spiritual expression among Catholics. Granted, the established Church initially disapproved of their somewhat dubious orthodoxy, refractory calls for reform, and quasi-medieval mysticism.
But the prominent leaders of these reform movements, especially Ignatius of Loyola, Teresa of Ávila, and John of the Cross, shaped the course of the Counter-Reformation in a way that revitalized the Church and consequently earned its hearty approbation.
Their legacy also clarified how ecclesiastics and laity alike viewed and used images, particularly in meditation. Calls for reform had occurred within the Church independent of Protestantism or its aftershocks, and these Catholic reformers fully acknowledged the need to steer Church practice away from the most blatant medieval abuses of images. They particularly addressed harmful and ignorant tendencies causing excesses in the worship of images of the saints and the Virgin, what Protestants volubly labeled “idolatry.” Thus, these voices provide further evidence of the serious rethinking occurring during this time of how the Church should use images, across the ideological spectrum.
Spanish intellectuals, too, played a key role in redefining the use of images in worship. In particular, John of the Cross articulated a view of images that, while carefully asserting their validity and usefulness in Christianity, cautioned against an overdependence on them. His ideas reflect the Neoplatonic distrust of the material world, including beautiful things, in favor of ascending to a spiritual realm of pure contemplation. But the most influential Spanish figure, Ignatius of Loyola, expressed a confidence in the use of the senses in understanding the material world. He valued images and the use of the imagination in meditation, and so fostered a favorable environment for visual elements of spiritual expression. Also, he placed a firm trust in the ability of images to shape spiritual feelings in a helpful way. Overall, this positive view of visual culture came to represent an important characteristic of the Catholic response to the iconoclasm of the Reformation.
John of the Cross on Images
The sixteenth-century Spanish mystic John of the Cross is best known for his intense poetry and participation, with Teresa of Ávila, in the reformation of the Carmelite order. In his writings, he was careful to affirm the use of art in the Church. Notably, he left an ink drawing of the crucifixion from an unusual point of view, which later inspired Salvador Dalí’s painting, Christ of Saint John of the Cross (1951; Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow). However, he tempered his support of images with the idea (drawn from both Neoplatonic sources and the legacy of John of Damascus) that the devout person should venerate the invisible subject and thus should not become dependent on images.
The spiritual life of such a person, John reasoned, should not be overly disturbed by the removal of images advocated and practiced by iconoclasts. Rather, it should seek the “true image,” which is the spiritual reality of Christ crucified within the Christian’s own soul. That is, the Christian ought to seek to ascend to the spiritual realm by devotion, and not remain preoccupied with images, which belong to the material realm. So, while John of the Cross did approve of the practical use of visuals in worship and meditation, he still thought it was best to “pass beyond the spiritual and immaterial level of presence to their content,” and then forget the actual image.
Again, John of the Cross followed mainstream Catholic teaching by affirming visual aids. He made “no question of doing away with images or their cult,” and even referred to the Protestant iconoclasts as “plague-infested men.”
However, his interest in images did not extend to their aesthetic value or in seeing beauty as a means to God, but rather as a necessary medium for knowledge of the material (i.e. transient and inferior) world. He follows the idea of Thomas Aquinas that “the spiritual way of contemplation” is more exalted than the use of imagination, which is “at best a lower state that is to be passed through and then left behind by those called to a higher spiritual communion.”
Thus, for John of the Cross, images were to be used purely for their ability to create a window through which the viewer could glimpse spiritual truths, though even then with caution. In this sense, he provides an interesting example of the serious rethinking of use of images in this time, in which both Catholics and Protestants sincerely sought a right understanding of the place of images in Christianity.
The Passion, Suffering and Cross of Christ: The Fundamentals of Christian Art
By far, the most important, prevalent, and distinguishing theme in Christian art from the Renaissance through the Reformation was the Passion of Christ. As Harold Wethey, a premier twentieth-century scholar on the art of this era, aptly phrased it, “The Passion of Christ, His suffering, and His death are the themes of the utmost significance in the minds of late sixteenth-century ecclesiastics.”
And indeed, depictions of Christ suffering, Christ wearing the crown of thorns, Christ embracing the cross, being presented by Pilate in the
ecce homo, various versions of pietà, and above all, the crucifixion, feature prominently in Spanish painting. Immensely popular both before and after this particular era, the significance of the Passion obviously transcends any single historical controversy. However, the intense schisms and religious upheaval of the Reformation and its aftermath caused a fixed focus on Christ’s suffering and sacrifice. For both Protestant and Catholic factions, this attention to the key aspect of Christianity was as intentional and urgent as in any other age, if not even more painstakingly so.
When the major disputations of the time threw even the means of salvation itself into doubt and debate, questions of soteriology and the view of Christ’s atonement took center stage. As demonstrated by St. John of the Cross and others, Catholics, too, were deeply concerned about matters of reform in the use of images in the Church. So, within this conflict, both factions occupied themselves with focusing on the cross as the core of Christianity, tempered by suspicion of the “quasi-polytheistic saint worship of the Middle Ages.”
Art reflected major differences between the conflicting beliefs, too. Protestant artists emphasized the importance of salvation by grace, (Lucas Cranach the Elder provides an excellent example with the typical Lutheran
Allegory of Law and Grace, ca. 1530, British Museum, London), and Catholic depictions of the crucifixion often contain messages about the body of Christ as present in the Eucharist.
Depictions of the Passion manifesting a relationship with the theological issues of the time took center stage in Catholic Spain remarkably often. A survey of the most mainstream painters shows that this was the case, even among those who generally produced “secular” work. This is not to say that all, or even a majority of the many paintings produced in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries follow mainstream changes in theology with clarity and exactitude. However, many do show clear influence by the intellectual and spiritual environment, including both mainstream ecclesiastical tradition and the counterbalancing efforts of reforming mystics and monastic orders. Moreover, some of the characteristics of painting in this era show that those commissioning paintings worked to influence viewers in the same way that Catholic Reformers affected the faithful who followed their teachings.
The Influence of Ignatius of Loyola and Spiritual Exercises: Sense Experience, Imagination, and Spirituality
Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, designed a series of enormously influential
Spiritual Exercises designed for putting the soul into order and training it so that it could better “seek and perform the divine will in all things.” In contrast to Calvin and the iconoclastic Protestants, he built on the medieval tradition to draw a connection between using the imagination (i.e. mental images) and penance in prayer. In the Exercises, Ignatius recommends internal penance to grieve for sins and external penance achieved by inflicting self-punishment. The blend lends itself perfectly to meditation on the Passion. For instance, he notes an exemplary outcome of external, or physical penance: the shedding of “abundant tears because of [one’s sins] or of the pains and sufferings which Christ our Lord underwent in his Passion.”
To achieve these sorts of laudable results, Ignatius recommends first drawing upon the imagination to create a visual scene in the mind. This scene should include imagined sights, of course, but also sounds, smells, textures, and even tastes. Next, he prescribes a dialogue with the mental image of the subject of the prayer (e.g. Christ on the Cross). His method of making prayer seem tangible is based on a fundamental credulity in sense experience. That is, he stresses the usefulness of imagining sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and touches in meditation and prayer. This trust in the value of images and the imagination shows a difference between Catholic and Protestants in their basic underlying approach toward physical creation, a difference especially highlighted by the discussions and actions of the Reformation era.
Naturally, the theme of the Passion features prominently in Ignatius’ exercises. For the Jesuit, the cross is the paramount emphasis in matters of salvation. As a concrete illustration of this focus, one entire week of the four weeks of exercises is dedicated to meditation on the Passion and on Christ’s sufferings. Building on the medieval tradition of penance, Ignatius forbids “joyful thoughts, even though they are good and holy, such as those about the Resurrection and heavenly glory.” Laughter, likewise, falls under the ban. Instead, he directs the exercitant to intentionally dwell on sorrow, suffering, and somber reflections on Christ’s pain, “by calling to mind often the labors, fatigue, and sufferings which Christ our Lord suffered, from his birth up to whatever mystery of the Passion I am contemplating at the time.”
These sorrows and “abundant tears” provided a means to holiness, however, and “meditation on the passion was seen as a means for overcoming sin and vices, and as a call to virtue.”
After self-subjection to the rigors of these meditations, the contrite heart will undergo “true conversion” and then be able to experience the joy of salvation while walking in victory (or, perhaps more appropriately for Jesuits, marching forward like a soldier for the Kingdom of God). For Catholics in the sixteenth century
, then, “meditation on the cross is seen as a primary motive for sorrow and contrition, leading to conversion and to positive dedication to working for God’s reign.”
This way of using imagination and meditation on the Passion certainly applied to visual art as well. Ignatius influenced the expression of Christianity in Spain with his overarching faith in the usefulness of sense perception. If images were useful in personal piety, then they were likewise useful to society at large.
Specific Examples of the Passion in Spanish Art
In Spain, the masterpieces of painting manifest many of these developing theological trends. Depictions of the Passion appear in the oeuvre of all the major Spanish painters of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. From the celebrated crucifixion by Diego Velázquez to the scenes by Murillo and Zurbarán, to the portrait-like icons of Christ bearing the cross by El Greco, paintings of the Passion undoubtedly comprise the most prolific and significant theme in the religious art of the Catholic Counter-Reformation. Evidently, scenes of Christ’s Passion enjoyed immense popularity (again, as in previous and later ages). However, historical pressures necessitated new emphases in the way artists treated an old subject. Among these, perhaps the most characteristic of Catholicism were a tendency to see the cross and the crucifix as objects for devotional use, and the inclusion of symbols of the Eucharist to emphasize the Roman Catholic sacrament.
Scenes of the Crucifixion of Christ continued to be among the most frequently commissioned and valued themes. Often, paintings included only Christ on the cross, who appears as a comparatively serene figure in order to induce the viewer to meditate on the significance of his suffering and sacrifice. The background generally appears dark, monochromatic, or stormy, as in typical versions by El Greco. Alonso Cano, too, produced a similarly treated Crucifixion with the presence of strong devotional aspects.
[52] Perhaps even more characteristically Spanish than El Greco’s were the numerous crucifixions by Francisco de Zurbarán, of the mid-seventeenth century. He produced so many versions of the scene Christ at the moment of expiration against a black background that the miniscule differences between each painting hardly serve to distinguish them. In this particular example, Zurbarán shows Christ looking to heaven, presumably in the act of asking God, “Why have you forsaken me?”
The seventeenth-century version of the scene by Diego Velázquez remains a locus of Spanish pride. Velázquez, the lead court painter for Philip IV, painted the masterpiece for the sacristy of the convent of the Benedictine nuns of the Incarnation of Saint Placid in Madrid. The picture includes all the elements of a characteristically Spanish (specifically, Sevillian) crucifixion: a dark, monochromatic background; a perfect, classic model of the body in an undulating pose; four nails and suppedaneum; a light amount of blood, enough to evoke the Eucharist without distracting from the harmony and beauty of Christ’s body; and tenebrist lighting seeming to emanate from the body itself. The Cristo Crucificado became such a classic that by 1780 when Francisco Goya applied for membership in the Royal Academy of Fine Art, the painting he presented was essentially an academic study of the Spanish style of crucifixion, epitomized by Velazquez’s version. This prolonged academic exaltation of the sixteenth-century mode of painting the crucifixion illustrates the extent to which the Counter-Reformation impacted Spanish visual art.
Summary: How Spanish Ecclesiastics and Artists viewed the Passion
In the same way that Spanish ecclesiastics used meditation on mental images (as in the
Spiritual Exercises), they also used images to practice personal piety. As instruments of meditation, these paintings were intended to produce affective results. That is, their purpose that coincided with the aim of empathetic meditation in the style of Ignatius of Loyola (namely, contrition, true conversion, and actions that would advance the Kingdom of God). Though their styles varied slightly, these artists portrayed the cross as an object to be viewed and pondered as a thing in itself. By removing it from its surroundings, artists emphasized the crucifixion’s universal relevance, making it accessible to contemporary viewers in diverse contexts through the discipline of meditation. These examples illustrate a main concern of the era: namely, in the case of the Passion, the suffering and sacrifice of Jesus. Moreover, this focus fits within the larger agenda of reforming the use of images in the Church to reaffirm the place of the central place of the cross in Christian practice.
Veronica’s Veil: From Medieval Emphasis on the True Image to The Use of Paintings for Meditation on the Passion
One important outcome of the Reformation was that it forced the Catholic Church to crack down on the more fanciful medieval traditions like the Mystery Plays and the legends associated with them. The legend of Veronica and her veil, an interesting example to illustrate this trend, indicates the obsession of the age with pictorial representations of Christ’s face. However, the way artists depicted it underwent an essential change. Instead of the medieval assertions that it was an authentic portrait of Christ that claimed that the veil was valuable as a true depiction of his face, artists began to use the veil as a visual prompt to meditate on the Passion. Then, after this resurgence in the seventeenth century, Veronica’s Veil gradually faded away from the repertoire of hyper-popular religious themes.
Though it gained most popularity in the medieval age, the story of the miraculous veil originated in the apocryphal gospel of Nicodemus and evolved through Eusebuis of Caesarea, becoming intertwined with legends of St. Luke’s attempts to paint the face of Jesus. However, the prevailing version that became the basis of the sixth Station of the Cross told that on the road to Golgotha, St. Veronica gave Christ her veil to wipe his face and found that his image had become miraculously transferred to the fabric. Veronica’s veil provided a “vera icon,” or true image of the likeness of Christ, which enhanced its popularity. The legend was also popular in the Greek Orthodox tradition, and El Greco would have been familiar with both.
In fact, the artist produced almost a dozen variations on the theme while in Spain, all within his first five years there. The paintings either showed Veronica proffering the veil to the viewer herself or simply the cloth hanging by itself with the image of Christ at its center. In both cases, the subjects of the paintings appear against a dark, monochromatic background, indicating that they are objects in themselves, and not a frame of an actual historical moment. Instead, the pieces provide a basis for meditation on the Passion, a theme paramount to the art of the Counter-Reformation.
The history of the Veronica theme shows an interesting development in Counter-Reformation painting that emphasizes the contemplation of Christ’s sufferings as a practice of personal piety. This supplanted the previous goal of encouraging credulity in the medieval stories represented in Mystery Plays and other legends. Until this point, the popularity of the Veronica images was due to their claim to represent the true image of Christ’s face imprinted on the original veil, or
sudarium, held at the Vatican. The veil’s significance as a visual relic appealed to the medieval fascination (bordering on obsession) with the face of Christ. However, the developments of the Catholic Reformation curbed this enthusiasm for the vera icon. Urban VIII, Pope from 1623 to 1644, prohibited any further reproductions of the image of the Roman sudarium, even going to far as to order the existing copies of the image to be destroyed. This change in the Church’s policy quickly appeared in later paintings of Veronica’s Veil, as artists no longer emphasized the importance of simply regarding the image as a true portrait of Christ.
A version of the theme by Zurbarán, painted around 1635 (Nationalmuseum, Stockholm), demonstrates a clear departure from previous depictions of the Veil. Jesus’ face appears on the cloth as before, with a crown of thorns and a dolorous expression. However, instead of the typical frontal view, he appears in a three-quarter pose. Because a face literally impressed on a cloth could not have rubbed off in this way, the artist had other purposes in mind for the image than an implied copy of the sudarium of St. Veronica preserved in Rome.
By showing the portrait at three quarters, Zurbarán departed from the iconic tradition of the image and downplayed its significance as a miraculous portrait of Christ.
Instead, he chose to treat it as a reminder of Christ’s Passion that would provide an aid to empathetic meditation, whereby the viewer would be able to picture the scene on the road to Golgotha with the Saint witnessing the sufferings of Christ, then analyze the significance of the passion as his atonement for the personal guilt of sin, and finally be moved to a response of greater love and praise of Christ as Savior.
The Cult of the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception
In the Catholic Counter-Reformation, then, the Church’s representations of St. Veronica developed from the medieval assertion of portraying a true likeness of Christ towards a usage of the image for meditation. But the upheavals of the time did provide the opportunity for artists to champion certain themes that significantly distinguished Roman from Protestant dogma. One of these principle themes, to which the art of the Counter-Reformation clung more tenaciously than ever, was the cult of the Virgin Mary. Protestant objection to the teachings that Mary was conceived without original sin, that she maintained perpetual virginity, and possessed an overabundance of good works, must have seemed like a shocking degradation, and the Church responded with louder-than-ever proclamations reaffirming her special place of holy honor.
The traditions of visual art in churches and the cult of the Virgin went hand in hand, and it was natural and expected that this renewed call to honor the Queen of Heaven would resound most gloriously from canvases, statues, and the very walls and ceilings of Catholic buildings. Indeed, the use of images and the glorification of the Virgin grew so nearly indistinguishable that the Reformers often condemned both without making a distinction between the two practices.
Their failing to articulate separate objections to the use of images and to the veneration of Mary indicates the extent of the interconnected usage of the two in seventeenth-century mind. Thus, visual artists sometimes found themselves among those most responsible for communicating the Church’s teachings, especially in the case of the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception the Coronation of the Virgin, and scenes of the Virgin and Child, among others.
Interestingly, Tridentine Catholicism’s acceptance of this idea led to a preference for the version of the Passion that describes Mary as sorrowful at the sufferings of her son, but not fainting or exhibiting extreme anguish or passion. Whereas medieval portrayals emphasized her suffering and weeping, inviting sympathy from viewers, the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception led theologians in the sixteenth century, particularly Jesuits, to teach that, since the Virgin was free from original sin, she was logically free from the grip of passion and could act in a more rational and dignified manner.
Thus, the Church moved away from scenes Mary in the Passion with overdone or irrational mourning.
Francisco Pacheco Illustrates the Proper Tridentine Iconography of the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception
Francisco Pacheco was an important religious painter of 16
th century Spain. As a member of the Inquisition in Seville, he wielded significant influence on Spanish art. His apprentice and son-in-law, Diego Velázquez, became arguably the most successful and admired painter in Spanish history. Another apprentice, Alonso Cano, was also known as a distinguished painter, with a reputation for reflecting the uniquely Spanish popular religious sentiment.
But perhaps his greatest historical notoriety comes from his lengthy writings on painting and theology. In his classic work,
El arte de la pintura, Pacheco provides an important contribution to historical knowledge of Spanish painting and the religious mood of the era.
As an inquisitor, Pacheco was concerned with the treatment of religious themes in his medium. Conscious of the importance of art as a powerful didactic tool, he reflects all the passion for orthodoxy and vigilance for heresy that one would expect of a true “child of the Council of Trent.”
Consequently, his writings include lengthy specifications for how artists were to treat particular religious themes. He devotes an entire chapter to the proper iconography of the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception, an important subject to Catholics of this time, especially among the Spanish, who especially championed the elevation of the Virgin Mary.
In that country, the Cult of Mary enjoyed enormous popularity, and paintings of the Virgin were among the most frequently commissioned. Indeed, popular support of the miraculous sanctification of the Virgin predated the Church’s official endorsement of the idea. The Immaculate Conception matured as a doctrine in the midst of the Counter-Reformation, and the Church first formally supported it with a papal bull issued by Paul V around 1617 that prohibited any denial of the claim of Mary’s freedom from the blight of original sin. News of the decree caused joyous celebrations in Pacheco’s Seville, and to this day Spaniards know to answer the greeting, “
ave Maria purísima,” with the response, “
sin pecado concebida.”
Spanish ecclesiastics of the time developed a value of such paintings as a primary means to communicate these newly coalesced Counter-Reformation doctrines regarding the Virgin Mary’s holiness, especially to defend the teaching of her lack of sin (relatively recently developed from hot debates within the Medieval Catholic Church) against religious dissenting and doubt. Indeed, the initial groundswell of popularity for the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception occurred principally in Seville and the surrounding areas of Andalusia. Thus, Pacheco’s guidelines represent a quintessential and uniquely Spanish attitude of the time.
Iconographically, depictions of the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception show Mary standing and at full length, usually surrounded by clouds and cherubs to indicate her status as the Queen of Heaven. Pacheco instructed painters to refer to the biblical description of the woman of Revelation chapter twelve who was clothed with the sun, standing on the moon, and crowned in twelve stars in their portrayal of this important theme. The Virgin’s feet, he added, should rest on a crescent moon and on the head of a dragon, cementing her position as the prophetic woman and representing her struggle and triumph over the devil.
As a further guideline for painters, Pacheco provides another biblical reference, this one to help in depictions of the Virgin’s face and aspect. Pacheco insists that, in the Immaculate Conception, Mary must be shown as a perfectly beautiful young girl, reflecting the description of Solomon’s Beloved in Song of Songs chapter four, which says, “you are altogether beautiful, my darling; there is no flaw in you.” This idealization lends itself well to showing the Virgin as an exalted, holy, and practically divine figure. Indeed, the Spanish could hardly have chosen a more effective way to uphold the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception than through the powerful images produced in this style.
Pacheco’s own version of the painting still hangs in San Lorenzo de El Escorial, as does the masterful rendition by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, who painted the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception at least twenty-five times.
Murillo, one of the most popular painters in seventeenth-century Spain, also lived and worked in Seville at the height of the city’s artistic heyday. As might be expected, his paintings of the Virgin follow the spirit, if not the letter, of Pacheco’s specifications. That is, he usually omitted the defeated dragon under her feet, and each painting varies from the other in similar small details. However, they generally follow Pacheco’s other guidelines, and a blue-caped, moon-supported, star-crowned woman would have been easily recognizable to contemporary viewers as the Virgin Mary. Significantly, Murillo shows the Virgin in the most exalted and idealized form possible, with a softness and glow about her to make her seem the epitome of divine womanhood. This painter’s versions of the Immaculate Conception became some of the most beloved and celebrated in Spanish history.
Francisco de Zurbarán, another key religious painter of the time, produced multiple versions of the theme. In fact, the earliest painting attributed to him is an Immaculate Conception produced in Seville in 1616, and he repeated the theme several times through at least the 1660s,
just before his death in 1664.
In his rendition of the theme, the Virgin appears in the flower of youth, surrounded by many of the theological symbols to denote her virtues and purity, in addition to Pacheco’s recommendations. In this sense, while the painting could easily serve to inspire and inflame devotion to the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception in the heart of the simplest layman, it could also engage with the deeper doctrinal conversation surrounding the subject.
Thus, it functions both as a theological statement upholding the uniquely Spanish religious views of the Counter-Reformation, and also as a work for personal devotion, intended to inspire “pious emotion”
in the viewer.
El Greco, too, produced an important and well-known Immaculate Conception in the same decade as Zurbarán’s first painting, at the beginning of the seventeenth century. His version (c. 1608-14; Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid)
appears to be the most unique in its take on the theme, departing from many of the smaller details prescribed by Pacheco. However, the portrayal of the youthful Virgin herself is seemly and faithful to the typical iconography of the time.
The painting is divided between earthly and heavenly areas, as is typical for El Greco’s work. In the heavenly realm above, celebratory angels pose in mannerist attitudes of worship, while the Holy Spirit descends on Mary in the form of a dove. In the lower zone of the composition, the traditional symbols of the Virgin appear, showing the artist’s grasp of the doctrinal import of the work. The clarity of the theological message built into the painting demonstrates the importance of exalting of the Virgin and supporting the her cult. Again, those who commissioned these paintings intended them to inspire faith, devotion, and meditation.
Thus, Pacheco, Murillo, Zurbarán, and El Greco, some of the most prolific, influential, and popular painters of the era visually demonstrated the ideals of what Catholics in Spain were teaching most passionately at the time. Moreover, the popularity of the theme itself is a manifestation of the Church’s response to the challenges of the Reformation in upholding and glorifying the cult of the Virgin by championing her holiness through the Immaculate Conception.
Conclusion: Counter-Reformation Catholics Relate Art and Theology in
As these complicated cases demonstrate, the charged atmosphere of Catholic realms like Spain –while entire cultures were considering and implementing the reforms of post-Tridentine Christendom– sometimes proved quite difficult for artists to navigate. El Greco and his contemporaries labored under heavy pressure from powerful patrons with strict and complicated demands, undoubtedly. But to see the new specifications and regulation of art merely as creativity-stifling rules imposed by iron-fisted authorities is to see the issue through a historical peephole that, by its undue narrowness, impedes a proper understanding of the situation.
In reality, the environment was richly complex, and a survey of the main religious trends from the late sixteenth to early seventeenth centuries in Spain reveals that the artists, too, generally shared many of the core values of the Church, the state or any other authority. Furthermore, both Catholics and Protestants of the Counter-Reformation demonstrated a genuine concern for the right use of images in Christian expression. Some of the most prolific, influential, and popular painters of the era visually demonstrated the ideals that Catholic bishops in Spain were teaching most passionately at the time. A survey of certain specific themes of Spanish religious painting, including the Passion, Crucifixions, Veronica’s Veil, and the Cult of the Virgin, shows that artists often dealt with the most prominent theological themes of the time. Because of the Catholic understanding of art’s responsibility to communicate theological truths, the Counter-Reformation saw correlation between the most significant theological points and the most prominent artistic commissions. Though not all, or even a majority of the many paintings produced in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries followed these changes in theology with clarity and exactitude, many did show this influence from intellectual and spiritual environment, including both mainstream ecclesiastical tradition and the counterbalancing efforts of reforming mystics and monastic orders. Thus, some of the most characteristic themes in Counter-Reformation painting in Spain show that those commissioning paintings worked to influence viewers in the same way that Catholic Reformers affected the faithful who followed their teachings.
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