Category: religious

Photos: Museo Nacional de Escultura

A National Sculpture Museum is to be found in a small city, some 200 km north of Madrid. But don’t expect too much marble, bronze or mixed media here in Valladolid. During their golden age, Spain’s sculptors worked in wood. Presenting exhibit A: close up of a sizeable tiered seating arrangement for…

Janet Cardiff, The Forty Part Motet (2001)

When a gallery is a deconsecrated church and the artwork is a piece of religious music, walking in is a hair’s breadth from turning up for Sunday worship. It’s humbling, even humiliating. The early choral work, Spem in Alium by Thomas Tallis, is drawing people in off the street, nevertheless.…

The Sacred Made Real: Spanish Painting & Sculpture 1600-1700

Published on Culture24 The Sacred Made Real at The National Gallery, London, until January 2010 As you would expect from a pallid corpse in a darkened room, Dead Christ draws quite a crowd. Gregorio Fernández’s wooden bier is surrounded by a dozen curious visitors. If this was a roadside, they…