(jazzy piano music)
- [Steven] We're upstairs in the Spanish Court in
The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
looking at this exceptional sculpture.
Before we even go into what we're looking at,
it's important to understand that we're not seeing this
the way that it would originally have been meant to be seen.
We're seeing it on a pedestal by itself,
but originally, this would have been part of a large altar.
- [Lauren] It would have been a number of other polychromed
and gilded sculptures in addition to painting.
This would have been in conversation
with a lot of other objects.
- [Steven] One of the tragedies
of this sculpture having been separated
from it's original altarpiece is
that we've lost the identity of this figure.
- [Lauren] This is this is either an apostle or a saint
by the very famous 16th century sculptor Alonso Berruguete,
who comes from Spain who was trained by his
also very famous father Pedro Berruguete.
And Alonso Berruguete clearly made this for an altarpiece
and we know that because it's sculpted on three sides
in the round but then the back is left unsculpted.
- [Steven] And so art historians have hypothesized
that this was probably a corner piece,
so you would be able to move around
and see all sides except the very back.
- [Lauren] And Berruguete has used a few techniques
to get us to really look at this from those three sides.
This saint or apostle here,
is twisted in a certain way
where you really wanna get as close as you can to it,
to walk around the different sides
to get a full sense of what this sculpture looks like.
- [Steven] And that's because it is so expressive,
you don't need to look only at the face or the hands
to understand the emotion of this figure.
Every inch of this sculpture,
its movement, expresses anguish.
There's such a sense of animation in this figure and clearly
the artist had a very sophisticated understanding
of anatomy and that understanding allowed him
to manipulate the figure,
and it reminds me of the work of Michelangelo.
I think what's a little unnerving when I look at this is
that at first it seemed so naturalistic,
but the more time you spend with it,
you see the way in which the artist has
purposefully distorted the human body
to achieve emotional effect.
Look for instance at the face, actually the very shape
of the skull seems to gently arc the way that
the body below it arcs and this is further accentuated
by the way that wind seems to whip the beard around his chin
and the way that the hair on the right falls longer
than the hair on his left.
It is as if the skull itself arcs
in rhyme with the arc of the body.
And when you look closely, you realize that
the artist understands human anatomy
but has pushed beyond the more static naturalism
of the Renaissance to create an object
that we would classify as Mannerist.
- [Lauren] If we just look at the textiles covering
the figure's body we really get a sense of that here.
We have these swooping arcs created by things
like his arm that's outstretched and holding some object,
we don't know what the object is,
and then another arc that's created by the turn
of his left arm that's holding a book,
and then another arc that's created
by one of the garments that he wears.
But they all still hang relatively naturally,
except we also have these Mannerist tendencies.
We have the elongated, angular face,
we have the elongated fingers,
and the apostle or the saint actually looks
like he's being blown by wind.
We get this impression of movement
and yet the garments he's wearing aren't moving
with this gust of wind.
- [Steven] And imagine if he stood up straight
and his body wasn't creating this beautiful arc.
Look at the length of the body,
and imagine how many heads tall he is.
This far exceeds the height of
the actual anatomy of he human body.
- [Lauren] Something that's really important to note
about this particular sculpture is that it is painted wood
or polychromed and gilded wood.
Which is not necessarily what we think about
when we're thinking of Renaissance sculpture.
However, painted or polychromed wood was actually
very common in the Renaissance, not only in Spain,
but it is something that you do find
a lot of in Renaissance Spain.
- [Steven] And although this has been done so masterfully,
it looks as if it was carved from a single block of wood.
That was not actually how this was done.
This is made from individual pieces
that are fit together in ingenious ways
in order to mask those seams.
So, for example, the right forearm is not part of
the same piece of wood as the shoulders.
- [Lauren] Carving in wood did allow you to do things
that you couldn't do, say, carving in marble
or creating something like a bronze sculpture.
Wood was usually a more supple material to work with,
meaning that you could cut more naturalistically
at a faster speed if you so desired it.
It's also incredibly light, meaning that it's not
as heavy as something like bronze or marble.
- [Steven] And it takes color beautifully.
You can get a sense of the almost magical quality
of wood carving if you look especially at his toes,
which are in a sense, hyper real.
- [Lauren] You can almost see each individual bone
in the toes, we can see veins sneaking up the feet,
there really is this hyper realistic quality to them.
- [Steven] And look at the decisions that
the sculptor has made, recessing those feet far behind
the drape, which cantilevers over,
protecting and creating a real sense of depth and volume.
You get a sense of the body below that heavy drapery.
- [Lauren] And when you're standing up close
to this sculpture, you can also see the different ways that
the painter has tried to enliven this sculpture.
We see the naturalistic painting
of the flesh tones and then we have different colors
of paint used for the textiles,
including some that are gilded or the addition of gilding.
And this relates back to the very collaborative process
that would have been used to create this type of sculpture.
- [Steven] It's important to remember that the painting
of the wooden sculpture was seen as a separate skill
that would have been given over
to somebody who had a high degree
of expertise in that specific area.
- [Lauren] Typically with Spanish polychromed sculpture,
you had the sculptor who was actually
the one carving from the wood,
and then once he or she completed that,
would give it over to another artist,
who would do the painting.
And you had different types of painters.
You had those who specialized in
the (foreign language word) or the flesh tones,
and then you had those painters who would do
the gilding or painting of the textiles.
So you had sometimes a great many artists who would work
on a single figure like this one
to produce what we're seeing here.
- [Steven] Let's just take a moment to remember
that the term (foreign language word) is related
to the English word incarnation, that is to give life.
The painting of the flesh tones
literally brought these objects to life.
- [Lauren] We have a wooden sculpture that has been painted
with a wide variety of colors
to make this look more naturalistic,
to make this look more alive.
- [Steven] And while there is
some Italian sculpture in wood, certainly,
Donatello's "Mary Magdalene" comes to mind,
wood is the much more common material
for sculpture in Spain.
- [Lauren] Berruguete was one of
the most important artists of 16th century Spain.
He was not only a sculptor but he was
also a painter and an architect,
and earlier in his career he actually travels to Italy
and he supposedly studies with Michelangelo.
Whether or not he actually works directly
with Michelangelo is maybe more contested,
but we know that he was actively looking
at sculptures made by Michelangelo,
as well as studying Greco-Roman sculpture,
like the "Laocoon" that had been observed
by Michelangelo when it was being pulled up from the ground.
- [Steven] And he wasn't in Italy just for a short time,
he lived there for an extended period.
- [Lauren] And when Berruguete actually returns to Spain,
he will be made the official court painter
to Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor and the King of Spain,
which is in some ways ironic because as soon
as he's made the court painter,
Charles V basically leaves for his military campaigns
and the artist turns to sculpture
for the remainder of his career.
- [Steven] In a sense, having ascended to
the single most important artistic position in Spain,
one of the most powerful countries
in the world at that time,
the artist is able to set his own course
and gives up painting.
- [Lauren] And Berruguete is but one of many examples
of artists who were itinerant,
who were moving around in the Renaissance.
- [Steven] And this will have significant impact
because Spain at this time,
was becoming a major colonial power,
this Mannerist style will have resonance in the Americas.
(jazzy piano music)