(upbeat music)
- [Steven] We're in the Metropolitan Museum of Art
on a balcony in the Spanish Court
looking at a life-size Spanish sculpture
from the early 17th century of Saint John the Baptist.
- [Lauren] It was created
by the sculptor Juan Martinez Montanes,
who is arguably the most famous sculptor
of the first half of the 17th century in Spain.
- [Steven] And for good reason.
This figure seems as if he is alive,
as if he's walking into my space.
It's almost uncanny in its lifelike quality.
And part of that has to do with the animation of the body,
which seems absolutely natural, but it also has to do
with the surface and especially the painting.
- [Lauren] We tend to think of sculpture
and we think marble or bronze,
and here we're looking at painted or polychromed wood.
And this was incredibly common in Spain
beginning in the 15th century.
And here we have it peaking
in the 17th century with Martinez Montanes.
- [Steven] You can see this sculpture building
on the knowledge that had been gained
from the 15th century onward,
in terms of the skeletal structure, the musculature.
All of which is revealed,
even though the figure is largely hidden under
this heavy cloth, because this is, after all,
Saint John the Baptist
who is traditionally represented wearing camel,
a reminder that he lived in the wilderness.
- [Lauren] And we see them reflected in other ways as well.
Saint John the Baptist often has wirey somewhat wild hair.
And we're seeing that here.
You have this twist and twirl in the front,
his hair is shoulder length, he's barefoot,
and his feet are somewhat dirty,
indicating that he is living in the wilderness.
What's so striking about this sculpture is,
even though he's wearing this very modest clothing,
the sculptor has indicated his special status
as a saint by draping a more elaborate textile
over his shoulder on the right side.
On this red textile,
we're seeing vines and flowers.
We're seeing the faces of putti.
We would have immediately recognized,
as a viewer in the 17th century,
that this is someone who has a special status.
- [Steven] If you look closely,
you'll see that his forward most foot is worn and dirty.
And it suggests to me that that was the part of his body
that people in the church where this was placed could reach.
This is what they could touch.
And it speaks to the importance
that St. John elicited from worshipers in this convent.
- [Lauren] It's from the convent
of Our Lady of the Conception in Seville, in Seville.
And it was part of an altar dedicated
to Saint John the Baptist.
And so it's important to keep that in mind,
because, as we're seeing it here,
raised on a plinth in the museum,
we don't see the rest of the altarpiece
on which it would have been displayed.
And in fact, we're not even seeing the entire sculpture.
If we look at the figure of St. John,
he's pointing at something.
Still on the sculpture today,
we see a small hole in the base
that indicates that something would have
been placed inside of it, perhaps a banner,
because often in painting and in other sculptures,
we see St. John accompanied by a banner
or maybe it was even the lamb of God.
- [Steven] You mentioned that this was part
of an altarpiece.
Spanish altarpieces could be wildly elaborate.
- [Lauren] Spanish retablos, or altarpieces,
could fill the entire wall of the apse
or the back of the church where the altar was.
So to see this life-size sculpture alone,
we have to imagine what
that altarpiece could have looked like.
It would have been very sizeable
and often would have had not only sculpture,
but painting and even architectural elements surrounding it.
- [Steven] This sculpture is so beautifully formed
that it seems as if it was carved
from a single block of wood,
but that's not the way that the Spanish produced
their wooden sculptures.
This sculpture is formed from numerous pieces
that are put together in very clever ways
so that the seams are never visible.
For instance, St. John's left leg
would be a separate piece from his hips.
- [Lauren] And in a similar fashion,
while we attribute this sculpture
to the artist Juan Martinez Montanes,
he would have only been the sculptor.
There would have been a different artist,
or possibly even artists, who would have done the painting.
And we know that by the 17th century,
there were prescriptions around who could sculpt
and who could paint.
And usually a sculptor was not allowed to paint his creation
- [Steven] That flies in the face
of the way that we think of creative license now
in the 21st century,
where an artist often has complete control over their work.
But perhaps it's better to think of architecture
where you have people with different skills
who are coming together to create the whole.
- [Lauren] Juan Martinez Montanes
was an exceptional sculptor of wood.
He was known as the god of wood in the 17th century,
and then a different artist would paint the flesh tones
in a process called encarnacion,
or the enlivening, or literally the incarnation.
The idea was that until the flesh tones were painted,
the sculpture wouldn't be alive.
- [Steven] And it's so interesting
to think about the relationship
between the three-dimensional physical form of the wood
that is sculpted and the way in which paint
is not simply putting flat color on those objects
but is subtly modulating, creating shadows and highlights,
to accentuate the three dimensionality
and the physical veracity of the object
- [Lauren] In this collaboration,
we still have to keep in mind
that Martinez Montanes is the one
who is carefully sculpting the veins that we see on the skin
where we get this very subtle modeling of the musculature.
There really is this symbiotic relationship
between the wood and the paint
that makes this a much more naturalistic sculpture
and one that really brings us in,
it really humanizes what we're seeing here.
In the 17th century, when we have artists
who are responding to say the demands,
the tenets of the Council of Trent,
where they want art that is instructive,
they want art that follows orthodoxy,
or that follows scripture
and that's clear and easy to read.
And here Martinez Montanes has given us a very clear,
easy-to-read sculpture.
- [Steven] But also one that dissolves the 1700 years
between the moment when the sculpture was made
and the time of St. John the Baptist.
(upbeat music)