BY IAN SHANK
Jan Brueghel el Viejo and Hendrick de Clerck, Abundance and the Four Elements, 1606. Image via Wikimedia Commons.
By the mid-17th century, a
clear religious and legal consensus had emerged in Spain. Nude
paintings—particularly featuring women—were not only morally suspect, but
dangerous.
Earlier, in December 1563,
the Catholic clergymen who had gathered for the Council of Trent decreed that
“all lasciviousness [in church artwork] shall be avoided in such ways that
figures shall not be painted or adorned with a beauty exciting lust.” Even
Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel fresco of the Last Judgment fell afoul of the
church, prompting some contemporary Spaniards to declare that paintings of the
nude were “inventions of the devil,” could make the onlooker a “slave to lust,”
and that “the finest paintings are the greatest threat: burn the best of them.”
In 1640, the Spanish court went so far as to declare the creation, importation,
and possession of nude paintings illegal—thereby cementing the most repressive,
anti-nude legal regime in all of Europe.
And yet, collections of the
nude not only continued in Spain, but flourished. Under the tutelage of Philip
II and Philip IV, the Spanish Habsburgs would come to possess the largest
collection of nude paintings in Western art. “This paradox,” said Miguel
Falomir Faus, director of the Museo Nacional del Prado, “is that this impressive
collection of erotic paintings was not in the very liberal Amsterdam, or in
Florence, but in Madrid, and the owners of this collection were the most
Catholic kings in the world.”
This seemingly
contradictory state of affairs has its roots in the particular significance of
nudity in European art. “In the late fifteenth century, the ability to draw the
nude was becoming a prerequisite for the very definition of a successful
artist,” writes art historian Jill Burke. Moreover, “successful paintings and
sculptures of nudes were those that provoked physical desire on the part of the
viewer (who was generally assumed to be male).” Thus, even as the political
climate grew increasingly antagonistic, serious patrons of the arts like Philip
II and Philip IV continued to collect the best—and, by extension, most
alluring—works of art.
This stark contrast between
moral and artistic standards could put painters in a bind when it came time to
actually hire a nude model. “In the end the ones who are suitable don’t want to
strip,” complained one bitter artist of the 1640s, “and those who will strip
would make a good model for witches.”
Far and away the most
important factor in the development of the Spanish Habsburgs’ illustrious
collection, however, was the genesis of the salas reservadas—cloistered,
exclusive spaces scattered across a handful of royal properties for the purpose
of displaying certain works separately from the rest of the collection. Though
references to sequestered holdings of nude paintings in the royal collections
begin to crop up as early as 1621, the first documented sala reservada appears
in a 1636 inventory of the Alcázar Palace under the reign of Philip IV. The
room featured nine nude paintings by Titian, and was recorded as the place
“where His majesty retires after lunch.”
By the arrival of Charles
III, these rooms bore the bulk of the monarch’s “indecent” holdings. The
country had come to a consensus—established alongside the official
criminalization of nude works—that, in the hierarchy of sin, the most
pernicious offense was to create nude works or exhibit them publicly. “That
left an important loophole for [members of the ruling class] who chose to own
such paintings, as long as they kept them in secluded spaces, away from the the
indiscriminate eye of the general public,” writes art historian Javier Portús.
But not every king embraced
these works. After ascending to the Spanish throne in 1759, Charles III arrived
in Madrid to find a veritable cornucopia of nude and erotic paintings
painstakingly amassed by his Habsburg predecessors. The collection included
tableaus by the likes of Titian, Diego Velázquez, and Peter Paul Rubens—the
remnants of a staggering 5,539-painting inventory, conducted in 1700, that had
subsequently dwindled through foreign gifts and a devastating fire at Madrid’s
Alcázar Palace in 1734.
In the annals of monarchic
prudery, Charles III commands a sterling position. In 1752, as King of Naples
and Sicily, the regent once famously fled an archeological dig when presented
with a marble statue of a satyr fornicating with a goat. Appalled by the cache
of erotic Roman antiquities he’d uncovered, he banished the offending work to a
locked cabinet and ordered the excavation to be halted altogether…………………
https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-spains-kings-thousands-nude-paintings-catholic-church
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario