Baroque Sculpture: Characteristics and Spanish Influence

Baroque Sculpture: Main Characteristics

• Triumph of Realism: The goal was a specific and individualized realism, without sacrificing formal correctness. Depending on trends, it could be natural realism or a more idealized, heroic realism.
• Theatrical and Bombastic Language: Dynamic and expressive, aiming to impress, move, or persuade through emotions and feelings:
  • Interest in expressing feelings and passions in a heightened, theatrical, and dramatic way.
  • Figures in attitudes of great dynamism, projected outward, describing unstable positions.
  • Diagonal compositions prevail. Robes swell and wave.
• Pictorial Conception: Interest in visual values, chiaroscuro effects, pretense of qualities, and merging the figure with the environment through light and the instant expression of movement.
• Sculptural Materials and Techniques:
  • Both round and relief sculptures were cultivated.
  • Varied materials were used (marble, stone, bronze, and wood).
  • High level of technical perfection and virtuosity.
  • Sculpture served architecture, highlighting its importance.
• Broad Themes:
  • Religious themes occupied a prominent place due to the prevailing atmosphere of spiritual exaltation in the Catholic world.
  • Predominant themes included martyrdom, miracles, mystical and ecstatic apotheosis, and representations of saints.
  • Mythological and allegorical sculptures were also created.
  • Development of the portrait.

Spanish Baroque Sculpture: The Golden Age

• Purely Religious: The church was the main client and promoter of sculptures, using them for propagandistic purposes.
• Accessible and Sensory Language: Embodied in the triumph of realism and expressionist theatrical images that were natural, real, and believable, tending toward the exalted expression of passions and feelings. Sentiment predominated over reason. The quest for realism even incorporated false, non-authentic elements into sculptures.
• Dominant Religious Issues:
  • Themes related to the Passion of Christ.
  • Representation of saints, expressing the ascetic and mystical vision of religious feeling, incorporating new iconography.
  • The subject of the Immaculate Conception also acquired great development.
• Material: The most used material was polychrome wood, which facilitated the intended realistic and expressive effects.
• Sculptural Genres:
  • Altarpieces contributed to enriching and glorifying temples.
  • Proliferation of free-standing cult images.
  • Creation of a new genre: processional sculpture ("pasos" of Easter).

Two Main Schools of Spanish Baroque Sculpture

• Castilian School: Gregorio Fernández
• Andalusian School: Martínez Montañés