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Europe 1300 - 1800
Course: Europe 1300 - 1800 > Unit 7
Lesson 3: 16th century- A miraculous appearance for a queen: Juan de Flandes, Christ Appearing to His Mother
- A wedding and a miracle for the queen of Spain: Juan de Flandes, Marriage at Cana
- The Cantino Planisphere
- Bringing the figure to life, Berruguete at The Met
- Bringing the figure to life, Berruguete at The Met
- Alonso Berruguete, Abraham and Isaac
- Fernando Yáñez de la Almedina, Head of Christ
- The Tower of Belém
- Belém Monstrance
- Alejo Fernández, Virgin of the Navigators
- Sacred geometry in a Renaissance ceiling from Spain
- El Escorial, Spain
- El Greco, Burial of the Count Orgaz
- El Greco, View of Toledo
- El Greco, Adoration of the Shepherds
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Bringing the figure to life, Berruguete at The Met
Alonso Berruguete, Apostle or Saint, c. 1520s, polychrome and gilded walnut, 103 x 37 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art), part of Smarthistory's Expanded Renaissance Initiative Speakers: Dr. Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank and Dr. Steven Zucker. see learning resources here. Created by Smarthistory.
Want to join the conversation?
- If they do not know what alter piece this is from or which church, then how do they know it is from Spain and sculpted by Berruguete?(1 vote)
Video transcript
(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)