Heaven - and hell on earth

There are only a few days left in which to see The Sacred Made Real, The National Gallery’s extraordinary show of Spanish religious paintings and sculpture. Faith is brought to compelling life – and death – here. If you can, go and see this profoundly strange, gory –a head of the decapitated John the Baptist features gruesome severed arteries – and fascinating collection. As you look, bear in mind that these 17th century statues are still taken in candlelit processions through Spanish streets, accompanied by penitents in pointed hoods and cloaks to the tune of sinister, sonorous drum beats, and borne on the backs of men who believe undergoing the physical pain of bearing their weight is a spiritual penance.
These works, lit as if by candles in an otherwise sepulchral darkness, are meant as realistic depictions of agony, spiritual passion, ascetic ecstasy, torment and death. Macabre to us, they reinforce the idea that the holy figures were actual, suffering humans in torment or – equally disturbing – self-inflicted extremis. Gregorio Fernandez’s Dead Christ is a cadaver who has been tortured, complete with flagellated flesh, gaping wounds and fingernails made of real horn. His glass eyes are rolling back in his head; his defeated open mouth reveals ivory teeth. Pedro De Mena’s Saint Francis In Ecstasy is equally intense. To understand why this small statue of a skeletal monk whose glass eyes appear to be looking into something more full of dread and wonder than any earthly experience, you need to know that St Francis was supposed to have been discovered in his tomb, 200 years after his death, and instead of being a decomposed corpse, was standing upright, looking heavenwards – as does this statue – and still bleeding from his stigmata: the wounds that manifest themselves on the hands of the faithful, as if by a miracle, that mimic the bleeding wounds inflicted on Jesus before his crucifixion.
At the other end of The National Gallery, equally realistic human figures are used in a context that is the profane opposite to The Sacred Made Real. The Hoerengracht, by Ed and Nancy Kienholz, is a walk-though installation that recreates Amsterdam’s red light district. The bodies of the women are modelled on real people, and topped by mannequin heads. Reminding the viewer that these figures are part of a long tradition of representing prostitutes, their tiny, shabby rooms are decorated with reminders of the visual traditions of painting fallen women; meanwhile, the way the women who inhabit these rooms have been, and continue to be, objectivised, is emphasised by the face of each being surrounded by a frame. As the figures of the saints and martyrs are intended to be as lifelike as possible in their agony, the garish prostitute women in The Hoerengracht are deliberately made into objects to be desired and consumed, whether as flesh or as art.