Juan Martínez Montañés, St. John the Baptist

[0:00] [music]

Dr. Steven Zucker: [0:06] 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.

Dr. Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank: [0:16] It was created by the sculptor Juan Martínez Montañés, who is arguably the most famous sculptor of the first half of the 17th century in Spain.

Dr. Zucker: [0:24] 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. 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.

Dr. Kilroy-Ewbank: [0:43] We tend to think of sculpture and we think marble or bronze, and here we’re looking at painted or polychromed wood. This was incredibly common in Spain, beginning in the 15th century, and here we have it peaking in the 17th century with Martínez Montañés.

Dr. Zucker: [0:58] 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.

Dr. Kilroy-Ewbank: [1:21] We see that reflected in other ways as well. Saint John the Baptist often has wiry, somewhat wild hair, and we’re seeing that here. We have this twist and twirl on the front. His hair is shoulder-length. He’s barefoot and his feet are somewhat dirty, indicating that he is living in the wilderness.

[1:38] 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.

[1:50] 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.

Dr. Zucker: [2:03] If you look closely, you’ll see that his forwardmost 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. It speaks to the importance that Saint John elicited from worshipers in this convent.

Dr. Kilroy-Ewbank: [2:20] It’s from the convent of Our Lady of the Conception in Sevilla, in Seville. It was part of an altar dedicated to Saint John the Baptist. 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.

[2:38] In fact, we’re not even seeing the entire sculpture. If we look at the figure of Saint 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.

[2:51] Perhaps a banner, because often in painting and in other sculptures, we see Saint John accompanied by a banner, or maybe it was even the Lamb of God.

Dr. Zucker: [2:59] You mentioned that this was part of an altarpiece. Spanish altarpieces could be wildly elaborate.

Dr. Kilroy-Ewbank: [3:04] Spanish retablos, or altarpieces, could fill the entire wall of the apse, or the back of the church where the altar was. 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.

Dr. Zucker: [3:24] 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, Saint John’s left leg would be a separate piece from his hips.

Dr. Kilroy-Ewbank: [3:45] In a similar fashion, while we attribute this sculpture to the artist Juan Martinez Montañés, he would have only been the sculptor. There would have been a different artist, or possibly even artists, who would have done the painting. We know that by the 17th century there were proscriptions around who could sculpt and who could paint.

[4:03] Usually, a sculptor was not allowed to paint his creation.

Dr. Zucker: [4:07] 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. Perhaps it’s better to think of architecture, where you have people with different skills who are coming together to create the whole.

Dr. Kilroy-Ewbank: [4:21] Juan Martinez Montañés was an exceptional sculptor of wood. He was known as the “god of wood” in the 17th century. Then a different artist would paint the flesh tones in a process called “encarnación” or the enlivening, or literally “the incarnation.” The idea was that, until the flesh tones were painted, the sculpture wouldn’t be alive.

Dr. Zucker: [4:43] 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.

Dr. Kilroy-Ewbank: [5:03] In this collaboration, we still have to keep in mind that Martinez Montañés 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.

[5:15] 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.

[5:26] 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.

[5:42] Here, Martinez Montañés has given us a very clear, easy-to-read sculpture.

Dr. Zucker: [5:47] Also one that dissolves the 1,700 years between the moment when the sculpture was made and the time of Saint John the Baptist.

[5:54] [music]