The Museo Nacional del Prado is showing how volume and colour were used for the purposes of religious persuasion in the early modern period through an exceptional group of masterpieces of Spanish polychrome sculpture

On display until 25 March 2025 in Rooms A and B of the Jerónimos Building, the Museo del Prado and Fundación AXA are presenting Hand in hand. Sculpture and Colour in the Spanish Golden Age, an exhibition that focuses on the success of Baroque polychrome sculpture and its close relationship with painting. It achieves this aim through a spectacular installation of almost one hundred sculptures by masters of the stature of Gaspar Becerra, Alonso Berruguete, Gregorio Fernández, Damián Forment, Juan de Juni, Francisco Salzillo, Juan Martínez Montañés and Luisa Roldán. Displayed alongside these works are paintings and engravings which emulate or reproduce them in the manner of mirror images, in addition to classical works that demonstrate the importance of colour in sculpture since Antiquity.

Curated by Manuel Arias Martínez, Head of the Department of Sculpture at the Museo Nacional del Prado, the exhibition defends the importance of polychrome sculpture for a comprehensive understanding of Spanish art while also exhibiting for the first time five important works recently acquired by the Museum: The Good Thief and The Bad Thief by Alonso Berruguete, Saint John the Baptist by Juan de Mesa, and Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus which were part of a late medieval, Castilian Descent from the Cross.

When praising the wood sculpture of Christ of Forgiveness carved by Manuel Pereira and polychromed by Francisco Camilo, the writer on art Antonio Palomino (1655-1726) concluded with the following opinion: “Thus painting and sculpture, hand in hand, create a prodigious spectacle.” The unique importance achieved by the synthesis of volume and colour in sculpture of the early modern period can only be explained by the role it played as an instrument of persuasion.

From the Graeco-Roman world onwards sculptural representation was seen as a necessity. Divinity was present through its corporeal, protective and healing image which became more lifelike when covered with colour, an essential attribute of life in contrast to the inanimate pallor of death. In the words of the Benedictine monk Gregorio de Argaiz in 1677: “Each figure, no matter how perfect it may be in sculpture, is a corpse; what gives it life, soul, and spirit is the brush, which represents the affections of the soul. Sculpture forms the tangible and palpable man […], but painting gives him life.”

Religious sculpture existed in a context of supernatural connotations from the time of its execution. It was thus associated with miracles and divine interventions, with angelic workshops and with craftsmen who had to be in a morally acceptable state in order to undertake a task that went beyond a mere artistic exercise, given that what was created was ultimately an imitation of the divine.

The exhibition now presented at the Museo Nacional del Prado offers an analysis of the phenomenon and success of polychrome sculpture, which filled churches and convents in the 17th century and played a key role as a support for preaching. The close and ideal collaboration between sculptors and painters is revealing with regard to the esteem in which colour was held, not as a merely superficial finish to the work but rather an essential element without which it could not be considered finished.

Colour also made a decisive contribution to emphasising the dramatic values of these sculptures, both those made for altarpieces and for processional images. Theatrical gesturalism, together with the sumptuous nature of the clothing, whether sculpted, glued fabric or real textiles, transformed these sculptures into dramatic objects filled with meaning.

Finally, the exhibition also looks at other examples of the interrelationship between the arts in relation to polychrome sculpture, from the prints that helped disseminate the most popular devotional images to the Veils of the Passion [painted altarcloths of devotional images] which simulated altarpieces, and paintings that made use of striking illusionism to faithfully reproduce the sculptural images on their respective altars.