Fray Bartolomé de San Marcos was so fed up with being told he didn't know how to do nudes that he put himself to the test. The Renaissance painter (Savignano di Prato, 1472 – Florence, 1517) designed a Saint Sebastian of such “gentle charisma and corresponding beauty” that his confreres had to remove him from the church after several women confessed that they were lasciviously attracted to him felt … through the imitation of the living.” The anecdote that Giorgio Vasari tells in his biography of the artist is more than 500 years old, but not far removed from the dust that is now raised by Salustiano García's poster announcing the Holy Week in Seville in 2024 will be stirred up. Only now there are those who criticize it or collect signatures for its withdrawal, also protected by the supposed gay subtext that it evokes.
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The professor of art history at the University of Santiago de Compostela, Francisco Prado-Vilar, looks at what is happening today with the curiosity to see in the present “the reaction that Renaissance society must have had” to the humanist emergence naked Christ figures with delicate facial features, sensual Sansebastians with arrows or virgins who breastfed with their breasts exposed. The strange thing, however, is that neither then nor now did the Church show any opposition to the depiction of nudity in religious art. Or at least theoretically, as the references to divine sensuality in the Bible's Song of Songs, the flesh “as adornment” of the resurrection in the sermons of Saint Augustine, or the poems of the Spiritual Canticle of Saint John demonstrate the cross. .
The relationship between the depiction of nudity and religious art goes back directly to classical Greek and Roman art. This is where the first artists of the Renaissance went to depict “the idealized body,” which required a divine representation, as art historian and Holy Week preacher in Seville in 2013, Francis Segura, explained. The resurrection, a dogma of Catholicism, then became a topic that was as commonplace as it was complex for artists. “How do you represent God? How do you depict someone who has been resurrected after death? It is a combination of man and God. How do you imagine something like that? Turning to the classics, the ideas around you, what you think is divine,” says Prado-Vilar. Something that Salustiano himself claims to have done after drawing on the memory of his late brother and the example of his own son.
Salustiano García, left, presents his poster for Holy Week in Seville.CRISTINA QUICLER (AFP)
The poster designed by Salustiano García for the next Holy Week in Seville has provoked criticism from those who do not see themselves represented in this image. However, throughout art history, the figure of Christ has been depicted in very different ways. One of the representations used as an example to defend the vision of Salustiano García is this “Blessing of Christ” (1505) by Rafael.
“Resurrected Christ” (1490) by the Italian painter and architect Bramantino. Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum
“The Resurrection” (1509-1511) by Albrecht Dürer.
In the chapel of the Quinta Angustia brotherhood in the parish of Magdalena, this Mannerist sculpture of the Risen Christ by the sculptor Jerónimo Hernández, completed in 1583, is venerated. Archdiocese of Seville
A contemporary representation, the “Christ of the Winds”, by Guillermo Pérez Villalta from Cádiz.
This work comes from the Madrid Movida period from the series “El Valle de los Caídos”, which was created between 1980 and 1987 by Costus, the pseudonym of Enrique Naya Igueravide and Juan José Carrero Galofré.
The Melun diptych was created in 1450 by the French painter Jean Fouquet.
“The Last Judgment” from Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel.
Oil painting of the “Flagging of Christ” by the Italian Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, called “The Sodom” (1477-1549).
“San Sebastian”, by Bolognese Guido Reni (1575-1642). Prado Museum
“The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian” by El Greco, written between 1577 and 1578.
“It is the ideal of beauty to reach the truth,” explains the Sevillian art historian and curator José de León, known for his didactic children on the social network, not everyone has achieved it. “The majority has opted for an essentialist naturalism. But I would say that 95% of sculptors failed to depict the resurrection. There are examples of a crucified person, corpses were hung up in the 17th century, but no one has seen a resurrected person. You have to invent it. What painters or sculptors have done throughout history is to refine it in beauty,” explains Andrés Luque, professor of art history at the University of Seville.
How the public perceives these creations varies. Vasari tells the anecdote of San Sebastian, which provoked lascivious looks from the faithful in the Florentine Quattrocento, but there are many more and more famous cases. Caravaggio's Death of the Virgin (Milan, 1571 – Porto Ercole, 1610) was censored after a rumor spread that the tormented painter had used a drowned prostitute as a model. Perhaps the most famous upset, however, occurred when Pope Pius IV commissioned Danielle di Volterra in 1564 to cover up the intimate parts of the Last Judgment, which Michelangelo Buonarroti (Caprese, 1475 – Rome, 1564) painted in the Sistine Chapel in 1564 had . back. “They are controversies so far away that we don't see them, but they happened. Because they are paintings from the past, they are considered valid, as if they were the sensuality of the past,” explains Miguel Ángel Cajigal, art historian and scientific disseminator in X under the pseudonym El Barroquista.
But those earlier disputes were much more limited in scope than now. “Art used to be in private collections or in a chapel. When commissioning a work, the customer was able to grant himself certain licenses and this is how the work developed and creativity emerged. Holy Week brings this to the streets. Art in public spaces is something very modern. I couldn’t see it before and now that I see it, I don’t understand it,” Segura says. With the work of Salustiano García, all this dust has become even bigger, and the brother and Sevillian art historian Jesús Romanov wonders why there is so much trouble: “We must not underestimate the opinion of the people who say that they like to be recognized . They are people who are used to customs and the baroque style. What I don't believe is the harassment and destruction of the poster and billboard artist. I ask why they call him gay and homoerotic and they don’t know how to answer me.”
“Resurrected Christ,” by Bramantino. Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum
The multiplier, known for his educational threads on the social network We will never allow art to serve as a pretext to impose reactionary ideologies.” León only sees, as in the resurrected Salustiano, whose execution is as contemporary as it is classic in form, the updated Apollonian Seems ideal. Segura believes that the problem may lie precisely there, after reversing the values when considering a sacred work in terms of the Renaissance: “It used to respond to the canons of classical sculpture. In today’s world these bodies are vulgar, it is a very present reality and now the vulgarity shocks us.”
In any case, the six experts interviewed agree that when faced with a work that has obvious artistic quality, they point to the viewer's point of view as biased. “And here, where this is not even the artist's intention, they see a gay subtext that does not exist and is completely projected,” denounces Prado Villar. “If we follow this line, we must return to Romanticism, where the statues of Christ were dressed. We have entered a rather dangerous line emanating from Protestantism and its Puritanism. “That’s not typical of the Catholic world,” adds Romanow, annoyed. And that's why León is calling on Sevillians to take a stand. “Holy Week is incredibly human and connects people of all kinds. Pride means having created a ritual that, despite all the progress and secularization, still inspires people to create new things and tell old things today with artists of different styles. This is the greatness of the rite. Will we cancel it out of irrationality without any basis? “It is time to decide,” concludes the historian, convinced that the opposing voices are “not at all” the majority.
Salustiano García (left) presents his Holy Week poster in Seville together with members of the Council of Brotherhoods and Brotherhoods and the mayor of the city.
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