“St John of the Cross”, Francisco Antonio Gijón, c.1675, National Gallery of Art Washington.
I saw this polychrome wooden sculpture of St John of the Cross in the exhibition “The Sacred made Real” a number of years ago in London. Xavier Bray had brought together a great many such incredibly life-like religious sculptures from Seventeen Century Spain. It was an amazing exhibition. For many it was the first time they had really engaged with this type of art. Most of us entered the exhibition having acquired a taste for neo-classical unpainted statues in bronze and marble. I am writing this in Rome where that that taste can be indulged to the limit! Often as we gaze, we see the sculpture chiselling away, and completely fail to appreciate that a sculpture in whatever medium is rarely less than a collaborative effort. This is especially true of works like this sculpture of St John of the Cross. It is not the work of one hand. The carving, gilding, painting and so on were reserved to individual specialists. in fact, St John of the cross himself understood this well. After the death of his father, the young boy was sent by his mother as an apprentice to learn various trades. With little success he tried carpentry, tailoring, wood carving and painting. Of course, the mystic’s true gift was poetry and also prose. More than once in his spiritual writing he uses the analogy of the many hands that shape a polychrome wooden sculpture. “Not everyone who can hew a block of wood is able to carve an image; nor is everyone who can carve it is able to outline and polish it….each…can do no more than that with which he himself is familiar, and if he ties to do more he will only ruin his work.” The simplicity with which St John conveys spiritual truths in his writings is sometimes compared to the working of a chisel and he is contrasted with other writers who mask their lack of insight by the use of verbose sentences. In approaching this masterpiece we need to do more than subdue a neo-classical bias. We need to look beneath the surface and appreciate the extraordinary achievement of a shared endeavour. The realistic detail here is stunning, especially when you realise that it is the work of many hands. The stubble of his beard is visible. His upward gaze and slightly parted lips speak of his asceticism and his singular focus on God. His phrase “dark night of the soul’ was not so much about asceticism as an inner renunciation, a choosing of union with God above all else which God enables in those who seek him. His hands are shown as arthritic and the veins stand out especially on the one under the book which would have been visible to the viewer below. In his other hand, he once held a quill and above his shoulder the Holy Spirit once hovered in the form of a dove. One cannot help but think it hovered also above the artists as they worked together. The strange form on the open book is in fact a miniature Mount Carmel; a reminder of his guide to the spiritual life, “The Ascent of Mount Carmel”. It is now known that the sculpture was made for a community of Carmelite nuns in Seville who would have understood these attributes. The sculpture was gilded but then covered in brown and off-white pigment. It was then selectively etched as if the threads in his Carmelite habit had turned to gold for, after all, this is St John of the Cross in glory. His feast is next Saturday.
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