The MagazineArt of the FaithfulSpain’s Counter-Reformation as seen by its artists.Apr 26, 2010, Vol. 15, No. 30
• By MAUREEN MULLARKEY
 The Sacred Made Real Spanish Painting and Sculpture 1600-1700
The medieval spirit, steeped in sacred purpose, penetrated Spain’s Golden Age in Counter-Reformation guise. Through the 16th and 17th centuries, Spanish imagination bore the militant stamp of a mission to gird the Roman Catholic Church—its catholicity shaken—against the cudgeling of Protestant reformers. Evangelism was particularly keen in Spain, fortified by the Council of Trent and leavened by Christian mysticism. Great masters of the spiritual life emerged: Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, and Ignatius Loyola—aristocratic apotheoses of broad popular enthusiasm for contemplative piety. Ignatius’s Society of Jesus, a key instrument of the Counter-Reformation, reignited embers of the medieval devotio moderna and promoted the secular arts for confessional purposes. Devotion itself flamed, once again, into an art. By the 1600s painting and sculpture had joined music, theater, and architecture, even dance, as spiritual exercises, prompts to prayer. To read more, you must be a Weekly Standard Subscriber We're Sorry,
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