But the Grand Tour itself is a product of the late Enlightenment/18th century. It has roots in the pilgrimages (and other religious travel for nefarious purposes), but as a secular endeavor, it’s mostly the two generations that precede the Romantics. And because the parent-child relationship is eternally based on power and routinely reactionary, how the Romantics (the 3rd gen to make Tours a regular part of wealthy life) enacted their Tours alters the pattern. The Enlightenment generations admired the ancients and appreciated them, then built what they did and improved upon it. (Palladian.). (And mined it, and stole it and admired it so deeply they insisted upon owning it. No passes being granted.)
There’s technology that has to come into play before widely available Tours are even possible (the press to write up travel and promote it, shipping improvements, better carriages, road improvements, feed availability so that post horses can survive); by the time the Romantics came along, that tech was established and thus, had always been part of the world as far as they were concerned. But there’s such a deep reaction to and rejection of what they perceived as new technology in Romantic thought (which, to be fair, is reasonable, since early Industrial Rev tech is SO filthy and damaging and destructive) that the admiration of the old makes a level of sense. And because humans are reactionary, they take it too far, and unfortunately, it sticks, because Victorians.
Of course, the Enlightenment generation was, in some ways, worse - they’re the ones who cleaned all the last of the paint off the ancient statues and friezes because it was worn! And Vulgar! And Bright! But because for a hundred years nobody saw ancient art except in naked marble/bronze, and because the Renaissance sculptors didn’t paint at all, the world forgot it and now it seems… garish.
I looked up the full sized image. I think it’s fine. Actually, I admire it quite a lot. But I grew up with La Virgen de Guadalupe. Who is always painted.
Painting flat eyes on 3D objects is tough. Ask any Barbie refurbisher. The hardest painting of all, in my opinion. It’s why doll eyes are so common and why people will happily carve into a doll to replace the blank plastic with eye inserts. It’s much easier to aim a pair of eyes than paint them.
That was my thought. The monkey jesus restoration has brought a ton of money and attention. If i was in charge of an old church i’d have looked around for something not so great that could afford to be lost to the monkey treatment, wait a few years, and do EXACTLY what was done here.
Looks period correct. It’s hideous, but not everything from the 16th century is high art. Some of it looked pretty primitive. It may even be possible that the original carving tried to mimic earlier medieval styles. The bold flat colors lacking any shadow is very typical as well.
While I’d prefer restoration of old pieces like this to have oversight of an art historian and a restorationist, I can’t really find too much wrong in what was done. Except maybe I’d like to know what pigments were used,
Here are the recently repainted statues of the martyrs from St Albans Cathedral. This is probably what they would have looked like in mediaeval times. There were traces of the original paint to go on.
The technique is similar to the Spanish example: the statues are pained with flat colours. Classical sculptures would have been painted like this too.
I’ve been there, and I gotta say, anyone who saw the statue in person and came away with that impression is missing out on something. That statue is awesome in the old meaning of the word.
