Spiritual awakening

The Sacred Made Real: Spanish Painting & Sculpture 1600–1700
National Gallery, until 24 January 2010

If Spanish 17th-century painting and sculpture don’t immediately appeal to you, be prepared to try the new show at the National Gallery — it’s a revelation. I was brought up in the Church of England and used rather to look down on the bleeding hearts of Roman Catholic iconography. Of course, some of the sculpture you see in Catholic churches can be crude or even vulgar — just as some of the stuff that passes for modern art in English churches is misjudged and misplaced — but the polychrome religious sculpture of 17th-century Spain is magnificent. Its verisimilitude is shocking, its craftsmanship remarkable. Never did I expect to find Velázquez put (almost) in the shade by sculpture, but it happens at the NG. It’s a triumph of a show.

The first room is crowded in comparison to the rest of the exhibition, which is laid out with plenty of space between exhibits. (There are only 14 sculptures, 15 paintings and a drawing — a proper size for a show of such powerful and demanding work.) This minimal approach to hanging suits the galleries, which also benefit from being generally darkened, with the objects and pictures presented dramatically in pools of light. But the exhibition begins in more orthodox fashion with a marvellously restrained yet eloquent portrait of the sculptor Juan Martínez Montañés by Velázquez, and a polychrome Christ on the Cross by Juan de Mesa, flanked by paintings of the same by Francisco Pacheco and Zurbarán. This is one of the themes of the show: comparing the painted version with the sculpted version of the same subject. Even against the mighty and compassionate Zurbarán, the sculpture looks like winning.