The Prado hosts a processional passage in the ‘Shaking hands’ exhibition and “recovers” the polychrome sculpture for its rooms

He Prado Museum The exhibition will open this Tuesday ‘Shake hands’ in which he “recovers” baroque polychrome sculpture with five unpublished pieces, which will be shown to the public for the first time, as the director of the Prado Museum, Miguel Falomir, stated this Monday at a press conference.

In addition, the exhibition hosts in its rooms a processional passage, titled ‘I’m thirsty’, by Gregorio Fernández, from the National Museum of Sculpture in Valladolid, and which allows the public to understand the “alliance” between sculpture and color to “persuade “religiously to the faithful in the Modern Age.

“The alliance between sculpture and color ended up making the procession works effective. Furthermore, they allow us to understand the complexity of these motifs when it comes to composition. They are not rectangle works that only had to have one face or one profile, but they could be seen from different places and with different lights as well.“said curator Manuel Arias, head of the Sculpture Department of the Prado Museum, at a press conference.

For this exhibition, the art gallery has recently acquired the works ‘Good and Bad Thief’, by Alonso Berruguete, ‘San Juan Bautista’, by Juan de Mesa, and ‘José de Arimatea’ and ‘Nicodemo’, belonging to a ‘Descent’ late medieval Castilian.

The exhibition, divided into seven chapters, reflects on the success of baroque polychrome sculpture and its complementarity with painting, through almost a hundred works (41 sculptures and 35 paintings). “The sculptures were designed to convince, but this was not invented by the Spanish Baroque, but rather it came from before. And that is precisely the reason for incorporating classical sculpture, to search for those roots that unite us and make us heirs of the Latin world “explained the commissioner.

“Polychromy was not only capital, but it was the most expensive, because it used gold and another series of materials and because it gave life to the sculpture. However, it has been completely relegated“, One of the aspects that the exhibition most highlights is the importance of color to give meaning to the works. The curator has stressed that color in sculptures “is not an ornament”, and that it is an “essential” matter. to “accentuate the dramatic values” of the creations.The sculpture is a dead body if it does not have color, it is a corpse“Arias commented.

EL PRADO WILL REORDER THE SCULPTURAL PIECES

For his part, Falomir has pointed out that one of the lessons of ‘Shaking Hands’ is to see how “anachronistic” it is “separate the culture from this type of sculptures.” “It is an absolutely fascinating exhibition“he remarked.

Falomir has announced that in the “next” months, the Prado Museum will carry out a reorganization of some of the most important sculptural areas in search of a better permanent dialogue with the pictorial works.

“There are many sculptures that will find accommodation in the permanent collection. This is accompanied by this effort that we have been making in recent years with bronze and marble sculptures and now polychrome sculptures,” he stated.