October 11, 2009-January 3, 2010
Clowes Gallery in Wood Pavilion

This exhibition will explore the exaggerated aesthetic and expressive means employed by 17th-century Spanish artists to convey religious experience. The objects chosen for the exhibition were created explicitly to arouse wonder, devotion and identification, resulting in art of enormous power and originality. Sacred Spain will include works of art in all media, including paintings by well-known artists such as El Greco, Velázquez, Zurbarán and Murillo, as well as less well-known masterpieces of polychrome sculpture, liturgical silver, embroidered vestments and illuminated manuscripts. It will also include works from colonial Spanish America and the Philippines.

Image credit: Francisco Rizi, Spanish, 1608-1685. The Dream of St. Joseph, about 1665, oil on canvas. Anonymous Art Fund. 2006.110