LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA.- The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) unveiled a rare 18th-century Spanish Pietà on display for the first time in Los Angeles as part of the exhibition Trends: A New Presentation of LACMA’s Collection of European Art on view through July 28, 2002. The Pietà, an iconic image of the Virgin Mary holding the body of Christ, is presented within the exhibition organized by LACMA’s Center for European Art on the plaza level of the Hammer Building.
The nearly life-size work of art, which was likely originally made for religious processions during Holy Week, was recently acquired by LACMA and is the only known sculpture of its kind in an American museum. The Pietà is one of the few surviving examples of sculpture made from molded linen—possibly soaked in glue or gesso to make it rigid—with the surviving ones in Spain used primarily for religious purposes. Parts of the sculpture may also have been modeled from papier-mâché or a mixed medium called pasta de madera (literally, pine-paste, or a compound of various organic fibers similar to papier-mâché). The Virgin’s mantle, made of freely draped, plaster-soaked linen, is spectacularly painted and gilded in the technique of estofado: after being covered in gold leaf, it was painted in brilliant colors which were then incised in patterns imitating a brocade fabric woven with gold threads. The light weight of these materials made them ideal for religious processions. The Virgin’s eyes, made of glass, heighten the realism of the figure, which simultaneously expresses sorrow, wonder, despair, and awe.
The presentation of the Pietà is enhanced by related sculptures from LACMA’s permanent collection. An 18th-century Bust of a Sorrowing Female Saint, made of polychromed wood with painted glass eyes, was originally probably part of an imagen de vestir—literally a “dressed image,” a kind of mannequin of which only the head and arms were treated as fully finished sculptures. Also on view is another recent addition to the collection, Corpus of the Expiring Christ, a small crucifix figure that, like the Spanish Pietà, is made of pasta de madera and is particularly interesting because its crown of thorns is enhanced by actual fish-spines. The fourth sculpture in the gallery devoted to religious works is a recently restored, polychromed and gilded Bust of the Sorrowing Virgin (c. 1700), lent by the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Garden, made more passionate with exquisite glass eyes.
“This exhibition also provides insight into the exemplary efforts made to return the Pietà and Bust of the Sorrowing Virgin to their original condition by LACMA’s renowned Conservation Department,” said Mary Levkoff, the museum’s curator of European sculpture. “We are also pleased to showcase the cooperation of our sister institutions, the Huntington, for its loan, and the J. Paul Getty Museum, which provided facilities for X-raying the Pietà.”
