The Crucifix and the Art Gallery: An Odyssey from Religious Material Culture to Fine Art

Cynthia A Hogan

doi:10.3390/rel12070537

Abstract

This article focuses the epistemological processes through which a thirteenth-century Spanish Crucifix in less than pristine condition transformed from an obscure rural Catholic devotional into an art commodity and celebrated work of medieval art now exhibited at the Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester (MAG) in Rochester, New York. By situating the Spanish Crucifix within the nascent art historical epistemology and museum movement in the late eighteenth to early twentieth century, this article offers a case study in how religious material culture becomes embedded in capitalistic systems as products or commodities, yet suggests the ways that critical religious studies approaches might enhance our understanding of religious material culture in fine arts museums.

Highlights

The Museum MovementDuring the French Revolution, agents working under Napoleon’s aegis removedRoman Catholic implements and materials from ecclesiastical contexts
The Spanish Crucifix was featured in the MAG’s 1961 Handbook to the Collection. It was included in the “Treasures of Rochester” exhibition held at the Memorial Art Gallery in 1977
The epistemological transformations that religious material culture undergoes as meanings shift from contemplative practice to aesthetic product has deeply changed the way liturgical objects have been interpreted

Summary

Introduction

Roman Catholic implements and materials from ecclesiastical contexts. A number of these materials were installed in the Musée du Louvre, setting the precedent for appropriating religious materials within a new industry of “fine art”. Function was sublimated to form as aesthetic ideology, capturing the cultural imaginary of eighteenth-century elites across Europe and America and reshaping the ecclesiastical or devotional material culture’s central purpose as the focal point of religious contemplation into an aesthetic object of contemplation that focused on formal analysis (line, shape, space, texture, color, etc.). This same aesthetic priority undergirds the educational mission of many contemporary fine arts museums, with their dedication to fostering in audiences an appreciation for art as a civilizing and inspiring celebration of human achievement. Know a great deal about the origins of the Memorial Art Gallery

The Emergence of the Memorial Art Gallery

The Art Market Claims the Spanish Crucifix

The Spanish Crucifix Is Aestheticized and Musealized

The Spanish Crucifix and Critical Religious Studies

Conclusions