Page 9 - The mystery of faith

FOREWORD

T his catalogue is the thirty-eighth to be issued under our imprint since THE MATTHIESEN
GALLERY was refounded in 1978. It is hoped that this exhibition, held contemporaneously
and intended to compliment the splendid exhibition entitled The Sacred Made Real at the
National Gallery in London,1 will prove to be something of a ‘groundbreaker’, in the same
way that our exhibitions From Borso to Cesare d’Este: The School of Ferrara, The Onset of the
Baroque, Gold Backs and An Eye on Nature: Spanish Still Life Painting proved to be in the 1980s and
late 1990s. Spanish religious sculpture with its intense focus on faith will be a novelty and a surprise to
many and perhaps, in its intensity, somewhat alien to Anglo-Saxon taste.

In 2001 we issued a substantial publication entitled 2001: An Art Odyssey. This catalogue appeared in
order to mark the new millennium and, in the foreword, I stated that it was my intention thenceforward
to eschew exhibition catalogues and, instead, to concentrate on more focused specialist publications
that address a specific problem or artist. This, indeed, we have done and between 2002 and 2009 have
published no less than ten such publications, thereby decimating a small plantation of trees, but we
hope to a useful purpose! Nevertheless, after the success of our Spanish Still Life catalogue in 1997, I
always retained the nagging desire to address the arena of Spanish art once more, albeit in a different
vein. At first I considered the possibilities offered by Spanish primitives, but although this idea never
germinated, it still remains in the hothouse of future intentions. When, eighteen months ago, my
prominent young Spanish colleagues, Nicolas Cortes and Jorge Coll, both second-generation art
dealers, floated the idea of mounting a Spanish sculpture show my first reaction was of mild incredulity,
rapidly replaced by mounting curiosity. I had always had a special interest in Romanesque sculpture
instilled by my mother and Professor George Zarnecki at the Courtauld Institute. I had then by a
circuitous route found myself in charge of the conservation of Florentine sculpture under the aegis of
Professors Berti and Procacci at the Soprintendenza in November 1966 during the epic events in
Florence known as ‘The Flood’, so I thought to myself, well why not.2 At the time of our discussions I
was totally unaware of the National Gallery’s plans, long hatching under the careful curatorship of
Xavier Bray and then given special impetus by Nicholas Penny. Nor, indeed, was I aware of the long
delayed plan at Indianapolis to hold Ronda Kasl’s long awaited exhibition.3 It seemed, therefore, that
we were about to precipitate into an Hispanic maelstrom. The imminent opening of these two major
museum events, planned over a period of many years, put immense pressure on the three of us to come
up with a worthy event, but worse still was the impending conundrum of how to put together a
catalogue in a period of three months. Spurred by curiosity and a great sympathy for my much younger
colleagues, I scheduled several Spanish expeditions, which, more often than not, resulted in participating
in numerous memorable meals and the imbibing of delicious wines, usually partaken at ungodly hours.