Son of the Laocoön : Alonso Berruguete and pagan antiquity / [catalogue: edition, Manuel Arias Martínez ; texts, Manuel Arias Martínez, María Bolaños, Vincenzo Farinella, Carlos Morán Sánchez, Miguel Morán Turina, Tommaso Mozzati ; translation, Jenny Dodman ; exhibition: organizers, Subdirección General de Museos, Estatales (MECD), Museo Nacional de Escultura ; curator, Manuel Arias Martínez].

2018 edition.

[Madrid] : Secretaría General Técnica, Subdirección General de Documentación y Publicaciones : CEEH Centro de Estudios Europa Hispánica, 2018.

219 pages, 4 unnumbered pages : illustrations (chiefly color) ; 30 cm

Alonso Berruguete (c. 1489?1561), the first Spanish Renaissance sculptor, spent a fruitful stint in Italy, where he came into contact with Michelangelo, Raphael, and Bramante and was influenced by their enthusiasm for ancient ideals and their attitude to art. Sarcophaguses, ruins and statues fired his imagination, especially the Laocoön: its theatrical pathos, anatomical virtuosity, and bodies dancing in space left an indelible mark on his oeuvre. Upon his return to Castile he felt himself to be a Renaissance man, a new artist willing to defy the old authorities and defend his ingenium. Drawing on this heritage, he produced works steeped in emotion and visual vehemence that reveal an obsessive preference for the sombre and nocturnal brand of Renaissance art: Dionysian as opposed to Apollonian brand, characterised by tormented and exaggerated gestures, expressive frenzy and the terribilità suffered by Laocoön's sons. For Berruguete's pulsating modernity stems from his anticlassical classicism, the importance he attaches to freedom of rhythm and anguish, and an extreme subjectivity that combines the force of the ancient with the freshness of the modern.

English

January 15, 2019

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.