Inquisition, art, and self-censorship in the early modern Spanish Church, 1563-1834

Abstract

This chapter explores the extent to which the Catholic Church actively sought to self- censor and destroy images that might inadvertently contradict official dogma. It focuses upon the role of the Inquisition in Spain as an instrument of self- censorship within the church and its action in the policing and censure of religious imagery from the Council of Trent until its abolition in 1834. It would be impossible within this short chapter to offer a comprehensive survey and analysis of the Spanish Inquisition’s role in the policing of art during over two and a half centuries, and this is not my intention. Such a project, and the book that it would produce, is still to be written even though some historians have conducted reviews of parts of the documentary evidence and have tended to minimize the impact of the Inquisition upon early modern Spain’s sacred art and its artists. The specific object of this chapter is to examine the considerations that underpinned moves made by the Spanish Church to self- censor the religious works of art of its churches in the wake of Trent and the manner in which the Inquisition responded when it was called upon to assist this task. The first section offers a broad appraisal of the impact of the Tridentine decree of 1563 on artistic production in early modern Spain. In its second section, this chapter offers three case studies of the Inquisition’s involvement in the policing of religious works of art. The first case study involves an investigation conducted in 1644–45 into a set of paintings representing seven archangels, which were confiscated from an artist’s shop in Madrid. The second focuses upon a number of paintings in the Augustinian college of Doña María de Aragón in Madrid, which were the subject of close inquisitorial scrutiny in 1658. The third, and final, case study analyzes the investigation that led to the prohibition of a painting depicting Christ dying on the cross by the inquisitorial tribunal based in the provincial town of Cuenca in 1764. The investigations carried out by the Inquisition in these three instances demonstrate very clearly the extent to which the Council of Trent created an atmosphere of heightened anxiety and suspicion in which religious art was submitted to closer scrutiny and criticism than had hitherto been the case

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