This richly illustrated catalogue, produced in conjunction with the exhibition Sacred Spain, offers new perspectives that promise to revitalize the study of religious art in Spain and the Americas. The subject certainly warrants critical attention. As the organizer, Ronda Kasl, senior curator at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, points out in her introduction, art in the Spanish empire was “overwhelmingly religious” (12). Kasl and her co-authors sidestep the well-worn method of iconography in favor of two new approaches inspired by trends in religious studies: 1) examining religious art “through the lens of belief and its lived experience” (12); 2) considering its transcendent, spiritual potential. These fresh, new avenues inform the six essays and seventy-one catalogue entries.

The first essay, by Alfonso Rodríguez G. de Ceballos, opens the catalogue with an essential review of the centuries-long debate over sacred imagery in the Catholic Church. This sets the stage for an examination of the Council of Trent’s reforms and their implementation in the Spanish empire. In addition to detailing how local synods realized Tridentine mandates, Rodríguez examines the role of the Inquisition in monitoring religious art. He focuses on two image types central after the Council of Trent: devotional images and prints. By juxtaposing Tridentine restrictions with worshipers’ responses to sacred images, Rodríguez reveals a complex panorama of varied reactions to censorship. The essay thus raises an issue that is developed further elsewhere in the volume, namely, Inquisition and Church control of religious art. By questioning assumptions about the power and efficacy of Inquisition surveillance, Rodríguez and others introduce the possibility that censorship may at times be productive, not only restrictive; censorship sometimes inspires creators and beholders to fashion new visual strategies, a topic theorized by Judith Butler in Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative (New York: Routledge, 1997).

One of the most innovative studies in the volume is by Kasl, “Delightful Adornments and Pious Recreation: Living with Images in the Seventeenth Century.” It investigates how people lived with and used religious images. Drawing upon primary sources such as spiritual biographies and autobiographies, Kasl documents what she calls “pious recreation,” that is, the practice of arranging and playing with sacred objects, especially sculptures of the baby Jesus. Kasl’s study goes beyond typical interpretations that read religious images as either tools to instruct, aids to memory, or means to move affect. Her findings point to the fact that religious objects are not simply aesthetic in nature, which is in turn a major theme throughout the catalogue. She also encourages scholars to grapple with the material reality of the objects they study, another important trend in art history.

“Images as Beings in Early Modern Spain,” by anthropologist William A. Christian, Jr., considers images that sweat, bleed, cry, and change color, a phenomenon that reached an apex between 1590 and 1720. According to Christian, the “devotional biographies” of these “living images” are much more important than “their artistic biographies” (75), a bold claim to make in an exhibition catalogue. His assertion holds particularly true for miraculous images, whose supposedly divine origins necessitated the erasure of the actual artist-creator. Detailed case studies of these “living images,” as well as instances of people faking miracles, support his assertions. In the end, Christian’s article enhances the catalogue by reminding art historians of the extra-artistic issues implicated in the study of religious artworks.

His text is complemented by the helpful survey of the state of research on miracle-working images in the Spanish empire by Luisa Elena Alcalá, “The Image and Its Maker.” Additionally, her essay considers the theoretical issues raised by such objects. Since so many of these miraculous images are copies, how should art historians handle the thorny matter of authorship? Furthermore, many of these artworks copy older objects, and therefore employ an intentionally archaic style. How useful is style as an analytical tool in these situations? And what about the artists who crafted the original images, now held to be miraculous in origin? By raising these questions, Alcalá points to the challenges of studying miraculous images, as she helps explain why so many of these have not been examined by art historians.

Important theoretical issues also come to the fore in Javier Portús’s powerful contribution, “The Holy Depicting the Holy.” After assessing numerous primary texts on sacred imagery, he focuses on religious artworks that function as metapictures, that is, works that comment on the status of sacred art. These metapictures include images held to be of divine origin, such as the Holy Face or paintings by St. Luke, as well as representations of the creation of images, such as the scene of the Madonna appearing to St. Dominic to demonstrate her own proper representation. Portús employs these images to explore two important art-historical themes: the status of the artist in Spain, and the tension between aesthetics and the sacred. This original contribution, which builds on Victor Stoichita’s semiotic readings of visionary art, also highlights under-studied images and texts.

Two final essays bring new factual data to light. María Cruz de Carlos Varona studies how Tridentine reforms changed the canonization process, foregrounding the strategic importance of images. She documents two important case studies—the canonizations of the medieval Spanish king St. Ferdinand and St. Peter Nolasco, founder of the Mercedarians. Finally, Jaime Cuadriello’s essay on the Immaculate Conception, which investigates the earliest elaborations of the subject, from 1600–1650, in Spain, Mexico, and Peru, demonstrates royal influence upon its depiction. The article also reveals imaginative variations of the theme that go beyond Inquisition prescriptions as documented in Francisco Pacheco’s 1649 El arte de la pintura. The variants demonstrate once again an unexpected variety of artistic responses to censorship, adding weight to the premise that the Inquisition never attained complete control over the production of sacred imagery.

The catalogue of seventy-one works is impressive in its array of objects, their iconographic variety, and their geographic range. They include painting, sculpture, metalwork, and books, as well as non-canonical or popular works—ex-votos, copper paintings, reliquaries, and portable altars. In addition to the standard representations of Christ, Mary, and the saints, novel iconographies are considered, in particular visionary scenes. Alongside the great masters—Velázquez, Murillo, and El Greco—appear other worthy but lesser-known figures: Pablo de Céspedes, Juan Rizi, and Juan de Roelas, among others. As the exhibition organizer, Kasl is to be commended for including artists from the Americas—Juan Correa and Baltasar de Echave Rioja from Mexico and Francisco Bejarano from Peru—in addition to the work of artists whose names have been lost to history. Also important is the consideration of itinerant artists who worked in both Spain and the Americas, whose work often slips unnoticed between the boundaries of Europe and Latin America, such as Antonio Montúfar, Sebastián López de Arteaga, and others. The remarkable range of artists and objects impresses upon the reader the full richness and variety of religious artworks produced in the early modern Spanish empire.

This abundance is enhanced by the catalogue’s original conceptual framework. Instead of arranging the images by iconographic type, a standard organization for catalogues of religious art, Kasl opted for groupings that focus on how the images function. Her categories are: 1) “In Defense of Images,” on doctrinal correctness after the Council of Trent; 2) “True Likeness,” on sacred presence; 3) “Moving Images,” on affecting the emotions; 4) “With the Eyes of the Soul,” on visionary depictions; 5) “Visualizing Sanctity,” on the rhetoric of saintliness; and 6) “Living with Images,” on how people used religious objects.

Overall, Sacred Spain makes a number of valuable contributions to the study of religious art in the Hispanic world. These include its consideration of the function of objects and their materiality. (This contribution is thrown into relief by comparison to the 2010 exhibition of polychromed Spanish sculpture, The Sacred Made Real, at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, which gave more attention to the works’ aesthetic qualities.) Several of the authors in Sacred Spain expand an understanding of Church and Inquisition censorship and bring to light the enormous variety of personal responses to sacred objects. Finally, the impressive range of objects presented, many little studied before now, interrupts regular conversation about Hispanic religious art. In the end, by presenting such an impressive array of original works and new ideas, Sacred Spain disrupts the old idea that Inquisition control of religious art quashed creativity among Spanish artists.

Of course, no publication is perfect. As in any multi-authored work, inconsistencies among the catalogue entries and essays are apparent. References to artistic production in the Americas in some essays are tentative and underdeveloped. Coverage of the Viceroyalty of New Spain (Mexico) is far stronger than the treatment of the other viceroyalties, namely Peru. These weak spots thus compelled me to reconsider how to unite the study of Spain and the Americas, a strategy I have long advocated. How, when, and why should we bring together art from Spain and its colonies? Which viceregal artworks do we choose and why? Is it simply enough to include Latin America? These questions led me to consider gaps in the current scholarship. The field needs more focused studies comparing art and architecture in the Americas to that in Spain, including in-depth documentation of the transmission of images and monument types across the Atlantic. In addition to transatlantic movement, the circulation of artworks in Asia and Africa is also worthy of consideration, as are connections throughout the Americas, the latter insufficiently studied to-date. In addition, more regional studies would enrich scholarship. My questions and commentary are intended to inspire further work, and not to detract from Sacred Spain. This is an important catalogue that makes significant contributions to the study of art in Spain and Latin America.