Baroque Space: Claudio Coello's Sagrada Forma and the Sacristy of the Escorial

Like much Court art in the final decades of the seventeenth century, Claudio Coello's Sagrada Forma (1685–90, Fig. 1) exalts the Habsburg dynasty. Indeed, its political agenda is linked directly to the subject it depicts: the transfer in 1684 from the Basilica of the Escorial to its Sacristy of the Sacred Host of Gorkum, which had miraculously bled when it was trodden underfoot in 1572 during the Protestant uprising in the Netherlands. This consecrated host found its way, via Vienna and Prague, to Philip II in Spain.¹

The date of the host's transfer to the Sacristy, 1684, enabled the Spanish Habsburgs also to celebrate the liberation of Vienna in 1683 from the Ottomans (Santos 1962: 120). Following the transferral, the king decreed that a new and more fitting altar be constructed in the Sacristy. This retablo, which has as its centrepiece Coello's canvas, was designed by José del Olmo and finished in 1690.² It is a celebration of the piety of the Habsburgs. It features, for example, two eagles clutching the insignia of the Golden Fleece and two lions, both holding a sceptre and resting a paw on a globe, symbolizing, according to Santos, the dominion of the Spanish over both worlds (Santos 1962: 123; Checa Cremades 2004: 73–74). The marble reliefs either side of the retablo depict the miraculous host's history and its link with the Habsburgs: on the top left, its profanation; at top right, one of its profaners becoming a Franciscan as a result of the miracle; at bottom left, Emperor Rudolf with the host; and at bottom right, Philip II, hatless and beginning to kneel, receiving the Sagrada Forma in Spain. This link between Church and state is also proclaimed in Coello's canvas, not simply through the

Fig. 1.

Claudio Coello, Sagrada Forma, Sacristy, San Lorenzo del Escorial.

Copyright © Patrimonio Nacional

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occasion commemorated and the way it depicts this, with Charles kneeling before the Host which is held aloft by the Prior of the Escorial, Fray Francisco de los Santos, who had conceived the subject and written the inscriptions in and above the canvas (Sullivan 1985: 253), but by such means as the banner held by the cherubs at the top of the painting which proclaims 'Regalis mensa, præbebit delicias Regibus', and the three allegorical figures flying above the scene who represent Religion, Divine Love, and Royal Majesty.³

The Sacristy contained a stunning collection of paintings. From inventories and contemporary descriptions, the identity and location of the paintings within the Sacristy at the time that Coello depicted it can be reconstructed. From these, we can see that Coello accurately reproduces some of the works that hung there, such as Van Dyck's Christ and the Adulteress and Titian's/Giorgione's Virgin and Child with St Anthony of Padua and St Roch, which were on the short north wall – depicted at the back of Coello's canvas – which contains the entrance to the Sacristy and which faces the altar over which Coello's painting hangs on the short south wall, and Tintoretto's Christ Washing the Feet of the Disciples, which was on the Sacristy's long west wall, shown on the left of Coello's canvas (Bassegoda 2002: 118, 129).

As a result of such close attention to detail, the painting has always been celebrated for its realism, with the most clichéd of metaphors for realism, the mirror, first being applied to it in the seventeenth century by Santos himself: 'Propone a la vista esta pintura una bien delineada perspectiva, que como en los espejos grandes se ven las sombras y especies de lo que se les pone delante, se ven en ella todo el largo y ancho de la Sacristía donde está, con sus ventanas, pinturas y adornos, y la vuelta de su curiosa bóveda, de modo que hace parecer la pieza de mayor longitud que la que tiene' (Santos 1962: 125). The work's critical...