Sculpture on display at the National Gallery in London reveals the depths of who we are and who God is, Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Westminster has said.
He was speaking in the crypt-like darkness of the gallery’s Sainsbury Wing just a few days before the opening of The Sacred Made Real, an exhibition of paintings and painted wooden sculptures from the Spanish Counter-Reformation.
Standing over the Dead Christ, by Gregorio Fernàndez, he said it showed “the eternal desire of God to embrace all suffering, all human brokenness. There’s no place of darkness that He will not reach.”
The piece, commissioned by Jesuits, is designed so that people can pray at each of Christ’s wounds. The eyes are made of glass, the teeth of ivory, and the fingernails of bull horn.
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