Mary Eberstadt (one of my favorite exegetes of our culture) lauds and ponders the National Gallery's soon-to-close exhibition of 16th-century Spanish religious art, "The Sacred Made Real":

Here a bleeding, suffering Christ stretches tautly on the Cross, staring both piteously and pitiably at the penitent near his feet. There a dewy yet tormented Mary Magdalen, her dazzling soiled skin wrapped roughly in a penitent's coat of rushes, hunches in sorrow over a crucifix. A statue of Saint Ignatius Loyola looms so lifelike and animated that a recitation of his Exercises seems a strong possibility. Many more shocks await. Of course, the extreme realism owes plenty to the esoteric artistic minutiae – inserting carved elephant ivory for finger and toenails; painting gilt under a coat of white paint to make it glow eerily; using glass for eyes and then painting them on the inside for particularly vivid effect; and all the rest of the stagecraft discreetly enriching these pieces. Even so, no one viewing this exhibition will think that the overall effect is simply equal to the parts of such parlor tricks – beginning with the people who made the pieces in the first place. In fact, some were certain enough of their encounter with the divine via this work that they inserted written confessions of their own into the statues before sealing them.

"They're marvelous," as an abstract sculptor remarked to the Wall Street Journal reviewer: "Why are they so marvelous?" It's a question that goes to the heart not only of the exhibition, but also to the creation of all great sacred art, period. And thereby hangs an interesting historical tale. What really accelerated the appearance of these Spanish Baroque masterpieces was the Council of Trent – which beginning in 1545, and working against the influences of Protestantism, specifically affirmed the Catholic need for realistic images that might, by their aesthetic power, draw the viewer into contemplation and emulation.

In other words, while making clear that Catholic art was not to become what some Protestants accused it of – namely, idol worship – the Council nevertheless maintained as the Church traditionally had that such images were an asset to those seeking God, rather than an impediment. This, then, was the great historical fountain from which these astonishing works flowed: from the need to re-affirm, at a time following scandal and corruption, that the truth of the Church still remained the truth.

Quite obviously, whatever effect these pieces may have had on the prayerful between then and now, the Council's mandate ultimately worked at least one near-miracle. Four centuries later, it would capture throngs of Western people who say no penance, know no fasts beyond those designed to burn ketones, and who are generally more ignorant about their Christian heritage than any baptized Christians who came before, including the illiterate ones. Yet as the respectful and wondering public reception of "The Sacred Made Real" goes to show, this Catholic art nevertheless still speaks to them anyway, calling even the restless and relentlessly quotidian Western mind to the possibility of a transcendent realm.