Auto-da-fé — Spain in the Middle Ages [The Heretic], by William Shakespeare Burton (1824-1916). Oil on canvas. 44 1/4 x 56 1/2 inches (112.4 x 143.5 cm). Collection of the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, accession no. WAG 2743. Image kindly made available via Art UK on the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial licence (CC BY-NC).
Auto-da-fé is a Portugese word meaning "act of faith." It was the ritual of public penance of condemned heretics and apostates imposed by the Spanish Inquisition and carried out between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries. Punishment for being condemned as a heretic could consist of torture and whipping with the most extreme punishment being death by burning. The public ritual of auto-da-fé took place in public squares with the ceremony lasting several hours. The public penitence ceremony started with a procession of the heretics who wore a religious penitential garment called a sanbenito [costume of infamy] covered in symbols. The purpose of the symbols was to identify specific acts of heresy of the accused. The sanbenito worn in the procession by the confessed heretics was of coarse yellow sackcloth for the penitent or black for the impenitent. Those about to be burnt alive had their sanbenito covered with forked flames together with the figures of demons complete with pitchforks.The monk in the painting wears the robes of a Dominican, which were one of the leading groups who carried out the Spanish inquisition.
Burton exhibited this work at the Victorian Era Exhibition at Earl's Court in 1897, no. 141, and two years later at the Liverpool Autumn Exhibition in 1899, no. 1121. The painting is inscribed "JUSTITIA ET MISERICORDIA" [Justice and Mercy], which is the motto of the Holy Inquisition. Written on the back of the frame on an old manuscript label is "For Conscience's sake / preparing for the procession / of an Auto-da-fé." The label says the work was painted in 1893. When this work was exhibited in Liverpool in 1899 Burton himself explained the meaning of the work in the exhibiton catalogue: "A condemned heretic being prepared for taking her place, with others, in the ecclesiastical and military procession through the streets to the place of execution; the Holy Inquisition having declared her guilty of heresy, and condemned her to be burnt alive" (107). The pure white lily and crucifix as well as the flaming torch and the candles were obviously included for symbolic purposes.
E. Rimbault Dibdin mentions that the model for the head of the female heretic was one of Burton's daughters: "In Auto da Fé, also known as The Heretic, a moving illustration of old-time methods of conversion (now, happily, disallowed) is presented with true dramatic vigour – forcible, yet restrained. The beautiful head of the central figure was painted from one of the three daughters" (295). Percy Bate when discussing this picture, which he titles Faithful unto Death, felt it was one of the best of Burton's later religious pictures: "The former work shows the victim of an auto-da-fé clothed in the horrid robes that mark the recalcitrant heretic, about to be crowned by a monk with the mitre head-dress worn in the procession by those about to suffer martyrdom, and is a very noteworthy picture, as strong in drawing as in sentiment" (78-79).
The costume worn by the heretic is very close to that worn by the woman in John Everett Millais's The Escape of a Heretic, 1559. Burton would have been aware of this painting since it was shown at the Royal Academy in 1857, no. 408, and it likely influenced this much later work. Millais's painting is now in the Museo de Arte de Ponce.
Bibliography
Auto-da-fé. Art UK. Web 17 June 2024.
Bate, Percy. The English Pre-Raphaelite Painters, Their Associates and Successors. London: George Bell and Sons, 1901, 78- 79.
Cowling, Mary. "William Shakespeare Burton (1824–1916)". British Art Journal XV No. 2 (Winter 2014/15) 82-83.
Dibdin, E. Rimbault. "William Shakespeare Burton." The Magazine of Art XXIII (1900): 289-95.
Liverpool Autumn Exhibiton of Pictures Catalogue. Liverpool: Walker Art Gallery, 1899. 107.
Morris, Edward. Victorian & Edwardian Paintings in the Walker Art Gallery & at Sudley House. London: HMSO, 1996. 59-60.
Purcell, John S. "A Veteran Artist: Mr. William Shakespeare Burton," The English Illustrated Magazine XXXV (1906): 248.
Created 17 June 2024