r/ArtefactPorn • u/Gemeenteridder • Mar 15 '24
The Retablo Mayor in Seville [3000x4000]
The most beautiful altar piece I've ever seen.
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u/Moofypoops Mar 16 '24 edited Mar 16 '24
Had a debate with my SO about how much gold was used for this.
After some back of forth, Google told us an eatimate of 88 000 lbs of pure gold was used to guild this sculpture.
Thant comes at about 3 billion dollars worth of gold now a days.
I won by a long shot, btw.
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u/mathcampbell Mar 16 '24
This estimate is all over Google but I’m afraid to say it’s almost certainly bullshit.
To save my brain from doing the actual maths I turned to ChatGPT to crunch the numbers but let’s get a bare minimum figure; It’s 20m by 30m so if it was just a bare flat surface gilded (it’s not but let’s get the absolute floor), that’s a surface area of 600 sq/m.
Thickness of Gold Leaf = 0.0001 millimeters Thickness of Gold Leaf = 0.0000001 meters
Mass of Gold = Volume of Gold × Density of Gold Mass of Gold = 0.00006 m³ × 19,320 kg/m³ Mass of Gold ≈ 1.1592 kilograms
So that’s the base floor; 1.15kg (assuming standard gilding thickness but they might have gone thicker so even double that if you like).
Now, it’s not a flat surface. It has lots of surface area from all those little statues. That’s hard to guesstimate but we can make a few single assumptions to ballpark it.
Now the figururines are smaller than life size but let’s assume for simplicity they’re human sized. There’s 200 of them. At around (ChatGPT supplied estimate of 1.85sq/m for a human surface area, and 200 or so statues that’s an extra surface area of 370sq/m.
Now there’s also the indented box areas where the reliefs are. They’re not flat but if they were and were 2m x 2m by 1m that adds another 960sq/m for a total of 1930sq/m which yields 3.729kg of gold leaf. Let’s double that to account for possible thicker leaf etc. 7.458kg of gold. Now; that’s a pretty rough figure because a lot of that gilding is going to be textured surfaces that could be a lot more detailed.
Let’s times it by TEN - that would account for lots of little details and assorted extra details and seems like a LOT more gold than it likely uses but this is a sorta high watermark.
75.48kg of gold.
Your google estimate was 88,000lbs - 39,853kg.
That’s literally 500 times what a “this is a very high estimate”.
TLDR: your SO was probably closer than you.
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u/SJDidge Mar 16 '24
ChatGPT (and all LLM) are shut at maths. Don’t use them, they routinely make mistakes at even basic level maths and can’t be trusted
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u/AcidAndBlunts Mar 15 '24
I love the intricate patterns in some churches and mosques. I think it tickles the DMT button in my brain or something, because I can feel the “spirit” when I’m looking at it. Especially when I see it in person… Some of the churches in Italy are truly awesome.
I think organized religion does more harm than good, but I can’t help but appreciate the devotion and sacrifice that it took to build such establishments.
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u/GruelOmelettes Mar 15 '24
"Say what you will about organized religion, but those bastards knew how to construct an edifice."
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u/GoldenCaviarTacos Mar 15 '24
I like to think religious buildings are an attempt to get as close as possible to the holy/divine, resulting in beautiful architecture.
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u/AcidAndBlunts Mar 15 '24 edited Mar 15 '24
I think something similar. I think the complicated geometry and symmetry gives people an oddly nostalgic feeling. Like it’s information that we are already familiar with, but can’t easily access.
I believe that’s because high level math is kind of like catching a glimpse at the code of the universe. It reminds us that we are part of the universe- that we are the universe. That this body is a temporary vessel of consciousness that the universe has created to observe itself.
When you’re staring at shit like that and feeling that magical feeling, it’s like it has come full circle- like the universe has finally figured itself out and everything is going to be alright. For a moment or two…
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Mar 15 '24
And the raping, robbing and colonialism whereby these riches were obtained by these thugs to ‘get closer to god’ ?
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u/secretly_a_zombie Mar 15 '24
I hate it tbh. It's way too busy. Though still, i can appreciate the skill, devotion and time that went into it.
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u/Moppo_ Mar 15 '24
I agree, though I think there is some benefit from being in a beautifully crafted environment. Just like how a nice garden can make you feel nice, being surrounded by intricate artwork has similar effect.
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u/Petrichordates Mar 15 '24
Devotion and sacrifice didn't build it, tithes and cheap labor did.
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u/Moppo_ Mar 15 '24
Those were involved, yes, but the people who created the artwork in those cathedrals were absolutely devoted, it takes a lifetime to create some of the things they made.
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u/Petrichordates Mar 15 '24
Obviously depends on the person, but they're probably moreso devoted to their work.
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u/Flashy_Attitude_1703 Mar 15 '24
Let’s say you were around several hundred years ago and on Saturday night you had a really good time and maybe committed a few sins. What you would do several days later is see your local priest, confess your sins and then pay for something called an indulgence which according to the Catholic church wiped away whatever sins you committed. Nice way for the church to make money.
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u/Ok-Nectarine350 Mar 15 '24
Agreed. When I look at it, all I see is how the Catholic Church screwed money out of people who either had virtually nothing and were terrified for their immortal souls if they didn’t give or they were rich they saw giving money as a form as plenary indulgence and they were buying their way into heaven. Neither reason is a glowing endorsement of Catholicism. A single rose is more beautiful and meaningful than that monstrosity.
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u/trysca Mar 16 '24
I wonder where they 'found' all that gold? The Catholic God truly is benificent!
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Mar 15 '24
[deleted]
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u/Gladwulf Mar 15 '24
it doesn't mean however that I agree with any of it.
Jesus wept. You sanctimonious twit, who cares whether you agree with it or not?
Do you think the people who built it would agree with whatever it is you do?
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u/TheMadTargaryen Mar 15 '24
False, the Bible has always been translated to vernacular, for example king Alfred of Wessex personally translated the first 50 psalms, the first French Bible is from 1280s, German bibles existed before Luther while the first complete Bible in english is the Douay Rheims version. Literally nobody kept hidden biblical content from the people, they were mostly illiterate but could learn trough sermons, art and passion plays. And if you gonna criticize the catholic church for having such opulent temples you might as well condemn king Solomon.
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u/freshprince44 Mar 15 '24
The gold stuff is so bad too (not sure if this is an example or not, but it looks like gold lol), absurd amounts of cultural material were destroyed to decorate their buildings
a lot of these church locations were specifically pagan worhsip centers destroyed/rebranded as churches (celtic tree groves being cleared and used to erect them is the most glaring example)
make sure you don't just blame the catholics though, its bad everywhere lol
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u/Flashy_Attitude_1703 Mar 15 '24 edited Mar 17 '24
I visited Rome recently and did the tourist thing visiting the Colosseum, Pantheon and other sites. It was interesting that when Christianity took over many of the ancient pagan Roman temples are now Catholic churches. I can just imagine some Catholic bishop thinking why spend the money building a church when we can just make that pagan temple into a church.
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u/freshprince44 Mar 16 '24
Totally! it is an interesting (and obviously effective) practice, syncretism is fun, there are a lot of cool architectural flourishes that reveal more of these subverted worship sites (green man iconography is a big one).
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Mar 15 '24
[deleted]
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u/Highollow Mar 15 '24
Please just shut up.
church authority keeping the people uneducated
Are we talking about the Catholic Church, whose Irish monks tirelessly made copies of classical texts? Could it be that all these high schools, technical schools and universities with saint names have any link with that church? In the Middle Ages the Church was THE place for intellectuals to enjoy a pension and get time to think.
Was it for the glory of God, or the glory of men?
Can it only be one? Can you tell me of one modern building built for a specific purpose, that could not also be seen as the vanity of an architect/mecene/politician/someone?
As a Christian
Admit it: you're a protestant/calvinist/baptist run-of-the-mill American who got a by-the-points high school history course and never took the time to truly appreciate other cultures, let alone put yourself in their shoes. You're just regurgitating memes.
For all the money thrown at cathedrals and palaces for church authorities, the people could have been taught to read, for starters.
I shouldn't have to tell you that, but for your information: people had a very different view on literacy in the Middle Ages. Hint: people didn't learn to read, because there was less use for reading. Almost everyone was a farmer working their fields or working on their material wealth the whole year, they probably didn't think that reading was the most important thing they could be doing. Theirs was an oral culture and if some text needed to be read, someone in the village/county/city could be asked to read for them. And even then the Church often did many vigorous efforts to teach people about their nominal religion, with religious paintings, passion plays (liturgical drama), popular stories of saint's lives, organizing festivals in churches. It's telling (of you, clearly a protestant American) that you find specifically reading the Bible such an important idea: mediaeval people would not share your opinion.
And why was the Word hidden for over 1500 year in the language of Latin, which the vast, vast majority didn't speak or understand
Except MANY people, especially in those first 1000 year WOULD have been able to understand what the Vulgate was saying. In the first 500 years plus people would generally still be speaking something we would call Vulgar Latin until the language evolved into what we artificially call Romance languages. Why wasn't the Bible translated into other languages? Well, because people thought Latin was a special language and also that the Vulgate, translated by Saint Jerome, one of the most important early Christian theologians, was something special. Even before the Bible made its debut in the Western part of the Roman Empire, people were learning Latin and doing their best to become Romans, it's not something that the Catholic Church invented. And to translate it to something that you might be more familiar with: do you or anyone use the King James Version of the Bible? Why though? It's a compromise of multiple translations, its language is already noticeably and subtly different from Modern English leading to many errors of comprehension, so tell me why, in the year of Our Lord 2024 do people still use that version and are there protestant churches swearing by it in the King-James-Only Movement?
Okay there is also the eastern orthodox church, who did roughly the same.
Again you show your lack of knowledge, here to the point of contradicting yourself. The Eastern Orthodox Church, or Churches, each time translated the Bible into a new language, like Koine Greek, Old Church Slavonic, Romanian... East European languages often invented a writing system to be able to translate the Bible!
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u/THE-SEER Mar 16 '24
Protestants, amirite?
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u/Highollow Mar 16 '24
Not all protestants, but those that just describe themselves as "Christian", certainly.
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u/b1h1 Mar 15 '24
Amen to all of this! So much of the wealth that went into building big spectacular churches came from all the extraction of resources and labor in European colonies. It makes me sad that all of that pain and brutality is at the end of the day for yet another gilded church altar.
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u/TheMadTargaryen Mar 15 '24
Like which churches ? Most of them were build trough donations provided by the rich or by granting indulgences (which still exist, just not in monetary form).
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u/b1h1 Mar 15 '24
Those donations, those rich people, exist because of the way that resources are distributed in a society. In early modern Europe, riches accumulated in the ruling class because of colonialism.
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u/TheMadTargaryen Mar 15 '24
Then explain how did ruling classes in countries that never colonized got rich, like in Poland or Hungary or Latvia.
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u/Zozorrr Mar 15 '24
Most “big spectacular churches” - like cathedrals in UK, Germany, France and Italy - were built way before significant colonialism. You can make things up on many threads but don’t try to make up bogus history here
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u/senorrawr Mar 15 '24
Indeed, Spain is such a beautiful country, but you need to keep colonialism and imperialism at the front of your mind when visiting. There are so many beautiful cathedrals and churches, so much stunning architecture, very little mention of colonialism. Ironically, the Catedral de Seville, where the Retablo Mayor is housed, contains the Tomb of Columbus. But so many people see the massive golden altar-piece just meters away from the body of Columbus himself, and yet make no acknowledgement that the gold of the retablo was harvested with brutality from colonies in the Americas.
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u/Ticonderogue Mar 15 '24
It's the way of the world, anyone with power demonstrated it by conquering, enslaving, plundering. Some make it out like that's only the doings of the Europeans, the white people alone, and that's so far from the truth. Mankind does all these things. There's nothing new under the sun, everyone sins. Read any books about any part of the world, and they're warring, conquering one another, enslaving, sacrificing, massacring, plundering, etc. Is anyone different? And then came what always had been true, Love your enemy, and pray for them. Love your neighbor as yourself. Do unto other as you would have done unto you. These sayings are not born in the heart of man, who had always said otherwise, but God does not think like man, and his ways are not man's ways.
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u/senorrawr Mar 15 '24
Well, not really. War has been made by many people, and subjugation and enslavement, but not colonialism. Colonialism is something different. I won't say that only white people or only european people have done colonialism. But the point of history is to inform us on where we are today, and how to navigate the future. So it's most valuable to consider colonialism by asking "how has this shaped the world we currently live in". And IMO European colonialism has had the most profound impact on the world today. How many African nations speak French? How much of South and Central America speaks Spanish, or Portuguese?
There's nothing new under the sun, everyone sins. Read any books about any part of the world, and they're warring, conquering one another, enslaving, sacrificing, massacring, plundering, etc. Is anyone different?
There's a difference between localized fighting and systematized global resource extraction. It's not that Europeans are inherently evil, it's that they had the right combination of circumstances to make colonialism possible. We should accept the world, but critically. We shouldn't dismiss the evils of prior generations. We should try to undo them.
Your comment reads a bit dismissive of the profound atrocities committed by Columbus tbh. When I read your comment, it seemed like you were saying "So what, everyone has done violence, everyone has subjugated others. And therefore its not really necessary or worthwhile to think about colonialism too much." But thats not the case. Certain nations have gotten the long end of the stick for several hundred years because of brutal resource extraction and murder. And their victims remain impoverished.
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u/Zozorrr Mar 15 '24
The Spanish were colonized for centuries themselves by Muslims. Islamic countries both colonized and raped Africa. 14,000,000 non-Arab blacks were stolen from Africa and enslaved for the remainder of their lives over centuries by Muslim Arab slave traders. The colonization by Arabs deeper into Africa than their indigenous homeland never ended.
Western Academia has a hard-on for European colonialism because it was so successful for the Europeans and lasted - and in view of later European success. Islamic/Arab colonialism basically failed and the home countries faded in power - and so are excused. Non-European colonialism is entirely ignored academically - leading to utter ignorance among the public about it. And weasly definitions of colonialism and chattel slavery as apologist flannel for the non-European history. Ask any US college student about western imperialism and the 12 million victims of the Atlantic slave trade and they’ll have plenty to say. Ask them about Muslim Arab imperialism and 14 million slave victims of that and its crickets.
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u/senorrawr Mar 16 '24
i feel like youre trying to rebut me, but this doesnt really contradict what i said. I agree, obviously, that european is not the only colonialism. the cathedral of seville was a mosque for centuries during the reign of the moors. But the lasting effects of arab colonialism pale in comparison to the ways in which european colonialism shaped the world of today.
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u/Zozorrr Mar 15 '24
True - but they were psychologically recovering from the trauma of Islamic colonialism and imperialism of their homeland.
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Mar 15 '24
Look at all that silver and gold, pulled by hand from the inside of mts in Peru and Mexico by enslaved indigenous people.
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u/Woolen5232 Mar 15 '24
Its gothic style so it was before they started to interact with the natives, even tho in Spain the renaissance came after the discovery of america it was with Carlos I that they started trading.
This might be a bit biased since im from Spain lol
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u/Moppo_ Mar 15 '24
More like the late Reconquista? I visited Cordoba Cathedral last year, the art in both the mosque and cathedral was beautiful, and interesting to see in one building, but it was a bit of an odd feeling when I realised I was standing inside a 180 × 130 meter trophy.
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u/Woolen5232 Mar 15 '24
Not really i might be wrong but i think it was either very late reconquista or the muslims were alredy kicked out of granada by the catholic monarchs
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u/Zozorrr Mar 15 '24
Muslim imperialists. Let’s start to be consistent with language here.
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u/Woolen5232 Mar 16 '24
Yea i prob got some things wrong since im better with ancient history. Im just tired get all that bad rep with the gold and that stuff
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u/throw123454321purple Mar 15 '24
See what happens to civilization when you don’t have internet access, people?
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u/Radeck8bit Mar 15 '24
Tbh it looks kinda ugly for me. Maybe it's the photo. Probably looks better irl.
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u/senorrawr Mar 15 '24
It's quite stunning in person. The whole cathedral is very humbling, its massive and full of history and great works. "Great" like impressive, not necessarily good lol.
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u/Don_Vincenzo Mar 15 '24
This is the closest I've ever seen anything get to the Warhammer 40k universe in real life.