Oviedo, The Holy

John Taylor Arms trained as an architect but later gained great prominence as an etcher, becoming the president of the American Society of Etchers and the medium’s most vocal and tireless promoter in America. Oviedo, the Holy is dominated by the fifteenth-century tower of the northern Spanish cathedral, which is rendered in minute detail with the artist’s characteristically obsessive precision. Like many of his works, this one revisits a familiar picturesque site in Europe but portray it as void of any signs of life. The image is lifted above the ordinary by the intensity and intimacy of the vision, which funnels us down a narrow, echoingly empty street into glaring light. The height of the spires beyond is exaggerated by the narrow approach and the unusual proportions of the image.