Spain Vignette 5: Stendahl Syndrome

Stendahl Syndrome (or Stendhal’s syndrome) is defined as “dizziness, panic, paranoia, or madness caused by viewing certain artistic or historical artifacts or by trying to see too many such artifacts in too short a time.” (Courtesy Wordspy.com)* The disorder is named after the French author Stendahl (a.k.a. Marie Henri Beyle), best known for his novels The Red and the Black and The Charterhouse of Parma. Stendahl experienced these symptoms on a visit to Florence. He wrote,

“I was in a sort of ecstasy, from the idea of being in Florence, close to the great men whose tombs I had seen. Absorbed in the contemplation of sublime beauty… I reached the point where one encounters celestial sensations… Everything spoke so vividly to my soul. Ah, if I could only forget. I had palpitations of the heart, what in Berlin they call ‘nerves.’ Life was drained from me. I walked with the fear of falling.”

I had a mild case of Stendahl Syndrome while in Seville. It’s not surprising really. We had had quite an overload of art and beauty by that point: the art nouveau architecture of Barcelona, the Gothic Cathedral in Barcelona, the wonderful Romanesque and Gothic art at the Museu Nacional de Catalunya, the bizarre beauty of La Sagrada Familia (Gaudi’s cathedral masterpiece), the hundreds of paintings at the Prado and Thyssen-Bornemisza (I was in Baroque heaven), another Gothic Cathedral in Seville, the Moorish style architecture of the Alcazar Palace, and the splendors of the Sevillian Baroque at the Museo de Bella Artes de Sevilla (I worship at the altar of Zurbaran).

On our last day in Seville, we visited the Iglesia de la Magdalena, a Baroque church that was designed by Leonardo de Figueroa and was finished in 1709 (the Baroque lasted a bit longer in Seville than elsewhere in Europe). It had been a rather difficult to see this church. It is only open during very limited hours. And on our first try, we just couldn’t find it (Seville is made of very confusing tiny, twisty, winding streets, and our map wasn’t the best). But we finally located it, getting there just as it was reopening at 6 p.m.

From the outside, it’s a fairly typical-looking Baroque church. The church is in terrible shape. They are supposedly restoring it, but there isn’t much evidence of it. It was quite dark inside. The Lucas Valdes frescoes on the walls are crumbling away, which is truly tragic. We walked around the church, looking at the beautiful, but hard to see paintings (both because of their condition and the bad lighting). There is a beautiful gold altar, and the church has several life-size statues, of the type that are carried on floats during Seville’s Holy Week celebrations (what can I say, my taste in art is a touch florid). The statues are rather spectacular and are often dressed in elaborate cloth costumes.

After a few minutes in the church, the syndrome suddenly hit. I felt dizzy and I started to cry. It was really weird. I didn’t have palpitations or anything that drastic, but I was not feeling normal. I sat down in one of the pews and tried to pull myself together. As I looked up at the altar, in the semi-darkness, it was pretty amazing, because it felt like I could actually be in the church in the 18^th century. The whole experience was surreal. Maybe it was just the cumulative effect of too much beauty. After a little while longer, we walked outside into the bright sunlight and I felt normal again after a few minutes**.

*Wikipedia has a similar definition, although for some reason they call it a "psychosomatic" illness. Are you calling me crazy?
**It’s just possible that what I’m calling Stendahl Syndrome could have been a severe allergy attack since the church was basically one big mold spore, but I don’t think allergies explain it entirely.