Retablo Mayor

The largest and most absurdly expensive Christian wooden altarpiece in human history isn’t in the Vatican at all; it’s right in the center of the Seville Cathedral. This 20-meter-high, 18-meter-wide “wall of pure gold”—the Retablo Mayor—is less of an artwork and more of a violently aggressive billboard flaunting the wealth of the Spanish Empire at its absolute peak.

If you’re blinded by this massive, glittering wall, try thinking of it as a giant 15th-century IMAX screen, or a 3D pop-up comic book for the illiterate. In the Middle Ages, 99% of commoners couldn’t read a single word, let alone the Bible. So, the Church simply used a massive, 44-panel wooden comic strip to “broadcast” the entire plot of Jesus’s life—from birth and crucifixion to resurrection—plus the life of the Virgin Mary, in ultra-high definition to the believers below. Every single panel is crammed with lifelike figures, totaling over 1,000 miniature statues carved into the wall.

However, look closely at that dazzling gold leaf, and you might catch the faint scent of death. In an era with absolutely no modern occupational safety gear, applying solid gold to such a massive matrix of wood was an incredibly lethal job. Artisans had to work in the dim, enclosed cathedral, boiling highly toxic chemicals (like mercury) to use as adhesives, or inhaling clouds of deadly, floating gold dust. Behind every inch of gold leaf radiating divine light on this wall, there is likely an anonymous craftsman who traded his eyesight or rotted his lungs for it.

Who would even take on such a suicidal project? In 1482, an obsessed sculptor named Pierre Dancart took this massive commission. This madman hung like a spider on scaffolding dozens of meters in the air every day, furiously carving into walnut and chestnut wood. He carved entirely alone for over a decade until he literally worked himself to death, dying right next to his scaffolding. But when he died, the wall wasn’t even close to finished. It took several more generations of master carvers taking turns in a relay that lasted nearly 80 years to finally complete the puzzle.

You are definitely going to ask: where on earth did this astronomical amount of gold come from? This brings us to the man who completely reshuffled the global order—Christopher Columbus. Shortly after the construction of this altarpiece began, Columbus accidentally bumped into the Americas. Subsequently, Spanish conquistadors acted like starving wolves, looting the gold of the Incan and Aztec empires, loading it onto entire transatlantic fleets, and shipping it directly into the port of Seville. So, the holy “light of God” you are looking at is actually the “blood of fallen nations” from indigenous Americans. In a highly ironic twist, the highly controversial bones of Columbus now rest just a few steps away from this very altarpiece, which is literally paved with the gold he helped steal.

When you stand beneath this intensely oppressive giant wall of gold, will you marvel at the exquisite acting skills of the over 1,000 carved wooden figures, or will you feel that this altarpiece, soaked in toxic mercury fumes and the blood of the Americas, feels more like a magnificently decorated slaughterhouse?