I was walking through the streets of Huelva when nightfall led me to a church ablaze. At the door, people dressed in their Sunday best, even though it was Friday, November 6th. I went in out of curiosity, and that curiosity turned to silence: a motionless crowd was following a ceremony that someone whispered to me was the triduum of Our Lady of Sorrows.

She stood at the far end, framed in gold, upon a black tapestry where the embroidery coiled like a vine of light. At her feet, tall candles of pale wax rose in steps toward her face, and between them, in silver vases, grew a froth of pink flowers. A white veil framed her face. The dark velvet mantle held the gold as one holds a memory. A canon, with the solemnity of one officiating at a ceremony far older than himself, spoke amidst chants, his words rising with the wax smoke. Acolytes surrounded him, wearing blue robes embroidered with gold thread.

It was the Church of the Immaculate Conception, in the heart of Huelva, near the Plaza de las Monjas. I was told that it had been devastated during the Civil War in 1936, and that many of its religious images disappeared with it. Those we see today were added later, as if the church had wanted to recover, one by one, the figures of its past. The Virgin of Sorrows is the work of Ramón Chaveli Carreres, a Valencian sculptor who was living in Jerez at the time, and was carved in 1937. Today the church houses numerous images, several depicting sorrowful figures and a Pietà with a Christ of almost painful realism.

At the beginning of this century, the restoration led by the architect Antonio Jesús López Domínguez provided the nave with those much-discussed light wood vaults, as if the temple had learned to breathe again under a sap-filled sky.

But all I could do was look at the Virgin’s face. And, more than her face, at the path of her eyes. As in so many Marian images, her gaze seemed to fall toward something that lay beneath her. It descended, though no one could say exactly what toward it. Her own brotherhood emphasizes her forward-leaning head and the depth of her downcast gaze.

From the pews, our gazes rose toward her; from the altar, hers seemed to descend toward us. That silent encounter of glances contained, perhaps, an entire theology.

I went back out into the night wondering why so many virgins look at the ground, others at the sky, and some, less common in our processional imagery, directly at us. Is it a choice of beauty or a language of the spirit that we have forgotten how to read?

Because the eyes of a sculpture don’t just say what it feels: they point to where the soul leans.

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The first interpretation is the simplest: a lowered gaze signifies humility and contemplation. Mary lowers her eyes at the Annunciation because she accepts. She lowers them at Simeon’s announcement that a sword will pierce her heart because she does not wish to defy her destiny. And she lowers them at the foot of the cross because the grief of a mother who loses her son demands silence. It is the gesture of one who folds in on themselves before a mystery too great for the intellect, and yet, embraces it.

It is a gaze similar to that of the grieving angels who have inhabited our cemeteries for more than a century, with their eyes fixed on our graves, as if they were watching over a dream from which they hope to see us awaken.

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Raised eyes, on the other hand, speak almost the opposite language. They are the eyes of the saint who prays and supplicates, the martyr who seeks strength, the enlightened mystic who sees what others cannot. Lifted eyes seem to anticipate the encounter with God: they do not contemplate the present, but what has been promised. They are gazes of hope, of supplication, of ecstasy, of a thirst for eternity.

And yet, no equivalence is absolute. A woman in mourning who looks upward may be seeing her son on the cross; another who looks downward may be meditating on that same sacrifice. What is decisive is not the angle of their eyes, but the story of the soul that dwells within them.

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There is a third view: the frontal one.

In Byzantine and Romanesque art, Christ in Majesty and so many enthroned Virgins with the Child in their arms gazed directly at the viewer. Those solemn, hieratic figures seemed untouched by any fleeting emotion. Their frontality signified permanence, presence, eternity, and the authority of the Spirit.

In the so-called Sedes Sapientiae, or Thrones of Wisdom, Mary holds on her lap a Child who is not merely the infant Jesus of Bethlehem. He is Christ the King, divine Wisdom incarnate, the universal sovereign. Sometimes he holds the orb in one hand; at other times, he blesses with his right or displays the sacred book. Even as a child, he already seems to possess the majesty of the Pantocrator, the Lord of all things. And his Mother is not simply a mother: she is the human throne upon which divinity rests.

Those images inspired a respect that bordered on sacred awe. They sought not so much to move as to reveal. Their rigidity was not necessarily artistic clumsiness, but also an assertion of a sovereignty that does not belong to this world.

The faithful did not merely contemplate the image: they knew they were being contemplated by it. And sometimes, alongside veneration, they felt a tremor of fear.

Because there is a profound difference between looking and being looked at. When we contemplate an object, we observe it from a place of freedom; but when we feel a gaze upon us, we cease to be mere spectators. We find ourselves recognized, questioned, perhaps even judged. The gaze of the other reminds us that we are not the center of the universe.

And if that gaze represents that of God, the experience acquires an even more unsettling dimension: it is not only we who seek the divine; it is the divine that seems to seek us.

However, the direct gaze is not exclusive to religious art. From Egyptian pharaohs to Roman emperors, statues of the powerful have also sought to command respect from the viewer. The grand faces of Egyptian rulers, with their fixed eyes and imperturbable expressions, seemed to gaze not at anyone in particular, but at eternity itself. Their rigidity proclaimed that power would outlive the mortal body that wielded it.

The Greeks introduced a different kind of humanity. Their sculptures began to turn their heads, direct their eyes to the side, and suggest thoughts, emotions, and movement. The Romans combined this expressiveness with the solemnity of the official portrait: their emperors could gaze straight ahead to assert their authority, raise their eyes slightly to express grandeur, or turn their faces toward a horizon that seemed to herald new conquests.

The gaze of the powerful does not always seek to meet ours. Sometimes it seems to pierce right through us, as if contemplating a destiny we cannot comprehend.

And that tradition has reached our cities. For centuries we erected statues of kings, military leaders, politicians, writers, and artists on lofty pedestals. From there they dominated the squares, looking down on passersby. But today we find more and more sculptures at our own eye level: writers sitting on a bench, musicians leaning against a lamppost, fisherwomen, chestnut sellers, or anonymous vendors who seem to share the streets with us.

It’s a small revolution in the language of monuments. We’ve gone from erecting statues for people to look up to, to placing human figures without pedestals so they can look at each other directly. Memory no longer belongs exclusively to heroes and begins to recognize the dignity of ordinary lives as well. And their eyes, sometimes directed at us and sometimes lost in their own pursuits, no longer demand obedience or reverence, but companionship.

If civil sculptures express power or memory, the images of other religions reveal yet another dimension: the gaze of deities that do not always seek to inspire love or comfort, but above all awe.

One need only contemplate certain Hindu representations of Kali, with her wildly wide eyes, protruding tongue, and necklace of severed heads, or those of Durga battling the demon, or the protective deities of Tibetan thangkas, surrounded by flames and skulls, with wrathful faces and gazes capable of striking down anyone who confronts them. Ancient Mesoamerican religions also embraced this aesthetic of the terrible: the monumental Mexica Coatlicue, with her skirt of serpents and necklace of hearts and human hands, evokes dread. Many of these gazes are directed straight at the viewer and impose themselves upon them. They seek not so much to inspire supplication as to manifest a devastating and terrifying power. And although their justification is to offer the believer the assurance of a ferocious force capable of vanquishing whatever threatens them, they can inspire genuine panic in those who contemplate them from outside their tradition.

But these are not the only perspectives from the East. In contrast, we find the serene or half-closed eyes of the Buddha, which seem to withdraw from the world to delve into his own consciousness. And in Hinduism, there is also a particularly significant tradition: darshan, that encounter in which the believer contemplates the divine and, at the same time, feels contemplated by it. The gaze, then, is not merely an expression of power, but a bond that can transmit blessing.

Isn’t it surprising that such distant cultures have attributed to the eyes in their images the ability to establish a relationship between the visible and the invisible?

Perhaps all these representations remind us of something that contemporary Western man tends to forget: that the sacred does not always appear in the guise of gentleness and unconditional forgiveness. It can also manifest itself as mystery, majesty, and awe.

Perhaps that is why, when Christian art sought to connect with humanity, it gradually abandoned frontality. With the development of naturalism and, above all, with the Baroque period, it sought to move viewers from a more intimate perspective. Crystal tears, parted lips, bowed heads, and eyes turned toward heaven or earth gave pain, supplication, and ecstasy an intensity and prominence that much of medieval sculpture lacked.

Today, however, that direct gaze reappears in many contemporary images, but this time it speaks less of majesty than of closeness, of welcome, almost of friendship. It no longer seems to say only “reverence me,” but also “come closer.” And we feel it is more our own, closer to our sensibilities.

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There remains a fourth possibility: the closed or barely half-closed eyes of someone looking inward. It is the gaze of contemplation, perhaps the most mysterious, because it reminds us that we don’t always need to see to know.

Mystics from various traditions understood that there is an inner vision that begins precisely when the eyes cease searching outward. Sometimes, the excess of the world prevents us from seeing what is essential. Closing our eyes, then, may not be a renunciation of reality, but rather an attempt to penetrate it more deeply.

Seen in this light, these gazes convey something that transcends religious art. Human beings live simultaneously turned toward three horizons: the world around them, that which transcends them, and the mystery of their own inner selves. To look down is to acknowledge our own fragility and that of others. To look up is to admit that existence is not exhausted by what is visible. To look straight ahead is to reach out to the other. And to close our eyes is to discover that there is also a universe within.

Perhaps the greatness of these sculptures lies in the fact that they teach us how to look and, in doing so, they ask us where we look. Because our gaze is not innocent: it reveals our preferences, our fears, our desires, and ultimately, what we deem worthy of our attention.

That question brings me back to Our Lady of Sorrows.

Perhaps she doesn’t lower her eyes simply out of humility, but because we are there. It is a mother’s gaze, one that doesn’t shy away from human suffering, but shares in the suffering experienced, in one way or another, by those who gather before her.

The downcast eyes of the sorrowful Andalusian women would not then be resignation or dejection, but a superior form of attention: that of one who, having heaven as their destiny, does not cease to look at the earth.

I like to think that those eyes —Advocata nostra, illos tuos misericordes oculos ad nos converte, says the Salve Regina: “Our Advocate, turn those merciful eyes toward us”— do not only express the pain of a mother or the humility of a believer, but a decision: that of staying with those who suffer.

While some saints raise their eyes looking to heaven, she seems to lower them so as not to lose sight of men.

And perhaps therein lies one of the most beautiful paradoxes of Christianity: that to draw closer to God, we don’t always have to look up. Sometimes we have to look down at those who need us.

The sculptures remain motionless for centuries, and their eyes never change direction. But we, who contemplate them, can change our own.