This work-in-progress talk will present some new findings on the iconography and provenance of a series of cuttings from a richly illuminated choir book. I argue that the parent manuscript, a Gradual, was probably created in the late fifteenth century for the Observant Hieronymites of San Isidoro del Campo in Santiponce, near Seville. As used by this Hieronymite community, and later pasted into an album of cuttings by William Stirling Maxwell after 1849, I explore the continued production of meaning of these cuttings and their digital remediation.
Dr Matthew Westerby is Robert H. Smith Postdoctoral Research Associate for Digital Projects at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA), National Gallery of Art, Washington DC.
The event will take place on Zoom. Please register here to join:
The Zurbarán Centre for Spanish and Latin American Art at Durham University invites applications for a doctoral scholarship in Spanish art-historical studies, commencing in the academic year 2021/22. The scholarship has been created thanks to the generous support of the CEEH (Centro de Estudios Europa Hispánica) in association with ARTES and The Auckland Project. It supports research focusing on Spanish art from the Golden Age to around 1900, including the reception of Spanish art in Britain. The scholarship is tenable for three years full-time (or five years part-time). It is worth £20,000 per year over the course of three years.
Applicants are advised to contact Professor Claudia Hopkins, the Director of the Zurbarán Centre (Claudia.h.hopkins@durham.ac.uk) in advance of the deadline.
An annual event in honour of the great Hispanist Nigel Glendinning, organised by ARTES and the Instituto Cervantes. Part of the twelve-part seminar series hosted by ARTES and the Zurbarán Centre at Durham University.
17th March 2021, 18:00 to 19:00
Used by people of all classes and fronted by the architectural seat of imperial government, the Plaza de Palacio was the preeminent space of power in Habsburg Madrid. In the 1670s, during the regency of Mariana of Austria, it was lined with arcades and adorned with sculpture. This talk explores the plaza’s design within the context of late seventeenth-century European urbanism, demonstrating that its transformation reflects Madrid’s evolving image as the capital of an empire.
Jesús Escobar is Associate Professor at Northwestern University, Chicago. He arrived at Northwestern in 2008 and chaired the Department of Art History for seven years between 2010 and 2018. He is a scholar of art, architecture, and urbanism in early modern Spain and the larger Spanish Habsburg world. His first book, The Plaza Mayor and the Shaping of Baroque Madrid (Cambridge University Press, 2003; paperback, 2009), explored the interchange of architecture and politics in the evolution of Madrid from a secondary city of Castile to the seat of a global empire in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The book won the Eleanor Tufts Award from the American Society for Hispanic Art Historical Studies and was published in a Spanish-language edition in 2008 by Editorial Nerea. His second book, Habsburg Madrid: Architecture and the Spanish Monarchy (Penn State University Press, forthcoming in 2022), examines government buildings and public spaces built and shaped between 1620 and 1700 from local, regional, and global vantage points. Other recent and ongoing projects consider the monastery-palace of El Escorial, transatlantic Renaissance and Baroque religious architecture in the Spanish Empire, and the historiography of seventeenth-century architecture in Spain. With Michael Schreffler of the University of Notre Dame, he is at work on another book tentatively titled Architecture in the Spanish World, 1500 to 1800.
Booking is essential. Please email the Zurbarán Centre (Zurbaran.centre@durham.ac.uk) to register and to receive a zoom link.
Please click here for more information about the ARTES/ Zurbarán Centre seminar series.
Prince Baltasar Carlos in the Riding School, c. 1640 – c. 1645, Wallace Collection
Date: Thursday 4 and Friday 5 March 2021 Times: 15.00-18.00 each day Location: Zoom (online)
Drawing together an international panel of eminent scholars working on the Spanish Habsburg Court and Spanish art, this two-session conference focuses on one of the best-loved paintings at the Wallace Collection, Prince Baltasar Carlos in the Riding School.
Take a VIRTUAL TOUR of ‘Funk Fiction’, a video Installation by Brazilian Artist Henrique Fagundes, showing at the Casa de las Conchas Palace in Salamanca, Spain.
To learn more about Henrique Fagundes’ art practice and its relationship to the broader context of Brazilian art join the following didactic initiatives:
SEMINAR (in Spanish)
‘Not Only Carnival: Brazilian Culture between the Symbols of the Nation, Cultural Hybridisation and the Struggle Against Stereotypes’
THURSDAY 24TH FEBRUARY 2021
HISPANIC BRAZILIAN CULTURAL FOUNDATION – SALAMANCA – (online from 11 am UK time)
Speakers: Natalia Muñoz-Rojas (Enrique Harris Frankford Curatorial Assistant, The Wallace Collection) and Patricia Manzano Rodríguez (PhD Candidate, Zurbarán Centre for Spanish and Latin American Art, Durham University)
The Wallace Collection has eight paintings attributed to Velázquez and his school. Yet, few of them have a firm attribution. This is partly due to how little is known about Velázquez’s school, studio and assistants. Juan Bautista del Mazo is the only assistant about whom more is known.
Patricia Manzano Rodríguez is currently working on the first monograph on Del Mazo, which aims to unravel his oeuvre from that of his master. Natalia Muñoz-Rojas will ask her about her research and findings, and their conversation may even cause us to reassess the figure of Mazo and our perception of his work.
Registration and Location: This talk will be hosted online through Zoom and YouTube.
This post, supported by the CEEH (Centro de Estudios Europa Hispánica), is a 22 month traineeship for someone who has a good scholarly art historical background in European paintings and a special interest in Spanish paintings, who wishes to pursue a museum career. The Curatorial Fellow will have the opportunity to be involved in a full range of curatorial activities, including special projects, with a particular focus on Spanish paintings in the period 1450 to post-1800.
The Christian conquest of Granada (1492) triggered the conversion and acculturation of Muslims living in the Iberian Peninsula, who were henceforth known as “Moriscos”. As this process did not unfold in a uniform fashion, Christian doctrine was unevenly assimilated across the territory. Records of material culture in Morisco homes can shed light on the extent of religious conversion in the different geographical areas.
Inventories of New Christian homes were traditionally compiled without reference to their counterparts among Old Christians who were subjecting and converting the Moriscos to Christianity. It is therefore important to study Old and New Christian inventories in parallel to identify any points of contact between them. On the one hand, this research will reveal how Moriscos projected their identity onto personal possessions, including devotional figures which would in fact have represented very unusual choices among Old Christians. On the other, it will show a clear hybridization of customs, as evidenced by the many objects associated to Medieval Islamic tradition found in Old Christian homes, such as adargas (shields), almalafas (robes), ‘Morisco style’ furniture, etc. The aim of this presentation is, firstly, to explore the defining features that set these two communities apart as revealed by both Old and New Christian material culture; and secondly, to learn how such objects were perceived, based on extant descriptions. Taken in combination, these sources can shed light on aspects of daily life among these coexisting communities, the way they made their different identities visible, and their emotional practices.
Borja Franco Llopis is a Professor at the Department of Art History in the UNED (Spain). His research is devoted to the visual and literary representation of the otherness in Southern Europe. He has been a visiting scholar in several prestigious institutions such as the School of History and Archaeology in Rome, the Instituto Storico per el Medievo (Rome), the Warburg Institute (London), Johns Hopkins University, University of California (Berkeley), Harvard University, Columbia University, Universidade Nova of Lisbon and NYU; and Visiting Professor at the University of Genoa. He is Associate Professor at the Department of Art History in the UNED (Spain), the PI of the research group “Before Orientalism. Images of the Muslim Other in Iberia (15-17th Centuries) and their Mediterranean connections” and working Group Leader of the Cost Action 18129: Islamic Legacy: Narratives East, West, South, North of the Mediterranean. He has recently published the monographs titled: Pintando al converso: la imagen del morisco en la peninsula ibérica (1492-1614) (Cátedra, 2019), and Etnicità e conversione. Immagini di moriscos nella cultural visuale dell’età moderna (Affinità Elettive, 2020). He has also co-edited the book: Muslim and Jews made Visible in Christian Iberia and beyond (14-18th centuries) (Brill 2019).
ARTES 