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).
Recording of a talk delivered online on January 27th, 2021 as part of the research seminar series organized by Durham University’s Zurbarán Centre For Spanish and Latin American Art with ARTES Iberian & Visual Culture Group, with the collaboration of Instituto Cervantes in the UK
This talk was delivered as part of a series of 12 research seminars, many of which will also be recorded and available on the ARTES site.
The weekly sessions usually take place on Wednesdays, 6.00-7.00pm, except the fourth session scheduled for Tuesday, 2 February. The talks last ca. 40 minutes and are followed by Q&A.
The series is free and open to all with an interest in the visual arts. Booking is essential. Please email the Zurbarán Centre (Zurbaran.centre@durham.ac.uk) to register and to receive a zoom link. Please note registration closes 24 hours before the seminar.
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.
The lectures are free to members of the PSSA. A nominal charge of £3.50 is made for non-members for each lecture.
Abstract: The daughter of a well-known Sevillian sculptor, Luisa Roldán trained in her father’s circle, sculpting both over-life sized wooden sculptures for churches and intimate terracotta sculptures for domestic, devotional spaces. After her marriage in 1671 Roldán established an identity independent of her father and subsequently attracted commissions from churches and religious brotherhoods. Leaving southern Spain with her young family in 1688, she travelled to Madrid where she soon established her reputation as an able interpreter of Madrid’s religious and political environment. In 1692 she was named Sculptor to the Royal Chamber of Carlos II retaining the title upon his death and the arrival of Felipe V, and working until her death in 1706.
Biography: Cathy Hall-van den Elsen studied Spanish art at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia, completing her PhD (1992) on the life and work of Luisa Roldán. After a period working outside art history Cathy returned to scholarship in 2005, contributing the introductory chapter to the exhibition catalogue Roldana published by the Consejeria de Cultura in Seville in 2007. In 2018 Cathy published a monograph in Spanish:Fuerza e Intimismo: Luisa Roldán, escultora (1652-1706), (Madrid, CSIC). In August 2020 her annotated bibliography on Luisa Roldán was published by Oxford Bibliographies Online, and in 2021 Lund Humphries will publish her monograph in English: Luisa Roldán. Cathy’s next project is a study of creative women from Spain and Portugal in early modern period.
The Department of History of Art of the University of Oxford is delighted to announce the Slade Professor for 2021 is Jerrilynn D. Dodds, Harlequin Adair Dammann Professor, Faculty of Art History, Sarah Lawrence College. Professor Dodds’ scholarly work has centered on issues of transculturation, and how groups form identities through art and architecture. Among her publications are: Arts of Intimacy: Christians, Jews and Muslims in the Making of Castilian Culture, co-authored with Prof. Mara Menocal and Abigail Krasner Balbale; Architecture and Ideology of Early Medieval Spain; and New York Masjid, the Mosques of New York City. She was editor of the catalogue Al Andalus: The Arts of Islamic Spain (Metropolitan Museum of Art) and served as curator of the exhibition of the same name, at the Alhambra in Granada and in New York; co-editor and curatorial consultant of The Arts of Medieval Spain (with Little, Moralejo and Williams, Metropolitan Museum of Art); co-editor and consulting curator for Convivencia. The Arts of Jews, Christians and Muslims in Medieval Iberia (ed., with Glick and Mann, 1992); and, with Edward Sullivan, co-editor and curator for Crowning Glory, Images of the Virgin in the Arts of Portugal (Newark Museum). She has written and directed films in conjunction with museum exhibitions (Journey to St. James (MMA); An Imaginary East (MMA); NY Masjid (Storefront) and for wider audiences (Hearts and Stones: The Bridge at Mostar). Professor Dodds was the recipient of the Cruz de la Orden de Mérito Civil (Cross of the Order of Civil Merit) from the Government of Spain (2018).
Material Histories from Medieval Iberia
An Agonistic History of Art (Wednesday 28 April 2021)
The Great Mosque of Cordoba as Center and Periphery (Wednesday 5 May 2021)
Babylon in Flames (Wednesday 19 May 2021)
Mudejar and Romanesque. Romanesque and Islam (Wednesday 26 May 2021)
The Virgin as Colonial Agent (Wednesday 2 June 2021)
Hunting in the Borderlands: Conversions and Translations (Wednesday 9 June 2021)
Details of where and how the lectures will be delivered will be made available as soon as possible.
Susan Wilson’s copy of Robertson’s Blue Guide to Spain
Susan Wilson writes:
I have a dog eared copy of Robertson’s Blue Guideto Spain which I bought in 1977. I had hitchhiked around Spain in 1976 for three months curious to see what was happening to the country-after the death of Franco. I was 25 and interested in politics.
Many journeys followed, always with the Blue Guide. I would read it aloud to my companions, in a tent in Toledo or a pension, at night, in simple plain rooms devoid of tv, radio, or devices! We would laugh at hilarious, indignant passages where he expressed himself in trenchant terms. Here he is, noting that ‘although Spain no longer admits to being a police state, the police are still very much in evidence…’
‘In the countryside, where they now serve little purpose, the ubiquitous olive green uniformed Guardia Civil, always patrolling in pairs (and known familiarly as “La Pareja”, the couple) wearing incongruous but distinctive patent leather tricorn hats. Formed in 1844, members of this strong but singularly ineffective arm of the law, raised originally to combat rural banditry and who have since regularly intimidated rural peasantry, are seldom-officious, but are not invariably civil.’ He continues, ‘In addition…when students, Basques, crowds, demonstrations, or “Manifestations” may, in their opinion require “Supervision”… the autocratic police, recently designated “Policia Nacional”…in the process of changing from a grey uniform (when they were familiarly know as “grises”) to a brown (and already called “chocolate con porras”- the latter being a truncheon shaped fritter!). They also guard embassies, ministries, ministers, nervous capitalists, stations banks, etc. Some of them have met with violent death in recent anti-authoritarian disturbances.’ (p. 93 Blue Guide to Spain).
There is a wealth of excellent quotes from Richard Ford. Some years later I was given the three volume Handbook to Spain by Sir Brinsley Ford as part of The Richard Ford Award to Spain, but took Ian Robertson’s guide with me on the several journeys I made.
Mine is underlined, my routes marked on maps, as I followed the Guide along roads, hills and in unbearably slow forever stopping overnight trains. One, from Atocha to Granada one spring, where passengers in a compartment with eight seats told funny stories, mimed silly antics, and shared food and wine with us.
I wandered alone and with various companions to obscure churches and towns in Extremadura … and over bridges (the Alcantara bridge, Roman, still in use, was one).
Informative, scholarly and amusing, it remains a definitive guide although I am afraid that it is no longer in print and that publishers of guide books began to underestimate their readers’ appetite to see and understand a culture. Robertson made a huge contribution to the travellers’ understanding of Spain.
If you can find a copy, don’t part with it. Reading this in the pandemic is strongly recommended!
ARTES 