On 23 May 2019, 6pm–8.30pm, the Honorary President of ARTES, Sir John Elliott (Regius Professor Emeritus, University of Oxford), will deliver a lecture in celebration of the 200th anniversary of the Museo del Prado. The lecture will take place at the Embassy of Spain, 24 Belgrave Square, London SW1X 8QA. A limited number of tickets are available to ARTES members by emailing the Spanish Embassy (emb.londres.ofc@maec.es).
El camarín del desengaño. Juan de Espina, coleccionista y curioso del siglo XVII, by Pedro Reula Baquero, 2019
Juan de Espina Velasco (1583−1642), a nobleman of Madrid and cleric of minor orders, has gone down in history – initially as the unwitting protagonist of two eighteenth-century magical plays by the dramatist José de Cañizares and subsequently, in the twentieth century, as the enigmatic and jealous owner of the Leonoardo da Vinci manuscripts now in the Biblioteca Nacional de España. His early fame as a necromancer comes from rumours that circulated in his own day about the entertaining scientific activities he organised in his home in the form of natural magic shows, where, making use of a certain amount of technology, he put the audience’s credulity to the test. He also set out to bring back the lost genre of enharmonic music, which ordered the music scale perfectly and mathematically and with which the ancient musicians were said to work wonders on men’s nature and state of mind. In addition to the Leonardo codices, his home housed an exquisite collection of books, paintings, precious metalwork and ivory pieces – objects classified as naturalia and artificialia, which made up what we would now call a cabinet of curiosities, commonly known in Spain as a camarín.
Click here to save 10% on this book until April 15 (Pre-sale coupon code: ESPINA)
Nacer en palacio. El ritual del nacimiento en la corte de los Austrias by María Cruz de Carlos Varona, 2018
Motherhood, which stands at a disciplinary crossroads, has become a historiographic subject in its own right. It has gone from being viewed as an exclusively biological circumstance to being considered a key social factor in shaping the historical identity of the queens of Spain. This book analyses the ‘ritual’ surrounding the birth of royal offspring at the Spanish court between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and the role played by queens, ladies-in-waiting and midwives in a cultural system based on a series of rites performed before and after childbirth.
El coleccionismo de pintura en Madrid durante el siglo XIX by Pedro J. Martínez Plaza, 2018
This book examines the private collecting of painting in Madrid during the nineteenth century and the mercantile structure that underpinned it. The author analyses more than 140 private collections and studies the presence, development and running of shops, fairs, markets, estate sales, antique dealers and art galleries, many of them hitherto unknown, as well as surveying the role of the foreign collectors and artists and restorers who acted as advisors, intermediaries, sellers, promoters and agents.
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Less than a month remains to go on a one-hour guided tour of Antoni Gaudí’s Casa Battló in Barcelona, covering its history and the recent renovation of architectural features and interior fittings, such as lighting, windows and hangings. The visit also offers the opportunity to walk along the ‘Pasarela’ at 30 metres above ground level.
Click here for more information on the restoration and visit.
Founded and directed by José Carlos Mariátegui, the Peruvian magazine Amauta was one of the most influential cultural and political periodicals of the early 20th century. The exhibition of more than 250 works follows Amauta’s development as a platform to explore the diversity of the avant-garde artistic production in Peru, Argentina, and Mexico and the debates that shaped the art of Latin America during the 1920s. This exhibition, organised by Beverly Adams, Curator of Latin American Art, Blanton Museum of Art, and Natalia Majluf, Director and Chief Curator, Museo de Arte de Lima, Peru addresses the avant-garde production of a vast network of artists and writers connected with Amauta. and includes works in a variety of forms ranging from paintings, drawings, sculptures and photographs through to popular ceramics, many by lesser known artists as well as pieces by Tina Modotti and Diego Rivera. A large network of correspondents in Latin America and Europe fed the magazine, which had a print run of 3-4,000, and gave Amauta an international impact.
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The exhibition will travel from Madrid to the Museo de Arte de Lima (20 June – 22 September 2019); the Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City (17 October 2019 – 12 January 2020); and finally to Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas at Austin, Texas (February 16, 2020 – 17 May, 2020).
As reported by The Art Newspaper, the Dallas Museum of Art (DMA) is looking to enlarge its Latin American art collection. The museum has created a new endowed curatorial post, the Jorge Baldor Curator of Latin American Art, currently open for applications. It has also made significant new acquisitions of art from the region, from a 17th-century Peruvian carpet to artworks by Mexican artists Miguel Covarrubias, José Clemente Orozco and Diego Rivera, and Chilean artist Roberto Matta.
The Prado’s ‘Invited Work’ is a large painting on canvas showing the double Marriages of Martin de Loyola to Beatriz Ñusta and Juan de Borja to Lorenza Ñusta de Loyola painted in 1718 by an anonymous artist from Cusco. On loan from the Museo Pedro de Osma in Lima, it will be on display in Madrid until 28 April 2019. The scene depicted brings together two weddings that actually occurred at different times and places with the purpose of showing the blood ties between the Inca dynasty and descendants of two of the founders of the Society of Jesus, Saint Ignatius Loyola and Saint Francis Borja. The symbolic aim being to represent the conquest of southern America as a harmonious union between Spanish vanquishers and the vanquished.
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The next meeting of the Maius Workshop will take place tomorrow,26 March, 4:30–5:30pm, in room Law G3 at QMUL (335 Mile End Rd, London E1 4FQ). Click here for a map of the Campus.
Jessica Barker, Lecturer in Medieval History at the Courtauld Institute of Art, will lead a seminar entitled Inscribing Colonialism in Fifteenth-Century Portugal. The session will consider inscriptions, readability and visibility in funerary monuments, and their intersections with early Portuguese explorations in West Africa.
Maius is a friendly platform for informal dialogue and collaborative research. Our sessions are open to all, and research in early stages of development is especially welcome. We look forward to seeing you at this event, and please feel free to email us with ideas and suggestions for future meetings.
Image: Detail of inscription on the north side of the monument to João I and Philippa of Lancaster, 1426–34. Founder’s Chapel, monastery of Santa Maria da Vitória, Batalha. Photo: Jessica Barker.
Lunchtime Talk: Sorolla and Sargent, Monday, 29 April 2019, 1–1.45 pm, Sainsbury Wing Theatre, National Gallery, London
John Singer Sargent and Joaquín Sorolla belonged to an elite group of bravura painters who dominated the international art world of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Art historian Richard Ormond explores their friendship within the artistic context of their time.
Supported by the John Armitage Charitable Trust.
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Course: Painter of Spanish sunlight, Thursday, 2 May 2019 and Thursday, 9 May 2019, 2–4pm, Conference Room 1, National Gallery, London
Learn about Sorolla, the artist whom Monet called ‘the master of light.’ Art historian and ARTES’ committee member Gail Turner will trace Sorolla’s career, reflect on his place in Spanish art and explore his major works including the monumental panorama ‘Visions of Spain’. This two-week course introduces the life and work of the Spanish artist Joaquín Sorolla, from his paintings of sunlit beaches and gardens to his portraits and scenes of fishermen and rural life. Each week sessions are split into two parts, with ten minute break at 2.55pm.
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A rare chance to study this important artist, who was phenomenally successful in his own lifetime, but later eclipsed by modern artists such as Picasso.
Lunchtime Talk: Sorolla and nostalgia for ‘Moorish Spain’, Monday 13 May 2019, 1–1.45pm, Sainsbury Wing Theatre, National Gallery, London
Sorolla’s work in the context of Spain’s Islamic heritage and Spanish artists fascinated by Andalusia. Claudia Hopkins, Senior Lecturer in Art History at Edinburgh University, sets Sorolla’s work in the context of Spain’s Islamic heritage and Spanish artists fascinated by Andalusia. Supported by the John Armitage Charitable Trust.
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Lunchtime Talk: Painting with light, Monday 20 May 2019, 1–1.45 pm, Sainsbury Wing Theatre, National Gallery, London
Hear about the fascinating and often hidden relationships between painting and photography in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Martin Barnes, Senior Curator, Photographs at the V&A, reveals how developments in photography led to new pictorial possibilities for both art forms. Supported by the John Armitage Charitable Trust.
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The visual arts in Spain have long been haunted by the spectres of six giants: El Greco, Ribera, Velázquez, Murillo, Goya and Picasso. Still today, these canonical figures tower over all others and continue to shape the story of Spanish art, which has been traditionally told in monographic form. Although the strength of the Spanish canon has informed different disciplines (literature, aesthetics, performing arts), given the recent ‘material turn’, the prosopographical dimension of the visual arts in Spain poses a disciplinary challenge. Similarly, following the ‘global turn’, the visual arts of Iberia pose a geographical challenge, intersecting with the Mediterranean, Arabic, Latin American, British and continental European worlds. The notions of ‘Spain’ and ‘Spanish art’, therefore, are necessarily nebulous and problematic, raising a host of questions: To what extent does Spanish art exist before the establishment of Spain as a nation state? To what extent is the art of the Habsburg and Bourbon empires a Spanish art outside Spain? What is the role of Spain in the wider canon of European art? Who has exploited the visual arts of the Hispanic world, geographically, politically and intellectually? These questions ultimately point to a tension between canons and repertoires; between centres and peripheries; and between consolidating the ‘core’ and expanding the ‘remit’ of the so-called Spanish school.
This conference will explode the disciplinary, material and geographical limits of Spanish art, inaugurating the Zurbarán Centre as a critical and innovative research institution for the study of Spanish and Latin American art in the twenty-first century. Papers may challenge the canonical construction of Spanish art, which can be traced back to writings from Palomino’s Lives of the Eminent Spanish Painters and Sculptors (1724) to Stirling Maxwell’s Annals of the Artists of Spain (1848), to more recent publications by scholars in the field. Papers may also probe the chronological, geographical and material boundaries of the ‘El Greco to Goya’ survey, interrogating the ways in which academics, curators, scholars and teachers narrate this material through various platforms, including publications, museum displays, exhibitions, lectures, gallery talks and academic courses. Speakers are encouraged to address the various ‘terrains’ of Spanish art, from geographical constructions of Iberia as Europe’s frontier or edge, to exchange with all that lies beyond the Pillars of Hercules. Topics for discussion may include, but are not limited to:
Specialists of Spanish arts, artistic communication and exchange, as well as experts of other regions are invited to discuss the role and definition of Spain in their own disciplines. Presentations may be delivered in English or Spanish. Please send paper titles and abstracts of no more than 250 words, together with a CV and 150-word biography, to Dr Edward Payne by 31 March 2019: edward.a.payne@durham.ac.uk.
ARTES 