ARTES-CEEH Spanish PhD Scholarship Report | Emma Luisa Cahill Marrón, University of Murcia

ARTES is delighted to share Emma Luisa Cahill Marrón’s report of her work, funded by the ARTES-CEEH Scholarship for Spanish PhDs.

The ARTES-CEEH Spanish PhD Scholarship was a wonderful opportunity to research portraiture, gender, and the construction of the image of power in the beginning of the Spanish and English royal collections. It enabled me to conduct a week-long research stay in the Study Centre of the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid. In the Casón del Buen Retiro I was able to document examples of royal portraits linked to Anglo-Spanish relations and royal women’s artistic patronage in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries. I learned of the importance of King Charles II of Spain’s consort, Queen Maria Luisa of Orleans, who was the daughter of Henrietta of England. She brought several portraits of her English relatives to Spain such as effigies of her mother or Kings Charles II and James II of England. These became incorporated to the Spanish royal collection and are now part of the Prado Museum. 

A person taking a selfie in front of a building Description automatically generated
Emma in front of the Casón del Buen Retiro

I was invited by the social media team to talk about this project in their daily Instagram live session to explain England’s role in the presence of iconic female portraits in this museum, like the one of Queen Isabella I of Castile or the one of her granddaughter Queen Mary I of England. 

15 June 2023. Instagram Live at the Prado Museum

I focused on Mary I’s portrait because of the presence of a pair of gloves that are very similar to those present in other female portraits of her relatives painted by the same artist also displayed in room 56. They currently have an interactive installation that recreates the smell of these gloves. According to Dr. Alejandro Vergara, Head of the Conservation Area of Flemish Painting and Northern Schools, these luxurious objects were infused with perfume and sent as expensive gifts. I was able to trace a gift of ten pairs of gloves sent from an unnamed Spanish noblewoman in Mary’s privy purse expenses. As a nod to her, a pair of these gloves is most likely the ones chosen by the Tudor monarch to be represented for a portrait that she knew was going to end up in Spain. 

I studied their catalogue of miniature portraiture since this format was key in the introduction of Renaissance court portraiture into Tudor England. On the one hand, I was able to identify one labelled Retrato de mujer that is likely a depiction of the foundress of this institution, Queen Maria Isabel de Braganza. She was the consort of Ferdinand VII of Spain. On the other hand, I am still working on the identification of a second miniature portrait that could be a depiction of Queen Maria Luisa de Orleans who made key contributions to this museum’s collection in relation to English royalty previously mentioned.

A close-up of a person's face Description automatically generated
Miniature portrait labelled Retrato de mujer possibly a depiction Queen Maria Isabel of Braganza foundress of the Prado Museum. © Museo Nacional del Prado
A person in a red dress Description automatically generated

During the study of this catalogue, I identified an effigy of Benjamin Franklin, one of the Founding Fathers of United States of America. It was probably painted during the time that he served as the first ambassador to France of the newly founded United States of America (1776–1785).

Comparative analysis of surviving portraits of Benjamin Franklin with miniature portrait of in the collections of the Prado Museum (with blue background).

I also spent a very fruitful week-long research stay in London where I visited The National Gallery to study in-situ a portrait connected to Antonis Mor’s portrait of Mary I. This is the effigy of Pope Julius II painted by Raphael. Both portraits follow the same model established by the Italian artist in 1511. There is a version of Raphael’s portrait documented in the post-mortem inventory of Henry VIII in St. James’s Palace. This means that Mary I owned it and most likely asked Mor to follow this model and represent her in the same maner facing the other way. This would have allowed Mary I to display her version alongside the portrait of the pontiff who had authorised her parents’ marriage as a sign of her legitimacy as the first Queen Regnant.

A person taking a selfie in front of a painting Description automatically generated
Emma next to the portrait of Julius II by Raphael in The National Gallery in London

I was very fortunate to meet with Charlotte Bolland, curator of the National Portrait Gallery. We discussed my project and my research. We visited the new Tudor display together and she showed me the archive. She gave me a lot of insight on how to use the museum’s resources. She also informed me of an exhibition focused on Henry VIII’s six wives this coming summer and asked me about my willingness to participate as an expert on Queen Catherine of Aragon. I was also very privileged to be able to visit the Witt Library where I found many useful images. I am still working on some new avenues that this visit opened in my research into female Renaissance portraiture. 

Finally, I was also able to document a misidentification in a Spanish royal female portrait in Petworth House. It is an effigy attributed to Juan Pantoja de la Cruz identified as the infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia. The presence of the ‘double C’, a symbol identified by graduate student Rafael Conesa Tornel of the Arte, Poder y Género Research Group. This means that the sitter is the infanta Catalina Micaela not her sister. We are now preparing the publication of this discovery where I will be able to show my gratitude to ARTES and the CEEH for funding this project focused on gender and Renaissance portraiture at the beginning of the Spanish and English royal collections. 

A painting of a person in a red dress Description automatically generated
Portrait attributed to Juan Pantoja de la Cruz of the infanta Catalina Micaela labelled as Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia, Archduchess of Austria (1566-1633). Petworth House © NTPL

ARTES-CEEH Travel Scholarship Report | Philip Muijtjens, King’s College – University of Cambridge

ARTES is delighted to share Philip Muijtjen’s report of his research trip, funded by the CEEH/ARTES Travel Scholarship.

The ARTES-CEEH Travel Scholarship enabled me to travel to the beautiful town of Burgos in May 2023 to carry out extensive archival research on the Spanish bishop and legal scholar Juan Díaz de Coca (d.1477).

The Chapel of the Visitation in the cathedral of Burgos, with the tomb of Alfonso de Cartagena (d.1456) in the foreground.

Juan de Coca’s life is interesting for a number of reasons: he was from a family of conversos in Castille and he also became one of the most senior judges in the Catholic Church. During his busy and eventful life, he was very interested with his own burial and commemoration. During his time in Rome, he commissioned one of the most important fifteenth-century funerary monuments which can still be viewed in the Eternal City. Shortly before his death, however, he changed his mind and chose the cathedral of Burgos as his final resting place.


Juan would also play an important role the continuation of the so-called Chapel of the Visitation inside the Cathedral of Burgos, which was founded by his famous relative Alfonso de Cartagena (d.1456). Juan chose his second and final tomb there. Despite these and many other interesting details, Juan de Coca’s life remains almost completely unstudied.

The cloister of the cathedral of Burgos.

With generous funding from ARTES-CEEH I was able to travel to the cathedral archive in Burgos, where I found extensive collections of new documents on Juan Díaz de Coca and on his interest in tombs and chapels. It was a great experience for a number of reasons. Apart from the joy of finding good sources for research, this archival trip made a dream come true: Burgos had been high on my list for years but I had never found the chance or means to visit it. The Travel Scholarship finally made that possible for me. 

While I spent a substantial part of my time in the archives in Burgos, I was able to see many things in person. This included the aforementioned Chapel of the Visitation (see photo), which still holds the second and final tomb of Juan Díaz de Coca. After spending a long time trying to trace Juan and reconstruct his life, it was fantastic to finally experience his physical presence and see the cathedral which he had so loved in the early years of his life before permanently moving to Rome.

Detail of a tomb of  João I and his English wife Philippa of Lancaster from the Charterhouse of Miraflores.

Because Juan’s final tomb in the Chapel of the Visitation was a product of Burgos-based sculptors in the 1480s, I took the opportunity to see some other sites where examples of this sculpture could be seen. This included the famous Charterhouse of Miraflores and the stunning Cistercian abbey of Las Huelgas. I was able to appreciate how Juan’s own tomb in the cathedral was part of a bigger production of sculpture in and around the city. 

My visit to Burgos was an extremely valuable experience for me, as it opened me to new avenues of research topics on fifteenth-century Spanish art production. I owe it to the ARTES-CEEH Travel Scholarship that I could take this significant step as a researcher. 

CONVERSATION: Spanish Polychromed Sculptures and their Relationship to Easel Paintings

When: January 31st, 2024. 6:00 – 7:00pm (GMT)
Where: Zoom

Zoom details:

https://durhamuniversity.zoom.us/s/91739926026
Meeting ID: 917 3992 6026
Passcode: 645194

Lamentation

Please join us as Dr. Xavier Bray and Dr. Holly Trusted will be discussing Spanish polychromed sculptures, how they relate to easel paintings, some of the techniques involved, attitudes to such sculptures outside Spain, and why they are so central to the history of art.

Biographies

Dr Holly Trusted (formerly known as Marjorie Trusted) was a founder member and is now Honorary President of ARTES. She was Senior Curator of Sculpture at the Victoria and Albert Museum for over 30 years, and has lectured and published extensively on Spanish sculpture. She is currently working on a catalogue raisonné of Luisa Roldán with Catherine Hall-van den Elsen.

Dr Xavier Bray is an art historian specialising in Spanish art and Director of The Wallace Collection, London. He completed his PhD in 1999 at Trinity College, Dublin, on Goya as a painter of religious imagery. He was Chief Curator at Dulwich Picture Gallery, London and the Museum of Fine Arts, Bilbao, as well as Assistant Curator at the National Gallery. He has curated a wide range of exhibitions including El Greco, Velazquez, The Sacred Made Real: Spanish Painting and Sculpture 1600-1700, Murillo & Justino de Neve: The Art of Friendship, Goya: The Portraits and Ribera: The Art of Violence. Since joining the Wallace Collection he has overseen and co-curated several exhibitions including Richard Wallace: The Collector, Henry Moore: The Helmet Heads and Forgotten Masters: Indian Painting for the East India Company with the writer William Dalrymple. He most recently curated an exhibition at the Wallace Collection entitled Portraits of Dogs: From Gainsborough to Hockney, which ran from 29th March to 15th October 2023.

The event is part of the Research Seminar Series organised by Durham University’s Zurbarán Centre with the ARTES Iberian and Latin American Visual Culture Group in collaboration with the Instituto Cervantes and the Embassy of Spain in London.

The series provides an open forum for engaging with innovative research and exhibition projects relating to the visual arts in the Hispanic world.

CALL FOR PAPERS: Production, Transmission & Interpretation

An interdisciplinary conference on Islamic Art, Architecture, History and Archaeology 

Deadline: December 31st, 2023
All abstracts should be sent as pdf attachments to hist592@york.ac.uk 

Conference dates: 14th and 15th March, 2024 

With keynote addresses by Professor Robert Hillenbrand and Professor Marcus Milwright 

Islamic time begins with the Hijra; the integral responsibilities of every Muslim include the Hajj;  and studies of Islamic history have traditionally followed military marches and commercial/cultural  corridors that enabled the creation of the great gunpowder empires. More recently, mobility has also been manifested in the Islamic world in the fall of these empires, movement of their materials  through loots and repatriations, and voluntary and forced migrations. Until recently, these themes  have been predominantly researched divorced from Islam through incongruous positivist lenses  and euro-centric canons, and often with underlying colonial agendas.

It is with the aim to intervene within and disrupt this context that the Department of History of  Art and the Department of Archaeology at the University of York present Production,  Transmission, & Interpretation, a conference on Islamic Art, Architecture, History, and  Archaeology. Foregrounding the voices of the historically marginalised, founded in material  cultural narratives, and focussed on new sources and methodologies, this conference will bring  together the latest research from scholars ² doctoral to emeriti ² and draw upon a range of cognate  disciplines across the arts, humanities, and social sciences, to consider 1400 years of the Islamic  world and society. 

Submission Guidelines 

We welcome abstract submissions intended to culminate into the standard format of 20-minute  in-person academic paper presentations and invite applications from across disciplines, including art and architectural history, archaeology, conservation, heritage management, curation, museum  studies and cultural studies, on themes that may include 

  • Islamic heartlands, hinterlands, and frontiers 
  • Art and architecture of mobility, routes, travels, and transfers 
  • Patronage – imperial, sub-imperial, male, female, and non-binary 
  • Agency of architects, artists, and craftspersons 
  • Sources, oral histories, local archives, epigraphy, calligraphy, endangered languages
  • Archaeological material, bioarchaeological approaches, and conservation 
  • Islamic approaches past and present to nature, culture, environment and sustainability Conflicts, occupations, appropriations and adaptations 
  • Islamic art markets ² auctions, ethics, legislations

Abstracts should be limited to 250 words, indicate the target thematic cluster, and be accompanied  by the researcher’s name, institutional affiliation and stage of study, location, and a brief biography  not exceeding 100 words. 

Deadline for proposal submission is 31 December, 2023. 

All abstracts should be sent as pdf attachments to hist592@york.ac.uk 

If you have any questions, please email Parshati Dutta (parshati.dutta@york.ac.uk) or Nausheen  Hoosein (nausheen.hoosein@york.ac.uk).  

Conversations are underway with leading university presses to publish a thematic edited volume  of papers presented, therefore please declare if the material has been used before, and if not,  whether you would be interested in publishing with us.  

A limited number of travel bursaries may be provided. Please indicate if you would like to be  considered for the same. 

Becoming Actaeon: Titian and the Conceptual Gaze in Diego Velázquez’s Las Hilanderas

By Isabelle Kent, PhD candidate at University of Cambridge and winner of the ARTES 2023 Juan Facundo Riaño Essay Prize.

When: Monday, 4th December 2023 18:00GMT
Where: Instituto Cervantes London (15-19 Devereux Court London WC2R 3JJ) and zoom

In the background of Diego Velázquez’s enigmatic masterpiece, Las Hilanderas, the artist summarises with a few bravura strokes a treasure of the Spanish crown, Titian’s Rape of Europa. This citation, first identified in 1903, has underpinned many subsequent interpretations of the work, yet a second pivotal allusion to Titian’s poesie has passed unnoticed until now, that of Diana and Actaeon.

Taking these two citations as a starting point, this paper argues that Velázquez designed his painting within the intellectual framework of Conceptismo, with these quotations acting as ‘correspondencias’, mechanisms of interconnecting wit that weave art, metaphor and Ovidian myth. Combining this mode of intellectual thought as it applies to the poesie, with an embodied approach to how Velázquez as the curator of the King’s collection interacted with Titian’s paintings, this lecture (literally) pulls back the curtain on a new understanding the work, one that, as in Las Meninas, centres our ambiguous gaze.

To book your tickets – both in-person or zoom – please click here.

Isabelle Kent is a PhD candidate at Trinity College, University of Cambridge researching the heroic body in early modern Spanish art. She has been a visiting scholar at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and El Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, and from 2017-19 she was the inaugural Enriqueta Harris Frankfort Curatorial Assistant at the Wallace Collection. Her work has been published in the Burlington Magazine, Apollo Magazine and the Hispanic Research Journal, and she is also editor of Collecting Murillo in Britain and Ireland (CEEH, 2020).

This event is organized by ARTES, in conjunction with the Instituto Cervantes London and with the support of the Spanish Embassy to London.

Guillaume Kientz (Hispanic Society of America), “Murillo. From Heaven to Earth”. 

When:  Tuesday, 24 October at 18.00 (GMT), on zoom

The talk will discuss the research for the exhibition Murillo. From Heaven to Earth curated by Guillaume Kientz at the Kimbell Art Museum in Forth Worth, 18 September 2022 – 29 January 2023. Inspired by the Kimbell’s mysterious Four Figures on a Step, the exhibition focused on Murillo’s earthly depictions of secular subjects and everyday life in seventeenth-century Seville. The show and its accompanying catalogue shed new light on Murillo’s innovative portrayals of beggars, street urchins and flower girls in the artist’s culturally rich narratives of youth and age, romance and seduction, faith and charity.  

Guillaume Kientz is the Director and CEO of the Hispanic Society Museum and Library, New York. He previously served as Curator of European Art at the Kimbell Art Museum and as Curator of Spanish and Latin American Art at the Musée du Louvre.  

To join the seminar, click on the link below, or copy and paste it into your browser:  

https://durhamuniversity.zoom.us/j/93702971057?pwd=TW9raVNlM1pxaHFkdGFueURvaWVrZz09

Meeting ID: 937 0297 1057

Passcode: 612894

The seminar has been organised by the Zurbarán Centre and the ARTES Iberian and Latin American Visual Culture Group in association with the Cervantes Institute, UK.  

Inaugural Session of Permanent Seminar: Iberian Worlds and Early Globalization

Date: Thursday, September 21st, 2023 (17:00 CET)

The permanent Seminar “Iberian Worlds and Early Globalization” resumes its activities the coming Thursday, September 21st, starting with an inaugural session focused on the figure of J.H. Elliott, titled “J.H Elliott y su Mundo / J. H. Elliott and his World”.

In this session, Dr. Richard L. Kagan (Johns Hopkins University) and Dr. Geoffrey Parker (Ohio State University) will consider the legacy of Professor Elliot based on the text recently published in The British Academy, which can be downloaded here:

Elliott, John, 1930-2022

The Seminar will be composed by introductory remarks by Dr. Bethany Aram (Área de Historia Moderna, UPO), the dialogue between Professor Kagan and Professor Parker, and the mediation of Dr. Bartolomé Yun (Área de Historia Moderna, UPO), which will only be transmitted online through the following Zoom link:

https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_asd2enYJQbOBJEPBqcAr6A

For more information, please see the full program here.

CALL FOR PAPERS – Art in Times of War and Peace: Legacies of Early Modern Loot and Repair (Bibliotheca Hertziana)

Rome, Bibliotheca Herztiana – Max Planck Institute for Art History

8–10 May 2024

Submission Deadline: December 15, 2023

A category of objects that exists entirely as a function of violence, the term ‘loot’ describes a relationship of possession, if not more specifically of dispossession. Neither an historically nor materially specific typology of artifacts, loot is instead primarily a legal category that cuts across place and time. And while it is also not an art- historical classification, it is one with which the discipline of art history must constantly contend, given its repercussions for what is accessible, where, and in what condition. This international, interdisciplinary conference invites papers addressing the ways in which conflict and its resolution have historically moved, modified, and reclassified art objects in the long early modern period. We invite contributions on the material, ethical, legal, political, and narrative implications of the claiming and reclaiming of objects in times of war and peace, as well as the ongoing resonance of these issues today, particularly for institutions that are their present-day repositories.
  
Studies on looting have a tendency to focus on canonical episodes, most often drawn from Roman, Napoleonic, and Nazi-era plunder. But the early modern period saw the steady transfer of booties, trophies, and spoils over the European continent and across the Atlantic and the Pacific. In Europe, this transfer triggered a moral, theological, and legal debate around property rights, as well as the development of codified criteria governing correct modes of wartime conduct, regulating who was permitted to plunder, what, when, and from whom. The act of looting was itself a strategy of violence, especially in the colonial context; but looted objects themselves were also particularly susceptible to damage, neglect, and even deliberate melting down. Moreover, although often thought of as an entirely modern phenomenon, the return of seized objects was also first theorized in this period as a tool of diplomacy and cultivated alongside a nascent legislation for the protection of art against damage, destruction, or unlawful export.

This conference revisits the early modern origins of the discourse around cultural property with an eye to the challenges facing museums today. Recently, scholarly meetings including “Plunder: An Alternative History of Art” (panel, Annual Meeting of the Association for Art History, 2022), and “The Material Cultures of War and Emergency” (conference, University College London and Oxford University, 2023) have brought attention to the long history of the taking away of things as a result of conflict. We hope to continue this conversation, expanding its purview beyond the object’s capture, to its framing, display, and possible restitution, while spotlighting medieval and Renaissance loot and its contemporary stakes.

This conference is organized by Julia Vázquez and Francesca Borgo. Following “Wastework” in 2023, this is the second yearly conference convened by the Lise Meitner Research Group “Decay, Loss, and Conservation in Art History” at the Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History, furthering the Research Group’s ongoing inquiry into the consequences that different forms of loss, disappearance, and degradation bear for the discipline. For more information see our webpage: https://www.biblhertz.it/research-group-borgo. A series of special presentations and pre-conference visits to local collections will launch the event. Travel and accommodation costs will be covered for speakers. Proposals will be considered for inclusion in an edited volume on loot and its recovery in the early modern period. To submit a proposal, please send your CV (including current position and affiliation), a 250-word abstract and paper title to john.rattray@biblhertz.it by December 15, 2023.

Confirmed Keynote Speakers: Ananda Cohen-Aponte (Cornell University) and Erin Thompson (CUNY).

Meadows Museum Job Opening

The Meadows Museum (Dallas, Texas) is currently looking for a museum curator. The Meadows Museum is a thriving university art museum and a leading institution for the study and presentation of the art of Spain in the U.S. In 1962, Dallas businessman and philanthropist Algur H. Meadows donated his private collection of Spanish paintings, as well as funds to start a museum, to Southern Methodist University. The museum opened to the public in 1965, marking the first step in fulfilling Meadows’s vision to create “a small Prado for Texas.” Today, the Meadows is home to a comprehensive and high-quality collection of peninsular Spanish art. The collection spans from the 10th to the 21st centuries with a particular strength in painting, sculpture, and works on paper from the late medieval to modern periods. 

For more information and to apply, see here.