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[AUDIO LOGO] SPEAKER: I'm super pleased to introduce the moderator of our next session for this morning, Leonardo Santamaria-Montero, who is a graduate student here in History of Art and Visual Studies and a scholar on Central America. So, Leonardo, please come to the podium, and it's all yours. Thanks.
LEONARDO SANTAMARIA-MONTERO: Thank you, Andy, and thanks, everyone, for being here and for making this event possible. So we're going to start with the second session named Abundance and Acculturation, The Visual Language of Luxury and Liberation. The first person I'm going to only person today is Monica Dominguez Torres, who is professor of art history and Associate Director of the Center for Material Culture Studies at the University of Delaware.
Her research focuses on the art of the early modern Iberian world, specifically on cross-cultural exchanges between Spain and the Americas in the periods of the 1500s and the 1700s. Her latest book, Pearls of the Crown Art, Nature, and Race in the Age of Spanish Expansion, published by Penn State University Press in April 2024, examines a selection of images and objects connected to the Atlantic pearl industry.
This research has been supported by the NEH Getty Research Institute, Bard Graduate Center, and Renaissance Society of America, among others. Her presentation is titled "Splendor and Iridescence, Pearls in the Art of the Spanish Americas." Please welcome Professor Dominguez Torres.
[APPLAUSE]
MONICA DOMINGUEZ TORRES: Thank you so much for such a wonderful invitation and opportunity to reflect on an amazing selection of works from several collections. So let's see. OK, this is working?
In Grandeza Mexicana, a poem written in 1604 describing in detail Mexico City, its population and culture, Bernardo de Balbuena asserts that the then largest city of the Americas was full of illustrious noble people, as you can see on the screen, pleasant, sweet, and courteous in their demeanor. Its squares filled with rich markets where silks, jewels, pearls, gold, and cochineal abounded. Pieces on view at the exhibition Colonial Crosses echo Balbuena's hyperbolic perceptions even a century later.
[INAUDIBLE] a painting from the mid 18th century shows a Spanish woman, Espanola, elegantly dressed and wearing a choker made of large round pearls. As in many other casta paintings, this piece presents a contrived rendition of the diverse racial groups of new Spain, where despite of her lower status within the racial hierarchies of colonial Mexico, indicated by the fact that her [INAUDIBLE] is Xibano and her [INAUDIBLE], the Spanish woman displays some of the riches for which the Spanish Americas were known. Its copious pearling grounds.
Starting in 1498 when Christopher Columbus located bountiful pearl repositories around some islands off the coast of Venezuela, what is today Venezuela, large numbers of pearls were extracted in American waters or from American waters. In the Southern Caribbean around the island of Cubagua, and the coastal settlements of Cabo de la Vela and Riohacha, as well as Pacific Islands close to today Panama and Costa Rica.
Many of these centers reported to Santo Domingo and therefore were technically part of the vice royalty of new Spain, a fact that didn't escape Balbuena's pen. Indeed, he described Mexico's geographical location as privileged by a temperate climate and abundant grounds, not only inland, but also in the deep sea. And you see there the quote, especially the last verse at the end, that it was the climate impregnated pearls from the deep sea. I'm sorry I'm not providing English translation, but translating from Spanish and Baroque Spanish into English is not one of the skills that I mastered.
In all these locations, European entrepreneurs relied on the expertise and forced labor of Native American and African divers to hastily exploit the abundant pearl oysters and subsequently deplete these natural repositories. Even though Spanish regulations dictated that all the pearls harvested overseas should be locked in a box and sent to Seville, it is well known that large numbers of them stay behind in the Americas, and made their way to the hands of many secular and religious patrons.
By the end of the 16th century, pearl adornments were so abundant in the Indies that the Jesuit Joseph Acosta asserted, not without an element of exaggeration that, and I quote, "Nowadays they are so abundant that even Black women wear strings of pearls." End of quote.
My presentation today will discuss some of the spiritual and material values of the Hispanic-- that Spanish Americans perceive in pearls against the conceptual and practical premises behind the industry that provided this luxurious material to them. And it has been a wonderful opportunity to use the pieces in the collection to then reflect on what's happening in the Americas around pearls.
In the exhibition, a portrait-- OK. A portrait likely made in Cusco, Peru, shows an aristocratic lady glamorously attired with luxurious textiles and jewelry, including earrings decorated with large pearls. And I think the decoration of the veil is also meant to be pearls, but I'm not 100% sure, I have to admit.
In a portrait by Andres Solano in 1776, [SPEAKING SPANISH] from the village of [SPANISH] in the island of Cuba wears earrings and a necklace with a cross seemingly made of pearls. And this is another case where it's really hard to determine for sure, but it looks like pearls.
With their iridescent ornaments, these ladies were showing off not only the wealth and status that their families had achieved overseas, but also less tangible spiritual attributes, since pearls had not been associated with Christian values like purity, wisdom, and salvation. Both in Europe and the Americas, pearls were commonly associated with the Virgin Mary. As shown in the galleries of the Johnson Museum, popular Marian images in the Andes, such as Our Lady of Cocharcas or Our Lady of Pomata, were festooned with pearl ribbons pinned over the virgin dresses.
As I have explained in my recent book, Pearls for the Crown, in medieval Europe, pearls became representative of the virginal nature of Mary. For since ancient times, pearls were thought to have a sort of virginal birth. An old legend passed down by the first century Roman natural philosopher, Pliny the Elder, asserted that pearls originated from dew drops that were trapped inside oysters when they surface to breathe and reproduce.
According to the ancient Roman naturalist, the color and quality of pearls depended on the type of dew that the oyster ingested. And I quote, "If it was pure inflow, their brilliance is conspicuous. But if it was turbid, the product also becomes dirty in color." End of quote.
Following Pliny's statements in the Middle Ages, the white iridescent material of pearls became metaphorically associated with Mary. Theologians as a Hugo and Victor compare her acceptance during the Annunciation, the acceptance to become the mother of God, to the oyster that rose from the bottom of the sea and opened itself to be impregnated by the heavenly dew.
In 17th century Spain, moreover, theologians linked pearls to Mary's own immaculate conception, as shown in [INAUDIBLE] Antonio Navarro's virginal alphabet of the excellencies of Mary's holy name, published in 1604. In addition to equating Mary's virginal nature before, during, and after childbirth, which is an important element of the doctrine of the immaculate conception, with a whiteness and purity of a pearl, full of the Holy Ghost, dew and grace. And that's how he puts it, that equation between pearls and the immaculate conception of Mary. Navarro explained that in their devotion to the virgin, the faithful could find a spiritual benefit similar to the medicinal properties associated with pearls.
Likewise, the apothecary and astrologist Gaspar de Morales, in his book Of The Virtues and Properties of Precious Stones, published in 1598, equated [INAUDIBLE] a matter of pearls not only with Jesus Christ, the unblemished product of Mary's virginal conception, but also with Mary herself as the keystone from which the pearl Jesus originated.
He believed that pearls were formed thanks to the action of celestial bodies and determined on the basis of astrological considerations that the best time to retrieve mature pearls was August 15, the day of Mary's assumption. And of course, that was completely wrong, but. [LAUGHS]
In this context, thus, it became popular tradition to donate pearls and pearl embroidered adornments to images of the Virgin Mary, especially those that were deemed miraculous, a practice that was quickly adopted in the Americas. Such expressions of devotion were often promoted by those at the top of the political hierarchy.
For instance, in 1588, King Philip II of Spain offered large quantities of the marine gems to Our Lady of Guadalupe of Extremadura to decorate her rich mantle. Even though the original Romanesque image presents her as a throne of wisdom that is sitting on a throne with the baby Jesus on her lap. It started in the 15th century. It began to be dressed with sumptuous garments that disguised her original resting pose and made her look like if she was standing and holding her son with her right hand.
The mantle, decorated with the pearls donated by the King, was described by the mestizo writer Garcilaso de la Vega, nickname El Inca, has a magnificent piece, all embroidered with very fine and large pearls, following a chessboard pattern. Although this mantle no longer survives, it can be appreciated in numerous early modern renderings of the virgin, like the one that you have there on the right, but also in a painting from colonial Bolivia featured in the exhibition Colonial Crossings.
This particular image, however, was not meant to reproduce the image from Spain, but a copy made in the vice royalty of Peru in 1601 by Friar Diego de Ocana for the Church of la Plata in today's Sucre, Bolivia. This [INAUDIBLE] friar left the Extremadura monastery dedicated to Our Lady of Guadalupe in 1599 to travel for nine years throughout South America and to disseminate this Marian devotion and gather alms to send back to Spain for the maintenance of the monastery. He spent six years in the Andes, and the image that he created for the Church of La Plata quickly became famous on account of her own miracles.
As Lucia Abramovic discussed several years ago, this image became the recipient of numerous donations, in particular a jewels to be attached to her triangular gown, many of which included Baroque pearls. When around 1784 the original canvas on which the virgin was painted was too worn out by the weight of the jewels, it was placed on a silver plate that could bear better the weight of the pious gifts. A print showing Ocana's rendering with angels fluttering around became the source of many paintings dating from the 17th and 18th century, including this painting at the Colonial Crosses exhibition.
That the faithful understood the connections between Mary, Mary's virginity, and the way how pearls were thought to reproduce is confirmed by early modern books such as The Life of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, Represented in Emblems, published in 1646 in Paris, with engravings by the French printmaker, Jacques Collot, which presented this complex metaphor in visual terms.
Moreover, some contemporaneous authors commented on the American origins of the pearls that decorated famous images of the Virgin Mary, both in Europe and the Americas. For instance, the poet and playwright Jose de Valdivielso stated in his [SPEAKING SPANISH] that the pearls that adorn a miraculous image of the Virgin of the Sagrario in Toledo were found in the Indies, where they were retrieved with ardent fervor. That's what he says. This statement was clearly a euphemism, as pearls were widely known to have been forcibly and carelessly retrieved in the Americas.
Despite many idealized visual representations that circulated in the Atlantic world showing pearl fishing as a peaceful industry, it was not a secret at all that these enslaved workers who retrieved the precious gems in the Americas worked under grueling conditions. Numerous textual reports provide the testimony that a slave diver were fed little, shackled at night to prevent them from escaping.
They had a short and miserable life because, as Bartolome de Las Casas put it, and I quote, "No man can spend long under water without coming up for air, and the water is so cold that it chills them to the marrow. Most choke on their own blood, as the length of time they must stay under water without breathing and the attendant pressure on their lungs makes them hemorrhage from the mouth. Others are carried off by dysentery caused by the extreme cold to which they are subjected." End of quote.
This cruel industry, however, encouraged many entrepreneurs in both Spain and the Americas, many of whom established themselves in large urban centers such as Santo Domingo, San Juan de Puerto Rico, or Seville, and only visited the pearl fisheries from time to time. Various Spanish American dynasties emerged from the wealth amassed by prosperous [INAUDIBLE], such as [SPEAKING SPANISH].
Maybe the unidentified female donor in the late 17th century painting of Our Lady of Chiquinquir, on view at the exhibition, is a late descendant of one of those families. And this is merely speculative. Her conspicuous displays of pearls, as well as the devotion to a virgin that miraculously appear in the New Kingdom of Granada, where some of the richest pearling grounds were located, could refer to her family origins, since pearls were not exploited in Peru. That it is the place of origin of this particular painting, what we believe is the place of origin.
Another image that, despite it's Andean origins, point to earlier events that took place in Nueva Granada is the painting of Saint Luis Beltran baptizing an African slave on display in the galleries. And we will hear more about this particular image a little bit later. But I want to say that this Valencian brother from the order Saint Dominic started in 1562 his missionary career in Cartagena de Indias, whose port received large numbers of enslaved Blacks from Africa, many of them actually destined to the nearby pearl fisheries in the Peninsula Guajira.
As shown by several period documents by the time that Saint Luis Beltran engaged in missionary activities, the pearl industry mostly relied on Black labor, as the new laws of 1542 had forbidden the enslavement of Native Americans. In addition to the books on the screen, a letter from the Dominican-- I'm sorry. Oops. I lost my images, but you might remember what it was on the screen.
So in addition to the books that I show on the screen, a letter from the Dominican Friar [INAUDIBLE] dated 1571 explained that in the Caribbean fisheries, between seven and eight canoes with 50 or 70 [SPANISH], so Black slaves, aboard went to fish for pearls every morning. This letter also described the harsh treatment that Black divers endure, echoing the denunciations that Las Casas had made about Native American divers several years earlier.
Even those images, such as the one at the Thomas collection, were meant to showcase the benefits brought by Christianity to African slaves, the rich attire and pearls that decorate the ear and arm of this particular enslaved Black create a dissonant contrast with the actual working conditions that prevail at the pearl fisheries. In particular, the passive attitude of the Black servant, which could not be farther from reality.
At the pearl extracting sites in the Peninsula Guajira, for instance, there were several revolts led by enslaved Blacks that put in jeopardy the profitable industry. A major uprising took place in Riohacha in 1603, when about 450 enslaved Blacks armed with lances, machetes, swords, darts, and even bows and arrows attempted to kill all the majordomos or the overseers at the site. They destroyed the sails of several canoes and looted and burned many houses. They also were successful to kill at least two of the overseers, and were on the run for several days.
After several battles against Spanish armed forces, most of the rebels were captured. The 12 leaders were publicly executed and the others were subjected to increased control at the pearl fisheries. This revolt caused severe losses to the Riohacha [INAUDIBLE], many of whom could hardly recover financially. All the more because the local pearling grounds were starting to show clear signs of exhaustion.
Thus, behind the grandeur and iridescence that the marine gems were believed to embody, there was an exploitative industry that oppressed both native and foreign workers. And despite the idealized ways in which pearls appear in many of the paintings on display at Colonial Crossings, they can also serve as reminders of the dark history that their exploitation entail. Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
LEONARDO SANTAMARIA-MONTERO: Thank you very much for your presentation, Professor. Now we're going to continue with Juliana Fagua, who is the second speaker. Juliana is an art historian and curator of Latin American art and material culture. Currently a PhD student at Cornell University, her research focuses on the early modern transpacific trade and the cross-cultural, artistic and material dialogues between Asia and Latin America.
Born and raised in Bogota, Colombia, Juliana came to New York City in 2019 to pursue an MA from the Bard Graduate Center in Decorative Arts, Design History, Material Culture. In 2022, Juliana curated the installation Louis C. Tiffany and Latin America at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. And her exhibition [SPEAKING SPANISH] opened at the Franz Mayer Museum in Mexico City from May to August 2023. The presentation of Juliana is titled "Your Plenteous Grandeur Resides In You, Asian Luxury in Spanish American Domestic Interiors." Juliana, the floor is yours.
JULIANA FAGUA ARIAS: All right. Thank you. As period inventories demonstrate, colonial Latin American denizens embellished household interiors with a combination of Asian and European objects, products from other vice royalties throughout the Americas, as well as local products that reinterpreted transoceanic goods. [INAUDIBLE] lacquered furniture from Japan resonated with [INAUDIBLE], lustrous furniture made in Southwest New Spain and New Granada. Women would wear silk and alpaca llicllas, a hand-woven shoulder cloth of Inca origin and laced with [INAUDIBLE], a Mesoamerican blouse. In the kitchen, the knotty aroma of Mexican cacao and sweet corn would blend with Southeast Asian cinnamon and cloves.
Although remarkable to contemporary scholars, these quote unquote "mixtures" quickly became naturalized throughout the 16th century, as has been famously argued by Dean and [? Lipson. ?] Nonetheless, the association of Asian or Asian inspired objects with luxury, opulence, and fantasy was rooted in the colonial collective imagination, an association that would influence the consumption and production of these objects throughout the early modern period.
The unique intersection between the varied colonial Latin American decorative Arts showcased in the exhibition Colonial Crossings, Art, Identity, and Belief in the Spanish Americas and the Johnson Museum's renowned Asian art collection provide a rare opportunity to place in dialogue selected pieces from the exhibition with the Asian objects that galvanized their creation.
In this presentation, I look at a few chosen objects from Colonial Crossings that reveal significant connections with the Pacific trade, and I relate them with pieces from the museum that resonate in terms of materials, technique, and iconography. I focus on objects that would have been exhibited and used within the domestic sphere, particularly in the [SPANISH], which served both as display and collecting areas within the colonial household, as well as spaces of intimate and familial interaction with these goods.
I believe for their owners, these Asian or Asian inspired objects had a dual function in relation to their perception of space. They both carved and secured a sense of belonging to the Spanish vice royalties, since possessing them indicated the observance and celebration of fashionable aesthetics, and they also indexed visions of distant territories, most specifically imagined landscapes of Asia, offering a sense of immediate access to otherwise unreachable places.
In wealthy homes, elite individuals would carve niches and spaces to display Asian and Asian inspired luxury goods in the two areas of colonial homes where they received visitors and could thus flaunt their wealth. The master bedrooms and the [SPANISH], a raised platform covered with carpets and seat cushions, a configuration that preserved the Hispano-Muslim custom of sitting on the floor.
The fact that the [SPANISH] was elevated on a platform not only directed the visitor's attention towards it, but created a spatial hierarchy that ascribed a higher value to the objects contained within it. Even when the [SPANISH] was not situated on a raised platform, folding screens called [? biombos ?] enclosed the area, creating a porous yet confined space to which access was privileged.
Made from several joined panels bearing decorative paintings, these folding screens were inspired by the Japanese and Chinese screens known as [NON-ENGLISH], which translates to windbreaker, made of either polychromed and lacquered wood, or of watercolors on paper mounted on wooden stretchers. The foldable surfaces of [NON-ENGLISH] was the preferred medium for memorializing places like the environs of the cities of Kyoto or Edo, or narrating stories like the celebration of the rice harvest in an example at the Johnson Museum. The profuse use of gold leaf to render clouds or mountains infuse the Japanese scenes with an otherworldly quality, and was one of the preferred stylistic adaptations of Mexican artists who famously also gilded their [NON-ENGLISH] with golden clouds.
Consider the feminine domain of the house. The [SPANISH] was women's collective, creative, and display space, a stage for both intimate bonding and social networking. In this space, women would spend their days by themselves or hosting guests surrounded by commodities that reflected their worldly taste as well as by objects of their own making that showcase their physical and intellectual dexterity. Male guests were invited to visit the [SPANISH], but social protocol dictated that while women sat on plush, velvet cushions on the carpeted platforms, men could only sit on chairs, usually made of leather and oak outside the platform.
In a similar manner to Renaissance cabinets of curiosities, the [SPANISH] acted as a microcosm where women interacted with the rich variety of goods produced locally and afar. A surrogate for an external world that was difficult to access, the material richness of the [SPANISH] counterbalanced women's limited mobility as they were anchored to the domestic space. Therefore, the objects displayed in the [SPANISH] not only signal wealth and status to outsiders, they engaged elite women's minds and bodies in a variety of rituals that spoke to both their intimate lives and public roles, and indexed visions of faraway territories through their decoration and materiality.
Low tables and small writing desks were present for individuals to eat their meals, write letters, and play games. Lacquered chests were used to store needlework, sewing boxes, and writing tools. Devotional altars were usually set up displaying religious paintings, and sculptures in Asian ivory or [SPEAKING SPANISH], a type of alabaster.
A printed image of the [SPANISH], for instance, depicts large scale paintings of armed angels, an example of which is present in Colonial Crossings, and which we heard a lot of before. A military, aristocratic, and religious iconography that combines Andean material values in the profuse use of gold and feathers, as well as iconography from European military manuals, these paintings aim to inspire conversion through a combined expression of protection and violence.
Altars would also be populated by Catholic ivory sculptures like the example to the left, present in Colonial Crossings. Most Catholic ivory sculptures were made for export in specialized workshops in the Philippines, where the raw materials arrived through maritime trade networks that connected Africa, India, and Southeast Asia.
Although made for the Spanish American market, these sculptures preserve characteristics of Chinese Buddhist sculptural conventions, evidenced here in Saint Joseph's heavy eyelids and his top knot, a hairstyle associated with nobility in Chinese art. The cascading, beveled edges of Saint Joseph and Christ's drapery resembled the gracefully hanging tunics of 18th century Chinese deity statues, and the gilded floral patterns recall sumptuous Chinese silks, highly coveted in the Spanish Americas. Saint Joseph's slightly curved, elongated shape likely reveals the original structure of the ivory tusk, which would have been collected in Africa or South Asia.
At a period where overseas business and communication was conducted primarily over written documents, furniture like writing cabinets and desks developed to fit a diplomatic lifestyle in which local and international geographies were constantly in dialogue. Some of the most extravagant, imaginative, and transcultural designs emerged from experimentation in furniture precisely because, as a medium, it offered different possibilities from the traditional formats of portraiture or devotional paintings.
Furniture's three dimensionality offered multiple surfaces of varied sizes. Lids, drawers, table tops for ornamentation and storytelling. Its corporeality and physical presence in the space responded to the bodily needs of its users, but also prescribed certain behaviors and interactions determined by the predominant business and diplomatic lifestyle of the vice royalties. Numerous drawers and lids, some secret and some evident, provided a delightful aspect of revelation, an element that artisans capitalized on by creating contrasting designs in the inner and outer surfaces of furniture.
Finally, desks, cabinets, and tables acted as the center hub around which all manner of activities in the household, either social or business related, took place. Therefore, these objects acted as a stage upon which multiple transoceanic elements, foodstuffs, dinnerware, overseas correspondence entered in dialogue.
A writing cabinet by noble Indigenous artist Jose Manuel de la Cerda, an almost-human-sized ensemble consisting of a cabinet resting on a low table exemplifies the sophisticated and whimsical Asian inspired furniture made in Western New Spain. The cabinet exhibits an ebony color background overlaid with golden painted landscapes and military scenes.
Curved table legs in the shapes of paws or talons grasping an orb support the set, an assertive gesture that symbolizes the forceful confidence of its owners. The lid and the two front doors of the cabinet swing open to reveal an assortment of drawers of varied sizes. Floral patterns painted on scarlet, indigo, and cream grounds echo the exterior decorations, but offer a chromatic light contrast to the inky outer surface.
Silver locks and pulls on the drawers and the lids indicate that this cabinet might have held treasured writing implements, inks of various colors, papers in assorted sizes, sealing wax, pen knives, feather quills, and important documents or correspondence, possibly addressing transoceanic business.
A portrait of a lady in Colonial Crossing's richly dressed in a brocaded costume and posing with all the accouterments of luxury indicates the role of lacquered furniture, like a de la Cerda's cabinet as visual signifiers of wealth. The black and red cabinet in the painting is likely inlaid with mother of pearl to amplify its brilliance, and the multiple drawers possibly held items of importance to this lady, perhaps the precious jewelry that she dons in her portrait. Gold filigree and emeralds from the vice royalty of New Granada, pearls from [SPANISH], and silver trinkets from Peru could have been some of the treasures held in her expensive cabinet.
A Chinese table screen in the Johnson Museum collection exemplifies the types of East Asian commodities that Spanish American lacquer artisans would have encountered in markets or domestic spaces. Like de la Cerda's writing cabinet, which detaches from a low table, this Chinese table screen is a composite object consisting of a base and a detachable screen. Circulating in erudite and learned spaces, just as the writing cabinet, table screens were important objects in a scholar's studio, either placed on a painted table for decorative purposes or in front of a window to protect from breezes.
The screen can be raised or lowered to adjust the airflow, and it offers two distinct views. A jeweled, mountainous landscape dotted by pagodas on one side, and an exquisite depiction of flowers, plants, and insects on the other. The striking contrast between the jet black lacquer ground and the shimmering gold leaf and powder perfectly exemplify the style that enthralled early modern Europeans and Americans. Carved creatures with roaring moths and bulging eyes punctuate the base's legs and the sides of the screen, a capricious and playfully intimidating gesture that surely mirrored the owner's self-confidence, and that de la Cerda echoed in the carved talons on his cabinet.
De la Cerda's cabinet preserves the striking contrast between the inky black background and the lustrous gold overleaf. However, the new Spanish artist would have used a combination of [SPANISH], a fatty acid obtained from an insect of the same name, and chia oil, and chia is Nahuatl for oily seed, to create the polished surface instead of the traditional urushi lacquer used in China and Japan, or the linseed oil used in Europe.
Endemic to Mesoamerica, both [SPANISH] and chia oil had been used since pre-Hispanic times by Indigenous groups like the Purepecha for artistic, culinary, and medicinal uses. Although the crops were nearly decimated and their use strictly regulated with the Spanish arrival.
Other vectors of transmission that informed new Spanish artisans in the creative task of imagining Asia included European books and prints, which carried motifs, designs, and techniques that artists integrated into their pre-existing knowledge. These widely consumed narratives, which included accounts of diplomatic embassies and missionary journeys to diverse territories in Asia, as well as costume prints and books, freely collapsed the diverse Asian landscapes, costumes, physical features, architecture, and other elements into predetermined, highly Eurocentric iconography.
A print from the Johnson Museum's collection titled Costumes of the Different Nations of the World by the Swiss artist Jost Amman exemplifies the reduction of the myriad Asian cultures into an easy, digestible, quote unquote, "Ottoman type." On the right side medallion, the massive globular turbans and luxuriously brocaded robes contrast with the otherwise crude depictions of tents dotting the background.
More than particular phenotypes, it is the presence of camelids and the overwhelming depiction of jewels, headwear of various shapes and sizes, and intricately adorned garments which seems to characterize individuals from Asia. These images demonstrate all too popular link between, quote unquote, "the Orient" and the extreme luxury and fantasy that was prevalent in the collective European imagination and that transpired in Spanish American furniture.
Together with travel accounts, costume books, and prints were world making devices that codified the European imagining of the world as verified knowledge. Consumers of these printed media would also commission and purchase objects like de la Cerda's cabinet, which not only replicated this geographical archetypes but also reified incorporeal objects the exotic preconceptions of the non-European world.
In de la Cerda's cabinet, scenes of weeping willows swaying over idyllic pagodas and flowering plums and camellias painted in gold, white, and red neighbor medieval towers, cannons, and horse riders dressed in red waistcoats alongside Ottoman cavaliers wearing globular turbans.
These fantastic landscapes, which brought together East and West Asian motifs extracted from their original context with European militaristic or mythological scenes responded to the 18th century fashion for [SPANISH] or [SPANISH] decorations, which infused Asian prototypes with capricious, imaginative, and romantic visions of an exoticized East, resulting in inventive yet incongruous settings.
Reducing the individuals from geographically distant lands to easily accessible archetypes that connected costume, geography, and identity, these iconographies in both print and furniture allowed for a type of armchair travel in which the privileged owners of these lavishly illustrated objects could visit distant territories from the comfort of their homes.
A [SPANISH] made in [INAUDIBLE], a town with a similarly celebrated lacquerware tradition to [SPANISH] further illustrates the ways in which Asian-inspired and European iconographies were fantastically integrated into a seemingly cohesive landscape. A woman, probably the Greco-Roman goddess Diana or Sibyl, due to her hunting attire, is reclined in the central medallion, surrounded by pastoral and hunting scenes alongside dragons, unicorns, and armadillos.
Echoing the militaristic theme that runs through de la Cerda's writing cabinet, hunting and agricultural imagery populates this [SPANISH] with horses pulling carts loaded with hay and individuals with bows and arrows enlivening the elaborate decoration.
Nonetheless, the curved roofs, tiered structures, and outward eaves of pagodas circle the landscape, and the crooked, sinuous tree trunks and bare mountain rocks that punctuate the bustling composition recall the stylized landscapes of Persian manuscripts.
Another outstanding lacquer tradition of the colonial Spanish Americas, a distinctive technique called [SPANISH] is represented in colonial crossings in a fabulous tabletop populated by fantastical creatures, tropical animals, flowers in bloom, and stylized acanthus leaves. Seemingly haphazard, the composition of the 17th century tabletop is organized through a series of frames embellished with a pattern of geometricized flowers and serpentine garlands. Meandering vines sprout from the mouths of four faun masks in the outer frame while swinging monkeys, nibbling peacocks, prancing dogs, roaring lions, climbing jaguars, and skittish rodents complete the tropical menagerie on the inner frame.
In the center of the composition, two griffins escort a blue and gold asymmetrical medallion that encircles a trotting lion, claws, fangs, and tail akimbo. Rooted in Indigenous pre-colonial knowledge, this technique, most recently explored by art historian Catalina Ospina, flourished and achieved overseas recognition in the 16th and 17th centuries. Proximity to the Amazon Andes Piedmont was crucial to [INAUDIBLE] production centers because it provided easy access to raw materials, as well as to establish distribution networks.
The mopa-mopa tree, a species endemic to Southern Colombia, produces the essential sticky resin that Indigenous makers gathered, stretched, colored, and cut to coat [SPANISH] objects. A result of the uneven cultural encounters ignited by the Spanish invasion, [SPANISH] became a crucible of Indigenous, European, and Asian aesthetics, fused through the artisans hand to create a unique artwork.
This tabletop would have acted as the center hub around which all manner of activities connecting the owners to overseas regions would have taken place. Perhaps they drank chocolate from Chinese porcelain cups, smoked cigarettes and dipped snuff while hosting visitors and discussing recent travels.
Possibly they ate soups or stews flavored with treasured Southeast Asian spices such as nutmeg, cloves, pepper, or cardamom, filling the atmosphere around the table with aromatic fragrances. Or maybe they sat down to write or respond to correspondence, or read important documents related to overseas business. Informed by multiple vectors of transmission, the Indigenous makers of this tabletop operated in a creative context of high visual literacy and aesthetic sensibility.
Renaissance portrait and ornament prints, for instance, offered models for the tabletop central medallion and the grotesque creatures. Widely disseminated, portrait prints usually featured a half length image of the sitter in 3/4 view against an empty background. The portraits were vertically framed by an almond shaped medallion, usually containing an inscription surrounded by architecture inspired decorations like volutes, statues, or columns.
In the tabletop, the artist replaced the image of the sitter with the profile of a lion and flipped the central medallion horizontally, resulting in an asymmetrical frame with heavier visual weight in the direction in which the lion is gazing. And I think I need to rethink this also with Jennifer's presentation. The architecture inspired elements are flattened due to the plasticity and flatness of color of the mopa-mopa resin. Other mythological motifs, such as the faun masks or the griffins, can be traced to ornament prints, which provided symbols and patterns to inspire artisans.
Just as the new Spanish artists, Amazon Andean masters also found inspiration in East and South Asian lacquer, particularly because the plasticity, brightness, and color retention of the mopa-mopa resin afforded the desired chromatic contrast between polished, dark backgrounds and colorful, metallic, or iridescent motifs that characterized Asian lacquer.
A pair of Chinese bowls from the Johnson Museum collection exhibit the iridescent shine of mother of pearl inlay that was so desirable in the early modern period. A central scene of scholars strolling and discussing in a garden surrounded by crooked trees and boulders is framed by a geometric ornamental pattern around the bowl's rim and base. Rendered in mother of pearl, these narrative and decorative elements glisten in jewel tones of emerald green, turquoise, blue, fuchsia, and lilac.
The central frame of the [SPANISH] tabletop achieves a similar iridescent effect, highlighting in sky blue and white specific details, including the lions, hunting dogs, griffins, and a few minute tendrils and vines. The ornamental patterns of inlaid mother of pearl rosettes and rhombuses on the rim and foot of the bowls, referred to as [NON-ENGLISH] in Japanese lacquer, are also echoed in the diminutive decorative rosettes in the [SPANISH] tabletop, similarly composed of diamond shaped leaves and arranged to frame the central image.
Finally, art historian Mitchell Codding has suggested that motifs common in [SPANISH] of tropical animals swinging on vines, for instance, the monkey above the central medallion in the tabletop, are directly connected to a squirrel and grapevine motif common to 16th century Chinese and Japanese lacquerware and painting.
Indigenous artisans from the Pasto, Cofan, and Sibundoy communities of the Amazon Andean Piedmont would have encountered these blended Asian lacquers in elite households, where some of them worked as part of the [SPANISH] system, or in the context of missionary workshops where mendicant communities displayed the religious objects they commissioned across the Pacific.
[INAUDIBLE] Spain meets with China, Italy with Japan, and finally, an entire world of trade and order. So it goes. Bernardo de Balbuena's poem, La Grandeza Mexicana. And such was the reality of colonial Spanish American households during the early modern period, a territory at the center of the proverbial East and West. Incoming Asian luxury goods change how the inhabitants of the Spanish colonies ate, dressed, and furnished their homes. The display of Asian goods in viceregal domestic spaces evidenced the owner's good taste and worldliness, and connected individual households to the larger network of the trans-Pacific trade.
To meet the demands of the colonial consumers, Spanish American craftspeople integrated these Asian designs into their production, adapting them for a local market that had ties to both pre-contact and European empires. The trans-Pacific trade network stimulated the creative minds of the colonial populace on both sides of the Pacific. And out of this synergy, a dynamic society that to this day produces and consumes marvelous hybrid objects was born. Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
LEONARDO SANTAMARIA-MONTERO: Gracias, Juliana. Thank you. Now we continue with the third presentation of this session. Please welcome Dr. Elena Fitzpatrick Sifford. She's an Associate Professor of Art History at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania. She also serves as Director of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and is affiliated faculty in Africana Studies and Italian studies.
Her research centers on visual depictions of racial difference in the art of colonial Latin America. Together with Dr. [INAUDIBLE], Dr. Fitzpatrick Sifford has worked on several projects addressing issues of diversity and inclusion in the fields of art history, including the co-author publication, and I quote, "addressing diversity and inclusion in Latin American art." That was published in Latin American and Latinx visual cultures. Dr. Fitzpatrick Sifford has recently published in Ethnohistory Art Journal, as well as in numerous edited volumes. Please welcome Dr. Fitzpatrick Sifford.
[APPLAUSE]
ELENA FITZPATRICK SIFFORD: Hi, everyone. First, I wanted to thank Ananda Cohen-Aponte for the invitation, Andy Weislogel for the warm welcome, Juliana Fagua Arias, as well, for your coordination, and Leonardo Santamaria-Montero for your commentary.
So my talk today is inspired by a work in the Toma collection. And featured in the exhibition entitled San Luis Beltran baptizing an African slave. Painted in Quito in the mid 18th century, the painting depicts Luis Beltran, patron Saint of New Granada, the vice royalty which encompassed present day Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, and Panama.
In 1561, the Spanish Dominican sailed on a galleon to Cartagena, a hub of the transatlantic slave trade in the vice royalty. The painting features a newly arrived African receiving the baptismal rites, a reference to the saint's missionary activity upon arrival in the port. The figure's kneeling posture communicates his conversion, thereby highlighting Beltran's missionary successes.
Yet the supplicant posture also serves as a racialized marker used in various contexts to convey African and Afro descendant peoples as servile, whether before a holy authority like Beltran, or later in the independence periods kneeling before their liberator, such as seen in this commemorative medal celebrating Simon Bolivar the Liberator.
As inspired by one of the themes in the Colonial Crossings exhibition, the constructions of race, today I offer some reflections on the use of bodily posture, particularly the kneeling position, as one marker of racialized ideas around Black African bodies.
The trope of the supplicant African had a long shelf life, spanning religious and secular artistic production in the Americas, and transcended colonial borders, appearing in both the Spanish colonial and independence period contexts as well as in early US American and British abolitionist art. Examining the supplicant African then reveals that portraying race was not limited to phenotypical difference, but that race and its related hierarchies could also be communicated via gesture and bodily comportment.
As a second takeaway, this topic also offers an opportunity to bridge the seemingly gaping chasm of scholarly inquiries into Spanish versus British colonial and independence period visual culture, allowing us to look at artistic production and its related ideologies through a more hemispheric lens.
So one of the common markers of Blackness in Spanish viceregal visual and literary rhetoric was a servile or supplicant position, often rendered in conjunction with a childlike appearance, like what we see here. This trope, already well established in the 17th century, can also be seen here in the mid 18th century painting of San Luis Beltran.
The African figure wears a billowing blue robe, a red feathered diadem, a pearl drop pearl earring, and a jeweled golden armlet. Such finery was a convention used to signal Africans as valuable commodities of those who owned them as slaves. The diminutive figure's finery are clearly exoticizing tropes, but also perhaps suggests his elite status, perhaps as an African noble just arrived in Cartagena.
That an African Prince could arrive in the slave port in all his finery, of course, was pure fantasy, as the Middle Passage inflicted its physical and material wounds to all captives alike, no matter their former social status. Notable, however, are the ways in which the figure, while dressed, wears exotic clothing that still reveals far more of his body than that of the cleric. A state of relative undress was another visual trope used to signify otherness, whether African or Indigenous.
The 1647 frontispiece to Spanish Jesuit Alonso de Sandoval's historia de Ethiopia features a detail of Africans baptized by a priest. Inscribed below is the caption [SPEAKING SPANISH] to turn white. In the first edition of the treatise dedicated to converting the population of Africans in South America, Sandoval describes Blackness as a marker of the biblical Ham's sin, marking the body as subject to perpetual servitude.
The Jesuit, however, offers the possibility of salvation through the whitening of their souls, that through the sacraments, here baptism, their souls could be whitened, reflecting the long standing notion in the West of Blackness as ignorance and whiteness as spiritual enlightenment. Here, much as in the Quito painting, the Black supplicant, physically much smaller than the cleric, is given this sort of childlike appearance and shown kneeling, though lacking the exotic dress, of course, of the figure in the Beltran painting.
This is not to claim that only Africans could be supplicants, of course. Certainly this kneeling posture features prominently in all kinds of Christian iconography. What I point to is the ways in which the kneeling African is used to convey hierarchies predicated on marking the body as other. By casting the African baptizein as diminutive, gazing upward towards the priest who offers the sacrament of baptism, both images convey a triumphalist narrative that highlights the success of the mission in converting the African population.
The Quito artist draws from the engraving of Saint Francis Xavier baptizing a native produced by the Klauber workshop in Augsburg. That the Quito artist chose Francis Xavier's image as a prototype makes sense, considering the great fame of the Jesuit known as the Apostle of the Indies, and that both Saints were missionaries from Spain serving in foreign lands.
In the new interpretation, the [SPANISH] artist collapsed the source engraving's three figures adoring the saint to just one. In the Klauber print, the three figures surrounding the Saint allude, of course, to his mission in Asia. The two closest to the foreground, including the figure being baptized, have dark skin and wear feathered accessories, including an armlet, headpiece, and quilled arrows. Behind them, a lighter skinned, turbaned figure looks outwards, a typical Eastern type.
So the other two figures, the figures in the foreground, I argue, are a result of collapsing these distant lands into this kind of abstract idea of the Indies, a notion rather than a place, denoting an early modern European thought, an exotic distant other and elsewhere. In a similar process, the figures who possibly personify these converts in Goa, where Francis Xavier spent much of his mission, are also seen depicted in this befeathered guise of a savage and are racialized as Black via their dark skin color.
So the Quito painter sort of collapses some of these motifs. The feathered armlet and headdress sort of brought together into the singular figure with the dark skin at left. So these various exotic types are sort of collapsed together. And this is something that we oftentimes see, where a feathered headdress becomes sort of described as a moors hat, the ways in which these kinds of Eastern notions of otherness become superimposed onto the Indigenous peoples of the Americas.
So this sort of comparison underlies some of the mechanics at play in the creation interpretation of images, such as the [SPANISH] canvas whose heavy handed rhetoric both contribute to the construction of race. Once relocated within a sort of vaster set of early modern visual material and gestural vocabularies, the gesture, composement, scale, and adornment of the baptizein, in which viewers are invited to see as the attribute of the savage for whom enslavement brings salvation, become rightly contingent on their ideological context.
When we look at early modern images of difference, we can see many of the rooted attitudes of the colonial period that continued into the independence and post-independence periods. The visual record is rife with examples of images that projected the stereotype of an unruly, transgressive Black body that could be controlled only via European intervention. As demonstrated, the trope of the kneeling, submissive Black figure has this long history, and the kneeling African came to be a trope for the Black slave type, and soon was used in emancipation visual culture.
In 1846, medal commemorates the erection in Bogota of a statue of Simon Bolivar, the Liberator. One side of the Medal reproduces a relief, which is at the base of the statue that we see here, and it features Bolivar standing at attention. He holds a book above a kneeling man, behind whom crouches the nursing mother and child. Created by Italian neoclassical sculptor Pietro Tenerani, the image celebrates Bolivar as the emancipator of South America's enslaved population.
During his campaigns against Spanish occupation. Bolivar, a criollo, received aid from Alexandre Petion, a free man of color and the first President of the Republic of Haiti. In return, Bolivar vowed to free slaves in the areas that he liberated from Spain.
So in the relief, we can see how the artist portrays Bolivar with this classical contrapposto, the 3/4 view of his face. And in contrast that the African figures are shown in this more profile position. Their features are rendered with full lips and round noses, following European conventions for African phenotypes. The female figure has her hair covered, while the male figure's hair is cropped. In contrast with Bolivar's tailored military costume, the African figures are in a state of undress, both wearing only draped cloth, threatening to come loose.
So here their bodies, though rendered no different in color, of course, than that of Bolivar due to the nature of relief, are nonetheless revealed as Black bodies. They look up to their emancipator in deference and gratitude, almost a secularized version of the saved African alongside San Luis Beltran.
So such images and the racial hierarchies that they herald have, of course, come into scrutiny in more recent years. In December of 2020, the Boston Fine Art Commission vowed to remove a statue of Abraham Lincoln that includes a Black man at his feet kneeling with broken chains around his arms. The statue is a copy of one by Thomas Ball in Washington, DC, and features Lincoln holding the Emancipation Proclamation. And interestingly, it was originally commissioned by Black freedmen and Union veterans.
Of the original statue, the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass wrote, "the Negro here, though rising, is still on his knees and nude. What I want to see before I die is a monument representing the Negro, not couchant on his knees like a four footed animal, but erect on his feet like a man." Douglass here highlights the function of embodiment in communicating status and racial ideology. Though perhaps rising, as Douglass mentions, the figure is subordinate to Lincoln, who is couched as the white savior, thereby denying the very agency of enslaved people in their own liberation.
And I meant to bring in an image of this, but in more recent years, of course, Black male athletes in the United States, beginning with Colin Kaepernick, have really signified this kneeling stance from servile to one of empowerment and protest. Oh, I did have it there. Sorry, I thought I forgot it. There's cap.
So to conclude, I provided today some thoughts on one way beyond the typical mechanisms of ascribing racial difference via skin color, hair texture, and facial features that race and its related hierarchies were conveyed through bodily comportment and gesture. The supplicant African was used in both religious and secular contexts to convey notions of African inferiority and reliance on a white savior for redemption.
These tropes crossed colonial contexts, offering us an important lesson in understanding that while specificity matters, at the same time, lessons can be learned by thinking hemispherically and investigating the ways in which visual culture and embodied ideologies were part of larger networks of exchange and interconnected ideologies across the boundaries that we typically tend to draw within our field and related fields. So thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
LEONARDO SANTAMARIA-MONTERO: Thank you very much for the three speakers, to the three speakers. So please come to the table, the three of you. And it's time for Q&A. So do you have any questions here in the audience? Maybe while you think, I can start with a question maybe for you.
First of all, thank you. I really enjoyed the three of your presentations and I believe are super interesting. Checking my notes. So in general, in this presentation in the exhibition, there's this idea of the Americas as a crossing space for different regions and places and geographies.
In the specific case of this session, that's very evident in terms of connections internally in the Americas, with the case of the pearls, for example, and the extraction in different places and the movement of that. In the case of Juliana, the trans-Pacific and trans-Atlantic connection, but especially the trans-Pacific. And in the case of Dr. Fitzpatrick, it's very clear the circulation of iconographies and peoples, of course, people's iconographies and ideas around the Atlantic world.
So given that circumstances or different locations and different materials, techniques, and ideas, I would like to ask you, the three of you, about the challenges in terms of access to archives and how you are building your own archives of research in terms of where are the things that you are looking for? Are there any challenges in terms of the access to that or how to navigate?
Because when it comes, for example, the trans-Pacific is huge. We're talking about Asia and the Americas. It's an enormous amount of things. And also you are bringing a lot of material culture, which is not necessarily understood as fine arts or that kind of things. So my question is about that, if you have any challenges.
And also you may include things in terms of theoretical stuff, because I know you're pushing back some long-standing Eurocentric and I'll say [INAUDIBLE] approaches to art history that are still important in colonial Latin American art. You are not representing that. So I'd love to hear more from you. Thank you.
MONICA DOMINGUEZ TORRES: I guess let's start in the same order that we presented. So well, in the case I'm studying, there is a big gap in the archival materials. So a lot of the primary documents can be found in Seville. But it is in many cases looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack.
So there are many reports about pearls that were transported from the Americas to Seville. But the more personal kind of report, you can find it sometimes in letters, like the one that I cited in my presentation. But they are extremely hard to find, because you don't know exactly what the letters are going to be discussing. Sometimes the person who created the description for the document refers something to pearls, but in many cases, they don't. So it gets buried in the archive.
The other issue is that, of course, pearls are not only found in the Americas. So there was a very long tradition of extracting pearls from the Persian Gulf. And unfortunately, unless we conduct scientific studies on the surviving pearls, we cannot know where they are actually coming from just by observing them. We cannot know where they are coming from.
So many pieces that survive don't have documentation. Then the documents refer to pieces in general, and in many cases we cannot relate them to specific surviving pieces. So there are tons of gaps where I had to fill up with a lot of secondary sources or with a lot of other connected sources, or just by bringing together what was circulating at the time.
And I do have to say that most publications of the time were talking about pearls. So many of them. It was actually one of the challenges with this topic is that there is so much that it is difficult to narrow it down and to decide, OK, these are the kind of issues I'm going to take up. Because there is so, so, so much about this.
In many cases, they repeat each other, the sources. In many cases, you can see how they are quoting somebody else and adding their own kind of elements to the narrative. But what it is very interesting is that as opposed to the images I show that don't show that kind of dark side of the industry, many of the books that were published at the time are showing that side. So it was not that it was something nobody knew. It was very well known.
And I think in part, the value of that material was precisely because of its pedigree coming from Greco-Roman times, but also because it was widely known that pearls has [SPEAKING SPANISH]. It could cost a human life. So that was a part of the association of the value of pearls.
JULIANA FAGUA ARIAS: OK. So in my case, I'll give three examples of different challenges that I've faced. One is in terms of the separation that came after or because of this colonization. Local crafts communities, crafts making communities, there's this kind of separation between the makers and the historic object.
So to talk about [SPANISH], for instance, there is still a very thriving community in Pasto producing [SPANISH]. But a lot of the historical objects that kind of trace that continuity all the way back to the 17th century are in collections outside of Colombia. And that has to do with the very context and purpose in which these objects were commissioned. And a lot of them were commissioned by Spaniards that would then take them back to Europe. But there are great, awesome examples of [SPANISH] in New York City, for instance.
And I think that separation kind of creates a gap in that knowledge. And it's not only that physical separation between the makers and this historical objects, but it's also the difficulty of connecting with those makers, because they are still in a territory in Colombia that's difficult to access. So I think for me to create that continuity, and it's, for instance, something that Jennifer was kind of inviting to was to integrate contemporary knowledge in order to mend these gaps. That's something that I would really like to do. But I think that separation that was, I think, responding to the very conditions of colonialism, I think that it's a challenge.
Another thing for me, in terms of materiality and scientific analysis of materials that haven't been analyzed before and the creation of new scientific techniques to understand those materials. And I want to reference this ongoing project that's happening at the Met on lacquered Mexican furniture, and particularly in relation to one of the main elements, which is chia oil.
And they have explained how because chia oil hasn't really been studied in the conservation field as much as linseed oil, for instance, then there isn't really a technique to identify its presence in lacquered furniture. And the importance of the presence of a pre-Hispanic material in this type of furniture, which was commissioned by kings vice reigns which traveled to Europe, I think would be pretty game changing in the way that we understand in the way colonial Latin American art used to frame.
We used to understand it as derivative. So this idea that artisans in Mexico, for instance, had to be working only with European techniques or only with European materials, where in fact they were using knowledges that had been kind of in creation for much longer than the arrival of the Spaniards. So I think also in terms of having this scientific fields catch up with where we are now in understanding the objects is another thing.
And then finally, I would point out the importance of languages. For me, it has been very important to face a new challenge of learning Mandarin, because I would really want to as much as I can understand the perception of East Asia in this period towards Latin America and how they were perceiving Latin America. What type of role were we playing in their own imagination?
And I think being able to access those both sides of the archives from both sides of this hemisphere would prevent maybe biases that I would have by having Spanish as my first language and only being able to access archives in Spanish. So I think it's a huge challenge. And I know being able to decipher a Chinese, I don't know, Chinese manuscript from the 17th century, that would be my goal. And I'm working towards it, but I think it's-- huh? Oh. Thank you. Thank you.
ELENA FITZPATRICK SIFFORD: Thank you. So this is a relatively sort of new strand of my research. So I was thinking a few things in relationship to the fact that I'm looking at iconography and the ways that these kind of racial ideologies are encoded in them.
And one of the things is there's an abundance of examples. It's not a dearth of examples. It's so many. You just introduced me one to last night in that silk that you had. So there are seemingly endless examples to draw from. So how can we understand this kind of phenomenon or these sorts of patterns?
Also looking at imagery coming out of the British North American context and its relationship to images that we see coming from the Spanish context is something that's new for me, and that we don't really see a lot of in the field. So that is also a kind of challenge, but it's also an exciting prospect to begin to understand the Americas in this hemispheric way. Where as I mentioned, yes, specificity in the local is important, but we can also understand patterns and exchange and similarities across these divides.
Also the kind of connections between the sacred and the secular imagery, where you begin to see sacred imagery that becomes secularized later on. So those are just some of the challenges and also sort of exciting prospects that I tried to tap into in my presentation. I hope it came across. And it's something that I hope that I'll continue to be in conversation with anyone else who's interested in these topics.
LEONARDO SANTAMARIA-MONTERO: Thanks for these three very interesting answers and very deep questions. All right.
AUDIENCE: Since you still have the mic, I wanted to ask whether you have looked closely and what you have made of it the missionary painting from the Toma collection from Cartagena who's baptizing the enslaved figure that is kind of bowing.
There's a flagellant's tool right on the table, and there isn't one in the print, in the [INAUDIBLE] print. So do you ascribe that to a difference in the mendicant order, or do you think that in some ways it's making a kind of statement about punishment being a kind of Christian self-punishment and advertising that in a way as a kind of virtue signaling, maybe? Even with the enslaved figure there, he's kind of signaling his self-flagellation.
And then the other question I had had to do with that Simon Bolivar, and whether it's possible that the source for that, I mean, is a kind of more Greco-Roman source, and it's an image of clemency with the barbarian.
ELENA FITZPATRICK SIFFORD: Right. Thank you. Thank you for these ideas. I'm writing them down. The Bolivar image also, it's really similar to the Wedgwood anti-slavery medallions. Am I not a man and a brother, which were very much in circulation at this time and also have that neoclassical sort of heritage to them. So I'll be looking more closely into that Greco-Roman connection that you mentioned. So thank you for that.
The flagellant tool. I haven't thought so much about this. Now that you pointed out, it certainly relates to the sort of flagellant practice, religious practice, but also the whipping of the enslaved. Many of the images that are in the-- and I didn't get to go into detail about the painting, but many of the images that are in the painting that you don't see in the print are related to the life and the hagiography of the Saint. They're sort of placed in there in order to place him in this location where you see the palm tree in the back and things like that to identify him and to speak to his mission.
He spent actually just a short-- he's from Valencia, but he spent just a short time in Cartagena, and then he goes into the interior. And he really spends a lot more time proselytizing to the Indigenous population. It was just a sort of short period in his life where he is in Cartagena and interacting with the African population there in his mission practice or process. So I think that that is a great question and one that I will be thinking about more. Thank you so much.
LEONARDO SANTAMARIA-MONTERO: More questions? Do we have time? One more. One last question. Do we have questions on Zoom or on the digital? I don't know. Oh, all right. No. Start from the previous [? reel. ?]
AUDIENCE: I actually have a follow up on Christina's question for you. And I enjoyed your presentation very much. I'm a print person, so I'm particularly interested in the relationship between the San Luis Beltran picture and the original, the source print, if you want to call it that, what have you.
And you commented, I think, very aptly on the fact that the [SPANISH] artist subtracts and pares down to one sort of essential figure from the three previous ones. And just from a scale or a compositional standpoint, it seems like one logical possibility would have been to make the remaining figure larger and more prominent with respect to the Saint.
And since you have more space, I'm sort of being facetious, because I can understand your answer to the question I'm going to pose, which is, is there in addition to the supplicant gesture of the enslaved figure, is there a significance to the discordant scale between the two figures that you would want to comment on?
ELENA FITZPATRICK SIFFORD: Yes, I touched briefly on this. It is a sort of theme that I've seen across several of these images where the African figures are rendered it's like a hierarchy of scale. The figures are rendered quite small in relation to the European figure. And that's common. It's common in several of the examples that I've come across.
So it's interesting to think about that in relationship to the print, as you point out. I hadn't thought of that. Where the figures are in scale in the print, and then that one figure has been collapsed into a singular figure and then shrunken in the other example. I mean, it also leaves more room for all that stuff that's in the background that's kind of speaking to the life of the Saint, the hagiography of the Saint, which is added.
But that kind of diminutive scale is something that I've seen in several of these examples, which I think is when thinking about how-- one of the questions that I continually ask myself is we know that the typical tropes of how racial difference is codified or is conveyed visually. How else is it sort of conveyed in an embodied sense? And that kind of childlike, very small appearance is part of this racialized hierarchy. So thank you for that comment as well as it relates to how it's been changed from the print source.
LEONARDO SANTAMARIA-MONTERO: All right. Thank you for that review. Let's give them a last round of applause.
[APPLAUSE]
At this symposium, presented in conjunction with the Johnson Museum of Art exhibition “Colonial Crossings: Art, Identity, and Belief in the Spanish Americas,” established scholars whose work encompasses a variety of regions and approaches to colonial Latin American art history offer new methodologies seeking to expand the boundaries of this visual culture. The symposium was made possible through the generous support of the Carl & Marilynn Thoma Foundation.
The second session, “Abundance and Acculturation: The Visual Languages of Luxury and Liberation,” was moderated by Leonardo Santamaría-Montero, PhD candidate at Cornell University.
Presentations at the second session were “Splendor and Iridescence: Pearls in the Art of the Spanish Americas,” Mónica Dominguez Torres (University of Delaware); “‘Your Plenteous Grandeur Resides in You’: Asian Luxury in Spanish American Domestic Interiors,” Juliana Fagua Arias (Cornell University); and “Supplicant Africans: From Baptizands to Emblems of Abolition,” Elena FitzPatrick Sifford (Muhlenberg College).
