Benutzerspezifische Werkzeuge

Towards a New Art History of Cult Images and Devotion in Spanish America

Although miracle-working cult images of the Spanish viceroyalties in Latin America (such as the Virgin of Guadalupe), and the rich art they generated, have long drawn attention from scholars of art and religious history, the methodologies applied to their study are recently undergoing notable expansion and transformation. This lecture will explore these developments through a general overview and, more specifically, through the cult of the Virgin of Loreto in colonial Mexico.  The latter will be used to exemplify the kinds of questions and approaches that the New World can offer up for the global field of art and devotion.

Luisa Elena Alcalá is Associate Professor of Art History at the Universidad Autónoma of Madrid, Spain.  She received her PhD from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University with a dissertation on the Jesuits in viceregal Mexico and the visual arts. She is the author of numerous articles and essays on Latin American colonial art, and her main interests include Marian religious images, the Jesuits, Mexican painting of the 17th and 18th centuries, and the circulation of works of art throughout the Spanish empire. In 2014, she coedited the book Painting in Latin America 1550-1820 with Jonathan Brown. She is also one of the co-curators of the exhibition “Pinxit Mexici. Painted in Mexico 1700-1790,” in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (2017-18).