Transforming Saints

Charlene Villaseñor Black

Description

Transforming Saints explores the transformation and function of the images of holy women within wider religious, social, and political contexts of Old Spain and New Spain from the Spanish conquest to Mexican independence.

The chapters here examine the rise of the cults of the lactating Madonna, St. Anne, St. Librada, St. Mary Magdalene, and the Suffering Virgin. Concerned with holy figures presented as feminine archetypes—images that came under Inquisition scrutiny—as well as with cults suspected of concealing Indigenous influences, Charlene Villaseñor Black argues that these images would come to reflect the empowerment and agency of women in viceregal Mexico. Her close analysis of the imagery additionally demonstrates artists' innovative responses to Inquisition censorship and the new artistic demands occasioned by conversion.

The concerns that motivated the twenty-first century protests against Chicana artists Yolanda López in 2001 and Alma López in 2003 have a long history in the Hispanic world, in the form of anxieties about the humanization of sacred female bodies and fears of Indigenous influences infiltrating Catholicism. In this context Black also examines a number of important artists in depth, including El Greco, Murillo, Jusepe de Ribera, Pedro de Mena, Baltasar de Echave Ibía, Juan Correa, Cristóbal de Villalpando, and Miguel Cabrera.
Introduction
Chapter 1: St. Anne, Art, and Conversion
Chapter 2: The Madonna, between Mother and Queen
Chapter 3: The Suffering Mother
Chapter 4: Rebellious Daughters
Chapter 5: Mary Magdalene and the Erotics of Devotion
Conclusion
Appendix
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Arts visuels
• Histoire des Arts
• Histoire des Arts
• indigenous
• breastfeeding
• Librada
• Tlazoltéotl
• México
• Catholicism
• Yolanda Lopez
• Chicana feminism
• Toci
• Our Lady of Sorrows
• Holy Week
• Saint Anne
• Mary (mother of Jesus)
• Our Lady of Guadalupe
• Spain
• Panama
• New Mexico
• Mary Magdalene
• Art
• Spain (groupe)
• Soledad
• Mexico
• Tlazolteotl
• History
• Judith Butler
• Foucault
• Deleuze
• Saints
• Inquisition
• Nouveau-Mexique
• Martin Heidegger
• Guatemala

Informations

• Publié par: Vanderbilt University Press
• Date de parution: 15 juillet 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780826504722
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 94 Mo

Extrait

TRANSFORMING SAINTS
Transforming Saints
From Spain to New Spain
CHARLENE VILLASEÑOR BLACK
VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY PRESS
Nashville, Tennessee
Copyright 2022 Vanderbilt University Press
All rights reserved
First printing 2022
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Villaseñor Black, Charlene, 1962– author.
Title: Transforming saints : from Spain to New Spain / Charlene Villaseñor Black.
Description: Nashville, Tennessee : Vanderbilt University Press, [2022] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022002160 (print) | LCCN 2022002161 (ebook) | ISBN 9780826504708 (paperback) | ISBN 9780826504715 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780826504722 (epub) | ISBN 9780826504739 (pdf)
Subjects: LCSH: Christian saints in art. | Women saints in art. | Christian art and symbolism—Spain. | Christian art and symbolism—Mexico. | Christian saints—Cult—Spain. | Christian saints—Cult—Mexico.
Classification: LCC N8079.5 .V55 2022 (print) | LCC N8079.5 (ebook) | DDC 704.9/48630917561—dc23/eng/20220414
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022002160
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022002161
A mis antepasadas
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. St. Anne, Art, and Conversion
2. The Madonna, between Mother and Queen
3. The Suffering Mother
4. Rebellious Daughters
5. Mary Magdalene and the Erotics of Devotion
Conclusion
Appendix
Notes
Bibliography
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
AT THE HEART OF SCHOLARSHIP lies dialogue, conversation, and connection across difference. For that reason, I am deeply grateful for the opportunities I enjoyed presenting the research and ideas that make up this book. People too numerous to mention provided thoughtful commentary, asked challenging questions, and entered into conversations with me that improved my thinking. I thank the following institutions for invitations to speak and for their support of my work: UCLA and its Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (now the CMRS Center for Early Global Studies), Department of Art History, César E. Chávez Department of Chicana/o and Central American Studies, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library and Center for 17th-and 18th-Century Studies, Fowler Museum, and Chicano Studies Research Center; Southern Methodist University, where I presented as part of the Comini Lecture Series at the invitation of Adam Herring; Yale University, where I was invited by Mary Miller; the University of Michigan, at the invitation of Louise Stein; the University of California, Riverside, at the request of friend and colleague Jennifer Scheper Hughes; the University of Southern California’s Department of Art History and the USC-Early Modern Studies Institute; the University of Oxford; and other venues. Audiences at various museums offered their insight into the ideas I was working through, including at the Getty Research Institute, Dumbarton Oaks, the Oakland Museum, the Frederick and Jan Mayer Center for Pre-Columbian and Spanish Colonial Art at the Denver Art Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Meadows Museum at Southern Methodist University, and the Huntington Library. Colleagues at conferences furthered the conversation, including at the College Art Association annual conference, Renaissance Society of America, the International Congress of Americanists, and the Attending to Early Modern Women gathering. Finally, I extend my heartfelt thanks to the anonymous peer reviewers of the manuscript. Their suggestions made enormous improvements to this book, and I am forever grateful for their insight and expertise.
Generous financial support provided time off to research, write, and acquire image permissions. I am thankful to the following organizations for their recognition of my work: the Career Enhancement Fellowship Award, Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; the American Council of Learned Societies Frederick Burkhardt Fellowship (at the Huntington Library); and the UCLA Gold Shield Faculty Prize for Academic Excellence, an annual award offered by an inspiring group of women alums. Later in the project, as I finished, I received support from two additional awards. My inspiring co-principal investigators and research partners on “Critical Mission Studies at California’s Crossroads,” funded by the University of California Multicampus Research Programs and Initiatives, provided invaluable insight into the experiences of Native Americans during colonization and forced conversion. During the final year (2021–22), as I awaited publication, I was fortunate to be the Terra Foundation Visiting Professor of American Art at the University of Oxford, affiliated with History of Art and Worcester College. I enjoyed support from UCLA along the way, especially from the Deans of the Humanities and Social Sciences, David Schaberg and Darnell Hunt, as well as Interim Dean Laura Gómez.
Several talented graduate students provided invaluable research assistance over the years, including Yve Chavez, Julia McHugh, JoAnna Reyes Walton, Carlos Rivas, and Miranda Saylor. Miranda valiantly helped with the image permissions at the height of the pandemic when institutions in Mexico were shut down. I am grateful to those individuals and organizations in Mexico, Spain, New York, New Mexico, and elsewhere that granted me permission to publish images.
Finally, I extend my thanks to family members, friends, and colleagues whose love and support sustained me. My son, Joe, now a young adult, grew up with this project. Thank you for everything that you are and for all our adventures, intellectual debates, and shared love of philosophy, politics, history, and music. Being your mother has been a journey of healing. My sister, Jessica Doğantemur, was always there, doing the heavy work of caring for our mother, and serving as the perfect travel companion and interlocutor. My students at UCLA over the years, as well as at Stanford and Oxford, provided inspiration, challenge, and sustenance. As Paulo Freire reminds us, to educate is an act of love. I am blessed by wonderful colleagues at UCLA. I learned a great deal from years of friendship with the visionary Chon Noriega. Colleagues in Chicana/o studies, Alicia Gaspar de Alba and Alma López, provided good food, good company, and lively exchanges in their beautiful home in LA, Casa Nepantla. I was grateful to have a supportive department chair in Leisy Ábrego. With our adjacent offices in a corner of Dodd Hall, the “witches’ corner,” Sharon Gerstel was a steadfast friend and inspiring fellow single mother, with whom I share not only academic interests but our common challenges as parents. I cherish my escapades with retired colleague Cecelia Klein, authority on Aztec art and gender, including trips to Mexico and Cuba, shopping expeditions, restaurant hopping, and intense conversations about our work. Maite Álvarez of the Getty Museum and I have been friends for decades and coauthors for some years; I strive to emulate her graciousness and creativity. I am delighted to have worked closely with Emily Engel for the last five years on the founding of Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture , the first peer-reviewed journal in our field. Ilona Katzew of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art has been both a brilliant and inspiring colleague and a caring friend. I’ve found our collaborative efforts on conferences and seminars to be supremely stimulating. Felipe Mirabal is an old friend (and former student) who knows more about colonial New Mexico than anyone in the world, and I treasure our exchanges and travels together. I finished this project as I began working closely with artist Judithe Hernández, whose own images of women provided visions of how our ancestors survived the past in Mexico—living and thriving as they confronted conquest, conversion, revolution, and migration.
My UCLA colleague Maite Zubiaurre recommended Vanderbilt University Press; I am thankful for her wise suggestion and to everyone who supported my manuscript through peer review and production: Zachary S. Gresham, Acquisitions Editor; Joell Smith-Borne, Managing Production Editor; Brittany Johnson, Grants Coordinator; and Jenna Phillips, Scholarly Marketing and E-Book Manager. I thank Kim Giambattisto, Senior Production Editor at Westchester Publishing Services, who oversaw copy edits and finalized the images, as well as copy editor Lisa Sinclair.
Colleagues and friends at the University of Oxford made the final stages of edits, proofs, and awaiting publication more enjoyable. I extend my gratitude to Chair of the Department of History of Art Geoffrey Batchen and to Giuseppe Marcocci, convener of the Iberian History Seminar. I was fortunate to find comadres in the UK, including the colonial historian Karoline (“Kaja”) Cook and dear friend Rocio Van Doren, the other Latina living in the village of Islip in Oxfordshire, birthplace of Edward the Confessor. My visionary friend Yannick Ndoinyo made tangible to me the importance of decolonizing our world through his inspiring political work and research.
I write these acknowledgments as we enter the third year of the COVID-19 pandemic. I’ve had a lot of time during lockdown to think about the subject of this book and its connections to my antepasadas . I dedicate this study to them, to the womxn in my family—past, present, and future–in honor of our powers to survive, thrive, adapt, and transcend as we nurture (and nurtured) loving bonds and connections, making families.
INTRODUCTION
IN 2001 IN Santa Fe, New Mexico, outraged protesters attempted to shut down the exhibition Cyberarte at the Museum of International Folk Art. At issue was a photograph by queer Chicana artist Alma López of a woman posing as the Virgin of Guadalupe, clad in what protesters described as a “rose bikini” 1 ( figure I.1 ). Similar anger was unleashed at the 2001 opening of the exhibition The Road to Aztlán at the Los Angeles County