Dr Francisco Montes, Female Power and Visual Culture in Viceregal America.

Abstract: This paper presents an overview of the findings in current research focusing on how the influence exerted by certain women in Spanish colonial society can be measured from the visual field. For this purpose, an extensive iconographic repertoire composed, among others, of casta paintings and sumptuous portraits of aristocrats, chieftains and nuns have been the most eloquent tools to analyze this phenomenon. However, there were other symbolic representations of female power, embodied by distant sovereigns and absent vicereines, which still need to reveal the multiplicity of hidden meanings.

About the speaker: Francisco Montes is Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Sevilla (Spain), where he also obtained his Ph.D. in Colonial Latin American Art. His research is primarily focused on artistic patronage, ritual festivals and the exchanges of images between Spain, Italy and the Iberian Americas during the viceregal period. Montes is the author of the books Sevilla Guadalupana. Arte, historia y devoción (2015) and Mecenazgo virreinal y patrocinio artístico. El ducado de Alburquerque en la Nueva España (2016). He also edited the volume Religiosidad andaluza en América. Repertorio iconográfico (2017). He is currently an editorial board member of Anuario de Estudios Americanos.

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.