Transforming Saints: From Spain to New Spain (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780826504715)

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 Villaser 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 Lez in 2001 and Alma Lez 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 Ib僘, Juan Correa, Cristal de Villalpando, and Miguel Cabrera.

Author: Charlene Villaser Black
ISBN-10: 082650471X
ISBN-13: 9780826504715
Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press
Language: English
Published: 07/29/2022
Pages: 396
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.53lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.88d