Description
This symposium focuses on the spaces and objects that structured religious life for Spanish Habsburg women— among them queens, regents, widows, infantas, and nuns—and reinforced their positions as central figures in a global empire.
Throughout the period of Habsburg rule in Spain (1516-1700), women members of the family founded convents allied with the court, commissioned oratories destined for dynastic rites, and fomented devotion to miracle-working images and to the cults of newly canonized saints. The symposium will explore how Habsburg women thus engaged the culture of material circulation fueled by global expansion and Catholic evangelization, whether through devotional books and prints from the Spanish Netherlands, crosses made of gold from viceregal Peru, or holy relics from Christian Japan. It will also examine the ways in which Habsburg women employed sacred material culture in defining and reconstituting their roles at court, in the convent, and in public discourse. Through the exchange of luxury goods and the ritual performance of piety, the dynasty’s women mediated the linguistic, cultural, and geographical boundaries that often separated them.
This event will include lectures by internationally renowned specialists as well as a collection presentation designed for students and scholars featuring sixteenth- and seventeenth-century books and prints from the Newberry Library’s collections.
Co-organized by the research project AGENART, La agencia artística de las mujeres de la Casa de Austria, 1532-1700. Sponsored by Carole Levin.
With the collaboration of The Art Institute of Chicago and the Instituto Cervantes Chicago.
Registration Information
This event will be free and open to the public, but space is limited and registration in advance will be required. A registration link will be available closer to the date of the symposium.
Schedule
Thursday, April 17
1-1:30 pm Coffee and Welcome
1:30-3 pm Session I: Religious Patronage and Habsburg Women
Chair: Elizabeth Neary (Newberry Library)
Laura Bass (Brown University): “Instructing a French Queen: Local Knowledge and Royal Devotion in Lope de Vega's Virgen de la Almudena for Isabel de Borbón”
Walter Melion (Emory University): “Isabella Clara Eugenia as Progenitor of Petrus Bivero, S.J.’s Sacrum oratorium and Sacrum sanctuarium of 1634”
Marina Sánchez Montero (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid): “A Transnational Approach to Mariana of Austria’s Artistic and Religious Patronage in the Court of Madrid”
3-3:15 pm Break
3:15-4:45pm Session II: The Descalzas Reales and Sacred Space
Chair: Silvia Mitchell (Purdue University)
Rosilie Hernández (University of Illinois Chicago): “Mirrors, Self-Portraits, and Visionary Exemplarity: An Analysis of the Guadalupe Chapel, Royal Discalced Convent, Madrid”
Erin Giffin (Hamilton College): “The Casita de Nazaret at the Descalzas Reales, Madrid: A Habsburg Whodunit”
Cécile Vincent-Cassy (Cergy Paris Université): “Marian Cult and Votive Offering. The ‘Portrait’ of the Virgen de los Desamparados of Valencia by Tomás Yepes (1644) in the Convent of the Descalzas Reales, Madrid”
6-7:30 pm Keynote Conversation and Reception at the Instituto Cervantes
Speakers:
María Cruz de Carlos Varona (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid)
Carole Levin (University of Nebraska-Lincoln)
Tanya Tiffany (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee)
Merry Wiesner-Hanks (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee)
Friday, April 18
9:30-11am Session III: Ritual Objects and Empire
Chair: Sheryl Reiss (Newberry Library)
María Cruz de Carlos Varona (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid): “Habsburg Women and Pan-European Images and Cults: the Case of the Nine Feasts of the Virgin”
Tanya Tiffany (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee): “Sor Margarita de la Cruz’s Exercicios de devocion y oracion and Habsburg Piety”
Kate Holohan (Syracuse University Art Museum): “Catherine of Austria and her Featherwork Ecce Homo: Devotion in Mexico, Iberia, and Southeastern Africa”
11-11:15 am Break
11:15 am-12:15 pm: Collection Presentation
Click Here for Full Abstracts and Bios