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Semester 2

Golden Age Spain: Art, Politics and Religion (HIAR10124)

Subject

History of Art

College

CAHSS

Credits

20

Normal Year Taken

3

Delivery Session Year

2023/2024

Pre-requisites

Visiting students must have completed 3 History of Art courses at grade B or above, and please note that we will not consider History courses unrelated to Art, or practical Art courses, towards these pre-requisites. We will only consider University/College level courses. Please see Additional Restrictions below.

Course Summary

As an introduction to the most fertile period in Spanish art and culture, this course will focus on the interplay between visual culture and the political and religious conditions that prevailed in late sixteenth and seventeenth-century Spain. It will look at a broad spectrum of the visual arts, including painting, polychrome sculpture, liturgical artefacts, prints and drawings, and the built environment. The powerful influence of patrons will be a particular focus with close analysis of art within the specific devotional and ritual contexts of Spanish Catholicism and the broadest political concerns of the Spanish monarchy. Religious art and artefacts were made to stimulate devotion, wonder and identification; forms and meanings were inextricably linked to the beliefs and religious practices of the individuals or the constituencies for whom it was made. We will consider recent claims that the rediscovery of the role of the imagination in the exercise of faith led to the development of ingenious artistic solutions to the depiction of visionary experiences, to the representation of the unrepresentable and to making the sacred real (e.g. the expressive sculptures by Martínez Montañés, Gregorio Fernández, Pedro de Mena and others). Case studies will also include the works by El Greco and Zurbarán, that resulted in a meditative and didactic visual language. Although the focus is on Spain, one seminar will look at the complex processes by which Spanish religious art was exported, adapted and translated into new cultural contexts in Spains vice-regal territories in South America. Shifting the focus to the court of Madrid, an analysis of textual and visual material will contribute to an understanding of how artistic creativity poetry, theatre, music and the visual artswas often manipulated to serve specific political ends. At the same time the calculated projection of political ideals could also be accompanied by artistic expression of surprising unconventionality. The subject of patronage and the artists status at court will be discussed in a seminar dedicated to Velázquezs chef doeuvre Las Meninas. This painting in particular will stimulate critical discussion on different methodological approaches to Velázquez art.

Course Description

Introduction: Orthodoxy und creativity at El Escorial and in Toledo **Faith and imagination: Zurbaráns visionary paintings at the royal monastery of Sta. Maria de Guadalupe **Like a Virgin: the Immaculate Conception (session at the National Gallery of Scotland) **The sacred made real: hyperrealism in sculpture **Exporting sacred images to the new world of vice-regal Spain **Velázquez: artistic freedom and constraints **Art and propaganda: Philip IV, Olivares, Velázquez and the Retiro Palace **Velázquez Las Meninas: Vanity, death and salvation. **Painting and sculpture at the Hospital de la Caridad in Seville.

Assessment Information

Written Exam 50%, Coursework 50%, Practical Exam 0%

Additional Restrictions

Unless you are nominated on a History of Art exchange agreement, visiting students are only permitted to enrol in one 3rd year History of Art course each, per semester, before the start of the relevant semester’s welcome period – and spaces on each course are limited so cannot be guaranteed for any student. Enrolment in a second course from this group will depend on whether there are still spaces available in the January Welcome Period, and cannot be guaranteed. It is NOT appropriate for students to contact staff within this subject area to ask for an exception to be made; all enquiries to enrol in these courses must be made through the CAHSS Visiting Student Office. This is due to the extremely limited number of spaces available in this very popular subject area.

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