How do Early Modern objects shape identities, mediate relationships and produce meanings? This panel explores objects' agency in Early Modern Spain, centring how materiality shapes reality. The four interventions will focus on case studies to reflect on productivity, mediation and interpretation across practices of devotion and artistic exchange, followed by a roundtable discussion.
“And Then They Wear Them as Relics”. Relic Exchange and the Production of Sacred Meaning
Speaker: Bárbara Arango Serrano (RRCHU Fellow at Harvard University - Committee of the Study of Religion and Committee of Medieval Studies; Literary Studies, Universidad Complutense de Madrid)
Tact, mediation, and displacement configure the sacred meanings of relics, always in a liminal position that defies the distinction between the material and the transcendental. At the interstice of the sixteenth century, the Castilian beata María de Santo Domingo fashioned a distinctive visionary performativity through her provocative use of costumes, jewellery, and other objects she wore as relics for sanctification, shaping her visual identity. This paper explores the reciprocal relationship between objects and the production of sacred meaning. We will examine how matter acquired relic status through contact with the beata, while her religious identity was consolidated by those relic-related practices and the acquisition of a rib of Saint Catherine of Siena, sent directly to her from Rome.
Turning the Page on Model-Copy: The Isabella Breviary and Hispano-Flemish Painting
Speaker: Alina Huselid (History of Art and Architecture, Harvard University)
In 1985, Michael Baxandall challenged the art historical use of “influence” for its “wrong-headed grammatical prejudice about who is the agent and who the patient.” The same assumption permeates model-copy studies, which often become a search for origins. This paper turns towards the “copies.” I connect three illuminations from the Isabella Breviary (the Temptation of Christ, the Birth of St. John the Baptist, and St. Ursula) to three visually similar Hispano-Flemish paintings, and propose that copying can be a form of agency. These works do not form relationships of simple reproduction, but rather ones of strategic borrowing, adapting, and transforming, in service of conveying new meanings.
Babies Flipping the Bird? Painted Amulet Magic in Early Modern Spain
Speaker: Santiago Olábarri Oriol (History of Art and Architecture, Harvard University)
A primary concern for children’s health in early modern Spain was the evil eye: a condition caused by the exuding of noxious vapours from the eyes of (ill-intentioned) adults. With varying degrees of conviction, theologians, physicians and lexicographers discussed this condition, proposing fragrances, fumigations, and amulets as prophylaxis. This talk will explore the most common of these: fist-shaped amulets with sexual connotations called higas. Examining a wealth of primary sources, I will build on current literature to expand on the strategies by which they were thought to function. Furthermore, I will demonstrate how the function of these amulets was reflected in courtly child portraiture at the turn of the seventeenth century. I argue that higas’ prophylactic potential—their ability to distract, absorb, and reflect a toxic gaze—was registered and activated by artists in paint. These portraits begin to appear as amuletic objects in their own right, protecting sitters in effigy
Objects in Motion: The Social Lives of Clothing in Sixteenth-Century Havana
Speaker: Nieves Rico Parreño (RCCHU Fellow at Harvard University - ALARI: Afro-Latin American Research Institute; Humanistic Research, Universidad de Oviedo)
How did clothing mediate social relationships in sixteenth-century Havana? Drawing on notarial records from 1578 to 1587, this presentation explores three contexts in which textiles acquired meanings beyond their practical use: garments and household linens included in a marriage dowry, clothing and jewellery bequeathed to an image of the Virgin, and garments pawned or used as collateral for debts involving soldiers. Through these case studies, it examines how material objects participated in the negotiation of family relationships, religious devotion, and economic obligations, highlighting the role of clothing in shaping social practices and identities within the early modern Spanish Atlantic.
Organizers: Bárbara Arango Serrano and Nieves Rico Parreño
Scientific Coordination and Design: Bárbara Arango Serrano
Moderator: Pablo Gutierrez de León Juberías (ASPR Junior Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Anthropology, Harvard University)
LOCATION:RCCHU Conference Romm STATUS:CONFIRMED DTSTART:20261113T230000Z DTEND:20261114T045859Z END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR