Diego Velázquez's Early Paintings and the Culture of Seventeenth-Century Seville

Tanya J. Tiffany

Publish Date: 11/29/2012
Dimensions: 8 x 10
Page Count: 256 pages

Illustrations:

Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-271-05379-0

Hardcover Edition: $79.95Add to Cart

“Tanya Tiffany’s mastery of the documentary, historical, theological, ethnographic, and literary material of Africans in Seville is meticulous, broad, and thorough. This is a significant contribution to the field. It offers new interpretations and advances theoretical discussions of race, gender, iconographical description, intellectual life, and Velázquez’s historical stature in important paintings.” —Gridley McKim-Smith, Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities, Bryn Mawr College

“Drawing upon a wealth of new sources, Tanya Tiffany has managed to reconstruct the social, intellectual, and religious world of Seville as it was when Spain’s most celebrated seventeenth-century artist lived there. Especially revealing are her detailed readings of his early works, his deservedly celebrated bodegones among them. The result is a strikingly original and wholly convincing understanding of this still poorly understood phase in Velázquez’s artistic career. This handsome volume deserves a place on the bookshelf of anyone seriously interested in Velázquez, let alone the art and history of Golden Age Spain.” —Richard Kagan, The Johns Hopkins University

“Tanya Tiffany’s book is by far the most in-depth examination to date of Diego Velázquez’s early paintings in relation to the culture and society of early seventeenth-century Seville, Spain’s most cosmopolitan city in that period. Combining rigorous research and meticulous attention to pictorial composition, the chapters offer sustained, original analysis of works from all the major genres Velázquez cultivated in his formative years. Tiffany brings a commanding range of textual sources to bear on her analysis, including hagiographies, poetry, devotional manuals, and conduct books. The breadth of visual sources examined alongside the major paintings—prints, polychrome sculptures, and ephemeral paintings—is also impressive, transcending anachronistic divisions between popular and elite art in the early modern period. Throughout, Tiffany reconstructs as much as possible the original circumstances of Velázquez’s production. The result is a richly illuminating book about the social and cultural life of Velázquez’s early paintings and the world to which they belonged. It will thus be indispensable to students and scholars not only of art history but also of early modern Spanish culture more broadly.” —Laura R. Bass, Tulane University

Diego Velázquez spent his formative years at the center of artistic life in seventeenth-century Seville, a gateway to the New World characterized by intellectual debate, religious fervor, and mounting ethnic tensions. Yet critics have often divorced the painter’s novel style and subject matter from the city’s unique pictorial and cultural traditions. In Diego Velázquez’s Early Paintings and the Culture of Seventeenth-Century Seville, Tanya J. Tiffany demonstrates that Velázquez’s works not only engaged Seville’s social practices but also raised issues of vital importance to seventeenth-century Sevillians. As a young artist, Velázquez contended with such essential questions as women’s place in society, the nature of artistic creativity, the role of religion in everyday life, and the incorporation of racial minorities into Christianity. This study offers close readings of individual paintings with regard to their historical framework, critical context, and early reception. Through this approach, Tiffany illuminates well-known masterpieces and also highlights the fluid boundaries between high art and popular forms of visual expression.

Tanya J. Tiffany is Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee.

Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Velázquez in Pacheco’s “Gilded Cage”

1 Devotion and Desire: The Immaculate Conception and Saint John

2 Portraiture and the “Virile Woman”: Madre Jerónima de la Fuente

3 A Bodegón and a Collector: The Waterseller of Seville

4 African Slaves and Christian Salvation: The Supper at Emmaus

5 The Lure of the Court

Notes

Selected Bibliography