Pre/Early Modern Forum: Saints and Dolls: The Material Lives of Sacred Images in Early Modern Spain

Yale Pre/Early Modern Forum 

presents

Saints and Dolls: The Material Lives of Sacred Images in Early Modern Spain

Lecture by Adam Jasienski, Associate Professor, Southern Methodist University

Monday, April 14th, 4:30 pm, Loria 351, 190 York Street, New Haven

Object Session, with Adam Jasienski, at Beinecke, April 14, 1:30-3:30 pm

For registration, send a request to gabriel.haberberg@yale.edu

With generous support from:

History of Art and Program in Early Modern Studies, Yale University

Imagine the following scenario: in 1709 in a small town in Spain a figurine is danced across a table, provoking mirth. It is given food and drink, and spoken to. And finally, perhaps handled too roughly, it breaks. Although the figurine was treated like an

object for play, like a doll, it was, in actuality, a religious statuette. And its breaking, though likely accidental, thus became an act of iconoclasm, falling under the purview of the Holy Office of the Inquisition. The Inquisition’s archives are replete with cases where iconoclasm and play — saints and dolls — overlap. Thinking through such moments, when damage reveals the materials, techniques of making, and internal structures of images, allows for a reflection on the boundaries of religious imagery in the early modern Hispanic world, on when it becomes or ceases to be sacred, and, indeed, on what it even is.

Adam Jasienski is Associate Professor of Art History in the Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University.