Just some very quick housekeeping up top. During the session, during the trophy presentation, please do keep videos off and microphones muted.
And once we start the discussion, I invite you to turn on your videos, in the interest of sharing body language and responding to each other.
It's a real honour to introduce Charlene Villaseñor Black
the Terra Foundation visiting professor of American Art at Oxford University for this academic year.
Charlene is a professor of Art History in Chicano Studies at UCLA.
She's also the editor of Aztlán journal Chicano Studies and the founding editor in chief of Latin American and Latin X Visual Culture,
which is published by U.S. Press. She publishes on a range of topics related to the early modern Iberian world and contemporary Latin American art.
Most recent books include Renaissance Futurities Science, Art, Invention, published in 2019.
Knowledge for Justice and Ethnic Studies Reader also published in 2019, the new 2020 edition of the Chicano Studies Reader,
and she also co-edited the volume Autobiography without Apology: The Personal Essay in Latino Studies. In the coming year,
There is lots of exciting coming out as well,
so keep an eye out for Charlene's monograph Transforming Saints: From Spain to New Spain,
published by Vanderbilt University Press in 2022 and her co-edited volume Decolonising Art History to be published by 2022.
And finally, The Artist as Eyewitness: Antonio Bernal Papers, 1884-2019.
Charlene has been awarded for her teaching at UCLA and held many grants from foundations including the Terra,
Fulbright, Mellon, Borchard, Terra, and Woodrow Wilson Foundations, to name just a few.
Finally, in and very exciting way, Charlene was recently awarded an exhibition grant from the Getty Foundation for her upcoming show and book,
which will be co-authored by Dr. Maite Álvarez and titled Verdant Worlds: Art and Sustainability across the Cosmos.
Today, we have the great pleasure of hearing Charlene paper titled, Sacred Art and Censorship in the Hispanic World:
Mary's Lactating Breast. So please take it away. [PROF. CHARLENE VILLASEÑOR BLACK]: Thank you so much.
In 2001, Catholic demonstrators assembled outside the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to protest the opening of the exhibition.
The Road to Aztlan: Art from a Mythic Homeland.
They condemned a painting of the Mexican Virgin of Guadalupe cast as the pre-Columbian goddess, Coatlicue (?), demanding its removal.
The work in question was by pioneering Chicana Mexican-American artist Yolanda Lopez, created between 1981 and 88,
by superimposing the image of an actual Aztec statue from Coxcatlán, Puebla over the Virgin's radiant mandorla.
Lopez replaced the demure Madonna of the original with the ferocious figure of Coatlicue garbed in serpent skirt with clawed feet and exposed breasts.
Shorthand references to the starry blue cape, brocaded gown and crescent moon make the original iconographic source clear.
Lopez's transformation of this powerful symbol of Mexican and Mexican-American
identity was another in a long line of her revisions of the traditional icon.
So, for example, this very famous triptych of pastels or this self-portrait here? IMAGE REF
An anonymous caller to the museum who simply identified herself as being from Orange County explained the problem with the image,
which she had seen in the museum's exhibition brochure, and she explained this to LACMA curator Virginia Fields.
She was offended by Lopez's portrayal of exposed breasts.
This quote, ‘pagan idol’ unquote meant to represent the Virgin Mary.
This is a quotation. ‘My 15-year-old son could have seen those breasts’. Fields, recalled the woman exclaiming.
The caller's connexion to the protesters who gathered in front of the museum is unknown.
The demonstrators were Roman Catholic Guadalupanas(?),
members of a devotional group dedicated to the virgin of Guadalupe, who carried banners proclaiming ‘Stop Catholic bashing’.
Fields recalled that after the protests appeared on the nightly local news,
the demonstrators disappeared, Lopez's image remained on display until the show closed.
This protest, another similar one, such as the 2001 controversy over Lopez's Our Lady in Santa Fe,
New Mexico, seems symptomatic of the so-called culture wars of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
But disputes over the depiction of the Virgin Mary have a long history in the Iberian world.
These 21st century controversies, in fact, highlight two major issues that have traditionally provoked attempts at censorship
in the Hispanic world. Number one: the humanisation of sacred female bodies,
And two: fears of indigenous influences infiltrating Catholic cults.
My talk today focuses on the first, in a case study of tensions around representations of the Virgin Mary as a lactating
mother created after the Council of Trent convened from 1545 to 1563 and into the 17th century in Spain.
Although occurring hundreds of years earlier,
the case of early modern Mary predicts with surprising accuracy the issues likely to provoke protests today.
How did early modern artists react to church and inquisition censorship in the case of the Madonna?
How did their ingenious responses demonstrate the productive nature of censorship?
Let us begin by considering the power of the image in 16th and 17th century Europe.
This was the era of the Protestant and Catholic Reformation, a time of religious conflict and reform.
Widespread censorship and even iconoclasm,
while major doctrinal differences and church corruption lay at the heart of the Protestant Catholic dispute.
The role of sacred imagery was also a point of contention. In December 1563 Catholic delegates at the Council of Trent,
convened in response to the Protestant Reformation, directed their attention to this issue.
They validated the importance of religious art in worship,
Then, Tridentine reformers issued guidelines dictating the doctrinally correct depiction of major Christian narrative and devotional scenes.
No longer were artists allowed creative licence in rendering sacred subjects, or so it would seem.
In Spain, in its empire, censorship of the visual arts also came under the purview of the Inquisition.
In fact, the holy office hired artists as sacred art inspectors or censors. Two lengthy texts.
Documenting this practise have come down to us. The first, by Francisco Pacheco, named [INAUDIBLE] or ‘Sacred Art Censor’, in 1603.
is The Art of Painting, which dates from the first third of the 17th century.
A second text: The Christian Painter by inquisition censor Friar Juan Interián de Ayala, dates to 1730.
In addition, I have located a number of other texts that address the correct depiction of religious imagery,
documents and even drawings confiscated by the Inquisition, as well as a number of legal cases brought by the Inquisition against artists.
While, art historians of the 21st century tend to find artistic censorship abhorrent.
One can also argue that it testifies to the power of the image.
This was precisely the argument of the Inquisition censors. Painters should be regarded as preachers.
Their sacred images books for the unlettered, Pacheco proclaimed, because the visual arts were more persuasive and effective than mere words.
Indeed, the Catholic Church recognised that sacred imagery was particularly influential,
its power enhanced amongst the largely unlettered population and because it was publicly accessible in churches.
More recent theorising of censorship is also of interest to me, particularly that of Judith Butler in Excitable Speech.
Butler suggests the productive nature of censorship, whether explicit or implicit,
and like her, I'm interested in how people respond to prohibition and surveillance.
Because such responses are performative, that is enacted and repeated over time.
They have the potential to disrupt even becoming, in her words, political contestation and reformulation.
Thus, speech acts or in my mind, artworks can become insurrectionary.
How, in fact, did artists and viewers in the Spanish empire respond to the chilling effects of inquisition censorship?
How do church guidelines for religious imagery compare to actual artistic responses in the Hispanic world?
Or to ask it another way: How did Catholic artists and viewers, both in the early modern era and today use religious imagery to their own ends?
In other words, do we see evidence of the dual nature of power, as articulated by Michel Foucault?
Indications of not only its ability to control, but also its flip side its productive potential?
Let us begin our enquiry into these matters by looking at the controversy over the Lactating Virgin and early modern Spain.
This represents a particularly interesting case because as we'll see, it demonstrates artist's inventiveness in the face of attempts at control.
In addition, the Virgen de la Leche controversy, reveals that the exposure of Mary's body,
and especially her breasts, was a major concern in the 17th century, just as today.
Now, this artistic debate must be contextualised within another dispute of the time over maternal breast feeding,
which was a topic of great concern on the part of Protestant and Catholic reformers, humanist philosophers, moralists and medical doctors.
Maternal lactation advocates included luminaries, such as as Martin Luther Erasmus, Thomas More, Leon Battista Alberti
as well as Spanish humanist and religious reformers Juan Luis Vives and Friar Luis de León.
Nursing was natural, they all argued, and therefore good for mothers, children and society.
Vives opined that lactation deepened as a mother child bond. Mothers who did not nurse their children were accused of vanity, laziness, indifference.
Friar Antonio de Guevara offered his opinion that quote ‘Women think it worthy to conceive children but
a sin to take them in their arms’ unquote. Upper class Spanish women preferred their little dogs,
which they proudly held in their arms as status symbols to their own children.
He offered. Breastfeeding advocates most vehement criticisms are aimed at mothers who sent their children to be raised by wet nurses,
in the words of Friar Luis de Leon. These mothers were quote ‘so pitiless as to entrust to a stranger the fruit of their womb.’ Unquote.
Vives warned of the dangers of ingesting the milk of strangers and cautioned against bad habits imbibed from morally suspect wet nurses.
In his comportment manual, The Perfect Wife, Leon noted that, quote ‘The Perfect Wife cannot indeed be perfect unless she herself suckles her children.’
Then, as now, breastfeeding was thought to deepen the mother child bond. According to Spanish commentators,
nursing mothers were more likely to carry their children in their arms,
cooing to them, more likely to witness their children's first laughter and first words, and more inclined to kiss and hug their offspring.
Additionally, because babies were thought to absorb character traits from their milk source,
animal milk was considered unsuitable for human consumption.
One child after being raised on pig’s milk threw himself into the mud like a pig, explained Vives.
But maternal lactation advocates one final, powerful weapon.
They urged women to imitate the Virgin Mary, venerated throughout the Catholic world as the ideal mother.
She had breastfed the infant Jesus herself and other mothers should follow her example.
In fact, Mary was such a devoted mother, according, Carmelite friar and author José de Jesus Maria,
that she neglected herself in favour of caring for her holy child.
Quote ‘Many times the Virgin forgot to give her body its necessary sustenance,
even going without sleeping some nights’ unquote so focussed on her holy child was she.
Given the importance of visual images as models for behaviour in Catholic cultures,
one would thus expect to find numerous depictions of a lactating virgin in early modern Spanish art.
Such images could have provided inspiration to earthly mothers.
But in the case of the lactating Virgin, the role of religious imagery as didactic model surrendered to another more urgent
dictum in Spain: the prohibition against nudity in art after the Council of Trent.
The Tridentine Council have prohibited lascivious things in books and in the opinion of Pacheco and others such as Joannes Molanus(?).
Quote ’How much more they should be forbidden in pictures and even more in sacred images’ unquote.
According to Inquisition censor, Interian, renderings of Mary,
the mother of God with breasts exposed were no better than representations of classical goddesses.
How did Hispanic artists act in the face of such restrictions? As we will see with great creativity.
But allow me to back up for a moment.
The image of Maria Lactans was relatively new in the Iberian Peninsula, although a couple of manuscript examples can be dated to the 12th century.
The subject didn't begin to appear with frequency in Hispanic art until the late 14th century, reaching a peak in the 15th and early 16th.
As we see in these images, so these, of course, are from the 14th century. IMAGE REFS
And here are some. 15TH century examples here. IMAGE REFS
After the Council of Trent, the subject declined in frequency, surely, in response to the nudity ban.
Additionally, artists circumvented the prohibition of nudity as lascivious by modifying the traditional lactation
Scene. As a replacement for the baby Jesus with mouth hungrily latched onto his mother's exposed breast.
They depicted him with his hand on her tunic or reaching inside it.
An ingenious scene that made the idea of lactation clear, but without the breasts displayed. In the 1560s, Luis De Morales,
executed several touching versions of the scene. I'm showing you two of them here. IMAGE REFS
These variations attained great popularity. In the 17th century Bartolomé Esteban Murillo depicted at least 14 different versions. In them, IMAGE REF
The baby conspicuously places his hand on her breast, as we see in the images on the left or on the neckline of her garment.
As in the third image or both as we see and what I think is a rather awkward gesture in that last painting.
Murillo’s so-called Santiago Madonna, IMAGE REF
named after the patron Marquis de Santiago and commissioned for his family chapel in Madrid, is a particularly magical example.
And I show, you the preparatory sketch has also been preserved.
Other artists employed similar strategies. So here's an example by Francisco de Zurbarán. IMAGE REF
In another scene, Zurbarán depicts the moment before the actual feeding. IMAGE REF
But Mary is modestly covered in a gown with long slits to facilitate access.
A historically accurate depiction of nursing wear and a type still in use by women today.
The scene is intimate, an idealised vision of mother child bonding, with the added
touching detail of the baby Jesus petting his mother's breast as he prepares to suckle.
And he's doing this to hasten the milk flow. So, notice his right hand reaching for the other opening in the bodice.
Other artists came up with their own ingenious inventions.
The painter and Carthusian brother Juan Sánchez Cotán represented Mary feeding Jesus from a cup, instead of nursing him. IMAGE REF
Inquisition pronouncements notwithstanding, though, numerous Spaniards professed heartfelt devotion to Mary's breasts,
breastmilk and womb, her bosoms continue to be the subject of sermons, devotional texts and even a handful of paintings such as this one.
Francisco de Zurbarán’s Rest on the Flight into Egypt from 1659. IMAGE REF
This tender, warm portrayal describes a profound mother child bonding fostered by breastfeeding, as described in Spanish texts.
Mother and son gaze lovingly into each other's eyes as the baby firmly latches onto her exposed breast, nipple
partially visible. Zurbarán re-created a textbook example of the V Hold,
the most frequently depicted nursing technique in Spanish art and one that
traditionally enjoys popularity amongst nursing women in the Hispanic world,
as opposed to opposed to the C Hold, which uses the thumb and index finger.
This painting by Alonso Cano can be likened to the previous Zurbarán example IMAGE REF
in that it also depicts a type of nursing where worn by breastfeeding mothers.
In contrast to Zurbarán’s more modest approach here, Cano uncovers most of Mary's breast, giving us a clear view of her nipple at the ready.
The question of patronage springs to mind: where were these pictures and who commissioned them?
Because this painting entered the city's museum around 1836-37.
As a result of the Spanish government seizure of ecclesiastical property, it undoubtedly came from a religious establishment.
Scholars have suggested two possibilities: The convent of (?) Carmelites in [INAUDIBLE],
or more likely, the convent of del Carmen in Guadalajara.
These are both male orders, male religious orders.
I think what is important here is that the painting was not on public display where it would have been subject to potential censorship.
As these various images have shown, Spanish artist's responses to Inquisition guidelines reveal a variety of inventive reactions.
Artists created new compositions and introduced novel details, demonstrating productive responses to the chilling effects of censorship.
And despite the nudity prohibitions of Pacheco, Interian and others, on some occasions, artists simply ignored the church's guidance.
But allow me to complicate the issue at hand.
What about these images of saints experiencing visions wherein they drink Mary's breast milk, so notably Saint Augustine and Bernard. In both scenes,
Mary's breast is exposed as she aims streaming milk across the room to the Saints open mouths.
Why were these images allowed? Three possible explanations come to mind.
Both were commissioned for male monastic settings, so once again not on public display, but instead for learned eyes.
Furthermore, they both refer to visions, and we could understand the lactation here as allegorical or metaphorical, not literal.
St. Augustine has a vision in which he is poised between Christ's sacrificial blood and Mary's healing breastmilk.
St. Bernard's vision has been read as an allegory about Mary as a source of his wisdom and eloquence.
What seems additionally notable is that no mouth touches Mary's breast.
These images thus suggest the Madonna's increasing untouchability in early modern Hispanic culture.
In fact, as the Virgen de la Leche scenes became less frequent in early modern Spanish art,
artists produced more depictions of Mary not as the perfect mother, but as the immaculate conception, the untouchable, unsullied embodiment of purity.
These two roles earthly, mother and pure stainless paragon, constitute the central paradox of Mary devotion.
17TH century paintings of the immaculate conception, particularly those painted by Murillo,
are considered the best of the genre attempted to suggest the abstract idea of Mary's purity and extraordinary status through her chaste beauty.
Murillo’s purest, Immaculate Conception of the Venerable Priests is a perfect example. IMAGE REF
These scenes, however,
are often populated by countless infants in the form of an Angelitos, little angels, who gather at Mary's feet as if emerging from beneath her gown,
suggesting that attempts to suppress Mary's materiality to use Julia Christeva’s term,
denoting fantasies about motherhood and maternity were not entirely successful.
And also note her hand gesture, which seems to allude to the V hold.
In 17th century Spain, lactation imagery may have also engaged class issues that complicated Mary's role in the discourse.
In several paintings that take poverty and begging as their themes, Murillo included breastfeeding women
wearing tattered clothing and tending to ill kept children in prominent positions in his
San Diego de Alcala feeding the Poor. We behold on the left a poor woman toddler in arms with breast exposed. (IMAGE REF)
In his St. Thomas of Villanueva giving alms, a poor family. IMAGE REF)
Of nursing mother, baby and older son appears on the right.
The tops of the mother's breasts are visible, and her older son, who gleefully holds up a coin,
is dressed in rags so tattered that his genitals show a sight rarely depicted
by Spanish artists who routinely covered even Angelitos with strategic draperies.
Such scenes indicate maternal lactation in association with poverty and carnality.
Indeed, Spanish texts confirm that breastfeeding engaged class issues. While arguing that all mothers should nurse their own children.
Juan Alonso, [INAUDIBLE] of the medical faculty of the University of Alcalá de Henares,
they are not as exempted royalty and aristocracy from his advice since quote,
‘it is clear that there have to be differences between royal persons and their favourites’ unquote.
Now, the question of what happened to these images in new Spain is a really important one.
I'm happy to discuss that after there's a really unique development and surprising development that happens in New Spain.
But I was unable to squeeze it all into this short talk today.
The case of lactating virgin imagery thus testifies to the productive nature of
censorship and the power of artists and patrons to resist attempts to control
Spanish artists creatively circumvented nudity prohibitions substituted in the scene of Christ reaching or the breast for the actual breastfeeding.
In some instances, though, artists simply disregarded the Inquisitions guidelines and depicted nudity.
Even Mary's naked breasts. Do these acts indicate resistance to authority?
Or are they simply reflections of the heartfelt devotion felt by many for Mary?
Is differing patronage the likely explanation? Although commissioning documents are, for the most part, missing from the historical record,
I wonder if the depictions with exposed breasts were intended for members of religious orders and not everyday people.
In any case, my guess is that in the end, it must have been difficult to reconcile images of the breastfeeding Madonna,
which held up to the beholder the promise, the most profound comfort and security humanly imaginable, with Trendentine calls to ban lascivious things.
And this brings me back to today's starting point.
Are attempts to control the visual arts any more successful today than they were in the era of the Inquisition?
It seems not. Artists and viewers in the Hispanic world, both historically and now demonstrate resistance to such censorship.
In fact, the actions of artists, patrons and devotees seem to present proof of the productive nature of suppression.
Foucault was right. Power is a quote ‘complex and unstable process’ and discourse in our case today,
religious art quote ‘can be both an instrument and an effective power and also a hindrance a stumbling block,
a point of resistance and a starting point for an opposing strategy’ unquote.
I'm also struck by the remarkable continuity from the 16th century to the present
day in the types of issues likely to provoke censorship of religious art,
namely concerns about humanising the female holy person's body and concerns about
indigenous influences infiltrating Catholic cults. While occurring centuries apart,
The 2001 controversies in Los Angeles and Santa Fe are not so different from those in the early modern Iberian world.
Trepidation about the power of images to harm religious belief or dishonour the holy personages represented has a long history.
One wonders if greater awareness of this history might lessen current apprehension about the power of art.
But what if we look beyond protesters claims that holding figures are being dishonoured or paganized, and attempt to understand artists' objectives?
A different interpretation emerges.
The case at hand of the lactating Mary represents attempts to humanise the holy figure in order to heighten viewer identification.
In other words, beneath public protests and Inquisition pronouncement, lies fear of humanising the Madonna.
Does this not camouflage in reality, a fear of our own humanity, and more specifically, a fear of recognising women's full humanity?
In response, I close today by quoting Chicana writer Sandra Cisneros,
whose essay Guadalupe The Sex Goddess inspired Alma Lopez to create her controversial image of Our Lady. ‘Blessed Art,
Thou, Lupe, and therefore blessed am I. Thank you.
[ANNA ESPINOLA LYNN]: Well, Charlene, thank you so much for just a really brilliant and thought-provoking talk. Incredibly rich. I have many questions, but I will use my chair's prerogative to kick off our Q&A with a kind of more reflective question.
I was really, really interested in your account, on the one hand of inquisitorial censorship of nudity,
particularly the nudity of the Virgin, alongside this kind of evasion or inversion of censors by artists or patrons or viewers of art.
And so, to me, I think that that relationship you're talking about really cuts to the quick of a motivating tension in Art History,
which is this kind of dialectic between tradition and transformation and between convention and creativity.
And so, my question is twofold. First, I'm curious how and why you decided.
I mean, there's some kind of obvious historical circumstances that incur using frameworks of censorship in response to censorship.
But I'm curious kind of what how you arrived at that framework of thinking about censorship and then response?
And then maybe if you would like to share any reflections on the relationship between
the censorship of imagery and then visual conventions and then [INAUDIBLE]
Thank you so much again.
[PROF. CHARLENE VILLASENOR BLACK] Thank you. That's a great question. I love how you framed it as this tension that's really central to art history, to what we do.
I think I became interested in censorship because we have these great texts that lay out how you should depict things.
But I kept noticing artists who weren't following the rules, and I'm also interested in agency.
I'm interested in people's agency and I'm also I'm interested in people who don't do what they're supposed to do,
which like, tells, tells you something about me. So, I'm interested in people who are refusing to follow the Inquisition guidelines,
and I actually think it's been extremely important for my work on New Spain.
And this is part of the book that's coming out in July. And part of what I'm looking at in New Spain is in the context of forced conversion.
How do people indigenous people, for example, in New Spain, make religion their own?
So, I'm interested in in in agency and trying to see if we can recover any sense of agency.
[PROF. CHARLENE VILLASENOR BLACK] So that's the short version of. [ANNA ESPINOLA LYNN] That's brilliant, thank you.
I think that's something we can continue to think about in terms of production of these images,
but also, their interpretation of how we can glean moments of agency and historical archive that has that is very biased.
Mm-Hmm. Mm-Hmm. Well, I want to open up.
I mean, I have a backlog of questions here, but I'm eager to open up the floor and invite anybody by the question,
either to raise their hand to chime in or great right away.
First one - I saw [NAME] hand pop up.
[AUDIENCE] Thanks, Charlene. That was, yeah, fascinating. Fascinating talk.
Yeah. What wonderful kind of selection of artworks to think about.
I was wondering what your thoughts are of.
I mean, this is probably more of a like a methodological question, but.
And some of the implications of proposing these comparisons between a really contemporary kind of radical practice and,
you know, that’s art history, that one tends to like box in the 17th century Counter-Reformation.
You know, we have these kinds of received ideas and just how you feel,
I guess your own practise of working across these historical boundaries. It’s really stimulating and exciting to see it.
Hmm. Yeah, I just I just wondered what your reflections are and the risks or you know, how you negotiate this, this this kind of way of working.
[PROF. CHARLENE VILLASENOR BLACK]: OK, thank you that. That's a brilliant question. And it gets really to, I think, the heart of some of the issues in the talk.
I am interested in working trans-historically. I am interested in making those comparisons between the early, modern and contemporary moment.
And I think they began when I look back over my career.
They began as a way of making myself visible in my research as a Latina woman, so I think that was the original impetus that I had.
But I'm very interested in.
I don't believe in objective truth, so I believe that any time we're looking at the past, we're looking through our current lenses.
So, I, on the other hand, I don't want to invent things in the 17th century, right?
So, I am aware of what I'm thinking now and what the concerns and issues are of our current moment.
And I think that sensitises me to look for those things in the 17th century.
So, I try to balance, you know, Judith Butler's excitable speech or Foucault with what inquisition censors were actually saying,
what artists were actually doing. So, I think it's hard. I think the risk is that we deform the past, right?
But I think people claiming to be objective are probably doing that already.
So, I think if I make what I'm doing clear and open and I'm also open to the possibility that I may change my mind or make mistakes.
So yeah, and that dialogue. Dialogue as a scholar, is everything so.
[AUDIENCE]: Thank you. Brilliant.
[ANNA ESPINOLA LYNN]: Anybody have any? We've got another hand, whoever just put their hand up.
[AUDIENCE]: Thank you Charlene. So interesting, especially to those of us who don't know nearly enough about things across the Atlantic.
You'll know very well that the notion of Catholic reform you talked about the Inquisition and the whole Catholic reform with its missions.
It's confessors. And then the Inquisition is the kind of third
arm of this. Three arms - is much debated on the European side.
And I guess a generation ago,
the prevailing view was that it just transformed everything and there is still that view out there [INAUDIBLE] the book Tribunals of Countries,
you know, just basically says that was the transformative moment.
And Europe and in fact, Western culture has been in the grip of the Catholic Church, whether it knows it or not.
Since the 17th century, cutting across that, there’s a different historiography,
and I think it's much more fragmented, but it takes a form analogous to your approach to
these images a question is ahead about well. How effective is this inquisitorial process anyway?
And what do we find people actually doing when they make images or when they venerate them?
And one finds all sorts of inconsistencies with the rules. So, my question, my question, that was a comment.
But then my question to you is you did refer quite a lot of the Inquisition into what it said,
but could you send off a bit more about what it actually did? And if I can put it this way, your context?
[PROF. CHARLENE VILLASENOR BLACK]: OK, yeah, that's another that's another just brilliant question. And you're right that it is really it's impossible to generalise and we cannot.
I don't think we should overestimate the power of the Inquisition. And I think they actually have more power over text than they do over images.
OK. Yes, we have these censors who are, we have images that are confiscated, destroyed, changed.
I found expurgated hagiographies with images crossed out and things like that.
But we also find, particularly in New Spain, where the Inquisition is even less effective.
We also find these local responses. I'm trying to balance trying to keep in mind the local and specific as much as I love macro history,
but to keep in mind these local moments where we can actually document something concrete, right?
And so, I think that's the trick. I'm always thinking, like do I have enough examples that can add up to a generalisation here and in New Spain,
one could argue, well, the church is busier with conversion, maybe in the new world, but in new Spain,
the people simply are not following those guidelines, even though those texts are circulating there.
So, it's very interesting to me to do that comparison. I don't know if I answered your question, but if you had another thought.
[AUDIENCE]: You know what I meant, just a comment, I mean, insofar as there are, for example, letters back from bishops,
I think they come from New Spain as well as from other parts of the world in the aftermath of the 1563 decree on committees.
Insofar as they have been looked, at and a base, they’ve done a bit, they have quite a lot to say about things that bishops are worried about.
Bishops worry about all sorts of things, to the art historian,
it is quite striking that they are not so far as I know, I'm aware, really focussing.
They think maybe they've got other things to worry about, they’ve got heresies to be concerned about.
Hmm. And so, there's rather less interest.
I mean, you do find visitation comments on images being wrongly venerated that should be moved and put it proper places.
rather less than you might have expected, given the books, given the publications
that you mentioned on the actual content of pictures and apart from now famous cases of Caravaggio and Veronese(?),
I was not aware of many artists actually being hauled up before Inquisitors in Europe.
I mean, there are some interesting cases in new Spain that, yeah, yeah, they're definitely there.
[PROF. CHARLENE VILLASENOR BLACK]: There there's a controversy over depictions of the Trinity.
For example, there are in the National Library in Spain, I found a cache of drawings that depict nudity that have been pulled by the Inquisition.
I know, I know. Isn't that just like incredible?
There's a famous case in New Spain of a Flemish artist, Simon Pereyns(?), who makes this outrageous comment that, oh,
I'd rather paint portraits than religious images and the Inquisition gets him, and he's made to paint an altar piece in response.
So, there are, but I think it's a good.
I think it's a good warning to be specific about like what, you know, we have these guidelines, but what's actually happening on the ground.
Yeah, I mean, I think about I was trying to think of inquisition censorship as having a chilling effect more than like,
here are these commandments you can't. [AUDIENCE]: Yeah, yeah, it's a cold wind.
I agree about that. [PROF. CHARLENE VILLASENOR BLACK]: Thank you. Thank you.
[AUDIENCE]: So just sort of following up on that. So, I think it would be interesting to think also about the difficulties of enforcing these kinds of things because it's actually,
you know, in a pre-photographic, you know, there's no Tik Tok videos of that inappropriate cult worship.
You know, it has to be all the images. What the problem with them is has to become translated into words that then get described to someone else.
And there are these visitations people might go and see them.
But I think especially when you're thinking about the more far flung places, in a way,
it's easier to describe problematic behaviour, perhaps than a problematic image, because there's a kind of layers of translation.
And I guess one question I had just because, you know,
there are some examples of the difference between different media and I'm thinking specifically about prints.
Yes, because prints. Actually, that object, that image can travel and then become, you know, be seen.
I'm thinking of, for example, the classic cases the Modi by [INAUDIBLE].
And you know that the problem wasn't so much with the drawings, but when prints were made, that then could be circulated.
Also, because that means that rather than a small elite group that can hopefully, you know, handle the nudity or the pornography or whatever,
we want to call it, that it becomes suddenly available to a wider and presumably less controllable, less educated, whatever audience.
So, I guess I wonder whether you see more or different kinds of issues of censorship and of the, well, the kinds of images, but also, you know,
the reactions to them in prints that may circulate more widely and whether there's a question of simply that they're more accessible
or also whether there's additional worry of but now they'll be available in a broader geographic and socioeconomic context.
[PROF. CHARLENE VILLASENOR BLACK]: Thank you. Another brilliant question. And there's actually pretty good evidence for new Spain in prints,
and it's actually the work of Kelly Donoghue Wallace, who, yeah, it was my student at University of New Mexico.
And there are cases. A lot of the cases are people mistreating images like, Oh, they got mad and they folded up the image and put it in their shoe,
or they got mad at the Virgin Mary didn't grant this, so they did something bad to the image.
But there are also clear restrictions on the two that come to mind the Trinity again.
In New Spain, the Trinity is depicted as the triplets. The triplet figures of Christ and the church is like, No, no, we can't, can't do that.
The other is in New Spain.
The controversy over these depictions of Christ's suffering that are really gory and bloody and that show his bones showing through his back.
So those are the two cases I can think of specifically concerning prints.
Now, I can't think of any examples for Spain. Yeah.
I don't know if anyone else. I can't think of any.
[AUDIENCE]: Now, I guess, I mean, I guess I was just raising. And there'd be other ways to think about how do these things work differently in different media.
The other one, which I mean, I haven't really thought through, but for example, sculpture, you know,
is there something about the three dimensionality of the object that maybe raises more concerns?
Or maybe interestingly, doesn't you know the same problem that prints by being more diffuse raised new questions?
Does the three dimensionality?
I mean, and we can think of, you know, the amazing one thinking that more of images of the dead Christ that one knows from [INAUDIBLE].
You know how those images function differently? Is there in a kind of equivalent or different kinds of worries about the incarnation
in a literal three-dimensional form of the female body in images of the Madonna?
I mean, anyway, it doesn’t have to be that question. I think it would be interesting to think in terms of media diffusion and other kinds of issues that that might
raise and whether or whether it raises other issues in the context that you're working on,
The question about sculpture is a great one, and I don't I don't know.
And that's a great. The cases that I can think of are about paintings or prints.
So that's a really you would think they'd be really concerned about sculpture. In New Spain.
They're definitely worried about prints, right? Yeah, for sure. Because, yeah, their circulation.
[ANNA ESPINOLA LYNN]: Does anybody have any other questions percolating, Geraldine?
[AUDIENCE]: It wasn't a question was just a kind of slightly random comment.
So, having worked on bare breasts both kind of earlier and later than the period you work on and not particularly in a Spanish context at all.
But one thing that's interesting, especially thinking back some of the earlier ones,
So, there is this - this is just sort of throwing out is a further thought -
So, there's a question about, you know, good mothers have to be like the virgin and themselves, you know, breastfeed the baby.
But there is. I seem to remember certain discussions, especially again in the in the earlier Italian context that I work on a bit more.
That one of the problems is with the kind of biology of breastfeeding,
meaning that when you're breastfeeding, you're less likely to be able to get pregnant again,
and that there was a kind of tension amongst especially elite women or elite families that the pressure to breastfeed,
which on the one hand was being put on by particularly clerics, was coming into conflict with sort of dynastic concerns.
Because actually, if you're an elite woman, the reason you put your baby out to a wet nurse,
and in fact, if you're wealthy enough, you don't have to put them out in the countryside. You just have your servant, your in-house nanny, basically.
But it meant you would be able to get pregnant more quickly. And if you're at the sort of top of the social scale,
you know your husband and his family want you to be pregnant more rather than taking possibly a year or two out and not be pregnant.
So, I just wonder and then there's a bit less sort of sort of textual evidence supporting that, but it's just worth thinking about that,
that there is a tension between kind of secular dynastic concerns about increasing ideally the male children that the wife
is going to bear versus the kind of moralising more clerical like be like a good mother like the Virgin.
Anyway, just maybe I don't know if that if that spills over into later periods, whether people thinking about it from the biology point of view.
But it is a sort of another angle about where there's some pressure of why women and their families,
perhaps including the sort of male head of the family,
might not want to be like the Virgin because you you'll have fewer male heirs, potentially anyway.
Yeah. Well, I don't know if it comes up anywhere, but it is something I think that is discussed a bit in the earlier period.
But whether it comes up in later discussions about encouraging breastfeeding through visual or other means, I don't know.
[PROF. CHARLENE VILLASENOR BLACK]: There is that one medical text that I quoted by Juan Alonso […INAUDIBLE] who talks about
well, women should breastfeed, but royal women, we can make an exception for them.
And it's interesting because I read that is in terms of class difference, but I mean that you're probably right.
That's what it is that. And there I can't think of anything that explicitly says what you're suggesting in the Spanish context,
but I suspect that's what's at the heart of that.
Yeah. What about text? Yeah. Yeah, it's just, worth thinking of as another sort of thing that crosses over with some of this material.
Thank you. Thank you so much. Yes.
[ANNA ESPINOLA LYNN]: So, if I may just ask another question, just kind of building on the question around kind of a humanisation of women's sacred women,
and what really that means if it's a grounding in a body is a grounding in historical moment.
And it made me think of some of your earlier work on St Anne, right. In the apocryphal state, a constructed state,
Who, certainly in the context of late mediaeval Europe,
Northern Europe offers a kind of point of identification and model for bourgeois women follow a model of piety because she married perhaps three times,
is the matriarch of a massive family. And all of the images of her of the nativity of the Virgin are often, you know,
situated within a bourgeois interior and St Anne and is an actually accessible model of
femininity because her soul was not created in time before time to the impossibly [INAUDIBLE].
So, I guess my question is, have you come across any images of Saint Anne lactating or any images of [INAUDIBLE] the Virgin as a kind of.
all the more human, sacred woman.
[PROF. CHARLENE VILLASENOR BLACK]: Wow, OK, that's an interesting question. That's a great question.
The images that show Anne and Mary Mary's older are usually too old to breastfeed, but I have this vague memory.
I've seen something where maybe, but I actually think it's Joachim, maybe holding Mary as an infant, I cannot think of any Saint.
I'm pretty sure it's Joachim, but that, yeah, that would be.
Wow, that would really make the point, wouldn't that to women about the importance of breastfeeding?
My sense with this Catholic imagery at this point is that it's a very delicate balancing game like they're models for us to follow,
but they're not like us, right? So, there's this constant tension going back and forth.
You're like Mary, but not totally like Mary, right? So, they have to maintain that distinction.
I think, so there's always this delicate balancing act.
I suspect. [ANNA ESPINOLA LYNN]: Yeah, I mean, that kind of idea of humanisation can really put that tension within Mary.
On the one hand, particularly after the council's trend of really grounding Mary in the sense of a real
world and kind of historical moment in the kind of historical human incarnation.
And then, on the other hand, is this kind of person outside of time and outside of the kind of logic or laws of the universe?
[PROF. CHARLENE VILLASENOR BLACK]: There's of course, I mean, as you probably know, there's a really interesting twist to what happens in New Spain,
where, you know, First the Franciscans are like, Wow, they're really interested in Madonna and child.
But then there are almost no images of the Madonna and child.
I mean, there are relatively few in new Spanish art. And then it turns out that indigenous converts are not interested in Mary, the humble mother.
They're interested in Mary as the celestial queen. And the idea that she fits somehow better into existing notions around female deities.
So that's a really interesting case. And even when artists in New Spain copy European artworks, either from copies or from engravings,
they go out of their way to make Mary more celestial more queenly to make her less humble, cover her up.
And it's really fascinating. It was not what I expected at all.
[ANNA ESPINOLA LYNN]: That's really brilliant. Well, I'm mindful of time, and we have really asked loads of questions already, but if anybody has any final question.
All right, well, Charlene, thank you so much for a really, brilliant fascinating talk and very thought-provoking.
Thank you so much for sharing it with us. [PROF. CHARLENE VILLASENOR BLACK]: Thank you for the invitation. I appreciate the dialogue.