Representing Women’s Political Identity in the Early Modern Iberian World by Roe, Jeremy; Andrews, Jean;

Short description:

By exploring textual, visual, and material culture, this volume presents new research into the experiences, agencies, and diverse political identities of Iberian women between the fifteenth and early-eighteenth century. It is an invaluable source for students and researchers of early modern Iberia.

Long description:

By exploring textual, visual and material culture, this volume presents a range of new research into the experiences, agencies and diverse political identities of Iberian women between the fifteenth and early-eighteenth century.

Representing Women’s Political Identity in the Early Modern Iberian World explores how the political identities of Iberian women were represented in various forms of visual culture including: religious paintings and portraiture; costume; and devotional and funerary sculpture. This study examines the transmission of Iberian culture and its concepts of identity to locations such as Peru, Goa and Mexico, providing a rich insight into Iberia’s complex history and legacy. The collection of essays explores the lives of protagonists, which vary from queens and members of the nobility to painters and nuns, allowing for a more nuanced understanding of both the elite and non-elite woman’s experience in Spain, Portugal and their overseas realms during the early modern period.

By addressing the significance of gender alongside the visual representation of political ideology and identity, this book is an invaluable source for students and researchers of early modern Iberia and the history of women.

Chapter 11 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license.

Table of Contents:

Introduction by Jeremy Roe and Jean Andrews  Part I: The politics of non-elite devotional identities in textual, visual and material culture  1. Three willful characters in search for God: visionary action and political identity in seventeenth-century Portuguese women mystics  2. From spectatorship to sponsorship: female participation in the festivals of colonial Potosí  3. The mirror-shield of Sor Juana Inéz de la Cruz  4. Female agency and the sculptural object in Agostinho de Santa Maria’s hagiography of Filipa Ferreira (?–1626), the Augustinian Soror Filipa da Trindade  5. Josefa de Ayala e Cabreira’s St Catherine of Alexandria altarpiece and female empowerment  Part II: Spaces and spectacles of the female courtier  6. The monastery I have built in this city of Madrid: mapping Juana of Austria’s royal spaces in the Descalzas Reales convent  7. Ladies-in-waiting at the Spanish Habsburg palaces and convents, the Alcázar and the Descalzas Reales (1570–1603): spaces and representations of identity and agency  8. Ana de Mendoza y de la Cerda, Princess of Éboli: image, myth, and person  9. The Relação do torneio que fizeram as damas da Rainha Nossa Senhora, a noite do Baptisado do Sr Infante D. Pedro…: identification and the spectacle of court culture  10. The use, significance and projection of artistic objects in the life and exequies of the VI Duchess of Aveiro  Part III: Rethinking regal iconography: the materiality and ideology of symbolism  11. The Queen Consort in Castile and Portugal: María of Aragon (b. 1403–d. 1445), Queen of Castile and Leonor of Aragon (b. 1405/1408–d. 1445), Queen of Portugal  12. Mariana de Austria: the ideal bride and saviour of the Habsburg Monarchy  13. Dresses, portraits and spaces: female identities at the Royal Alcázar (1621–1665)  14. Queen Catherine, a Bragança in seventeenth-century London: cultural legacy, identity and political ‘individuality’