Spanish Royal Patronage 1412-1804: Portraits as Propaganda

Portraits have a long history in royal courts as a way of communicating the monarch’s status, rulership, and even piety. This anthology places such art works studied in the context of their commission, production, and display. Artists use different representational strategies to convey important information about the sitter. These aspects combined with patronage, location and use of the work form a departure point from which to address portraits comprehensively. The intersection between artist, the portrayed and audience with the additional layer of formed identity allows the portrait to hold a special place as popular genre of Spanish art. The relationship between the use of the work and its context is key to understanding better the cultural and social norms of Spanish aristocracy and what they reveal about Spanish identity in general. Used to solidify governance, lineage, and marriage, portraits legitimized the negotiation of status, power, and social mobility.


Ilenia Colón Mendoza is Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Central Florida, USA. She received a BA in Art History and Archaeology from the University of Evansville in Indiana, USA, and her MA and PhD from the Pennsylvania State University, USA. Her primary area of research is Spanish art of the 17th century and 18th centuries. Her book The Cristos yacentes of Gregorio Fernandez: Polychrome Sculptures of the Supine Christ in Seventeenth-Century Spain (2015) examines the significance of the Cristo yacente sculptural type within the context of the theatrical elaborations of the Catholic Holy Week in Baroque Spain. Her most recent publication in the Hispanic Research Journal focuses on Luis Paret y Álcazar’s Self-Portrait of 1776.

Margaret Ann Zaho is Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Central Florida, USA, where she is also the Faculty Director for the Art History study abroad program in Italy. She received a PhD from the University of Washington in Seattle, USA, and her research interests include Italian Renaissance narrative fresco cycles, triumphal imagery, Florentine painted antependiums, endangered art, and art as cultural patrimony. Her publications include Imago Triumphalis: The Function and Significance of Triumphal Imagery for Italian Renaissance Rulers (2004), and two textbooks focusing on the history of Western Art and the dangers facing the world’s art (2013 and 2017).

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William Ambler

Emily Engel

Lisandra Estevez

Niria E. Leyva-Gutierrez

Jennifer Olson-Rudenko

Margaret Ann Zaho

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ISBN: 1-5275-0402-6

ISBN13: 978-1-5275-0402-8

Release Date: 17th January 2018

Pages: 200

Price: £58.99

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