"Picturing Holy Women in the Spanish Empire, 1620–1800" will be the first exhibition organized by the Meadows Museum to explore the momentous and varied roles that female biblical figures, saints, and monastics played in early modern Spain and its empire. The exhibition relies on images of influential holy women to explore the complex history of how the Catholic Church and Spanish monarchy sought to control women’s movement in public and, ultimately, to separate them from the outside world.
Drawings, prints, and rare books offer insight into the special role of images in the promotion of idealized models of female piety while also revealing that, despite the patriarchal society in which they lived, some women became active spiritual leaders, authors, and patrons. Visual representations of the Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene, Saint Teresa of Ávila, and Saint Rosa of Lima, among others, will be featured.
Largely drawn from the collection of SMU’s Bridwell Library, the exhibition is curated by the Meadows Museum’s Center for Spain in America (CSA) Curatorial Fellow, Miranda Saylor. Highlights include an extraordinary engraving representing Saint Teresa preaching (1679), a frontispiece featuring the Mexican nun Sor Sebastiana Josefa de la Santísima Trinidad (1765), and a rare 18th-century pictorial manuscript commissioned for the Convent of Santa Clara in Palma de Mallorca (c. 1780–1800). These will be joined by works from the Meadows’s collection, as well as loans from SMU’s DeGolyer Library and a private collection.
The exhibition will remain on display through January 15, 2023.
"Picturing Holy Women in the Spanish Empire, 1620–1800" will be the first exhibition organized by the Meadows Museum to explore the momentous and varied roles that female biblical figures, saints, and monastics played in early modern Spain and its empire. The exhibition relies on images of influential holy women to explore the complex history of how the Catholic Church and Spanish monarchy sought to control women’s movement in public and, ultimately, to separate them from the outside world.
Drawings, prints, and rare books offer insight into the special role of images in the promotion of idealized models of female piety while also revealing that, despite the patriarchal society in which they lived, some women became active spiritual leaders, authors, and patrons. Visual representations of the Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene, Saint Teresa of Ávila, and Saint Rosa of Lima, among others, will be featured.
Largely drawn from the collection of SMU’s Bridwell Library, the exhibition is curated by the Meadows Museum’s Center for Spain in America (CSA) Curatorial Fellow, Miranda Saylor. Highlights include an extraordinary engraving representing Saint Teresa preaching (1679), a frontispiece featuring the Mexican nun Sor Sebastiana Josefa de la Santísima Trinidad (1765), and a rare 18th-century pictorial manuscript commissioned for the Convent of Santa Clara in Palma de Mallorca (c. 1780–1800). These will be joined by works from the Meadows’s collection, as well as loans from SMU’s DeGolyer Library and a private collection.
The exhibition will remain on display through January 15, 2023.
"Picturing Holy Women in the Spanish Empire, 1620–1800" will be the first exhibition organized by the Meadows Museum to explore the momentous and varied roles that female biblical figures, saints, and monastics played in early modern Spain and its empire. The exhibition relies on images of influential holy women to explore the complex history of how the Catholic Church and Spanish monarchy sought to control women’s movement in public and, ultimately, to separate them from the outside world.
Drawings, prints, and rare books offer insight into the special role of images in the promotion of idealized models of female piety while also revealing that, despite the patriarchal society in which they lived, some women became active spiritual leaders, authors, and patrons. Visual representations of the Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene, Saint Teresa of Ávila, and Saint Rosa of Lima, among others, will be featured.
Largely drawn from the collection of SMU’s Bridwell Library, the exhibition is curated by the Meadows Museum’s Center for Spain in America (CSA) Curatorial Fellow, Miranda Saylor. Highlights include an extraordinary engraving representing Saint Teresa preaching (1679), a frontispiece featuring the Mexican nun Sor Sebastiana Josefa de la Santísima Trinidad (1765), and a rare 18th-century pictorial manuscript commissioned for the Convent of Santa Clara in Palma de Mallorca (c. 1780–1800). These will be joined by works from the Meadows’s collection, as well as loans from SMU’s DeGolyer Library and a private collection.
The exhibition will remain on display through January 15, 2023.
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