Talking Images in the Spanish Empire

FAIN: FT-54988-07

Luis Corteguera
University of Kansas, Lawrence (Lawrence, KS 66045-7505)

My book project examines images of saints and kings, how early modern Spaniards viewed and used such images, and what such practices reveal about individual interaction with religious and political authority in the Spanish empire. It focuses on “conversations” with sacred and royal images in contemporary documents, which dramatize late medieval and early modern Catholics’ common practice of using images to communicate with divinity. Images bridged the separation between supplicants and God; ruler and ruled. I argue that diverse uses of images for political and religious communication allow us to see individual political and religious actions that are otherwise invisible because of our unfamiliarity with early modern Spanish visual culture.