The Autobiography of a Seventeenth-Century Painter and Nun, Estefanía de la Encarnación

FAIN: RQ-271241-20

University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee (Milwaukee, WI 53211-3153)
Tanya J. Tiffany (Project Director: December 2019 to present)
Laura Renee Bass (Co Project Director: December 2019 to present)

Preparation for publication of a bilingual scholarly edition and translation, from Spanish to English, of the only known autobiography written by a woman artist during the early modern period, Estefanía de la Encarnación (ca. 1597-1665). (21 months)

“The Autobiography of a Seventeenth-Century Painter and Nun, Estefanía de la Encarnación” brings together an art historian and a literary scholar to make available the first known autobiography by a woman artist—a text that has never been published. We are producing a complete bilingual (English and Spanish) critical edition of the autobiography for The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe, which publishes primary sources by and about women from the period. The Vida, as the text is known, has major significance for several interlocking domains of inquiry: art history, religious history, and gender studies. The author reveals the confluence and the conflict between her painting and her spiritual devotion, raising questions about the function and limits of religious imagery at the height of the Catholic Reformation. She also provides rare insight into the training of female painters and the social pressures they faced in an age when few women were deemed capable of artistic creation.

Associated Products

The Brush and the Quill; or, the Visual Rhetoric of Divine Love in the Spiritual Autobiography of Estefanía de la Encarnación (ca. 1597-1665) (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: The Brush and the Quill; or, the Visual Rhetoric of Divine Love in the Spiritual Autobiography of Estefanía de la Encarnación (ca. 1597-1665)
Author: Bass, Laura R.
Abstract: This paper was an expanded version of the one presented by both Bass and Tiffany at the RSA conference in April 2021; please see that abstract for a description.
Date: 04/16/2021
Conference Name: STVDIO Seminar, University of Warwick

“Performing Art,” roundtable presentation (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: “Performing Art,” roundtable presentation
Author: Tiffany, Tanya J.
Abstract: Roundtable presentation focused on Estefanía de la Encarnación in the context of early modern women artists.
Date: 10/01/2021
Primary URL: http://https://newberry.org/10012021-looking-forward-attending-premodern-women
Conference Name: Looking Forward to Attending to Premodern Women, Newberry Library (Chicago)

Sor Estefanía de la Encarnación y la práctica artística entre mujeres religiosas de la España del siglo XVII (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Sor Estefanía de la Encarnación y la práctica artística entre mujeres religiosas de la España del siglo XVII
Author: Bass, Laura R.
Author: Tiffany, Tanya J.
Abstract: Esta ponencia se centra en la creación artística de la monja pintora española Estefanía de la Encarnación tal como la describe en su autobiografía espiritual de 1631 en relación a otros testimonios, más fragmentarios, de otras monjas-artistas españolas. Estefanía se crió entre artesanos y cortesanos en Madrid, y tomó los votos en la villa ducal de Lerma en un monasterio de clarisas, la mayoría provenientes de la aristocracia, excusándosele la dote a cambio de su labor como pintora. A lo largo de la Vida, Estefanía cuenta sobre de su práctica artística antes y después de su profesión religiosa. Como el relato más detallado de la actividad de una monja-pintora de la época, las descripciones que ofrece de su creación de imágenes dentro del claustro proporcionan un contexto para examinar la producción plástica de otras mujeres religiosas, desde María Santísima de la Trinidad, una mercedaria analfabeta de Sevilla, hasta dos hermanas cultas de alta alcurnia, María de San Alberto y Cecilia del Nacimiento, que profesaron como carmelitas descalzas en Valladolid. A través de los relatos hagiográficos y autobiográficos más fragmentarios de estas mujeres y otras, exploramos hasta qué punto las experiencias descritas por Estefanía —como, por ejemplo, el uso de la oración como preparación para la creación de imágenes sagradas, el conflicto entre la pintura y la vida contemplativa o los enfrentamientos con el demonio cuando éste intentaba frustrar la producción artística— eran comunes a las monjas pintoras y esculturas. ¿Llegaron estas experiencias a constituir una conciencia artística femenina?
Date: 11/26/2021
Conference Name: Jornadas Internacionales - ESPACIOS RELIGIOSOS, PODER Y GÉNERO. MONASTERIOS FEMENINOS Y MUNDOS IBERICOS, PERSPECTIVA COMPARADA S. XVI, XVII Y XVIII

Reliquias del cielo: Las cuentas de Estefanía de la Encarnación y el problema de la ortodoxia (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Reliquias del cielo: Las cuentas de Estefanía de la Encarnación y el problema de la ortodoxia
Author: Tiffany, Tanya J.
Abstract: In 1633, the Franciscan painter-nun Estefanía de la Encarnación (Madrid ca. 1597-Lerma 1665) was censured by Inquisition officers in Madrid for circulating prayer beads that she claimed functioned as sacred relics. According to Estefanía’s spiritual autobiography, her Vida of 1631 (Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional de España, MS 7450; Universidad de Salamanca, Biblioteca General Histórica, Ms. 1730), the Virgin and the persons of the Trinity had consecrated the beads in her presence, thus transforming them into relics touched by the divine. In a memorandum condemned by the Inquisition, Estefanía also maintained that wearers of the beads received certain “virtues” (virtudes) and “graces” (gracias) along with indulgences that would reduce their time in purgatory. The officers declared this assertion a violation of papal authority, issuing a warning to Estefanía and prohibiting her beads from circulating. This paper locates Estefanía’s account of the beads in the contexts of Catholic Reformation definitions of orthodoxy and discourse on sacred objects.
Date: 04/14/2021
Primary URL: http://https://historiadelarte.uniandes.edu.co/proyectos/congreso-reliquias-arte/
Conference Name: Congreso Internacional Reliquias y arte entre Europa y América: historias compartidas a debatir

The Visual Rhetoric of Divine Love in the Vida of Estefanía de la Encarnación (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: The Visual Rhetoric of Divine Love in the Vida of Estefanía de la Encarnación
Author: Bass, Laura R.
Author: Tiffany, Tanya J.
Abstract: This paper examines the importance of painting and visual imagery in the spiritual autobiography of Estefanía Encarnación (ca. 1597-1665). Looking at Estefania’s account of her artistic development in her 1631 Vida, we first uncover the profound ambivalence she betrays towards her talent as both a divine gift that led her to God and a source of worldly vanity that took her from prayer. We then turn to her increasing dedication to writing and to the pictorial language she uses to convey her visions of divine love: a language rooted in the tradition of the Song of Songs and the spiritual Petrarchism of sacred poetry. Finally, we consider her surviving mural painting of St. John the Evangelist in La Ascención, her convent in Lerma, as a meta-reflection of her own writing as divine revelation.
Date: 04/15/2021
Primary URL: http://https://www.rsa.org/page/Virtual2021
Conference Name: Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting

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