Audio Guide - Spain and the Hispanic World

Contributors to this Audio Guide:

Elliott Wise completed a B.A. and M.A. in Art History at Brigham Young University in 2007 and 2009, respectively. In 2016 he received a Ph.D. in Art History from Emory University, studying the Northern Renaissance as his major field and medieval art as his minor field. He spent a semester at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands and a year in New York City as a fellow at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. His dissertation explores the affinity between vernacular mystical literature in the Low Countries and panel paintings by Rogier van der Weyden (c. 1399–1464) and Robert Campin (c. 1375–1445). His research and publications focus on the devotional function of late medieval and early modern art. In particular, he is interested in art and liturgy, representations of the Eucharistic Christ and the Virgin Mary, and the visual culture of the great mendicant and monastic orders.

Erik Yingling is a scholar trained in the history of art and religion. He teaches classes on the art of ancient Greece, Rome, and Byzantium. His research examines questions about mythical and religious art during the Roman Empire and Late Antiquity, including cross-cultural exchanges (Classical, early Christian, some Egyptian). An ongoing interest, the subject of his dissertation explores the “metamorphic imagination": the perception of bodily change and soulful identity in images of mythical transformation. His theoretical concerns include questions about the reception of images, including their evocative material qualities, sensory charms, ritual movements, enchantments, disenchantments, and pareidolic illusions in the natural environment. He has also published (and co-authored) papers on topics related to artistic forgery, authenticity, and the restoration of textual lacunae in damaged Coptic artifacts.

Jennifer Lane is a Neal A. Maxwell Research Associate at the Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship and a professor emerita at Brigham Young University–Hawaii. She received her PhD in religion from Claremont Graduate University, with an emphasis in the history of Christianity, in 2003. She received her MA and BA degrees from Brigham Young University in ancient Near Eastern studies and history respectively. She serves on the Board of the Society for Mormon Philosophy and Theology. Her presentations and publications include work on adoptive redemption in the Old Testament, the writings of Paul, and the Book of Mormon; Franciscan piety in late medieval Jerusalem pilgrimage and interactions with eastern Christians; New Testament historical context; and Latter-day Saint theology and doctrine.

Heather Belnap is Associate Professor of Art History and European Studies Coordinator at Brigham Young University, as well as an affiliate of the Global Women’s Studies program. Her research focuses on women in post-Revolutionary French art, fashion, and culture; religion and art in the modern era; transatlantic culture and Mormonism, c. 1900; and Mormon women’s history. She is the co-editor, along with Temma Balducci and Pamela Warner, of Interior Portraiture and Masculine Identity in France, 1789-1914 (Ashgate, 2011) and its pendant volume, Women, Femininity, and Public Space in European Visual Culture, 1789-1914 (Ashgate, 2014). Her latest book project, a critical biography of Minerva Teichert, is under contract with University of Illinois Press. Undergraduate courses that Professor Belnap frequently teaches include eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European art, modern art, contemporary art, women in art, and intro to European studies. University citizenship includes overseeing the BYU European Studies program, serving on the General Education Study Abroad (SAGE) executive committee member, and representing the College of Humanities on BYU’s Faculty Advisory Council (FAC), where she is co-chair of the benefits & compensation committee. Professor Belnap is a regional representative for The Feminist Art Project.

Mark Christensen joined the History Department of Brigham Young University in 2018. He earned a BA from BYU, MA from the University of Utah, and a Ph.D. in 2010 from Penn State. As a Colonial Latin American Historian, his specialization includes Nahua (Aztec) and Maya ethnohistory in central Mexico and Yucatan, and the translation of Nahuatl and Maya texts. His various books, articles, and essays explore the colonial experience of Nahuas and Mayas and illustrate how they negotiated their everyday religious, economic, and social lives with Spanish colonialism. His most recent book, The Teabo Manuscript: Maya Christian Copybooks, Chilam Balams, and Native Text Production in Yucatan (2016), won the Latin American Studies Association Mexico Section Book Award in the Humanities. His current project, Return to Ixil: Maya Society in an Eighteenth-Century Yucatec Town (in press) employs over 100 last wills and testament in Maya to reveal new insights into the socioeconomic, religious, and even military experience of the Yucatec Maya. He lives in Mapleton, Utah, with his wife, Natalie, and their five children.

Matthew Ancell is an Associate Professor of Humanities and Comparitive Literature at BYU. He received an MA and PhD from the University of California - Irvine.

Artworks Featured on this Page (COURTESY OF THE HISPANIC SOCIETY OF AMERICA, NEW YORK, NY):

Double Wick Lamp with a Mask of Pan
Bronze, 1st century CE
24.4 x 24 x 29.1 cm/
The Hispanic Society of America, R4179

Dalmatic
Gold and red silk velvet brocade, applied embroidered panels with metallic threads, polychrome silk, and applied pearls, 15th-16th century.
220.2 x 115.5 cm.
The Hispanic Society of America, H3922

Rosary Bead Fitted as a Pendant
Gold, enamel, precious and semi precious stones, ca. 1520-1550.
2.5 x 2 x 1.8 cm.
The Hispanic Society of America, R3497

Diego Velázquez (Seville, 1599 - Madrid, 1666).
Gaspar de Guzmán, Count-Duke of Olivares, 1625-1626.
Oil on canvas, H 222 x W 137.8 cm.
Courtesy of The Hispanic Society of America, New York, NY.
Gift of Mrs. Collis P. Huntington (née Arabella Duval; subsequently Mrs. Henry E. Huntington), in memory of Collis P. Huntington, 1910. A104

Pedro de Mena (Granada, 1628 - Málaga, 1688)
Saint Acisclus, ca. 1680
Wood polychrome sculpture: 50 x 42.3 x 21.5 cm
The Hispanic Society of America, LD2157

Juan de Juni (French–Spanish, 1507-1577)
Saint Mary Magdalene, ca. 1545
Polychrome wood:: 52 x 44 x 24 cm
The Hispanic Society of America, LD2412

Juan de Juni (French–Spanish, 1507-1577)
Saint Martha, ca. 1545
Polychrome wood:: 50.5 x 47 x 23 cm
The Hispanic Society of America, LD2411

Cristóbal Becerril (Spanish, 1539-1585)
Processional Monstrance, 16th century
Gilt silver and lapis lazuli: 94 x 40 x 40 cm
The Hispanic Society of America, R3019

Chalice.
Silver gilt, cast, repoussé, and chased, 1525-1550.
Diameter 10.1 x H 23.8 cm.
Presented to the Hispanic Society by Archer M. Huntington, 1930. R3082

Juan Rodríguez Juárez (Mexico City, 1675-1728)
The Castas: Mestizo and Indian Produce Coyote, ca. 1715
Oil on canvas, 103.8 x 146.4 cm
The Hispanic Society of America, LA2122

Map of the Ucayali River
Ink and colour on paper, 1808-1812
85.5 x 187.5 x 4 cm
The Hispanic Society of America, K60

Melchor Pérez Holguín (Bolivia, 1660-1732)
Saint Peter of Alcántara and Saint Teresa, ca. 1724
Oil on canvas, 83 x 62 cm
The Hispanic Society of America, A1837

Francisco de Goya y Lucientes (Spain, 1746-1828)
Are There Fleas?, 1796-97
Brush and wash on paper, 23.7 x 14.7 cm
The Hispanic Society of America, A3316