Papers by Carmen Ripollés
Oxford Bibliographies, 2023
Josefa de Ayala (b. Seville, 1630–d. Óbidos, 1684), commonly known as Josefa de Óbidos, is one of... more Josefa de Ayala (b. Seville, 1630–d. Óbidos, 1684), commonly known as Josefa de Óbidos, is one of the few documented professional women artists of early modern Iberia, and arguably the most celebrated painter of the Portuguese baroque. She was the daughter of Baltazar Gomes Figueira, a Portuguese painter who was well known at the time for his still lifes and landscape backgrounds. Baltazar Gomes developed part of his career in Seville, where Josefa de Óbidos was born in 1630 (the painter Francisco Herrera the Elder was her godfather) and where she lived for an indeterminate number of years before 1646, when she signed and dated her first documented works, and only a few years after Portugal proclaimed its independence from Spain. Based in the Portuguese town of Óbidos from 1646 until her death in 1684, Josefa created engravings, small-format oil paintings on copper, large altarpieces for churches and monasteries, still lifes, portraits, and individual devotional paintings—an impressive variety of formats and subjects of which more than 100 works remain. Although she sometimes collaborated with her father, Josefa de Óbidos kept her own workshop after attaining the legal title of “donzela emancipada” (emancipated maidenba), which allowed for her independence. Her fame grew to mythical proportions during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when a number of biographers stressed her feminine piety and celibate isolation—she never married. For much of the twentieth century, scholars built on these romantic notions, emphasizing the presumed folk provincialism, use of surface decoration, and sentimental naiveté of her work. They also placed undue weight on her still lifes (now considered a small portion of her oeuvre) and on the presumed mysticism of her works, exaggerating the isolated context of Óbidos—in reality, a town with important links to the court. From the 1970s, and thanks to the pioneering work of Vítor Serrão, Luís de Moura Sobral, and Joaquim Oliveira Caetano in Portugal, and Edward J. Sullivan in the United States, as well as the invaluable contribution of a number of exhibitions, Josefa de Óbidos’s career and work have undergone a profound reassessment through rigorous archival research and the introduction of new approaches taking into account gender, global connections, and material culture. The painter is now seen as a defining player of the Portuguese baroque who engaged with artistic, religious, and political concerns of utmost currency in the Portuguese culture of her day, making her one of the most characteristic, prolific, and original artists of early modern Portugal, although scholarship outside of Portugal is still limited.
Anuario del Departamento de Historia y Teoría del Arte vol. 35, 2023, pp. 65-88, 2023
Este ensayo examina la construcción de una identidad artística en los dos primeros grabados de la... more Este ensayo examina la construcción de una identidad artística en los dos primeros grabados de la pintora portuguesa nacida en Sevilla Josefa de Óbidos (1630-1684), completados en 1646, uno de ellos con seguridad en Coimbra. Los dos grabados nos ofrecen valiosos datos sobre la formación artística temprana de Josefa de Óbidos, sus ambiciones profesionales y su autoimagen artística, destacando el papel de las mujeres artistas que la precedieron y la importancia de los contextos artísticos y sociales de Sevilla y Coimbra. Al utilizar el grabado, además, la pintora comparte la estrategia y ambición de otras artistas mujeres de la edad temprana que se esforzaron por asegurar la supervivencia de su nombre y de su fama a través de este medio. Por último, los grabados sugieren la voluntad de la pintora por atraer un mecenazgo real, participando así activamente en la nueva cultura artística y política de la Restauración Portuguesa.
Itinerario Colección Banco de España, "Flores y frutos de otros mundos", 2023
https://coleccion.bde.es/wca/es/secciones/coleccion/itinerarios/floresyfrutosdeotrosmundos.html
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Flores (y frutos) de otros mundos Carmen Ripollés "Quelle vanité que la peinture, qui attire l'admiration par la ressemblance des choses dont on n'admire point les originaux!" «Qué vanidad la de la pintura, que atrae la admiración por su semejanza con cosas cuyos originales no son admirados.» Blaise Pascal, Pensées (1660) Esta frase encierra una paradoja que ha desconcertado a generaciones de creadores,
Smarthistory Reframing Art History, Chapter 54 , 2022
Smarthistory- Reframing Art History, 2022
What we call the “baroque” is an art historical period and style spanning the 17th and most of th... more What we call the “baroque” is an art historical period and style spanning the 17th and most of the 18th centuries that originated in Europe but manifested throughout many parts of the globe—developing into what some consider to be the first truly global style.
Sixteenth Century Journal, 2019
This article reexamines the function, decoration, and political and artistic significance of the ... more This article reexamines the function, decoration, and political and artistic significance of the Torre de la Estufa of Charles V in the Alhambra, a steam room decorated between 1528 and 1539 with topographic landscapes of the conquest of Tunis and paintings of grotesques. Challenging the traditional focus on the tower's debt to the Italian Renaissance, this essay brings attention to its pre-existing Islamic framework, arguing that its overall architectural language, specific decorative elements, and intended function reveal Charles V's will to engage formally and conceptually with the preexisting palace as a means of advancing imperial ideology.
Boletín del Museo del Prado, 34.54, 2018
This essay brings new light on the creation and early reception of the still lifes of the Toledan... more This essay brings new light on the creation and early reception of the still lifes of the Toledan painter Juan Sánchez Cotán. It focuses on Cotán’s friendship with and professional relationship to the metalworker Diego de Valdivieso and the manuscript illuminator Juan de Salazar, both of whom are recorded as being among the first owners of his still lifes. An analysis of these artists’ works vis- -vis Cotán’s still lifes reveals similar technical and conceptual concerns, as well as a shared will to elevate their crafts to demonstrate ingenio. This analysis therefore places Cotán’s still lifes in the context of artistic experimentation, supporting the long-held assumption that his first patrons appreciated these pictures foremost as ingenious novelties.
Boletín del Museo del Prado, 2018
Este ensayo aporta nueva luz sobre la creación y la recepción temprana de los bodegones del pin... more Este ensayo aporta nueva luz sobre la creación y la recepción temprana de los bodegones del pintor toledano Juan Sánchez Cotán. Se centra en la amistad y la relación profesional del artista con el platero Diego de Valdivieso y con el iluminador de manuscritos Juan de Salazar, ambos registrados entre los primeros propietarios de sus bodegones. El análisis de las obras de estos artistas junto con los bodegones de Sánchez Cotán revela un interés similar por cuestiones técnicas y conceptuales, así como una voluntad compartida por engrandecer sus oficios para demostrar ingenio. El presente análisis sitúa, pues, los bodegones de Sánchez Cotán en el contexto de la experimentación artística y apoya la arraigada hipótesis de que sus primeros clientes apreciaban estas imágenes sobre todo como novedades ingeniosas.
Reales Sitios, 2019
El presente artículo reexamina las pinturas de los cuartos de las frutas de la Alhambra y reivind... more El presente artículo reexamina las pinturas de los cuartos de las frutas de la Alhambra y reivindica su papel precursor en el desarrollo del bodegón español. Aunque las pinturas de los cuartos de las frutas han sido estudiadas solo en relación con el Renacimiento italiano, este artículo las considera desde la perspectiva de su emplazamiento en el marco arquitectónico y simbólico de la Alhambra, así como en el contexto de la utilización del naturalismo como lenguaje pictórico al servicio de la ideología imperial, poniendo de manifiesto conexiones entre estas pinturas y la historial natural, el pasado islámico y la ideología imperial.
This article examines how still-life painting contributed to the creation of a distinct urban ari... more This article examines how still-life painting contributed to the creation of a distinct urban aristocratic culture in seventeenth-century Madrid. Focusing on a group of paintings by Juan van der Hamen, the article situates these images within the context of the picture gallery and the practice of aristocratic hospitality. By giving visual form to this new urban mode of magnificence, Van der Hamen’s still lifes created a fiction of abundance that glossed over Madrid’s economic realities. At the same time, Van der Hamen concealed signs of manual craftsmanship and commercial interest in order to advance and ennoble his own artistic identity.
During the early modem period, male artistic creativity was often formulated by means of represen... more During the early modem period, male artistic creativity was often formulated by means of representing a painter depicting a female nude. This essay examines the complexities and paradoxes of this artistic discourse by focusing on an unusual example of the seventeenth century Flemish genre of painted "art cabinets," Frans Francken's The Painter's Studio (c. 1623). By considering the intertextual dialogue between the paintings within the painting, as well as the action represented, and the style, I will try to reveal how in The Painter's Studio the association between death, violence, and femininity put forward a notion of painting that, informed by the tenets of Neostoic philosophy, aims to annihilate women and the feminine in order to perform the creative act. Paradoxically, the prominent presence of the feminine in The Painter's Studio, embodied in a sensual Fortune-model in the studio, points to the contradictions inherent in trying to simultaneously reconcile Neostoic misogynistic ideologies with an artistic discourse that considered the depiction of consummate female beauty as its most honorable task.
Book Reviews by Carmen Ripollés
Renaissance Quarterly, 2021
Bulletin of the Comediantes, 2019
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Papers by Carmen Ripollés
Flores (y frutos) de otros mundos Carmen Ripollés "Quelle vanité que la peinture, qui attire l'admiration par la ressemblance des choses dont on n'admire point les originaux!" «Qué vanidad la de la pintura, que atrae la admiración por su semejanza con cosas cuyos originales no son admirados.» Blaise Pascal, Pensées (1660) Esta frase encierra una paradoja que ha desconcertado a generaciones de creadores,
Book Reviews by Carmen Ripollés
Flores (y frutos) de otros mundos Carmen Ripollés "Quelle vanité que la peinture, qui attire l'admiration par la ressemblance des choses dont on n'admire point les originaux!" «Qué vanidad la de la pintura, que atrae la admiración por su semejanza con cosas cuyos originales no son admirados.» Blaise Pascal, Pensées (1660) Esta frase encierra una paradoja que ha desconcertado a generaciones de creadores,
Introduction: Rethinking Art after the Council of Trent (Jesse M. Locker)
Chapter 1
On the ‘Reform’ of Painting: Annibale Carracci and Caravaggio (Clare Robertson)
Chapter 2
Sculpture, Rupture, and the ‘Baroque’ (Estelle Lingo)
Chapter 3
Spanish Artists in the Forefront of the Tridentine Reform (Marcus Burke)
Chapter 4
Judgment, Resurrection, Conversion: Art in France During the Wars of Religion (Iara A. Dundas)
Chapter 5
Reform after Trent in Florence (Marcia Hall)
Chapter 6
Quella inerudita semplicità lombarda: The Lombard Origins of Baroque and Counter-Reformation Affectivity (Anne Muraoka)
Chapter 7
The Allure of the Object in Post-Tridentine Spanish Painting (Carmen Ripollés)
Chapter 8
Federico Barocci, History, and the Body of Art (Stuart Lingo)
Chapter 9
Neither for Trent nor Against: Faith and Works in Hendrick Goltzius’s Allegories of the Christian Creed (Walter Melion)
Chapter 10
Francisco Ribalta’s Last Supper as a Symbol of Reform in Early Modern Valencia (Lisandra Estevez)
Chapter 11
Water in Counter-Reformation Rome (Katherine Rinne)
Chapter 12
A Missionary Order without Saints: The Extraordinary Case of the Iconography of Unbeatified Jesuits in Italy and South America, 1560-1622 (Gauvin Alexander Bailey)
Chapter 13
Bernardo Bitti: An Italian Reform Painter in Peru (Christa Irwin)
Chapter 14
Painting as Relic: Giambattista Marino’s Dicerie Sacre and the Shroud of Turin (Andrew Casper)
Chapter 15
Resisting the Baroque in mid-Seventeenth-Century Florence (Eva Struhal)