
La troisième rencontre de l’hiver 2021 des Nouveaux Modernes aura lieu le vendredi 19 Mars 2021 à 16 h sur Zoom. Our third meeting of the Nouveaux Modernes for Winter 2021 will take place on Friday, March 19 at 4pm on Zoom (link below).
Brendan McMahon (Assistant Professor of Art History, University of Michigan) : “Saint Jerome Comes Home: Mobilizing the Sacred Desert in the Early Modern Spanish World“.
Abstract/Résumé : In this talk, I follow the image of the penitent Saint Jerome as it traveled throughout the early modern Spanish world, looking across a horizontal latitude of production at the turn of the seventeenth century to examine iconographically similar but materially distinct objects produced in Central Mexico and the Philippines for distant audiences. Thinking comparatively and materially prompts a reconsideration of the relationship between material quality and devotional potential: sidestepping monolithic framing devices like exoticism or monetary value so often used to understand the reception of objects made abroad, I argue that their exuberant materiality was central to their function as instruments of private devotion. By using natural materials like nacre, ivory, and hummingbird feathers, artists literalized the notion of the desierto, or wilderness. To contemplate these images was to directly confront the majesty of divine creation, an act which transported viewers to a wild refuge akin to where St. Jerome freed himself of temptation.
Lien Zoom: https://umontreal.zoom.us/j/92629695417?pwd=dEVva05XY1c4WFhVN2FMZmdRTGJkUT09
Meeting ID: 926 2969 5417
Passcode: 672740