Spanish Globalization through Murillo's Eyes
Reflections from Seventeenth-century Seville
Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla author
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Publishing:19th Feb '26
£85.00
This title is due to be published on 19th February, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
Through the study of Bartolomé Esteban Murillo's painting, this book reveals unknown and intriguing aspects of early globalization and the history of Golden Age Spain.
This open access book examines the work of the 17th-century Baroque painter, Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1618-1682) – a figure who barely left the city of Seville – as a way of understanding globalization, its consequences, and its limits.
Full of saints, friars, virgins, and Christs, or poor people and cheerful pícaros oblivious to social injustice, Murillo's painting has been considered representative of the Counter-Reformation and the exponent of an immobile, even introverted, society that regressed with the ‘crisis of the 17th century’. Early Globalization, Spain, and Seventeenth-Century Seville introduces a global perspective by considering the Atlantic art market and developing comparisons with Protestant paintings and an analysis of Murillo’s iconography alongside the social and political theory of his time. Such comparisons and analyses illuminate a different image, emphasizing the idea of a common European path towards modernity, individualism, emotional self-control and social change.
The book also examines how Murillo’s contemporaries interpreted his iconography. The study of different ‘layers of globalization’, going back to the analysis of the Christian tradition, reveals the existence of political utopias, positive forms of valuing work and an image of the community that, opposed to the development of the speculative economy associated with globalization, would characterize the European history, with all its contradictions. The result is a new and sharper understanding of the tensions created by globalization in the field of art, in the construction of imagined communities, and in social relations in the early modern era.
The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by Pablo de Olavide University, Spain.
Through Murillo’s Eyes is a vibrant tribute to a city and an artist that straddled a world of contrasts. While often too easy to think of seventeenth-century Spain as in decline and beginning to isolate, this book makes the invaluable contribution of showing how Spanish art was very much in conversation with the global world. * Amanda L. Scott, Associate Professor of Early Modern Spanish History, Penn State University, USA *
Murillo painted for the faithful, but Yun-Casalilla sees the world in his work. Using Seville and one of its most beloved painters as guides, this book reframes early modern globalization—not through familiar stories of ships and silver, but in the intimate negotiations among merchant families, parish priests, and painters over money, faith, and what belongs on a canvas. * Dana Leibsohn, Smith College, and General Editor, Colonial Latin American Review, USA *
ISBN: 9781350528772
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
304 pages