Department of the History of Art Graduate Student Lecture Series: Diane Bodart

Description

Diane Bodart, a professor of Italian Renaissance Art History at Columbia University, will present a lecture titled "The Mirror-Shield of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz" as part of the Department of the History of Art Graduate Student Lecture Series and presented by the Singleton Center for the Study of Pre-Modern Europe.

In her portraits, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, the celebrated seventeenth-century Mexican poet, wears an impressively large nun badge as part of her Hieronymite monastic dress. Through this example, the talk will investigate the practice of wearing images in the Early Modern period, focusing on the modes of interaction activated by the inscription of images on the body. It will also undertake a close examination of the potential structure en abyme embedded in the depiction of an image-bearer. Ultimately, the analysis will allow to reconsider the role of the Mexican Phoenix in the construction of her "faithful image."