Reevaluation of Velázquez’s Portrait of Juan de Pareja (1650) reveals the extent to which the field has failed to address questions of race and enslaved labor in seventeenth-century Spanish art and visual culture. Building on research for The Met’s exhibition Juan de Pareja, Afro-Hispanic Painter (2023), co-curated by Pullins and Vanessa K. Valdés (CUNY), this talk addresses Pareja’s decades-long enslavement in Velázquez’s studio before his manumission and Pareja’s later life as a painter in his own right. As the best documented example of a formerly enslaved painter in early modern Spain, Pareja’s case prompts the reevaluation of broader issues relevant to how we understand a range of artisanal trades and the concept of “liberal arts.” The talk will also consider the intersection of Pareja’s historiography with the exhibition’s reception by critics and the public.
“Juan de Pareja, Afro-Hispanic Painter in the Age of Velázquez”
David Pullins
Elvejhem L150
@ 5:00 pm
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