“Juan de Pareja, Afro-Hispanic Painter in the Age of Velázquez”

David Pullins

Elvejhem L150
@ 5:00 pm
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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.