Curator discusses Spanish art

Scholars, students and local residents joined together at the IU Art Museum on Saturday for IU museum director and curator of Western art before 1800 Heidi Gealt’s talk about 16th- and 17th- century Spanish art.

The talk began when art professor Giles Knox introduced Gealt, who is best known for her work about artist Domenico Tiepolo.

Knox also brought a large group of scholars to the talk from a two-day conference titled “Sacred and Profane in the Early Modern Hispanic World.”  The conference focused on religion in the Hispanic world from 1492 to 1680.

The Noon Talk, which is part of a series of talks provided by the museum for education and awareness of art of campus,

focused on three works in particular: “Scenes From the Life of the Virgin,” “Study for Martyrdom of St. Sebastian” and “Vanitas.”

“Felipe Vigarny is credited with bringing the Renaissance style to Spain,” Gealt said and added that Vigarny is French, but painted in an Italian style, which he marketed to Spain.

“He went to great detail to point out different patterns and colors in textiles,” she said. “His work is an example of how the export stays relatively frozen in time.”

Eight panels from a series Vigarny painted for a chapel in Spain are at the art museum. However, the series is incomplete and Gealt said scholars believe there may be many more panels that complete the series.

Next, Gealt spoke about “Study for Martyrdom of St. Sebastian,” a red chalk
drawing that captures the human form and bodily expression, rather than merely facial expressions.

Gealt called the drawing one of Spanish painter Jusepe de Ribera’s greatest acquisitions.

“His mastery of the human figure has jelled,” she said. “He really evoked emotion through the body.”

The final work Gealt discussed was “Vanitas,” also called “Memento Mori.” Juan Francisco Carrion painted it in 1672 to contrast life and death, as well as good and evil.

“Carrion uses literature and represents its message in his painting,” she said. The painting includes a sonnet written by Carrion and other books that send a warning to the viewers.

“I like to look at paintings because I can get lost in it,” sophomore Marybeth Stull said. “I get to see what the artist has to say and then take it from my own point of view.”