Behind Closed Doors: Art in the Spanish American Home 1492-1898

Behind Closed Doors: Art in the Spanish American Home 1492-1898
Format
Hardback
Publisher
Monacelli Press
Country
United States
Published
10 September 2013
Pages
224
ISBN
9781580933650

Behind Closed Doors: Art in the Spanish American Home 1492-1898

A critical contribution to the burgeoning field of Spanish colonial art, Behind Closed Doors reveals how art and luxury goods together signaled the identity and status of Spanish Americans struggling to claim their place in a fluid New World hierarchy. By the early sixteenth century, the Spanish practice of defining status through conspicuous consumption and domestic display was established in the Americas by Spaniards who had made the transatlantic crossing in search of their fortunes. Within a hundred years, Spanish Americans of all heritages had amassed great wealth and had acquired luxury goods from around the globe. Nevertheless, the Spanish crown denied the region’s new moneyed class the same political and economic opportunities as their European-born counterparts. New World elites responded by asserting their social status through the display of spectacular objects at home as pointed reminders of the empire’s dependence on silver and other New World resources. The private residences of elite Spaniards, Creoles (American-born white Spaniards), mestizos, and indigenous people rivaled churches as principal repositories for the fine and decorative arts. Drawing princip

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