Adam Jasienski
| Phone |
214.768.2783 |
Adam Jasienski is a specialist in 16th- and 17th-century visual culture, particularly in Spain and Latin America. He works closely with the collections of the Meadows Museum, frequently teaching in its galleries. His book, Praying to Portraits: Audience, Identity, and the Inquisition in the Early Modern Hispanic World, examines the intersections of portraiture and religious imagery in the early modern Hispanic world (ca. 1500–1700) and was published with Penn State University Press in May 2023. It was awarded the Ronald H. Bainton Prize for best book in Art and Music History from the Sixteenth Century Society and the Eleanor Tufts Award from the Society for Iberian Global Art.
His new book project, on the Hispanic Inquisitions and visual culture, is supported by the Madrid Institute for Advanced Study at the Casa de Velázquez, the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies at Villa I Tatti, the Thoma Foundation and the John Carter Brown Library.
He looks forward to working with M.A. and Ph.D. students interested in early modern Spanish and Latin American visual culture. Additionally, every January he teaches the study abroad course SMU-in-Madrid: Art, Religion, and History, for which he also serves as program director.
Education
Ph.D., M.A., and B.A., History of Art and Architecture, Harvard University.
Recent Work
Research
Portraiture and identity; art and the law; sacred art; art and anthropology; censorship; affect and the history of emotions; Inquisition studies
Publications
“A Crucifix, Broken and Repaired, and Global Histories of Art and Emotions,” Journal of Early Modern History (forthcoming 2025).
“Rostros virtuosos: Los santos y sus retratos en la España e Hispanoamérica de la Edad Moderna,” in Fieramente humanos: Retratos de santidad Barroca, ed. Pablo González Tornel (Málaga; Valencia: Museo Carmen Thyssen; Museu de Belles Arts de València, 2023): 49-63.
Praying to Portraits: Audience, Identity, and the Inquisition in the Early Modern Hispanic World (Penn State University Press, 2023).
- Received the Lila Acheson Wallace-Reader’s Digest Publications Subsidy from Villa I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies.
- Awarded the Ronald H. Bainton Prize for best book in Art and Music History from the Sixteenth Century Society
- Awarded the Eleanor Tufts Award from the Society for Iberian Global Art
“Entre el retrato y la imagen sagrada: El caso de Eugenia de la Torre,” invited contribution to En las sombras del barroco: Una mirada introspectiva, ed. Adrián Contreras-Guerrero, Ángel Justo-Estebaranz, and Fernando Quiles García (Seville; Santiago de Compostela: Enredars/Andavira, 2023): 17-51.
“Disgust and the Sacred Image in Early Modernity,” in Sacrifice and Conversion in the Early Modern Atlantic World, ed. Maria Berbara. Florence, Milan: I Tatti Research Series, Officina Libraria, 2022.
“Velázquez and the Fragile Portrait of the King,” Art History 44, 5 (November 2021): 1-26.
- Awarded the 2024 Richard L. Kagan Prize from the Association for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies (ASPHS) for best article or chapter in an edited collection on the history of the early modern Spanish world, c. 1500-c. 1800.
“Francisco Pacheco y una anunciada intervención de Fernando III el santo: Un testimonio sobre el Libro de retratos,” Archivo Español de Arte 93, 372 (October-December 2020): 409-416.
“Converting Portraits: Repainting as Art Making in the Early Modern Hispanic World,” The Art Bulletin, 102, 1 (March 2020): 7-30.
- Awarded the 2021 Arthur Kingsley Porter Prize from the College Art Association.
- Honorable Mention, 2021 Early Career Best Article Prize, Association for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies.
“A Savage Magnificence: Ottomanizing Fashion and the Politics of Display in Early Modern East-Central Europe,” Muqarnas: An Annual on the Visual Cultures of the Islamic World 31 (2014): 173-205.
- Awarded the 2015 Emerging Scholars Publication Prize from the Historians of German and Central European Art (HGCEA), an affiliated society of the College Art Association.
Course list
| The Global Baroque | |
| El Greco to Goya? |
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| Power and Spectacle: The Arts of the Early Modern Hispanic World | |
| Portraiture and Selfhood | |
| Seminar on Spanish Art | |
| Seminar on Early Modern Art |
Future offerings:
| Meadows Museum Spotlight: Art History One Object at a Time | |
| Visual Culture in Colonial Mexico |
