The Latin American conquest has set ideas, news, knowledges, people and objects into circulation in an unprecedented way in terms of its means, ambitions and scope. While expressing the phenomenon of “globalization” (Gruzinski, 2006), this process relied on numerous strategies to establish in America a new system of material life. A set of heterogeneous objects were brought into circulation: altarpieces and portable altars, engravings, paintings on canvas, metal and glass, sculptures, relics and reliquaries, fabrics, jewelry, books, luxury goods, liturgical, musical and scientific instruments and tools for different trades - for engravers, watchmakers, cabinetmakers and builders. Members of the secular and regular clergy, and of the Spanish administration staff, bought these artifacts at commercial cities and regions such as Madrid, Rouen, Britanny, London, Flanders, Bavaria, Bohemia, Genoa, Naples, Venice and Rome. These objects were rendered invisible in the luggage of these “passeurs culturels” (bishops, viceroys, governors and provincial “procuradores” of the various regular orders) and, after their arrival on the American coasts, they undertook unusual biographical trajectories due to their multiple uses in the New World (Alcalá 2007; Gramatke 2019; Scocchera 2022). The course of all these objects can be identified in the missions territories, the border places, the cities, the ports and the mining sites.

On this subject, it is important to discover and decipher the nature and extent of this traffic, both on the European network and within the American space. Given that research on the American viceroyalties has not focused on the material and symbolic dimensions of this material culture and that the history of art has so far privileged the visual and iconographic aspects of the colonial American artistic objects, the aim of this session is to contribute to dialogues with history, literature, conservation and restoration, history of science and technology, among others, in an interdisciplinary approach.

Talks :

"Objects and Iconographies for the Tridentine Devotion"

• Anne LEPOITTEVIN - De Rome aux Amériques. Les Agnus Dei et les cultes mariaux.
• Vite Hernández ELIZABETH - Travel, Presence, Agency and Power in the Hispanic World. Cultural Biography of the Painting of Saint Leocadia by Cristóbal de Villalpando
• Paola CORTI, Magdalena PEREIRA - Sacred Architecture in Mural Painting: Seeing Materiality in Churches of the Ruta de la Plata
• Olaya SANFUENTES - Veneration of a sculpture of Baby Jesus in Sotaquí. A case of Material Religion
• Constanza ACUÑA, Paulina FABA - The muds of Chile and the evolution of the "submerged genres" of the Poor Clare Nuns of Santiago