"Of Style and the Generic: Cuzco, the European Canon, and the “Whiteness” of the Sacred"
Wednesday, December 3, 2025 4:45 PM
Goldwin Smith Hall G22
Abstract
The “stylized,” “generic,” or “idealized” nature of the faces and, to a lesser degree, bodies depicted in colonial Cuzco-school paintings (ca. 1650-1750) is widely recognized by scholars and often cited as a defining feature of the style. What is rarely acknowledged, however, is the origins of these “ideal” faces and bodies in imported European models. This talk argues for the importance of recognizing the foundation of the Cuzco school ideal face and body in European sources which both shaped the depiction of the diverse inhabitants of colonial Cuzco and presented a White image of the divine to the Cuzco faithful.
Biography
Emily C. Floyd is Associate Professor in History of Art at University College London and Editor and Curator at the Center for the Study of Material and Visual Culture of Religion at Yale University (MAVCOR). Her first book, The Mobile Image: Prints and the Shaping of Devotional Networks from Lima to the Andes and Beyond, is a study of the production and movement of prints in colonial South America. Her current research ‘The Monster and the Saint: Race and the Body in the Art and Art History of the Colonial Andes’ focuses on intersecting ideas of sanctity, monstrosity, and the body. She earned her PhD at Tulane University.
