Juan de Pareja

A provocative study of a freedman painter that recognizes the labor of enslaved artists and artisans in seventeenth-century Spain.Diego Velazquez's portrait of Juan de Pareja (ca. 1608-1670) has long been a landmark of European art, but this provocative study focuses on its subject: an enslaved man who went on to build his own successful career as an artist. This catalogue – the first scholarly monograph on Pareja – discusses the painter's ties to the Madrid School of the 1660s and revises our understanding of artistic production during Spain's Golden Age, with a focus on enslaved artists and artisans. The authors illuminate the highly skilled labor within Seville's multiracial society; the role of Black saints and confraternities in the promotion of Catholicism among enslaved populations; and early twentieth-century scholar Arturo Schomburg's project to recover Pareja's legacy. The book also includes the first illustrated and annotated list of known works attributed to Pareja.