SEVILLA, 30 Mar. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Focus Loyola Foundation participates in the exhibition ‘Juan de Pareja, Afro-Hispanic painter’ that the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, in the United States, will host from April 3 to July 16, thanks to the temporary loan of the canvas ‘View of Seville ‘ belonging to the permanent collection of the Centro Velázquez de Los Venerables.
The official opening of this exhibition, dedicated to the man who was the model for the iconic portrait of Velázquez at the Met, was attended by Anabel Morillo, general director of the Focus Loyola Foundation, and Borja Martín, director of International Relations at Loyola University, according to the foundation in a press release.
This exhibition seeks to offer an unprecedented look into the life and artistic achievements of Juan de Pareja (ca. 1608-1670), who worked as a slave in Velázquez’s studio for more than two decades before becoming an artist in his own right. . The exhibition is the first to tell its story and analyze the role that the artisan work of enslaved people and a multiracial society has in the art and material culture of the so-called Spanish Golden Age.
This presentation brings together some 40 paintings, sculptures and decorative artistic objects, as well as a series of books and historical documents, from the Met collection and other collections in the United States and Europe, among which is the ‘View of Seville’ from Triana from the 17th century that can be seen in the Centro Velázquez de Los Venerables in Seville.
In the exhibition, representations of Spain’s black and Moorish populations in works by Francisco de Zurbarán, Bartolomé Esteban Murillo and, above all, Velázquez join works that trace the ubiquity of enslaved labor in various media. The portrait presented at the Met, created by Velázquez in Rome in 1650, appears in context with other of his portraits from that same year, such as that of Pope Innocent X from the collection of the Duke of Wellington; Camilo Astalli from the Hispanic Society of America, or that of Juan de Córdoba from the Capitoline Museums, among others, and with the original manumission document kept by the State Archives in Rome, through which Pareja obtained his freedom.
The exhibition culminates with the first compilation of little-known paintings by Juan de Pareja, including his self-portrait, which he incorporated into his great work La vocation de San Mateo, in the Museo Nacional del Prado. In addition, the collection and writings of Arturo Schomburg—a Harlem Renaissance figure who was instrumental in the recovery of Pareja’s works—are a link connecting 17th-century Spain with 20th-century New York.
For Morillo, “the exceptional nature of the loan from the Focus Loyola Foundation is due to the quality and importance of the scientific project devised by David Pullins, curator of the Met’s Department of European Painting, with whom a fluid relationship has been maintained since 2021 in order to to weigh the temporary assignment to it”. The result of the different research studies “is evident in the beautiful catalog of the exhibition, edited by the Met and distributed by Yale University Press”.
“We have personally taken care of all the operations of transferring and assembling the painting in the museum’s exhibition hall, which has been endowed with a careful museography in line with the other loans from European museums, in particular from the Museo Nacional del Prado, and of other renowned American cultural institutions”, stated the general director of the Focus Loyola Foundation.
PORTRAIT OF THE SEVILLE OF THE GOLDEN AGE
Likewise, the person in charge of the aforementioned entity has assured that “our effort is worth it by promoting for several months an unprecedented meeting of the ‘Vista de Sevilla’ -superb portrait of the Seville of the Golden Age– with the iconic ‘Portrait by Juan de Pareja’ by Velázquez, as well as being a unique and unforgettable occasion to promote Velázquez’s hometown in one of the most important museums in the world, which is visited daily by thousands of people in New York.
For his part, Borja Martín, has indicated that the Universities are ambassadors of the Spain brand and we must promote the values, history and artistic heritage that our country has to build bridges between our societies. Likewise, he recalled that “Loyola has more than 30 agreements with educational institutions in the United States and this experience with the Met opens up many possibilities for supporting the work that the University has been doing in this country for a decade.”
In this sense, Loyola’s director of International Relations has stated that “the bridge between New York and Andalusia is very important and has a great economic, social, research and project impact. In addition, the Met is located in the parish of the Jesuit parish of San Ignacio de Park Avenue, which is also an important cultural center and where we also want to support ourselves to bring Andalusian music and culture”.
