Members

Image: Stefano della Bella, Portada para “Las vistas de los puertos marítimos”, 1647. National Gallery of Art, Washington DC (Colección del Dr. y la Sra. George Benjamin Green).

Luisa Elena Alcalá

Luisa Elena Alcalá is Associate Professor in the Department of History and Theory of Art of the Universidad Autónoma of Madrid. She received her BA from Yale College (1990) and her PhD from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University (1998), where she defended a dissertation on the Jesuits and the Visual Arts in New Spain.

She has been a member of over a dozen research projects funded by the Spanish government, the European Community, and other international institutions such as the Getty Foundation Connecting Art Histories. Since January 2022, she directs the ProJesArt Project.

In the Universidad Autónoma of Madrid, she is also co-chair of the research group HICSOS and was involved in the curricular development of the recently established Master´s program on History of Art of the Early Modern Period: Classical Tradition and Globalization.

In 2008 she was Paul Mellon Senior Fellow in the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA, Washington DC), and later she received a research fellowship from Dumbarton Oaks (Harvard University). She has taught MA and doctoral level classes as a visiting professor in the Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas (Universidad Autónoma de México), the University of Murcia, and the University of Alcalá de Henares, among others.

Her collaboration in exhibitions and publications has revolved around questions pertaining to the history of painting in the Spanish-American viceroyalties, with a specialty in Mexico, as well as on religious images, the Society of Jesus, and issues of circulation and globalization.

Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
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Rafael Japón

Rafael Japón is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History of Art and Theory at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid since 2022.

He graduated in Art History from the University of Seville (2013), where he also completed the Master’s program in Andalusian Artistic Heritage and its Ibero-American Projection (2014). He holds an International PhD in History and Arts from the Universities of Granada and Bologna, with a thesis on the influence of Italian painting on the Sevillian Baroque, receiving the highest distinction, cum laude. He was a fellow at the Fondazione di Studi Storia dell’Arte Roberto Longhi in Florence and held a University Personal Training (FPU) fellowship from the Spanish government from 2015 to 2019. He has carried out research abroad in various extended stays and is also part of the R&D project The Display of Arts in the Hispanic Monarchy (16th-18th centuries).

His publications focus on the cultural relations between Italy, Spain, and Spanish America, as well as on Italian painting and its impact on Spanish painters of the Modern Age, paying special attention to the patronage and collecting activities carried out by various religious orders. His most notable publications include Bartolomé Esteban Murillo y la copia pictórica (Universidad de Granada Press, 2018) and The Influence of Italian Culture on the Sevillian Golden Age of Painting (Routledge, 2022).

Universidad Autónoma Madrid
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Macarena Moralejo Ortega

Macarena Moralejo Ortega is Assistant Professor in the Art History Department at the Complutense University of Madrid. She graduated in Art History from Valladolid’s University and also studied at the Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofía (Università La Sapienza in Rome).

Thereafter, she obtained the title of Curator of Artistic and Cultural Heritage of the Church at the Faculty of Church History of the Pontifical Gregorian University of Rome and received her PHD in Art History with European Mention from the University of Valladolid (2008) with the thesis: La teoría artística de Federico Zuccari (h. 1539-1609): Antecedentes y repercusiones en la tratadística moderna. She held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence where she studied Bianca Cappello, Grand Duchess of Tuscany (1578-1587), as collector and her relations with the court of Philip II.

She has participated in more than seven research projects, among which, currently she also contributes to: “Identidades femeninas en la Edad Moderna una Historia en construcción: Aristócratas de la casa de Mendoza (1450-1700)” PID2019-105283GB-loo (PI: Prof. Esther Alegre Carvajal, UNED); and also “Redes de poder, mediación artística y patronazgo femenino en la Edad Moderna: El legado de las aristócratas Mendoza en los territorios de Castilla -La Mancha” SBPLY-19-180501-000242 (IP: Prof. Esther Alegre Carvajal, UNED),

Macarena Moralejo is a member of the Research Group “Patrimonio cultural y sociología artística, artífices obras y clientes en los territorios de la monarquía hispánica (1516-1833)”directed by Prof. María Teresa Cruz Yabar (UCM).

Her research focuses on the Italian-Spanish artistic literature of the 16th and 17th centuries, the collecting of works of art by the nobility in the Italian and Iberian peninsula, as well as the Society of Jesus in the Modern Age.

Universidad Complutense de Madrid
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Margarita Ana Vázquez Manassero

Margarita Ana Vázquez Manassero is Assistant professor at the Department of History and Theory of Art of the Universidad Autónoma of Madrid, since 2019. She holds a PhD in Art History (European Doctorate, 2017), and Extraordinary Doctorate Award (2019) by the UNED.

She was Research Fellow at the Curatorial Department of Spanish Painting Until 1700 at the Museo Nacional del Prado (2011-2013). Later, she was awarded a Predoctoral fellowship from Spain´s Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (FPI-UNED, 2014-2017) and a Postdoctoral Research Fellow “Juan de la Cierva-Formación” (Instituto Universitario La Corte en Europa, IULCE-UAM, 2019), among other scholarships and grants.

His research has developed along three main themes: the visual culture of the Spanish Golden Age, the relationship between art and science in the Hapsburg period, with special attention to the artistic and scientific collections gathered in court palaces, and the analysis of the networks of power and cultural exchanges between the cities and courts of the Modern Age.

Major publications include her book, El «yngenio» en palacio: arte y ciencia en la corte de los Austrias (ca. 1585-1640) in 2018, and the edition of two collective books: «Ser hechura de»: ingeniería, fidelidades y redes de poder en los siglos XVI y XVII, (2019, edited together with Alicia Cámara) and La ciudad de los saberes en la Edad Moderna, (2020, coordinated with Alicia Cámara and Álvaro Molina).

Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
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Alexandre Coello de la Rosa

Alexandre Coello de la Rosa is Senior professor of History of America and the Philippines at the Department of Humanities of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF, Barcelona) and ICREA Academia researcher (2020-25).

Graduate in Geography and History (UB); Master in Basic and Applied Anthropology (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, UAB) and Ph.D. in History (Stony Brook, New York, USA). Diploma in Andean Culture and Society (Centro de Estudios Regionales Andinos “Bartolomé de las Casas”, Cuzco-Peru). Postdoctoral researcher RED (UPF, 2005-06), JAE-doc (CSIC/UPF, 2008-10) and Ramón y Cajal professor and researcher (UPF, 2010-15) positively evaluated in 2012 (2nd annuity) and 2014 (I3, 4th annuity).

His research activities revolve around early modern Latin America and the Philippines (16th-18th centuries), historical anthropology, ecclesiastical history, and chronicles of the Indies. He has been visiting professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM, Mexico City), the Federal University of Grande Dourados (UFGD, Brazil) and the Instituto Francés de Estudios Andinos (Lima-Peru). He has participated in more than a dozen of research projects linked to Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), SUNY at Stony Brook (New York, USA), Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Universitat Pompeu Fabra and the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. He has three six-year research periods (1998-2008; 2009-14; 2015-20) and three five-year teaching periods (1996-2011; 2011-16; 2016-21).

He has published more than 100 articles in (indexed) journals and book chapters related to his research lines. He has just published (with Joao V. Melo), The Jesuit Encounters with Islam in the Asia-Pacific (Leiden: Brill, 2023), and he is currently working on different research projects that range from the diocesan church (pastoral visitations, archbishops, cathedral Chapters) to the Society of Jesus in the Viceroyalty of Peru and the Philippines (17th century).

Universitat Pompeu Fabra
Producción científica
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Patricia Díaz Cayeros

Irma Patricia Díaz Cayeros has a PhD in Art History from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (2004), a Master’s degree from the Courtauld Institute of Art (London, England, 1997) and a Bachelor’s degree from the Universidad Iberoamericana (Mexico, 1995). Since 2000, she is a full time researcher at the Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas of the UNAM.

She has been awarded fellowships which have allowed her to undertake research in other institutions as well, including the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (1998-1999), Dumbarton Oaks (Harvard University, Washington, 2001 and 2004) and the Colegio de Jalisco (Guadalajara, 2007).

She teaches in the Graduate Program in Art History at UNAM and is a founding member of the Interdisciplinary Seminar on Viceregal Sculpture (SEV). She participates, since 2007, in the Conservation of Cultural Heritage Seminar based at the IIE, UNAM from which she organized a colloquium on bio and geocultural heritage from the perspective of the history and conservation of the arts (2023). She has been part of multiple research teams such as the MUSICAT.

Her research revolves around Novo-Hispanic religious art (16th-18th centuries) and its relation to spaces and rituals of worship; in particular, her publications focus on devotional sculpture, the sacred image and material culture, and its relation to ornamental, functional, ritual, and liturgical contexts.

Recently (2023), she headed the organization of the IV Ibero-American Congress on the History of Furniture in Mexico, which for the first time took place in an American country.

IIE UNAM
SEV
IV Congreso Iberoamericano de Historia del Mueble y El Patrimonio bio y geocultural.

Carmen Fernández-Salvador

Carmen Fernández-Salvador is professor of Art History at Universidad San Francisco de Quito, in Ecuador. She received her M.A. from Tulane University in 1998 and her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 2005. Her research focuses on colonial Latin American art, Jesuit art and culture, and the historiography of art.

She has published various studies on colonial and nineteenth-century art, among them Encuentros y desencuentros con la frontera imperial: la iglesia de la Compañía de Jesús de Quito y la misión en el Amazonas (siglo XVII) (Madrid and Frankfurt: Vervuert, 2018).

She has conducted various research projects funded by Ecuadorian agencies, such as Fondo de Salvamento del Municipio Metropolitano de Quito. She has also participated in Spanish-funded I+D+i projects, and in various other projects sponsored by international agencies, among them the Getty Foundation. (https://siteartgetty.wixsite.com/unfoldingarthistory). Currently, she also collaborates in the project Coadjutores: artistas e ideas migrantes en la globalización ibérica. (https://udimundus.udima.es/handle/20.500.12226/871)

During the fall of 2015 she was the Robert F. Kennedy Visiting Scholar in the Department of Art History at Harvard University.

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Corinna Gramatke

Corinna Gramatke holds a degree in Conservation, Restoration, and Technology of Polychrome Painting and Sculpture (Staatliche Akademie der bildenen Künste Stuttgart, 1985), with a study on the manufacture and painting of European Rococo fans. Her PhD dissertation was a critical translation of the sections of the Spanish treatises by Carducho, Pacheco, and Palomino dedicated to artistic techniques (Hochschule für Bildende Künste Dresden, 2010).

She has worked on and collaborated with various museums, heritage preservation projects, agencies, and workshops both in Spain and Germany. She has imparted courses in France (École d’Art d’Avignon, 1990-1995) and Germany (Hochschule für Bildende Künste Dresden, 1996-1999, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, 2012, Fernuniversität Hagen, 2019, 2021 and 2022).

Her research focuses on the study of artistic techniques in European and Ibero-American written sources, with a focus on the materiality of works of art. In 2016 she was a Getty Scholar in the “Art and Materiality” program (Getty Research Institute). She has initiated and carried out a substantial research project on the materiality of polychrome carvings from Guarani-Jesuit reductions in the Province of Paraguay from the 17th and 18th centuries (Technische Universität München, Lehrstuhl für Restaurierung, Kunsttechnologie und Konservierungswissenschaft, 2016-2019). Currently she is engaged in the study of the transfer of culture and material knowledge from the Jesuits to Paraguay and the effects on the establishment of mechanical workshops in the missions. She is also working on a critical edition of Spanish treatises of the Golden Age in collaboration with Rocío Bruquetas Galán and Zahira Véliz Bomford (in preparation, CEEH 2024).

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Josefina Schenke

Josefina Schenke holds a PhD. in History from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. She also holds a Master’s degree in Art History from the Université de Paris – Sorbonne and a Bachelor’s degree in Art History from the Université de Bourgogne.

She is currently an associate professor at the Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez (Santiago de Chile).

Her areas of interest are related to objects linked to religious practice, in terms of configuration, iconography, reception and narrative that gave them shape during the colonial and early republican period in Chile; relics and reliquaries as objects in circulation linked to human corporeality, to the incarnation of the holy and to the expectations regarding miraculous materiality; the spaces and structures that host pious practices, and the devout and political places occupied by the regular religious orders settled in American colonial territories.

She was researcher in charge of the project “Imágenes sagradas y reliquias. Visualidad, presencia urbana y circulación devota entre Santiago de Chile, Lima y el Cusco, (siglos XVI-XVIII)”, financed by the Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo de Chile (ANID). She has been part of research projects related to Chilean colonial artifacts, (“Proyecto de catastro nacional de santos policromados de origen chileno y estudio de la Colección Holtz-Kähni” and “Proyecto de investigación y puesta en valor de la Colección María Loreto Marín y creación del Museo de Artes”, Universidad de los Andes, Chile).

Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez
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Vanina Scocchera

Vanina Scocchera is Assistant Researcher at the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET) based at the Centro de Investigación en Arte, Materia y Cultura of the Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero (UNTREF) in Buenos Aires.

She holds a Bachelor and Professor of Arts (2013) degree, and a PhD in History and Theory of the Arts (2019) from the Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA), where she defended a thesis on the social practices of exchange of religious images and objects in the Río de la Plata region. She is also Assistant Professor Doctor in the Chair of Visual Art History on America 16^th-18th centuries, and in the Master´s Program of Artistic and Cultural Patrimony in Colonial South America at the Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA) and in the Doctorate program on History of Art and Comparative Theory at the Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero (UNTREF).

She has published book chapters and articles in academic journals, coordinated dossiers and organized scientific meetings as well as integrated and directed research projects sponsored by the Fund for Scientific and Technological Research (FONCYT) and the Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero (UNTREF) in Argentina and abroad. In 2021 she was awarded the Thoma Foundation Research and Travel Grant.

In 2017 she completed a research stay at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México based at the Escuela Nacional de Estudios Superiores (ENES/Morelia, UNAM) and enjoyed two travel grants funded by the Asociación Universitaria Iberoamericana de Posgrado (AUIP) for research stays in 2018 at the Universitat de Valencia (UV) and in 2021 at the Universidad de Sevilla (US).

Her research focuses on the exchange and circulation of religious images and objects between Europe and the territory of the River Plate with an approach centered on material culture, the Society of Jesus, and the networks that favored its effectiveness.

CONICET
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Verónica Zaragoza

Verónica Zaragoza is full-time professor and researcher at the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) in Mexico, assigned to the National Museum of the Viceroyalty since 2002.

She holds a degree in Art History and a Master’s Degree in Art Studies from the Universidad Iberoamericana (Mexico City). Her professional career has unfolded in the museum sector, and she has curated numerous permanent and temporary exhibitions and authored texts for exhibition catalogs. Before moving to the post in the Museo Nacional del Virreinato, she served as curator of the collections of Viceregal Painting and Applied Arts of the Museo Soumaya (1994-1996).

She has also conducted research on the history and art of the Society of Jesus, with a focus on the former Colegio y Casa de Probación de Tepotzotlán. Currently, she is a member of the Transdisciplinary Research Seminar for the Study and Conservation of Historic Monuments in Mexico, under the National Coordination of Historic Monuments, INAH, and the Research Seminar on the Collection of Enconchados of the National Museum of the Viceroyalty, INAH.

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Elena Amerio

Elena Amerio holds a Master’s degree in Art History from the University of Turin (Italy), and she is Research Staff in Training (PDIF) in the Department of History and Theory of Art at the Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM) where she is pursuing her doctoral studies under the direction of Professor Luisa Elena Alcalá.

Her academic interests focus on Italian artistic manifestations from the 15th-16th centuries and on the artistic exchanges between Italy and the Viceroyalty of Peru. In recent years she has devoted her research to the figure of the Jesuit painter Bernardo Bitti and the role of the Italian Jesuits in the Peruvian missions. Her studies also extend to the field of materiality, diagnosis, and conservation of easel painting.

Currently, she is an associate researcher at the Antonio Ruiz de Montoya University and advisor on issues of Jesuit historical identity of the Society of Jesus in Peru. She also collaborates with and advises various Peruvian institutions (Prelatura de Juli, Museo Pedro de Osma, UNMSM, Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores) as well as international ones (Archbishopric of Sucre, Universidad Internacional de la Rioja, Italian Institute of Culture in Lima, Università la Sapienza). She has also co-founded the cultural associations Ayllu y Panaka and Íqono – Centro de Arte e Investigación, both located in Cusco, Peru.

In 2022 she was awarded the Marilynn Thoma Fellowship in Art of the Spanish Americas, and she is currently a pre-doctoral fellow at the Weddigen Department of the Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute in Rome.

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Jorge Oliaga

Jorge Oliaga is PhD candidate in the Department of History and Theory of Art at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, where he is working on his thesis on the Presence of the Old Testament in 17th century Spanish and Novo-Hispanic painting, under the co-direction of Luisa Elena Alcalá (UAM) and Benito Navarrete Prieto (UCM).

He is a double graduate in Humanities and Teaching for Primary Education from the University of Alcalá (2021) and completed the Master in History of Art in the Modern Age: Classical Tradition and Globalised World at the Autonomous University of Madrid (2022), where he was awarded a Collaboration Grant from the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training to carry out the Final Project of his Master’s Degree.

His research has focused mainly on seventeenth century Spanish painting, with special attention to the circulation of religious images and ideas about the Globalized World in the Early Modern period. He has participated as a speaker at institutions such as the University of Durham (Emerging Researchers Symposium, 2023) and the Complutense University of Madrid (CEHA, 2023).

He has also been a member of the organising committee of the conference “Presencia de América en Madrid: cultura material, arte e imágenes en tránsito (RABASF, Museo de América and AmerMad, 2022); and has recently written in the exhibition catalogue Identidades compartidas: pintura española en Portugal, held at the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga in Lisbon in 2024.

Melania Ruiz Sanz de Bremond

Melania Ruiz Sanz de Bremond holds a college degree in Art History from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (2016) and a Master´s in Andalusian Artistic Heritage and its projection in Ibero-America, from the University of Seville (2017).

She obtained her PhD degree in 2023 from the Department of History and Theory of Art in the Artistic, Literary and Cultural Studies Program of the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. Her thesis, “Painting on glass: production and circulation between the Old and the New World (1650-1790)”, was directed by Luisa Elena Alcalá.

In 2020 she was awarded a Short-Term Grant from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) in order to carry out research within the group “The Normativity of Sacred Images in Early Modern Europe” (SACRIMA) directed by Dr. Chiara Franceschini at the Institut für Kunstgeschichte of the Ludwig-Maximiliams-Universität (Munich, Germany). Subsequently, she has received the grants for Short Stays from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) under the tutelage of Dr. Pablo Francisco Amador Marrero (2022). That same year, she has also received the David Whitehouse Research Residency at the Corning Museum of Glass (Corning, New York).

ORCID
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Elba María Tejero Cox

Elba María Tejero Cox is a doctoral candidate in the Department of History and Theory of Art at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid since 2021, with a thesis directed by Dr. Luisa Elena Alcalá on the relationship between art, power, and identity surrounding the convent and church of Santo Domingo in Lima.

She graduated in Art History from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (2018) and completed a Master’s Degree in Teacher Training at the same university (2019).

She has recently been awarded the Exploratory Travel Award scholarship by the Thoma Foundation (2022).

Elizabeth Vite Hernández

Elizabeth Vite is a Predoctoral Researcher in the Art History Department at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. She has a BA in History (2016) and an MA in Art History (Field of Technical Art History, 2019, cum laude), both from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, where she received the nomination for the University Medal of Merit “Alfonso Caso”, for her transcript and the presentation of her Master´s thesis “Painting with White Saturn. Tracing the Technology and Uses of Lead White in Novohispanic Painting.”

She is currently working on her doctoral thesis on painting between the 17th and 18th centuries in Mexico City, based on a corpus of works by the artists Cristóbal de Villalpando and Juan Rodríguez Juárez, under the direction of Luisa Elena Alcalá, Benito Navarrete, and Rocío Bruquetas.

She specializes in the study of techniques and materials in art, an approach from which she has guided her research on Mexican Viceregal Painting, mainly from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. She has contributed to the book Historias de Pincel. Pintura y retablos del siglo XVI en la Nueva España, coordinated by Elisa Vargaslugo, Elsa Arroyo, and Pedro Ángeles (Mexico: IIE/UNAM, 2020). She was a research assistant at the Laboratorio de Diagnóstico de Obras de Arte del Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas at UNAM between 2012 and 2017, participating in technical studies of several Mexican works from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries.

She has been an assistant professor at the School of History of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, UNAM (2013-2016), and has participated in seminars and competitive research projects at UNAM and INAH. She is also currently part, as a predoctoral contract holder, of the project “Circulation of the Image in the Artistic Geography of the Hispanic World in Early Modern Age” (CIRIMA), directed by Benito Navarrete, also financed by Spanish government.

Universidad de Alcalá
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