Divine Senses: Exploring Sensorial Experiences in Religious Contexts throughout the Premodern Iberian World

Society for Iberian Global Art (SIGA) Sponsored Session – CAA Annual Conference 2025

New York City, February 12-15

 

Ocularcentrism has played a major role in the understanding and study of premodern religious art and architecture. Modern museums, screens, and art history classrooms still often privilege the visual over other sensory experiences. However, on the contrary, religious spirituality in the premodern world was intimately tied to multi-sensorial experiences. Could medieval monks understand the space of a cloister without the smell of blooming flowers? or the structural shapes of the church without hearing how the liturgical chants reverberated against them? Devotional spaces incorporated sounds and smells as much as visual stimulation, and many records exist of embodied religious ecstasy as in the case of Teresa of Ávila. Through the lens of art history, this Society for Iberian Global Art (SIGA)-sponsored panel seeks to explore how senses other than sight contributed to religious devotion in the premodern Iberian world.

The “sensory turn” in art history, as it has sometimes been referred to, acknowledges the importance of senses other than vision in experiencing art. Along this line of thinking, we gather papers that look beyond vision as the primary conduit for experiencing the holy from scholars of the premodern Iberian world including the Peninsula and Latin America. This panel is particularly consider hybrid spaces/objects or that deal with realms of mixed cultural practices.

Chairs: Teresa Martínez Martínez, University of Padova and Hannah Maryan Thomson, UCLA

 

Papers’ Abstracts

Una Confusión Devota: Soundscapes of Late Colonial Mexican Festivals

JoAnna Reyes, PhD, Assistant Professor, Arizona State University, School of Art

“I resided in that rich country and trod its silvered soil. And I always admired the magnificence, splendor, and brilliance, with which that illustrious City always shone in its displays”

By the late colonial period, the city of Zacatecas, located in the northwest Mexican state of the same name, had a vibrant festival culture that is memorialized in the historical and physical record.  In this presentation, I examine three primary sources that have not previously been discussed in correlation with each other: the minutes book of the confraternity of St. Sebastian, a published account of the festival held in Zacatecas to celebrate the Virgin of Guadalupe’s patronage of the Americas, and a published account of the festival held to consecrate the rebuilt Templo de la Compañía de Jesús. I pay particular attention to the written descriptions of the sounds evoked during these public festivals and consider the effect of what one author called “una confusión devota” as part of public ritual. I conclude that the soundscape played an integral role in Baroque festival culture on the northern fringe of the Spanish empire in Mexico.

 

Embodied Devotion and Pilgrimage: The Sensorial Experience of the Virgin in Thirteenth-Century Castile and Aragon

Cristina Aldrich, PhD, The Institute of Fine Arts, New York University

The veneration of Marian images in thirteenth-century Iberia was not just a visual practice but one deeply rooted in multi-sensorial engagement. Focusing on the Enthroned Virgin and Child from The Cloisters (53.67), this paper shifts from stylistic analysis to the statue’s role in facilitating embodied devotion within a multi-confessional society. The political project of Alfonso X, evident in the Cantigas de Santa Maria, for example, and devotional texts like Gonzalo de Berceo’s Milagros de Nuestra Señora reveal how Marian imagery, sound, and scent contributed to immersive religious experiences.

In rural Castile-Leon, Aragon, and Navarre, Marian cult statues were central to pilgrimage, miracle tales, and communal rituals. The touch of devotees, the resonance of chants, and the wafting of incense around these statues fostered a sacred atmosphere where the Virgin symbolized both spiritual intercession and political legitimacy. This embodied engagement, promoted by monarchs like Alfonso X, reinforced a fictionalized shared past while subtly advancing conversion politics in a society marked by confessional tensions.

By examining the sensory dimensions of these practices—touching relics, hearing devotional songs, and inhaling incense—this study engages with the “sensory turn” in art history. It highlights how Marian devotion was not merely a visual experience but an affective, multi-sensory encounter that shaped religious and political dynamics in a socially fragmented landscape. The Virgin, more than an icon, became an active participant in the sensorial experience of faith, linking devotion to broader sociopolitical narratives in thirteenth-century Iberia.

 

Sacred Touch: Pilgrimage Tokens and Seals as Apotropaic Conduits for Divine Transformation in Ireland and Spain in the Middle Ages

Laura McCloskey Wolfe, M.S. Learning Design and Technology, George Mason University. Ph.D. Candidate, History of Art, University of Dublin, Trinity College.

This paper proposal explores the tactile experience of pilgrimage, specifically in regards to seals or tokens that were collected in Spain during pilgrimages and brought back to Ireland during the Middle Ages. Theological and hagiographical writing in both Ireland and Spain frequently alludes to light and holiness directly associated with devotional writing and the exegetical experience, depicting a heavenly light around the body of a saint and light illuminating monastic sites associated with holy individuals. The similarly transfigurative aspects of pilgrimage and the art created in response to religious experience links metalwork, manuscripts, and devotional practice. A tangible reminder of this could be found in tokens or seals collected during pilgrimage. These tokens were designed to remind the pilgrim of their time abroad and included symbols that reflected loctus sanctus scenes related to the Christological cycle. Such scenes were intentionally designed to stir the emotions of the viewer, creating a lasting psychological imprint on the pilgrim and reaffirmed with each touch of the sacred object. Seals and tokens were not just reminders of a physical and spiritual journey, they also contained their own sacred powers via apotropaic motifs. My paper explores this concept in more detail, considering theological principles linking the senses (specifically touch) to the experience of the divine, with particular attention to the writings created and inspired by Isidore of Seville.

 

The Empire of the Sun: How the Incan Worship of Nature Continued After Catholic Conversion

Emi Higashiyama, MFA Candidate, Architectural History. MA Candidate, Art History Savannah College of Art and Design Savannah

The Incan culture that permeated the Andean region before the arrival of Spanish conquistadors was never truly wiped out, even after a mass Catholic conversion. Rather, the worship of nature flowed into the new religion, demonstrated particularly in the Cusco School of art. In vivid paintings, while Christian concepts were the general subject matter, details were integrated that draw attention to observations of and experiences with nature. For example, the Incan tradition of sun worship translated into the use of gold in paintings of Christ – gold was seen as the sun’s sweat, and the significance was transferred to the Christ figure. There was also an indigenous Christ, the Lord of the Earthquakes, unique to Cusco and believed to have the ability to speak with Pachamama, or Mother Earth. The Pachamama concept carried over into depictions of the Virgin Mary – Mother Earth was usually depicted as a mountain, which is how the Virgin Mary was often depicted. Perhaps the most famous Cusco School work is The Last Supper (1753) by Marcos Zapata, in which the famous Leonardo da Vinci scene was reimagined as the fusion of two cultures: the familiar Renaissance idea of Jesus and his disciples sitting in a linear formation was changed into a circular formation (more in line with indigenous tradition), and the table is set with indigenous dishes (most notably the guinea pig as the main dish). Although what lasts is visual, Incan Catholics almost always incorporated pre-existing nature worship and its accompanying senses.