2025
David Pullins and Vanessa K. Valdés, eds., with essays by Luis Méndez Rodriguez and Erin Kathleen Rowe
Winner
Juan de Pareja: Afro-Hispanic Painter in the Age of Velázquez
Exh. cat., New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2023
Diego Velázquez’s portrait of Juan de Pareja (ca. 1608–1670) has long been a landmark of European art. This provocative study, however, focuses on its subject: an enslaved man who went on to build a 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 current 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.
Finally, the book also includes the first illustrated and annotated list of known works attributed to Pareja.