Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Fictions Of Abundance In Early Modern Madrid: Hospitality, Consumption, And Artistic Identity In The Work Of Juan Van Der Hamen Y Leon, Carmen Ripollés

School of Art + Design Faculty Publications and Presentations

This article examines how still-life painting contributed to the creation of a distinct urban aristocratic culture in seventeenth-century Madrid. Focusing on a group of paintings by Juan van der Hamen, the article situates these images within the context of the picture gallery and the practice of aristocratic hospitality. By giving visual form to this new urban mode of magnificence, Van der Hamen’s still lifes created a fiction of abundance that glossed over Madrid’s economic realities. At the same time, Van der Hamen concealed signs of manual craftsmanship and commercial interest in order to advance and ennoble his own artistic identity.