Label Text:
Audrey Flack’s lavish Esperanza is based on a 17th-century statue of the Virgin Mary by Spanish artist Luisa Roldán (1652–1706), housed to this day in a Sevillian church. La Roldána—as she is known—was the first recorded female artist in Spain. Her jewel-like sculptures of biblical subjects inspired adoration and devotion for their dramatic emotional expression and excessive decoration, often including lace, gold, gemstones, and even tiny glass beads for tears. Working in a hyper-realist mode, Flack focused in on the Virgin’s face to emphasize both her beauty and suffering, as portrayed by La Roldána. In an artistic career spanning four decades, Flack has explored icons and symbols with feminine associations, from Greek goddesses and Hollywood starlets to tubes of red lipstick.

-Hannah Blunt, Associate Curator, Mount Holyoke College Art Museum (Sept. 2017)

Tags:
biblical; portraits; virgins

Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=MH+1986.29.3

Research on objects in the collections, including provenance, is ongoing and may be incomplete. If you have additional information or would like to learn more about a particular object, please email fc-museums-web@fivecolleges.edu.

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