María Lumbreras

María Lumbreras is a historian specializing in early modern Iberian art and visual culture. Her research focuses on the history of antiquarianism, particularly the roles of replication and material experimentation in historical understandings of evidence. With training in art history and the history of science, her interests extend to artistic networks, premodern environmental thinking, archival practices, and philosophies of expertise from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Lumbreras is currently working on her first book, The Facture of Evidence: Replication and the Past in Early Modern Spain, which examines how antiquarian, naturalist, and artistic practices intersected in Habsburg Spain at the turn of the seventeenth century. This project investigates the development of reproductive artifacts called retrato (“portrait”) and their impact on notions of material evidence during a period of evolving sacred history. María Lumbreras earned her PhD and MA from Johns Hopkins University and her MA (Diploma de Estudios Avanzados) and BA (Licenciatura) from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain. Her research has received support from institutions such as the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, the Singleton Center for the Study of Premodern Europe, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Harvard University.