Introducing Dr. Nina Gonzalbez
Congratulations to Nina Gonzalbez, who defended her dissertation “Looking Inward: Identifying the Local within the Global in Late Fifteenth-century Sevillian Artworks” under the direction of Dr. Erika Loic in the spring of 2024.
Dr. Gonzalbez’s dissertation examines the Iberian city of Seville, which offers a case study of motif and iconographic transference in the late Middle Ages and Early Modern era. Gonzalbez addresses the idea of transference through a formal lens and considers the cultural and historical contexts that surround it. The categorization of architecture as mudéjar and Hispano-Flemish has led to a flattening of these artworks’ meaning, not only historiographically but also in the popular imagination, particularly in Anglophone films. Viewing artworks first as local productions and second as productions influenced by outside sources, both religious and cultural, allows for a closer and more nuanced reading of a city’s visual culture. Gonzalbez examines the replication of tile and prints in various other media as a way of defining these terms for a Sevillian context.
Dr. Loic writes,
“Nina’s research into the art and architecture of Seville brings much-needed attention to the city’s increasingly global connections in the fifteenth century. She examines Seville’s long history at the forefront of ceramic and tiling arts, focusing on the convergence of these traditions and the new trends in painting and print. While ceramics and other “ornamental” media are regularly neglected as “minor” arts, Nina’s intervention brings them to the center of a discussion of technological change, trade, patronage, and civic identity.”
Dr. Gonzalbez received support for travel and research in Seville from the Penelope Mason Travel Grant for Dissertation Research, Friends of Art History Dissertation Research Award, and the AARHMS Simon Barton Travel Grant. These awards supported two separate trips to Seville where she worked in the archives and visited sites in the city and surrounding area. She also taught in Florence, Italy under the Art History / FSU International Programs Florence Teaching Appointment.
Of her advising professor Erika Loic, Nina writes, “Erika has been a wonderful advisor. She has offered guidance and support every step of the way. I’m deeply appreciative of all of her efforts and will always be impressed by her scholarship and by her ability to catch italicized periods!”
Gonzalbez presented her research at the International Congress on Medieval Studies in 2021 and has been accepted to present in the 2024 conference this May. She also presented at the International Conference on Early Modern Studies in 2022. Gonzalbez published “Brick by Brick: Constructing Identity at Don Lope Fernández de Luna’s Parroquieta at La Seo” in Globalism in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Age; in this article she examines how cosmopolitan architecture demonstrated wealth and power for its patron. She has a forthcoming publication titled “Imagining the Medieval in Andalusia: Seville as the ‘exotic’ in Flim” in Cine-Medievalismos: The Middle Ages in Luso- and Hispanophone Film and Television. In this article, she discusses how Anglophone and Spanish films address Seville’s medieval architecture.
In the fall of 2024, Dr. Gonzalbez will join the faculty of the Humanities and Fine Arts Department at St. Petersburg College, St. Petersburg, FL.