The University of Texas at Austin
Graduate Student, Art and Art History
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Dr. Jeffrey Chipps Smith
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About
Jessica Weiss is a doctoral candidate at the University of Texas, Austin. She is specializing in Northern Renaissance art, specifically the relationship between Flanders and Iberia, with a heavy emphasis on late Medieval art.
Her dissertation, titled "Juan de Flandes, Flemish Aesthetics, and Identity Construction in Isabelline Spain," explores how the hybridized hispano-flemish court style allowed Isabella the Catholic to simultaneously cultivate both an internationally sophisticated and localized Castilian identity. This interpretation problematizes and rejects the scholarships’ persistent interpretation of the formal qualities of Juan de Flandes, and of sixteenth-century painting in general, as passive indicators of regional schools, artistic hands, and broad cultural phenomena. Instead, this study argues that Isabella’s aesthetics reveal a proto-nationalistic awareness of a specifically “Castilian” visual identity, the manipulation of which coincides with her broader aims as ruler.
In 2002 she recieved her B.A. in Art History from the University of North Texas, where she worked with Drs. Scott Montgomery and Kelley Donahue-Wallace. Jessica also holds a B.A. in French and French Literature from North Texas.
In 2006 Jessica completed her thesis entitled "Andrés Marçal de Sas: A Case Study of an Immigrant Artist" and received an M.A. in Art History from Southern Methodist University. Her advisors were Drs. Pamela Patton, Annemarie Carr, and Karl Kilinski III.
