The First Viral Images: Maerten De Vos, Antwerp Print, and the Early Modern Globe

Stephanie Porras, Professor of Art History at Tulane University and Chair of the Newcomb Art Department, has authored a new book, The First Viral Images Maerten De Vos, Antwerp Print, and the Early Modern Globe, published by Penn State University Press.

Publisher's Synopsis As a social phenomenon and a commonplace of internet culture, virality provides a critical vocabulary for addressing questions raised by the global mobility and reproduction of early modern artworks. This book uses the concept of virality to study artworks' role in the uneven processes of early modern globalization.

Drawing from archival research in Asia, Europe, and the Americas, Stephanie Porras traces the trajectories of two interrelated objects made in Antwerp in the late sixteenth century: Gerónimo Nadal's Evangelicae historiae imagines, an illustrated devotional text published and promoted by the Society of Jesus, and a singular composition by Maerten de Vos, St. Michael the Archangel. Both were reproduced and adapted across the early modern world in the seventeenth century. Porras examines how and why these objects traveled and were adopted as models by Spanish and Latin American painters, Chinese printmakers, Mughal miniaturists, and Filipino ivory carvers. Reassessing the creative labor underpinning the production of a diverse array of copies, citations, and reproductions, Porras uses virality to elucidate the interstices of the agency of individual artists or patrons, powerful gatekeepers and social networks, and economic, political, and religious infrastructures. In doing so, she tests and contests several analytical models that have dominated art-historical scholarship of the global early modern period, putting pressure on notions of copying, agency, context, and viewership.

Vital and engaging, The First Viral Images sheds new light on how artworks, as agents of globalization, navigated and contributed to the emerging and intertwined global infrastructures of Catholicism, commerce, and colonialism.

Student News: Lilith Winkler-Schor (BFA, 2017)

Lilith Winkler-Schor is one of 62 national recipients of the prestigious Truman Scholarship

by Barri Bronston, photo by Ryan Rivet

With so much work to complete before the end of the semester, Tulane University senior Lilith Winkler-Schor was in a grumpy mood. She needed something to cheer her up — and she got it in the form of a phone call from Tulane President Mike Fitts on April 7.

Fitts informed her that she is one of 62 in the nation to win a prestigious Truman Scholarship, and just like that, the grumpiness turned into ecstasy. “I was elated,” she said. “I called my parents, but I didn’t want to post anything until I saw something in writing.”

Her skepticism was short-lived. She indeed won the scholarship, which provides $30,000 toward graduate school and the opportunity to participate in professional development programming to prepare for a career in public service leadership.

Candidates for the scholarship must be nominated by their colleges. This year, 768 candidates were nominated by 315 institutions. That number was whittled down to 199 finalists, and eventually the 62 winners, who will receive their awards at the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum in Independence, Missouri, on May 28.

Winkler-Schor, a Newcomb Scholar from Seattle, Washington, is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in social policy and political science and a bachelor of fine arts degree in glass and sculpture. Her scholarship focuses on urban policy, with special emphasis on incarceration, poverty and housing policy.

She is co-founder of Roots of Renewal, a community development nonprofit that provides work training for formerly incarcerated young adults as they re-enter their neighborhoods. She is a fellow at the Next City Vanguard, and is one of two recipients this year of the Tulane Center for Public Service’s Jim Runsdorf Excellence in Public Service Award.

Winkler-Schor plans to defer graduate school so she can continue working at Roots of Renewal and helping the formerly incarcerated become productive members of society. “It’s been a wild and wonderful journey,” she said. “But it’ll be nice to concentrate on this work without having to worry about school for a while.”

[Tulane New Wave, April 27, 2017]