About Baroque Bodies

Baroque Bodies is an academic short documentary exploring how fashion, movement, and visual appearance were used to shape power, identity, and the disciplined body in Baroque Spain. The film brings together philosophical theory—particularly Richard Shusterman’s concept of somaesthetics—with visual analysis of paintings featured in the traveling exhibition Splendor and Passion: Baroque Spain and Its Empire.

This film was produced alongside the research paper “Dressing the Body, Structuring the Mind: Somaesthetics and Baroque Fashion,” presented at the Boca Raton Museum of Art in March 2025. The event included a lecture and film screening as part of the museum’s educational programming in response to the national premiere of the Splendor and Passion exhibition, curated by Guillaume Kientz and organized by the Hispanic Society Museum & Library.

The documentary and research were developed in parallel as two distinct but deeply interconnected works. Together, they examine how fashion in painting was more than representation—it was a system of bodily control, religious performance, and visual propaganda.

The film was met with enthusiastic audience engagement and is currently under consideration for online publication by the museum.