ABSTRACT
The mantón de Manila, an embroidered silk shawl, traversed the globe from the late eighteenth century until 1898, when Spain lost the Philippines to the United States in the Spanish-American War. Commencing its journey in China, it traveled to Manila, the commercial hub of the Spanish Philippines, and then made its way to the Americas and to southern Spain. The shawl’s ubiquity in Spanish women’s dress occurred at a key moment in the production of costumbrista art in Seville beginning in the 1830s. That Spanish and foreign costumbrista artists during the nineteenth century depicted Andalusian female types wearing the shawl, highlighting it as fundamental to their visual construction, implicates this global traveler as a vital ingredient in the formation of Spanish, particularly Andalusian, women’s identity. As a sartorial object made exclusively for export, the mantón embodies the confluence of cultures as novel traditions were invented and appropriated for local customs. These shawls honor the rich history of trade with the East and Andalusia’s fundamental role in this global network. Thus, the depiction of mantones on southern Spanish women in costumbrista art geared toward both local and international audiences vitally shaped this region’s identity as key to Spain’s imperial interests.
