ABSTRACT
Feminist scholars in particular have deeply enriched our understanding of Sor Juana's portraits; sustained cross-culturally-attuned art historical analysis may yet yield new interpretations of the misleadingly unyielding likenesses. This chapter considers the artistic strategies as well as the scholarly reception of the modest number of extant seventeenth and eighteenth century portraits of the Creole Mexican poet-nun. Surveying these paintings and prints as chronologically as possible. It suggests some formal and conceptual links between the Mexican images and canonical as well as lesser-known works produced by the European, mainly Spanish, artists with whom they were undoubtedly in creative conversation. Multivalent rhetorical strategies such as these are largely absent in the remaining trio of three-quarter-length portraits of Sor Juana, all made by less technically gifted artists than those discussed. The complicated business of dating and attributing these works has been the main occupation of scholars who mention the three known eighteenth-century canvases, all of which appear to be copies of lost works.
