Historian Amanda Wunder joins us to discuss her new exhibition Spanish Style: Fashion Illuminated, 1550-1770, on view at The Hispanic Society Museum & Library until March 22nd, 2026. In addition to royal portraits, life-size sculptures, and sumptuous textiles and jewelry, the exhibition centers around sixteen rarely seen illuminated manuscripts known as cartas ejecutorias or “letters of nobility. Collectively, these objects reveal how upwardly mobile men and women used fashion as a reflection of status, identity, and power in sixteenth and seventeenth century Spain.

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