Destierro and Desengaño

Abstract

This chapter analyzes the role of the disabled body in court portraiture such as Diego Velázquez’s work for Philip IV, expanding upon Tobin Siebers’s concept of “disability aesthetics” and Rosemarie Garland-Thomson’s theory of “misfitting.” It discusses what purpose the disabled body served for portraitists like Velázquez and his patrons, as well as how visual representations of disabled subjects helped shape broader Spanish understandings of the borders of normalcy, monarchy, and the inner workings of their own bodies and minds.