Imágenes de la melancolía y el laurel: una aproximación a las tipificaciones visuales de Rosalía de Castro
Images of Melancholy and Laurel: Exploring the Visual Typification of Rosalía de Castro

Summary/Abstract: The portrayal of Rosalía de Castro has contributed to the mythification of the author, serving as an active element in the complex Rosalian discourse from the 19th century to the present. Since the era of her initial photographic portraits, images of Rosalía have been disseminated in alignment with social and cultural discursive orders that have typified gestures and iconographic motifs to support her canonization as a cultural icon and market image. This paper will examine various depictions of the author since the 19th century, focusing on the initial elective justifications for the use of reproducible images – in the context of photographs taken by photographers such as Cardarelly or Sellier – and on the figurative and reproductive evolution of these images into the 20th and 21st centuries, through designs or murals. We will explore two central tropes in constructing Rosalian visual imagery: the presentation of Rosalía as a poet-saint, characterized by the attributes and psychological virtues that articulate a “venerable” image (such as melancholy, sadness, sleep, sacrifice, or illness), and the iconographic elements of flower and laurels, which serve as instrumentalized motifs and a contradictio in terminis for her own work, thereby contributing to the construction of the Rosalian myth.

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