Felipe Pereda is a Spanish art historian and academic. He is the Fernando Zóbel de Ayala Professor of Spanish Art and Director of Graduate Studies at the Department of History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University. Pereda is president of the Society for Iberian Global Art (SIGA).
Pereda was born in Madrid. He studied art history at the Universidad Complutense, where he received his Licenciatura in Geography and History in 1988. He also studied philosophy at the National University of Distance Education (UNED). He then attended the Autonomous University of Madrid, receiving his PhD in 1997.
Pereda began his academic career at the Autonomous University of Madrid, where he served as assistant professor (1997âÂÂ2002) and later as associate professor of art history (2002âÂÂ2011). He then moved to the United States and joined Johns Hopkins University as the Nancy H. and Robert E. Hall Professor of the Humanities in the Department of the History of Art (2011âÂÂ2015). In 2015, he was appointed Fernando Zóbel de Ayala Professor of Spanish Art at Harvard University, where he also serves as director of graduate studies.
He has held visiting positions at the Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA) at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., Villa I Tatti (The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies). Pereda has been a visiting professor at the Scuola Normale Superiore (Pisa) and the CY Advanced Studies (CY Cergy Paris Université).
His work focuses on Spanish art in the early modern period (15thâÂÂ18th centuries), with particular emphasis on the process of religious confessionalization of its visual culture. His work also spanned art theory, image theory, and the history of architecture. He published on artists including Pietro Torrigiano, Sebastiano del Piombo, Luis de Morales, Jusepe de Ribera, Francisco de Zurbarán, Velázquez, El Greco, and, most recently, Francisco de Goya. Pereda has been researching the work of Goya and his relationship to late 18th-century debates on women's rights.