Ophelia

It is astonishing how deeply the figure of Ophelia has been woven into the fabric of Spanish literature and the visual arts – from her first appearance in eighteenth-century translations of Hamlet , through depictions by seminal authors such as Espronceda, Bécquer and Lorca, to turn-of-the millennium figurations. This provocative, gendered figure has become what both male and female artists need her to be – is she invisible, a victim, mad, controlled by the masculine gaze, or is she an agent of