Sacred Art of Spanish America - An Exhibition at Cornell University

I recently visited a very interesting exhibition at the Johnson Museum of Art on the campus of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, titled “Colonial Crossings: Art, Identity, and Belief in the Spanish Americas.” The works on display are primarily from the 18th century, with a few earlier pieces anda few later, from several different parts of the former Spanish colonies of the New World. The exhibition is scheduled to end on December 15th; if you are in the area, it is very much worth your time. Here are pictures of all the major works, and most of the minor ones. Very few of the artists are known by name.

We start, of course, with an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe. This was painted in 1779 by a Mexican artist named Sebastián Salcedo, a prestige commission done in a difficult and expensive medium, oil on copper; difficult, because it requires a lot of layering, and takes forever to dry. (The very first image of the Sacred Heart to be exposed in a church in Rome, the famous work of Pompeo Batoni, was done in the same medium only 12 years earlier.) It has to be said that the didactic panels in the show give far too little information about basic art historical facts, such as who commissioned this, whether it was for a church, a private chapel, a public space etc.

A painting of the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception, known as Our Lady of Miracles, from Cuzco, Perú, 18th century, made for the local Franciscan house. This is a very much toned down version of the allegorical representation of the Immaculate Conception, by this period long out of fashion in Europe.

Madonna and Child, 1592-1605, by an anonymous follower of the Italian painter Bernardo Bitti, a Jesuit priest from Camerino, Italy, who worked in many different places in the Viceroyalty of Perú.

Our Lady of the Rosary of Chiquinquirá (modern Columbia), with Ss Francis and Andrew, late 17th or early 18th century. The anonymous donor at the right clearly seems to have been added to the painting by a different hand, but no further information about this was provided by the show.

An image of Our Lady of Remedies, from La Paz (in modern Bolivia), 1770. The story depicted here is that a local miscreant stabbed an image of the Virgin Mary, but was converted instantly when it began to bleed.

An ex-voto from Caracas (in modern Venezuela), with the Virgin and Child and various Saints, made for a lieutenant colonel of the Spanish army, and presented to him in 1752.

Two images of Our Lady of Mercy (i.e. as Patroness of the Mercedarian Order, which originated in Spain), painted in Perú by an artist named Cipriano de Toledo y Gutiérrez, the first in 1764, and the second seven years later.

An alms-box. ca. 1790, decorated with an image of the Virgin of Regla, who has several shrines in various parts of the Caribbean.

An embroidered panel with several small relics attached to it, and an Italian devotional image of the Franciscan hermit St Benedict of Palermo (1526-89), the first black person to be canonized in modern times, who was of course, very popular with slaves of African descent in the Spanish colonies.

Tobias and the Angel, 1787, by the Puerto Rican artist José Campeche y Jordán (1751-1809).

St Louis Bertrand (1526-81), a Dominican missionary, baptizing an African slave; ca. 1750.

This painting of the Apostle St James the Greater, made in Cuzco, Peru in the 17th or 18th century, shows him in his New World guise as the “Mataincas - slayer of Incas”, a titled transferred from his role as the liberator of Spain from Muslim dominion, or “Matamoros - Moor-slayer”.

A statue of St Michael triumphing over the devil, for which I forgot to photograph the didactic panel.

A painting of the same motif, made in Cuzco in the late 17th or early 18th century.

From the same period, an angel carrying a rifle as a symbol of his protective power.

From the same place and period, a devotional image of the Christ Child wearing an apron decorated with symbols of the Passion, and the flag with which He is often shown while coming out of the tomb.

Another, showing Him depicting the Four Last Things, and surrounded by symbolic representations of the virtues.

A late 18th century depiction, made in Quito, Ecuador, of Noah shepherding the animals onto the ark, including some native American species such as llamas and armadillos.

This very peculiar image of the Veil of Veronica with a triple face on it, made in Colombia in the 17th century, would never have passed muster of the rules which the Church established for art in the wake of the Council of Trent, and which it was then implementing in most of Europe. But as is so often the case, such rules take rather longer to reach the peripheries, especially in any area where there were no Protestants, and the need for them was not considered urgent. (Facing this picture in the exhibition is one of Christ after the flagellation which is too grotesque to share here, and which would have been regarded in Europe as an intolerable violation of the rules of decorum for religious paintings.)

A mid-19th century depiction (possibly from La Paz) of the popular Spanish Saint Isidore the Farmer (1070 ca. - 1130). He was canonized in 1622 at the behest of the King Philip IV of Spain, whose father, Philip III, was once cured of a deadly illness when the Saint’s relics were brought into his bedroom. At the same ceremony, celebrated by Pope Gregory XV on March 12, 1622, were also canonized Ss Philip Neri, Theresa of Avila, Ignatius of Loyola and Francis Xavier, leading the Romans to joke that the Pope was canonizing “four Spaniards and a Saint.”

An ivory sculpture of St Joseph and the Christ Child, made in the Philippine islands in the 18th century, with clear Chinese influence.

Our Lady of Cocharcas, the patroness of an important shrine in Bolivia, 1751. 

Another of the Guadalupana, also Bolivian, from the 18th century.