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Picturing Prints in Early Modern New Spain*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Kelly Donahue-Wallace
Kelly Donahue-Wallace*
Affiliation:
University of North Texas, Denton, Texas
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Extract

In an anonymous circa 1754 portrait (Figure 1), fray Francisco de Santa Ana stands in a flowered crown and the brown and white habit of the Carmelite first order. The image commemorates the occasion of his final vows as a mendicant friar, and he is a rare if not unique example of a monk within the genre of the so-called crowned nuns. With eyes cast down, fray Francisco appears next to a table bearing an hourglass, skull, and book, symbols of his devotion and of his meditation on his own mortality. Painted as if tacked to the wall beside him is a print of the Virgin Mary, representing the Carmelite order's fervent Marian devotion. While she seems to gaze down at her follower, fray Francisco humbly looks away.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 64 , Issue 3 , January 2008 , pp. 325 - 349
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 2008

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank the anonymous readers of the manuscript for their insightful and constructive suggestions.

References

1 This article does not consider the representation of prints in religious paintings but instead only addresses prints painted into secular works.

2 Portús, Javier and Vega, Jesusa, La estampa religiosa en la España del Antiguo Régimen (Madrid: Fundación Universitaria Española, 1998), p. 192, discuss the representation of prints in Spanish paintings as evidence of poverty.Google Scholar

3 Talbot, Charles, “Prints and the Definitive Image,” in Print and Culture in the Renaissance: Essays on the Advent of Printing in Europe, eds. Tyson, Gerald P. and Wagonheim, Sylvia S. (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1986), p. 191.Google Scholar

4 Talbot, “Prints,” p. 199.

5 Castillo, Bernal Díaz del, The Conquest of New Spain, Translation and Introduction by Cohen, J.M. (London: Penguin Books, 1963), p. 62.Google Scholar

6 “Por esa razón fue enviado [tal método] al Consejo de Indias por conducto de los religiosos, como puede verse en las pinturas que se insertan en nuestra obra. No querría que esto se entendiera en el sentido de que yo pretendiese hablar mal de los inventores del arte calcográfico, puesto que ellos son muchos y han existido desde muy antiguo, sino que afirmo que el uso de ese arte en la enseñanza, y su método de adaptación, se debe atribuir a los religiosos de nuestra Orden.” Valadés, Fray Diego, Retórica cristiana, Introduction by Palomera, Esteban J. (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México/Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1989), p. 237. The Spanish translator used the word pintura although Valadés’s Latin passage employed the broader picturis, which does not specify the medium of the image.Google Scholar

7 Gruzinski, Serge, Images at War: Mexico from Columbus to Blade Runner (1492–2019), Translated by MacLean, Heather (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001), p. 71 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. If Samuel Edgerton’s recently published thesis is correct, Gante may have preferred prints to colorful paintings as instructional models, since he shared Alberti’s exaltatiqn of chiaroscuro as evidence of artistic proficiency, a feature of course privileged by the black and white prints. See Edgerton, Samuel Y., Theaters of Conversion: Religious Architecture and Indian Artisans in Colonial Mexico (Albuquerque: New Mexico, 2001), pp. 119–20.Google Scholar

8 Gerson’s use of the Lyon Bible as a source of inspiration is discussed in Camelo, Rosa, Lacroix, Jorge Gurría, and Valerio, Constantino Reyes, Juan Gerson: Tlacuilo de Tecamachalco (Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Arqueología e Historia, 1965).Google Scholar

9 “ … han sacado imagen de planchas de bien perfectas figuras, tanto que se maravillan cuantos las ven … ” Motolinía, Fray Toribio de, Historia de los Indios de la Nueva España (Mexico City: Porrua, 1973), p. 169.Google Scholar

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11 Peterson, Jeannette Favrot, The Paradise Garden Murals at Malinalco: Utopia and Empire in Sixteenth-Century Mexico (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993),Google Scholar 66. Emphasis added.

12 Gruzinski, , Images at War, p. 72. Emphasis added.Google Scholar

13 Talbot, , “Prints and the Definitive Image,” p. 199.Google Scholar

14 On the history of the printing press in Mexico City, see Medina, José Toribio, La Historia de la imprenta en los antiguos dominios españoles de América y Oceanía (Santiago, Chile: Fondo Histórico y Bibliográfico José Toribio Medina, 1958).Google Scholar

15 The legalities of Mexican colonial print publishing remain unclear. See Donahue-Wallace, Kelly, “Prints and Printmakers in Viceregal Mexico City, 1600–1800” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of New Mexico, 2000), pp. 18–27, for a summary of the laws affecting print production.Google Scholar

16 Concilios provinciales primero y segundo, compiled by Lorenzana, Francisco Antonio (Mexico City: Joseph Antonio de Hogal, 1769), p. 148.Google Scholar

17 Medina, , Historia Google Scholar, 1:330-31 cites a 1580 letter from viceroy Martín Enríquez that suggests that he had been recently given the authority to grant licenses for materials to be printed in Mexico City.

18 Scholars agree that the application of Albertian linear perspective carried with it essential notions of humankind’s place within the.universe. Samuel Edgerton summarized this sentiment writing, “The black-and-white linear lattice of Albertian perspective seemed to replicate the primal skeleton of the universe projected from God’s eye at genesis.” Edgerton, , Theaters of Conversion, p. 113.Google Scholar

19 “En el segundo año que les comenzaron a enseñar, dieron a un muchacho de Tezcuco por muestra una bula, y sacóla tan al natural, que la letra que hizo parecía el mismo molde. Puso el primer renglón de letra grande como estaba en la bula, y abajo sacó la firma del comisario y un Jesús con una imagen de Nuestra Señora, todo tan al propio, que no parecía haber diferencia del molde a la que él sacó. Y por cosa notable y primera la llevó un español a Castilla para la mostrar y dar que ver con ella.” Mendieta, Jerónimo de, Historia ecclesiastica Indiana, Book 4, Chapter 14 (Alicante: Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, 1999), n.p.Google Scholar

20 On education in New Spain, see Aizpuru, Pilar Gonzalbo, Historia de la educación en la época colonial: La educación de los Creoles y la vida urbana (Mexico City: El Colegio de México, 1990), pp. 22–23.Google Scholar

21 This statement of course ignores the artist’s agency and the negotiation inherent in early colonial artistic production. As this article addresses the perception of prints among bureaucrats and clerics, and later among the artists responsible for the portraits and casta paintings and their Spanish and Creole viewers, it does not address the complex strategies Amerindians employed to find their way within early colonial society.

22 MacGregor, , “Authority of Prints,” p. 404. Italics original.Google Scholar

23 “Por medio de las imágines que se nos imprimen de los lugares, podemos venir en conocimiento de los que en esos lugares se encuentra.” Valadés, ,Retórica cristiana, p. 237.Google Scholar

24 The full passage reads, “Hacían pintar en un lienzo los artículos de la fe, y en otro los diez mandamientos de Dios, y en otro los siete sacramentos, y lo demás que querian de la doctrina cristiana. Y cuando el predicador queria predicar de los mandamientos, colgaban el lienzo de los mandamientos junto á él) á un lado, de manera que con una vara de las que traen los alguaciles pudiese ir señalando, la parte que queria. Y así les iba declarando los mandamientos. Y lo mismo hacia cuando queria predicar de los artículos, colgando el lienzo en que estaban pintados. Y de esta suerte se les declaró clara y distintamente y muy á su modo toda la doctrina cristiana. Y no fuera de poco fruto si en todas las escuelas de los muchachos la tuvieran pintada de esta manera, para que por allí se les imprimiera en sus memorias desde su tierna edad… ” Mendieta, , Historia ecclesiastica Indiana Google Scholar, Book 3, Chapter 29.

25 Bronze is an alloy of copper. The full passage reads, “Pero lo que confunden dos siglos, burilará en laminas de bronce el passado de 1742.” Quintero, Cayetano Cabrera y, Escudo de armas de México. Celestial protección de esta nobilísima ciudad de la Nueva España, y de casi todo el nuevo mundo (Alicante: Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, 2004), n. p.Google Scholar

26 MacGregor, , “Authority of Prints,” p. 411. Italics original.Google Scholar

27 MacGregor, , “Authority of Prints,” p. 414.Google Scholar

28 “Y porque hay algunos que no saben leer, o no tiene afición a la lectura, añadimos algunas laminas con el fin de que rápidamente se recuerden esas cosas, como también para que se conozcan devidamente y con claridad los ritos y costumbres de los indios, y así por medio de estos dibujos se inciten las voluntades de los lectores a leer estas páginas con avidez y conserven en su mente aquello que más les haya agrado.” Valadés, , Retórica cristiana, p. 31.Google Scholar

29 “ … perturbar las conciencias de los timidos e incautos que creen ser justo y Santo todo lo que se imprime y estampa con mezcla de nuestra Sagrada Religion… ” Archivo General de la Nación (AGN), Edictos de la Inquisición, t. 2, fol. 27 (1773).

30 On Mexican colonial portraiture, see El retrato novohispano en el siglo XVIII (Puebla: Museo Poblano de Arte Virreinal, 1999); de Redo, Marita Martínez del Río, El retrato civil en la Nueva España (Mexico City: Museo de San Carlos, 1992)Google Scholar; Meyer, Barbara and Cianeas, María Esther, La pintura de retrato colonial siglo XVI-XVIII (Mexicó City: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 1991)Google Scholar; and Alarcón, Alma Montero, Monjas coronadas (Mexico City: Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, 1999).Google Scholar

31 The Society of Jesus was the most dedicated to portraiture and routinely commissioned likenesses of the order’s members. Padre Antonio de Mora explained the practice in his biography of Padre Juan Nicolás: “[D]esde sus principios, ha pretendido … la Compañía ponernos a la vista y refrescar en nuestra memoria los maravillosos exemplos y obras heroicas con que tantos y tan Ilustres Hijos … se han señalado, y aventajado en un sublime grado de Santidad.” de Mora, Juan Antonino, Vida y virtudes heroycas de el exemplar, y fervoroso hermano Juan Nicolas, Coadjutor temporal de la Compania de Jesus, y Procurador por espacio de treinta y ocho anos en el Colegio de S. Pedro y S. Pablo (Mexico City: Joseph Bernardo de Hogal, 1726), n. p.Google Scholar

32 See Donahue-Wallace, Kelly, “ Bajos los tormentos del tórculo: Printed Portraits of Male and Female Clergy in Eighteenth-Century New Spain,” Colonial Latin American Review 14:1 (2005), pp. 103–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

33 Muriel, Josefina, Cultura femenina novohispana (Mexico City. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, 1994)Google Scholar treats printed biographical literature at length. See also McKnight, Kathryn, The Mystic of Tunja: The Writings of Madre Castillo, 1671-1742 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1997).Google Scholar

34 “… leyendo [las] Vidas con tanta atención y ternura, que parecía le habían quedado impresas en su memoria.” Palou, Francisco, Relacion historica de la vida y apostolicas tareas del venerable padre fray Junipero Serra (Mexico City: Felipe de Zúñiga y Ontíveros, 1787), p. 3.Google Scholar

35 “ … me parecía pobreza no tener ninguna [imagen] sino de papel.” Cited in Portús and Vega, La estampa religiosa, p. 185.

36 “ … un recuerdo amoroso de todos los pasos de la Pasión del Hijo y compasion de la Madre.” de Mora, Juan Antonio, Vida y virtudes heroycas de el exemplar y fervoso hermano Juan Nicolás (Mexico City: Hogal, 1726), p. 229.Google Scholar

37 Mora, , Vida y virtudes, p. 229.Google Scholar

38 On Azlor, , see Relacion histórica de la fundacion de este Convento Nuestra Señora del Pilar, Compañía de María llamada vulgarmente la Enseñanza en esta ciudad de México, y compendio de la vida y virtudes de n.m.r.m. María Ignacia Azlor y Echeverz (Mexico City: Felipe de Zúñiga y Ontíveros, 1793).Google Scholar

39 On the history of the Virgin of Loreto in New Spain, see Alcalá, Luisa Elena, “The Jesuits and the Visual Arts in New Spain, 1670-1767” (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1998), pp. 172–247.Google Scholar

40 Alcalá, , “Jesuits and the Visual Arts,” p. 181.Google Scholar

41 Whittaker, Martha E., “Jesuit printing in Bourbon Mexico City: The press of the Colegio de San Ildefonso” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1998), p. 134.Google Scholar

42 These post-expulsion prints were likely commissioned by those who internalized the Society’s teachings, perhaps former members of the religious confraternities the Jesuits are known to have deployed in the service of specific cults. Three engravings are reproduced in Catálogo de ilustraciones, vol. 12 (Mexico City: Archivo General de la Nación, 1981), pp. 70, 86, and 96. The remainder appear in de Terreros, Manuel Romero, Grabados y grabadores en la Nueva España (Mexico City: Ediciones Arte Mexicano, 1948), p. 465, and passim.Google Scholar

43 Gazeta de México, 2, no. 41 supplement (October 23, 1787), p. 432.

44 See Portús and Vega, Estampas religiosas, p. 104 and passim for examples from Spain.

45 AGN, General de Parte, vol. 50, exp. 132, fols. 125v-126r.

46 “ … aficionados a buen buril … ” Gazeta de México 6:65 (September 23, 1794), p. 540.

47 “ … de repartirlos para aumentar esta devoción … ” AGN, Inquisition, vol. 1333, fol. 108r.

48 AGN, Inquisition, vol. 1337, exp. 16, fol. 7v.

49 On casta painting, see García Saiz, María Concepción, Las castas mexicanas: un género pictórico americano (s. 1.: Olivetti, 1989)Google Scholar; Katzew, Ilona, Casta Painting: Images of Race in Eighteenth-Century Mexico (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004)Google Scholar; and Carrera, Magali, Imagining Identity in New Spain: Race, Lineage, and the Colonial Body in Portraiture and Casta Paintings (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003).Google Scholar

50 I am not including playing cards in this discussion of imprints in casta paintings. Playing cards, which were produced via the same technologies as printed images and even by the same artists, appear in casta series by José Joaquín Magón, Buenaventura José Guiol, and at least one anonymous artist. In these cases, the cards may reference printing, but the more obvious association is with leisure activities and morality.

51 Katzew, , Casta Painting, p. 106.Google Scholar

52 “ … personas de gusto … ” Gazeta de México, 1:20 (October 6, 1784), p. 166.

53 “ … personas afectas a las nobles artes… ” Gazeta de México 1:29 (January 25, 1785), p. 240. Another print series is described in Gazeta de México 5:60 (October 29, 1793), pp. 586–88.

54 Gazeta de México 14:77 (September 19, 1807), p. 617.

55 Diario de México 1:21 (October 21, 1805), p. 84.

56 Gazeta de México, 9:2 (February 2, 1798), p. 16. This recalls Samuel Stradanus’s 1615 engraved Virgin of Guadalupe, which was offered for sale to support the construction of a new shrine.

57 This definition distinguishes objects collected primarily as art from those acquired as devotional tools or curiosities, although the same works may have served multiple purposes. Prints deployed as art in homes did not privilege their genesis as multiples and, in fact, were sometimes treated in ways that minimized their material characteristic. Nor did those who used prints as art seek to draw attention to the medium’s association with poverty, though the print’s low cost, especially when compared to oil paintings, frequently militated in its favor for buyers with limited funds. I also employ here the term art to distinguish prints displayed on walls from print collections assembled into portfolios and classified by subject or artist, which served other, generally more encyclopedic, purposes. On print collecting, see Hajos, Elizabeth, “The Concept of an Engravings Collection in the Year 1565: Quicchelberg, Inscriptiones vel Tituli Theatri Amplissimi,” Art Bulletin 11 (June 1958), pp. 151–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Robinson, William W., “This Passion for Prints: Collecting and Connoisseurship in Europe during the Seventeenth Century,” in Printmaking in the Age of Rembrandt, exhibition catalog, edited by Ackley, Clifford (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1981)Google Scholar; Bury, Michael, “The Taste for Prints in Italy, c. 1600,” Print Quarterly 2:1 (1985), pp. 12–26 Google Scholar; Collecting Prints and Drawings in Europe, 1500-1750, edited by Baker, Christopher, Elam, Caroline, and Warwick, Genevieve (London: Ashgate, 2003)Google Scholar; and, most recently, McDonald, Mark, The Print Collection of Ferdinand Columbus (1488-1539): A Renaissance Collector in Seville (London: British Museum, 2004).Google Scholar

58 Castillo, Francisco Fernández del, Libros y libreros (Mexico City: Archivo General de la Nación/Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1982), pp. 235 and 238.Google Scholar

59 Gruzinski, , Images at War, p. 156.Google Scholar

60 See AGN, Bienes de Difuntos, vol. 16, 1798.

61 On art collecting in Spain, see Vázquez, Oscar, Inventing the Art Collection: Patrons, Market, and the State in Nineteenth-Century Spain (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001).Google Scholar

62 “43 cuadritos, estampas, paises, vitelas, todos en marcos.” all framed. AGN, Tierras, vol. 188, exp. 7, fol. 44v.

63 Cited in Lugo, Elisa Vargas and Curiel, Gustavo, Juan Correa: Su Vida y Su Obra (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1991), vol. 3, p. 146.Google Scholar

64 On print production in colonial New Spain, see Terreros, Manuel Romero de, Grabados y grabadores en la Nueva España (Mexico City: Ediciones Arte Mexicano, 1949).Google Scholar On printmaking at the Royal Academy of San Carlos, see Donahue-Wallace, Kelly, “El grabado en la Real Academia de San Carlos de la Nueva España, 1783-1810,” Tiempos de América 11 (2004), pp. 49–62.Google Scholar

65 “ … estampas de España …el monumento de Sevilla … ” AGN, Tierras, vol. 758, exp. 2, fols. 35v–57v.

66 AGN, Inquisición, vol. 1420, exp. 20, fols. 228v-230.

67 At least one casta painting depicts the family of an artist, who displays both paintings and prints on the walls of his home.

68 This discussion of relative social status agrees with Magali Carrera’s notion of calidad and the fact that social status in colonial New Spain was not merely determined by race or economics, but was set by a conflation of behaviors, spaces, activities, pureza de sangre (of Spanish or Indian blood), and honor. See Carrera, , Imagining Identity, p. 6.Google Scholar

69 Katzew, , Casta Painting, pp. 107–09.Google Scholar

70 Torres, Anita, “The flora and fauna in eighteenth-century colonial Mexican casta paintings” (M.A. Thesis, University of North Texas, 2006) explores the possible significance of pineapples and other foodstuffs in the casta paintings.Google Scholar