EARLY EUROPE & COLONIAL AMERICAS EARLY EUROPE & COLONIAL AMERICAS

Transcription

1 EARLY EUROPE & COLONIAL AMERICAS

2 Screen with the Siege of Belgrade and hunting scene. Circle of the Gonzales family. c CE. Tempera and resin on wood, shell inlay. This biombo enconchado which originally included six additional panels, now in Mexico (see two illustrations of screens) is the only known work to combine the two elite Mexican genres of biombos (folding screens) and tableros de concha nácar y pintura (shell-inlay paintings, later known as enconchados). Commissioned by José Sarmiento de Valladares, viceroy of New Spain, it was most likely displayed in Mexico s viceregal palace, where it would have divided a ceremonial state room from a more intimate sitting room. The scene from the Great Turkish War ( ) after a Dutch print on its front side was an ideal propagandistic backdrop of Habsburg power for the reception of the viceroy s official international visitors. The decorative hunting scene on the reverse, also based on a European print source (see illustration), was better suited for a more intimate room like the estrado.

3 Screen with the Siege of Belgrade and hunting scene. Circle of the Gonzales family. c CE. Tempera and resin on wood, shell inlay. Japanese folding screens, which inspired the format of Mexican biombos, were introduced to the Americas in the early seventeenth century as both diplomatic gifts from Japanese embassies and as elite Asian exported goods. Asian screens found immediate favor with the viceroyalty s prosperous elite, and by the 1630s local artists were re-creating the screens in a new world style for privileged private collectors. Paintings inlaid with mother-ofpearl (pinturas enconchadas), of which this work is also an exceptional example, developed later, about 1660, by Mexican artists who combined the European art of tempera and oil painting with Asian and Mexican lacquer and mother-of-pearl encrustation techniques.

4 Screen with the Siege of Belgrade. c CE. Tempera and resin on wood, shell inlay.

5 Screen with the hunting scene. c CE. Tempera and resin on wood, shell inlay.

6 Miguel Gonzalez, The Virgin of Guadalupe. Basilica of Guadalupe, Mexico City, c1698 CE. Oil on canvas on wood, inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Inspired by Asian decorative arts, this piece used a special technique invented in Mexico and is known as enconchado (concha means shell in Spanish). Throughout the colonial period, there was a significant influx of Asian goods to Mexico via the legendary Manila Galleons that connected the East to the West. The Japanese embassies of 1610 and 1614 to Mexico also contributed to the fashion for Asian-inspired objects. Interestingly, at the beginning of the seventeenth century Japan and New Spain made attempts to formalize trade relations, but the effort was thwarted in part due to Japan s desire to curtail contact with the West following the country s unification.

7 Miguel Gonzalez, The Virgin of Guadalupe. (detail of tunic), c1698 CE. Oil on canvas on wood, inlaid with mother-of-pearl. This work is signed by Miguel González, who along with his brother Juan González is considered the foremost painter of enconchados. It depicts the Virgin placed atop an eagle perched on a cactus, Mexico City s legendary coat of arms. This is a significant detail that points to the rapid Creolization of the cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe in the second half of the seventeenth century, and her increasing association with a local sense of identity. She is surrounded by four roundels depicting her three apparitions to the Indian Juan Diego in 1531, and the moment when Juan Diego unveiled her image imprinted on his tunic before Bishop Juan de Zumárraga (r ); each roundel is supported by an angelic figure that lend a sense of playful dynamism to the composition.

8 Rachel Ruysch, Fruit and Insects CE, Oil on wood. This luscious sample of an autumn harvest represents at least two passions of its time: taxonomy (or categorization) and still lifes, which emphasize the pleasure of the senses and their short time on Earth. Ruysch was court painter to the elector palatine Johann Wilhelm, who gave this painting and its pendant to his fatherin-law, Cosimo III de' Medici. Most Dutch still lifes were extremely detailed, and filled with Christian overtones: The wheat and grapes were often seen by the Dutch viewer as the precursors of bread and wine the body and blood of Christ.

9 Spaniard and Indian Produce a Mestizo. Attributed to Juan Rodriguez Juarez. c 1715 CE, Oil on canvas. Casta paintings were family portraits made up of mixed cultures and races. They conveyed the perception that the more European you are, the closer to the top of the social and racial hierarchy you belong. Pure-blooded Spaniards always occupy the preeminent position in casta paintings and are often the best dressed and most civilized. Clearly, casta paintings convey the notion that one s social status is tied to one s perceived racial makeup.

10 Spaniard and Indian Produce a Mestizo. Attributed to Juan Rodriguez Juarez. c 1715 CE, Oil on canvas. The painting displays a simple composition, with a mother and father flanking two children, one of whom is a servant carrying the couple s baby. But who commissioned these works and why? Evidence suggests that some of these casta series were commissioned by Viceroys, (stand-ins for the Spanish King in the Americas), who brought some casta series to Spain upon their return. Little is known about the patrons of casta paintings in general. Because casta paintings reflect increasing social anxieties about inter-ethnic mixing, it is possible that elites who claimed to be of pure blood, and who likely found the dilution of pure-bloodedness alarming, were among those individuals who commissioned casta paintings.

11 Spaniard and Indian Produce a Mestizo. c 1715 CE, Oil on canvas.

12 William Hogarth ( ) was a major English painter, printmaker, pictorial satirist, social critic and editorial cartoonist.his work ranged from excellent realistic portraiture to comic strip-like series of pictures called modern moral subjects. Much of his work, though at times vicious, poked fun at contemporary politics and customs. Illustrations in such style are often referred to as Hogarthian. William Hogarth, Self-Portrait with Pug-Dog

13 William Hogarth, The Marriage Contract from Marriage a la Mode, 1743.

14 William Hogarth, Breakfast Scene from Marriage a la Mode, 1745.

15 William Hogarth, The Suicide Countess from Marriage a la Mode, 1745.

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17 William Hogarth, A Rake s Progress (etching), 1735.