Colonial painting exhibit at LACMA

A spectacular and ground breaking new exhibit of Mexican baroque painting has opened at LACMA in Los Angeles.

The show, entitled Painted in Mexico 1700—1790: Pinxit Mexici has been organized by LACMA curator of Latin American Art Ilona Katsew and includes numerous works never before displayed in the US or Mexico.

 

Casta Paintings at LACMA
An authority on colonial Mexican casta painting, Ilona has recently added several rare examples of the genre to the LACMA collection, including one by Baroque master Miguel Cabrera with hopes for an additional acquisition!
For fuller details please follow the text links.

SILVER CHAPELS OF GUANAJUATO: The Rayas chapel altarpiece

The Rayas altarpiece in situ before removal to California

The Chapel Altarpiece
Like the portal discussed in our previous post, the Rayas chapel's magnificent gilded retablo is presumed to have been designed by Felipe de Ureña,* or his son-in-law Juan García de Castañeda, and fabricated in the family workshop. 
   Like so many other colonial arts and furnishings in Guanajuato, this altarpiece is now no longer in place, either in the chapel or even in Mexico. During the 1920s—a period of religious repression and one of considerable peril for religious art—the altarpiece was purchased and exported by an American collector. Fortunately it has been carefully preserved and is now located in the St. Francis wedding chapel of the Mission Inn in Riverside, California.

The restored Rayas chapel altarpiece

As with other Ureña altarpieces, prominent estípite pilasters frame the retablo, projecting forward and extending through two tiers, thus drawing attention inward to the center and its abundant baroque statuary—an effect amplified by recessing broken arches of densely carved and richly gilded ornament.
   This elegant configuration is similar, although less opulent and on a reduced scale, to that of the magnificent retablos of La Valenciana, works of undocumented authorship but presumed to have been fabricated by the Ureña taller, probably to a design by Felipe or his son Francisco Bruno.

Rayas retablo key (©Arturo Parra)

The iconography of the retablo echoes that of the chapel portal and is related to the Cata retablos. Although the principal image, no doubt of the Virgin of Sorrows, is missing we can still admire the accompanying figures of her richly appareled parents, Sts Joachim and Anna, both expertly carved, painted and finished in classic Mexican estofado manner.

 

St. Joachim and St. Anne

 

                        St. Joseph and the archangel Michael                                                  

Together with the swaying figure of St. Joseph with the Christ child in the central niche, flanked by archangels, this grouping, as in the Rayas chapel entry, completes the depiction of the Five Lords. Statues of the Franciscan saints Francis and Anthony of Padua stand on either side.

  
St. Francis & St. Anthony

  
Sts Ignatius Loyola and Francis Xavier

Five statues of Jesuit saints in the upper tiers, including Ignatius Loyola and Francis Xavier, reference the family connection to the city church of La Compañía, founded and built by José Joaquín de Sardaneta y Legazpi, the Jesuit brother of the Marqués de Rayas, also to a design by Felipe de Ureña. 

Finally, the crowning relief depicts the Holy Trinity as three identical bearded young men in the traditional Mexican fashion (1).
   This superb and well preserved Mexican altarpiece is the finest example of its genre in the United States.

(1) This representation, originally promoted to combat heresy and signify the Church Triumphant, was initially deemed appropriate for newly converted peoples, especially in the Americas. Ironically, by the 1700s, this depiction was itself was considered heretical and officially banned by the Church, although to little effect in Mexico.
*Known as El maestro transhumante, the "peripatetic master", Felipe de Ureña was the most influential of the Mexican born architect /designers to introduce and expand the Churrigueresque style into New Spain. During the second half of the 18th century, together with family members, he was primarily responsible for the spread and subsequent evolution of this ornate late baroque style into cities across Mexico, especially along the silver routes north of Mexico City. Primarily an innovative designer and fabricator of altarpieces, he later adapted the barroco estípite style as it was called, for church facades. His elegant and distinctive designs are recognized and known as the felipense style.

text © 2017 Richard D. Perry.  graphic by Antonio Parra

color images by the author and Robert Guess by kind permission

SILVER CHAPELS OF GUANAJUATO: The Rayas chapel

For the last of our current series on the Silver Chapels of Guanajuato, we offer a two part feature on another chapel with ties to the architect Felipe de Ureña and the eminent Sardaneta family of that city.
   In 1776 Don Vicente Manuel de Sardaneta y Legaspi, now sole owner of the Mineral de Rayas silver mine and patron of the Templo de Rayas, an aristocratic hacendado, and one of the richest men in Mexico, added the finishing touches to his colonial mansion in the burgeoning city center of Guanajuato.  La Casa de Rayas, as it was known, was a suitably imposing residence for the Marqués de Rayas—a new title bestowed on Don Vicente by the king of Spain two years earlier. 

 

La Casa de Rayas: the present front;                                            the sculpture niche;

This venerable townhouse now houses the city museum, El Museo del Pueblo de Guanajuato, which was opened to the public in 1979. Its only original exterior feature is the ornamental niche that formerly held a statue of the Virgin of Sorrows, the Sardaneta family patron saint.

The Rayas Chapel 
Great care, as well as considerable funds, were lavished on the family chapel, located in the upper level of the hillside house. This chapel, with its elegant facade dated 1776, remains in place. 
   It was reportedly designed by Felipe de Ureña* although to judge by the dedication date this would have been very late in his career and at a time when he may have been in Oaxaca. 

The chapel entry with former sculpture pedestals (ringed)

Nevertheless, the slender portal provides an appropriately impressive entry to the chapel, very much in the felipense style. Elaborately layered, projecting estípite pilasters rise to support the scrolled ends of a broken pediment, and a large octagonal window overhead completes the design.

The archway bears a long, dedicatory inscription in Latin (1). The escutcheon of the Sardaneta family, once prominently emblazoned above the doorway but now obliterated save for the crowning tiara, was the focus of the facade, flanked by the names of Jesus and Joseph.
   Empty sculpture pedestals over the tiara and to each side of the window, once supported three statues. Although these have been lost, it is likely that they would have represented The Virgin Mary and her parents Joachim and Anna. Together with the inscribed names of Jesus and Joseph below, these statues would have signified the Five Lords (Los Cinco Señores), a widespread, late colonial Catholic devotion of the Holy Family (2). 

   The image of the Virgin, like those formerly in the exterior niche and the Cata retablo, was probably that of Dolores—Our Lady of Sorrows—whose cult was especially favored by the Sardaneta family.  

 

chapel facade details

The ornament and the interplay between its varied forms and shifting levels succeed in animating the doorway despite its limited scale and constricted space. In characteristic felipense fashion, the elongated estípites draw the eye upwards from the plain doorframe to focus on the inscriptions and the statuary above. 

All the intervening spaces are filled with rococo relief ornament, recalling the Templo de Rayas facade. 
In our final post we will look at the chapel altarpiece, also by Ureña.

(1)  “My house is a house of prayer saith the Lord. Within, whoever asks shall receive, whoever seeks shall find, and to whomever knocks it shall be opened. How awesome is this place; truly, is it not the house of God and the Gate of Heaven.”

(2)  Related to the popular cult of The Powerful hand (La Mano Poderosa) in which the five fingers of the right hand - the Hand of God - signify the five members of the Holy Family.

*Known as El maestro transhumante, the "peripatetic master", Felipe de Ureña was the most influential of the Mexican born architect /designers to introduce and expand the Churrigueresque style into New Spain. During the second half of the 18th century, together with family members, he was primarily responsible for the spread and subsequent evolution of this ornate late baroque style into cities across Mexico, especially along the silver routes north of Mexico City. Primarily an innovative designer and fabricator of altarpieces, he later adapted the barroco estípite style as it was called, for church facades. His elegant and distinctive designs are recognized and known as the felipense style.

........................

See our previous posts on the Silver Chapels of Guanajuato: La Valenciana, El Santuario de Villaseca; Templo de San Juan de Rayas;

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text © 2017 Richard D. Perry.  images by the author and Niccolò Brooker

THE SILVER CHAPELS OF GUANAJUATO: El Templo de Rayas, part two: the altarpieces

For our second post on El Templo de San Juan de Rayas we track down two of the original altarpieces, now, like so many other parts of the chapel, located elsewhere.
The Altarpieces
Although the fate of the main altarpiece—there must have been one—is unfortunately unknown, two of its elegant side altars have luckily survived and are now located in the transepts of the nearby Santuario de Villaseca (Cata), another silver chapel.

   The overall design of the two retablos is virtually identical and follows closely that of the Rayas temple facade. Both follow the classic barroco estípite style of the late 1700s, framed by slender, paired estípites, stalactite like lambrequins and flamboyantly scrolled pediments, and both may confidently be attributed to the Ureña workshop.*

   The retablos have related themes: one is dedicated to Christ portrayed as the Man of Sorrows, and the other to Our Lady of Sorrows (La Dolores)—to whom the Sardaneta family was especially devoted.

The Man of Sorrows altarpiece

The Man of Sorrows altarpiece has been modified with the hollowing out of the side niches to accommodate modern statuary. 
   However, the humble portraits in the medallions below are original and no doubt portray the Marqués de San Juan de Rayas and his wife, rather than members of the Villaseca family of Cata.

  

The Dolores altarpiece

By contrast, the Dolores retablo appears to be in its original state, featuring outsize niche-pilasters with large, painted reliefs of Saints Joachim and Anna—the parents of the Virgin Mary. Although the reliefs are elaborately framed in ornate, rocaille cartouches, the portraits themselves are posed in an unassuming, popular style.

*Known as El maestro transhumante, the "peripatetic master", Felipe de Ureña was the most influential of the Mexican born architect /designers to introduce and expand the Churrigueresque style into New Spain. During the second half of the 18th century, together with family members, he was primarily responsible for the spread and subsequent evolution of this ornate late baroque style into cities across Mexico, especially along the silver routes north of Mexico City.
Primarily an innovative designer and fabricator of altarpieces, he later adapted the barroco estípite style as it was called, for church facades. His elegant and distinctive designs are recognized and known as the felipense style.

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See our other pages on works by the Ureña family: El Santuario de Guadalupe (Ags); El Templo del Encino (Ags); The Temple of Carmen (SLP); San Cosme, retablo (DF); Regina Coeli, retablo (DF)

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text and images © 2017 Richard D. Perry
additional photography by Benjamin Arredondo and others

THE SILVER CHAPELS OF GUANAJUATO: El Templo de Rayas, part one

The Mineral de Rayas

One of the richest of the Guanajuato mines, the Mineral de Rayas was located atop the mother lode, or veta madre, set prominently in the hills above the city. In fact the mine still partially functions behind its forbidding, fortress-like structure. 

   The Rayas mine was expanded during the mid-1700s—its most productive years—by the proprietor, Vicente Manuel de Sardaneta y Legazpí, a prominent criollo entrepreneur, civic leader and first Marqués de San Juan de Rayas.

El Templo de San Juan de Rayas in its original location

A significant part of his legacy was the Temple of San Juan de Rayas, one of the most elegant of the silver chapels, erected in the settlement of San Juan de Rayas located beside the mine. It was completed in the 1770s, replacing a more modest chapel dating from the 1500s, at a then staggering cost of 54,000 pesos. 

   When the Rayas mine played out towards the end of the colonial era, the village of San Juan de Rayas came upon hard times, and by 1850 was virtually abandoned. The neglected temple fell into disrepair and by the early 1900s its integrity was threatened by landslides and unstable mine workings.
The Relocation
By the mid-1940s, the temple was in imminent danger of demolition because of planned construction of the Panoramic Highway that encircles the city. At the eleventh hour, the local Rotary Club came to the rescue, carefully dismantling the chief architectural elements of the temple. 

   The facade, along with the tower and a lantern above the dome were brought down from the mountainside stone by stone and reassembled to form a new front for the church of Guadalupe de Pardo, a former hacienda chapel located west of the city center in the barrio of Tepetapa, where it now remains.

While no longer in its original location, the Rayas temple is now recognized as a classic of the Guanajuatan baroque. Although not so far conclusively documented, we may infer from its distinctive design and the close connection between the architect and the Sardaneta family, that it was the work of Felipe de Ureña* or a close family member. In fact many of the architectural elements displayed in his design for the Jesuit church of La Compañía in the city center are also present in the Rayas temple.

The Facade

“A filigree in stone” as Manuel Toussaint, the late dean of Mexican colonial art studies, once called it, the Rayas temple facade, with its intricately layered estípite pilasters, expansive “moorish” doorframe and exuberantly scrolled gable, displays all of the signature features of the mature felipense style. 
   In the Rayas facade the architectural elements are sinuously layered, set one upon another against a tapestry of modeled floral relief—a pattern traceable back to Spanish Plateresque design, as well as pre-hispanic pictorial and sculptural traditions in Mexico.  
   This complex center façade stands in contrast to the flanking, blank arches, an unusual feature that suggests an unfinished state, even as configured in the original building.

The Iconography
The intricately carved tableau of the Baptism of Christ, framed by an elaborately festooned niche and prominently placed in the center of the gable, reflects the temple’s original dedication to St. John the Baptist, the namesake of the founder of San Juan de Rayas.    

   In contrast to the sophisticated treatment of the architectural elements, this carved relief evokes a more popular feeling, especially in the arrangement and detailing of the figures. (This is generally true of Mexican architectural sculpture from almost every period—another legacy both of Spanish popular art and pre-hispanic influenced, so-called tequitqui, forms.)

Including the John the Baptist relief, several other ornamental motifs evoke water symbols traditionally associated with baptism, such as seashells, the wavelike window frame, the undulating doorway arch and upper pediment, even the dripping stalactite style pendants on the lower columns. 

   In addition to its magnificent west front, many other ornamental and structural elements of the Rayas temple, including the single south tower, the octagonal dome with its pendentives and lantern, and not least, its superb gilded retablos (see Part Two) were putatively designed by Ureña in accordance with his innovative concept of “total design,” and expertly fabricated by craftsmen from his celebrated family workshop.

 

The Tower 
The single south tower, while still ornate, is less extravagant than the facade. Tall and elegant, its large bell openings are framed by slender but finely carved estípites capped with caryatids. A circular, temple-like cupola caps the square tower. 

dome lantern

The Dome
Because of the oval configuration of the pre-existing Pardo dome, the circular Rayas temple dome and its supporting structure, although salvageable, could not easily be placed in that location.  However, the transplanted lantern is there, also elaborately ornamented with prominent estípites and projecting cornice.

 

The Pendentives
The supporting pendentives—four large, triangular reliefs of the Evangelists—have also been preserved. These can now be seen, installed somewhat inconspicuously, above the principal stairwell of the School of Architecture, located in the Unidad Belém of the University of Guanajuato—formerly the Bethlemite hospital/monastery. 

 

Carved in low relief and originally painted in bright colors, each panel portrays one of the Four Evangelists with his respective attribute: Matthew (angel), Mark (lion), Luke (ox) and John (eagle). 
In our second post we will look at the "rescued retablos" of the Templo de Rayas.
*Known as El maestro transhumante, the "peripatetic master", Felipe de Ureña was the most influential of the Mexican born architect /designers to introduce and expand the Churrigueresque style into New Spain. During the second half of the 18th century, together with family members, he was primarily responsible for the spread and subsequent evolution of this ornate late baroque style into cities across Mexico, especially along the silver routes north of Mexico City. Primarily an innovative designer and fabricator of altarpieces, he later adapted the barroco estípite style as it was called, for church facades. His elegant and distinctive designs are recognized and known as the felipense style. 

See our previous posts on the Silver Chapels of Guanajuato: La Valenciana, El Santuario de Villaseca;

text © 2017 Richard D. Perry

color images by the author and Niccolò Brooker