Portrait, Luisa Manuela del Sacramento

1809

García Romero, Victorino (1791-1870)

Bogotá, COL, Banco de la República (current location)

This bust-length painted portrait depicts Luisa Manuela del Sacramento, a nun of the Conceptionist order, after her death at the age of 59 in the convent of Inmaculada Concepción in Santa Fé de Bogotá (today, in Colombia). Dead nuns were often commemorated this way in 18th-century Spanish America.

The nun Luisa Manuela is crowned with flowers, an adornment at signal ceremonies in the lives of Conceptionists. When worn by a dead nun, these floral crowns (related to the crown of thorns worn by Jesus during the Crucifixion) were meant to signify a triumph over death, that is, eternal life in heaven. Pinned to her mantle is a shield, or “escudo,” bearing the image of Mary of the Immaculate Conception. Conceptionist nuns are often portrayed with such escudos, and one is visible in Vistas. In death, as in life, she wears the dark blue mantle and white tunic and scapular of her order. Associated with the Franciscans and prominent in both Spain and its colonies, Conceptionist nuns were dedicated to the Virgin Mary. The legend reads: Verdadero retrato de la M[uy] R[everen]da M[adr]e Luiza Manuela del Sacr[a]m[en]to Heredia. Murió el ano de 1781 el dia 1 de noviemb[r]e teniendo de edad 59 años y [borrado] dias, los que acabo exemplarisimamente con grandes muestras de su eterna salvacion q[u]e dosam[en]te cre[e]mos ("True portrait of the most Reverend Mother Maria Luisa Manuela de Sacramento Heredia, who died November 1st, 1781 at the age of 59 years, [unreadable] days, which she ended in an exemplary manner, with great signs of her eternal salvation in which we believe").

Nuns, as well as other elites, were often commemorated on their funeral biers in 18th- and 19th-century Spanish America as well as in the rest of the Catholic world. And across Spanish America, nuns often had their portraits painted just twice—at the time of profession and at the time of death. This painting dates from the very end of the colonial period. Although Sister Luisa died in 1781, this image is one of several 19th-century portraits of deceased nuns attributed to the Bogotá painter Victorino García Romero. He may have been called upon to paint copies of existing works or to create them whole cloth; it was the existence of the image, rather than the precise likeness, that was important.

This is painted on oil on canvas, which was typical of portraits throughout Spanish America, especially for those of this genre of death portraits.

Some convents still hold the pictures of the dead nuns in public rooms (the nuns themselves would most often be buried beneath the choir.) This particular portrait is currently in the collection of the Banco de la República. National banks in Latin America often have large art collections of works of national patrimony like this.

In Spanish America, indeed, in most parts of the world before the 20th century, death was an everyday companion. Portraits of the dead reminded the living of their own journey towards the same point. But they also reaffirmed a belief in eternal life, signified by the flowery crown. As a “Bride of Christ,” Sister Luisa was believed to be finally joined with her bridegroom. Honoring the dead was also an important indigenous tradition in pre-Hispanic America. Europeans carried similar traditions across the Atlantic. And today across Latin America, the dead are often photographed, these works serving to remind family members of a loved one.

Colección Banco de la República de Colombia, Casa de Moneda, Bogotá. Registro 3022. All rights reserved.

Dana Leibsohn and Barbara E. Mundy.
Vistas: Visual Culture in Spanish America, 1520-1820. http://www.fordham.edu/vistas, 2015.

Benson, Elizabeth, et al. 2004. Retratos: 2,000 Years of Latin American Portraits. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press.

Cordova, James. 2014. The Art of Professing in Bourbon Mexico: Crowned-Nun Portraits and Reform in the Convent. Austin: University of Texas Press.

González, Beatriz and Rodolfo Vallín. 2000. Las religiosas muertes. Bogotá, Colombia: Biblioteca Luis Angel Arango.

Londoño Vélez, Santiago. 2001. Arte colombiano: 3,500 años de historia. Bogotá: Villegas Editores.

Montero Alarcón, Alma. 1999. Monjas Coronadas. Mexico: Circulo de Arte.