Virgin of Guadalupe

1675-1700

Name(s) currently unknown

Mexico City, MEX, Museo Franz Mayer (current location)

This image from Mexico City represents the Virgin of Guadalupe, one of the most important holy figures in New Spain (and later the Americas). The technique displayed here is enconchada—thin slivers of shell glued onto a wooden support, elaborated with washes of paint. Measuring 190 cm in height (almost 75 inches), this image would have seemed to glow when seen inside a darkened church or shrine lit by candles.

The Virgin of Guadalupe is surrounded by a rayed nimbus, which is, in this case, made of a mother-of-pearl mosaic. The skin of the Virgin of Guadalupe is often a slightly dark shade, like that of an indigenous or mestiza woman. Her bowed head and clasped hands signal her humility. Standing on a crescent moon, the Virgin of Guadalupe shares imagery with the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception drawn from Revelation 12:1. Distinct to the Guadalupe, however, is the small angel that hangs from the edges of her cloak.

Neither the patron’s nor painter’s name is known. Enconchada images of the Virgin of Guadalupe were not uncommon in the early 18th century.

The work’s otherworldly appearance is created by a combination of painting and enconchada: the garments of the Virgin are created out of razor thin squares of mother-of-pearl, glued onto the background and covered with opaque washes of paint. The same technique is also used for the borders of the image and in the frame. Enconchada paintings were first produced in Mexico in the 17th century in the workshop of brothers called González. Because the technique of mother-of-pearl inlay is originally an Asian one, the brothers might have come from Asia, or have been the children of Asians who adopted a common Hispanic surname. While much of the Asian influence in the art of Spanish America seems to have come from imported objects, in the case of enconchada, it may have been the direct result of immigration of skilled artisans.

The Virgin of Guadalupe, whose shrine sits on what was once the outskirts of Mexico City, was one of the most revered apparitions of the Virgin Mary in New Spain. She is believed to have miraculously appeared on the cloak of a 16th-century Nahua man, Juan Diego. In the 17th century, Nahuatl texts recorded this story. And throughout the colonial period her image has been replicated in paintings, prints, and, more rarely, shell-encrusted reliefs such as this one. The connections binding the Virgin of Guadalupe to Mexico City remain strong. Even today, her shrine is an important and popular pilgrimage site. While the original site of this image is not known, today it hangs in the Franz Mayer Museum in Mexico City.

The Virgin of Guadalupe was (and is) a testament to how otherworldly beings can intervene in the lives of ordinary and humble humans. Her image served as a daily reminder to residents of Spanish America of this possibility. Artisans were guided by a standard iconographical framework, but, as this example shows, they could creatively adapt size and material for new results.

Reproduced courtesy of the Museo Franz Mayer

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

Avila Hernández, Julieta. 1997. El influjo de la pintura china en los enconchados de Nueva España. Mexico City: INAH.

Brading, D. A. 2001. Mexican Phoenix: Our Lady of Guadalupe: Image and Tradition across Five Centuries. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Dujovne, Marta. 1984. Las pinturas con incrustaciones de nácar. Mexico: UNAM.

Peterson, Jeanette Favrot. 2014. Visualizing Guadalupe: From Black Madonna to Queen of the Americas. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Tovar de Teresa, Guillermo. 1990. “Los artistas y las pinturas de incrustaciones de concha nácar en México.” La concha nácar en México. Mexico City: Grupo Gutsa.