Coronation of the Virgin

1740-1760

Berrío, Gaspar Miguel de (1706-1762)

La Paz, BOL, Museo Nacional de Arte (current location)

This Bolivian painting of the Virgin Mary shows her being crowned as the Queen of Heaven by the Holy Trinity—God the Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit.

At the center of the painting, the Virgin Mary appears in one of her various identities, or manifestations, as the Queen of Heaven, identifiable by her royal crown. Other imagery in the painting, including the crescent moon and the many-headed beast, alludes to Mary as Virgin of the Apocalypse. Above the Virgin is the representation of the Trinity as three nearly identical men. This rendering, never common in Europe and rare by the time this was made, was popular in Spanish America. In the upper left, the archangel Michael is portrayed in Roman military garb and Gabriel with a flowering staff, similar to other paintings from Spanish America. At the lower left, in a touching gesture, John the Baptist, with his finger to his lips, bids quiet, as Saint Joseph, Mary’s husband, carries the sleeping Christ Child.

Gaspar Miguel de Berrio was trained by a famous teacher, Melchor Pérez de Holguin, the most important painter in and around Potosí in the late 17th and early 18th century. In turn, Berrio would become a dominant painter in the region around the mid-18th century, creating works to satisfy the high demand for paintings in the wealthy churches, monasteries, convents, and private homes of the mining center of Potosí.

The painting is oil on canvas. The flat designs of gold leaf overlaid on the clothes, called brocateado, were popular in the 18th century Andes.

Many of Berrio’s works remain in Bolivia; this painting is currently in the Museo Nacional in La Paz, Bolivia.

Narrative paintings like this one made the otherworld a somewhat familiar place—with its royal beings and social hierarchies. As Queen of Heaven, Mary was the benevolent intercessor for human beings, who welcomed deserving souls into a heavenly afterlife.

Reproduced courtesy of the Museo Nacional de Arte, La Paz

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

Gisbert, Teresa. 1994. Iconografía y mitos indígenas en el arte. La Paz: Gisbert y Cía-Fundación BHN.

Mendieta Pacheco, Wilson. 1998. Melchor Pérez Holguin: brocha de oro. La Paz: Banco Central de Bolivia.

Stratton-Pruitt, Suzanne, ed. 2013. Journeys to New Worlds: Spanish and Portuguese Colonial Art in the Roberta and Richard Huber Collection. Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art.