Friday, August 18, 2017

Saint Rose of Lima, The First Saint of the Americas

Claudio Coello, St. Rose of Lima
Spanish, 1683
Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado
In 1492 Columbus “sailed the ocean blue”, as everyone used to know.  Sailing west from Spain his three small ships bumped into the islands of the Caribbean.  They went ashore, met people whom they thought resembled the people of India, took some samples and sailed home again, thus becoming the first European ships to clearly record the existence of lands to the west of Europe and Africa and make it home again.1   

Three more voyages by Columbus followed, during which the immensity of the find became obvious.  More and more people and nations set sail, eager to carve out new territories for themselves to turn to profit and within 150 years there were little colonies scattered up and down the coasts and penetrating the interiors of what was now known as North, South and Central America.  But, the first country to do this and thus to gain the largest land area was Spain, whose queen in 1492, Isabella of Castille, had backed Columbus’ first voyage.  Spain held this huge section of the earth (with the exception of Brazil, which was claimed by the Portuguese) for more or less 300 years, losing colony after colony throughout the 19th century.

The earliest Spanish colonies were on the Caribbean Islands, especially Cuba, Santo Domingo and Puerto Rico.  From there they moved out to Mexico and the lands to the west, south and north.  In the United States we don’t think about this part of our country’s history too much, but the states of Florida, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, California and the territory of Puerto Rico are areas originally explored, named and settled by Spain and held for many years by that country. 





Along with Mexico, the richest of Spain’s colonies was probably Peru, center of the great Inca Empire (as Mexico had been the center of the Aztecs) and source of gold.  The Incas were defeated by Pizarro in 1532, just 40 years after the first contact and the viceroyalty of Peru was established.  In 1535 the Spanish viceregal capital was established in Lima to break administrative ties with the old Inca capital of Cuzco. 


Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, St. Rose of Lima
Spanish, c. 1660
Madrid, Museo Lazaro Galdiano
Fifty-one years later, in 1586, a baby girl was born in Lima to Gaspar Flores, a Spanish-born arquebusier who came to Peru via Puerto Rico and his Peruvian-born wife, Maria de Oliva y Herrera.  The baby was baptized with the name, Isabel.  She was so pretty that she was nicknamed Rose because her nursemaid compared her to a rose.  It seems astonishing that, a mere 50 years from the founding of Lima, she was to grow up in what amounted to a very European environment.  She was confirmed in 1597, when she took the name Rose as her confirmation name.  From then on she was known primarily as Rosa Flores. 2

During her teenage years she became aware of Saint Catherine of Siena, one of the most well-known of medieval female saints, whose austerities and works of reparational penance and prayer were widely known.3 Rose took Catherine as her model and from this point, modeled her own life very closely on that of Catherine.  She too undertook austerities and penances that to our modern eyes seem wild:  eating little, abstaining from meat, sleeping little, punishing her body with scourging, holding her hands in the fire, wearing a crown of silver thorns with sharp spikes pointed inward, while placing roses in the spaces between the thorns on the outside.  

Harry Clarke, Saint Rose of Lima Burning Her Hands in Penance
Irish, c. 1925
Ballinasloe (Galway, IE), Church of St. Michael

She aspired to become a nun, but her father refused his consent.  So, she withdrew, as Catherine of Siena had done before her, to her own room in the family home, which she left only to go to church or to care for the sick poor.  She continued to contribute to her family income and to provide for the poor by her embroidery, which suggests she was very good at it.

Anonymous, Saint Rose of Lima with the Christ Child
Colombian, 18th Century
Puerto Rico, Private Collection
She pledged herself to perpetual virginity and, to turn away any suitors which her beauty (something agreed upon by all the sources) attracted, she rubbed pepper and dirt into her skin.  Eventually her father relented in his opposition to her vocation to the extent of allowing her to become a Third Order Dominican, again following the example of St. Catherine of Siena.  After this she always wore the black and white habit of a lay Dominican woman, which many misinterpret as that of a nun. 


Anonymous, Saint Rose of Lima with Child Jesus
Peruvian  (Cuzco School), c. 1680-1700
Lima, Museo de Arte de Lima



Finally, at age 31, in 1617, she died, worn out like her model by her exertions.  By that time, however, she was well-known in Peru for her saintliness and her funeral was hugely attended.  Her canonization came relatively quickly, as she was declared a saint in 1671, only 54 years after her death.  She was the first person born in the Americas to be proclaimed among the saints and is the Patron of Peru, as well as the rest of the Americas, North, South and Central. 



Saint Rose in Art

I had not expected to find many representations of Saint Rose in art.  My reasoning was partly that, due to her canonization at the end of the 17th century, there had been little time for an iconography to form before the kind of distinctive iconography I deal with in this blog became a thing of the past.  This opinion was backed up by my personal recollections.  All the images of Saint Rose that I had seen up to this point belonged to the soppy “holy card” images of the first half of the 20th century.  I was surprised, therefore, to find that both assumptions were wrong and that, while not huge, there is a substantial group of images, some fine and all respectable, that do homage to her.

One element that distinguishes Saint Rose from all other female Dominican saints are the roses that recall her name. She is usually shown with a crown of roses, representing the crown of spiky silver covered with roses that she wore in life.  Or, she may be holding a rose or ruses.  Another element is the image of the Infant Jesus.  Like Saint Anthony of Padua, she is often shown holding Him or playing with Him.  Further, again like her model Saint Catherine of Siena, she is often shown making a mystical marriage, taking the Infant Jesus as her spouse. In addition, she frequently, but not always, wears a very large rosary around her neck.

The images divide into groups illustrating certain themes.  Among them are:

Saint Rose as One of a Group of Saints Celebrating Some Aspect of Catholic Faith


Giovanni Ceffis, Saints Pius V, Rose of Lima and Other Dominicans
Italian, 1592
Verona, Basilica of Santa Anastasia




Francois Spierre, Saints Francis Borgia, Luis Beltran, Cajetan, Rose of Lima and Philip Benizi
French, 1671
London, British Museum
These five saints were canonized on the same day, April 12, 1671



Anonymous Copy after Luca Giordano, Madonna of the Rosary with Domincan Saints
Spanish, 18th Century
Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado
St. Rose is at the right side of the picture, almost in the middle.  She is standing behind the figure of the Blessed Virgin Mary, looking upward and wearing a crown of roses.



Gregorio de'Ferrari, Saints Rose of Lima, Vincent Ferrer and Luis Beltran
Italian, c. 1700
Taggia, Church of San Domenico, Chapel of St. Catherine of Alexandria




Luca Giordano, Madonna and Child with Dominican Saints
Italian, c. 1700
Naples, Church of Santa Maria della Sanità



Anonymous Apulian Artist (possibly Ferdinando Sanfelice). Saint Nicholas Appearing to Saints Anthony of Padua and Rose of Lima
Italian, c. 1743
Nardo, Church of Santa Maria della Purità



Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, The Virgin and Child Appearing to Dominican Saints
Italian, 1747-1748
Venice, Santa Maria del Rosario



Saint Rose with the Madonna and Child

Jose Antolinez, St. Rose of Lima Before the Madonna and Child
Spanish, c. 1650
Budapest, Szépmûvészeti Múzeum



Gaspar de Crayer, Sketch of the Virgin and Child Crowning Saint Rose of Lima
Flemish, c. 1660-1669
Edinburgh, National Galleries of Scotland


Anonymous Peruvian Alabaster Carver, Saint Rose of Lima Kneeling Before Christ, the Virgin and St. Joseph
Peruvian, c. 1675-1700
London, Victoria and Albert Museum



Nicolas Correa, Mystic Marriage of Saint Rose of Lima
Mexican, 1691
Mexico City, Museo Nacional de Arte



Jacques Eubert Van der Burcht, Landscape with the Virgin and Child and Saint Rose of Lima
Flemish, c. 1700-1714
Lille, Church of Saint Maurice




Luca Giordano, Vision of Saint Rose of Lima
Italian, c. 1700
Naples, Chiesa della Pietà dei Turchini




Saint Rose Alone with the Christ Child

Cornelis Schut, Saint Rose of Lima
Flemish, c. 1650-1685
Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional de Espaňa



Richard van Orley, Saint Rose of Lima
Flemish, c. 1690
Brussels, Royal Library of Belgium




Blas Ametler Rotlan, Saint Rose of Lima (after Murillo)
Spanish, c. 1800-1840
Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional de Espaňa





Saint Rose By Herself


Juan Rodriguez Juarez, Saint Rose of Lima
Mexican, c. 1710
Philadelphia, Museum of Art




Anonymous, St. Rose of Lima
Spanish, Portuguese or Brazilian,19th Century
Salvador (BZ), Museu de Arte da Bahia




Saint Rose Attacked by Demons


Cornelis Galle, St. Rose of Lima Attacked by a Demon in the Form of a Dog
From Vita et historia S. Rosae
Flemish,1672
Providence (RI), John Carter Brown Library



Cristobal de Villalpando, Saint Rose Tempted by the Devil
Mexican, c. 1695-1697
Mexico City, Metropolitan Cathedral. Capilla de San Felipe de Jesús




Saint Rose As a Witness to the Christian Faith



Anonymous Apulian Artist, Entombment of Christ with Saint Rose of Lima
Italian, c. 1743
Nardo, Church of San Domenico




Death of Saint Rose



Melchiore Caffa, Funerary Monument of St. Rose of Lima
Maltese, 1665
Lima,  Church of San Domingo



Melchiore Caffa, Reduced, Gilded Copy of the Monument of St. Rose of Lima
Maltese, 1665
Private Collection
Caffa was sufficiently sure of popular interest in Europe that he prepared several reduced copies of the monument for Saint Rose which he was commissioned to produce for the church of San Domingo in Lima for sale in Europe.




Teofilo Castillo, Funeral of Saint Rose
Peruvian, 1918
Lima, Museo de Arte de Lima
Presumably this picture was painted to commemorate the 300th anniversary of her death in 1617.



As can be seen from the above, works of art depicting Saint Rose are, by no means, confined solely to the Spanish-speaking world, although some of the finest come from there.  But, it must be remembered that the world of New Spain and Peru was never cut off from the European world.  At the center of the Empire Spain was a two-way door, opening in both directions, with the Catholic faith as one of the main hinges.  Images traveled out from Europe and in from the far-flung Empire.  

The close relationships within Europe between what seem today to be very distinct countries also account for much interaction.  Spain and its monarchs were at the center of a web of relationships that may seem strange to us today, after two centuries of nationalism.  Spain ruled not only the Iberian peninsula but was, in addition, the ruler of the Low Countries.  Initially Spain ruled the entire area before the Dutch Republic broke away, and ruled what is now Belgium for much longer.  For a time, Spain also ruled Naples and southern Italy.  In addition, the ruling families of Spain and of the Austro-Hungarian Empire were closely related, through a series of intermarriages.  And, finally, through another set of intermarriages across several generations the royal Spanish Habsburgs were related to the French Bourbons.

Thus, images originating in Spain could travel within Europe as well as within the Americas and into the Far East, through Spain’s colony of the Philippines.  And, further, the Catholic culture of Europe could spread them into regions somewhat removed from these main lines, such as Germany.  Hence Saint Rose’s iconography was able to spread around the entire world, as the examples below demonstrate.



Philippine Ivory Carver, Saint Rose of Lima
Hispano-Phillipine, Late 17th Century
Private Collection




Carlo Dolci, Saint Rose of Lima
Italian, 1668
Florence, Galleria Palatina, Pitti Palace




Oswald Onghers, The Virgin and Christ Child with Saint Rose of Lima
Flemish, c. 1675
Munich, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen




Saint Rose of Lima with a Lamb
Peruvian, 18th Century
Moreton-in-Marsh, Oxfordshire (UK), Castleton House



Saint Rose is one of the small number of saints with two feast days.  Although she died on August 24, her feast day was initially set on August 30 in order to avoid conflict with the feast of one of the Apostles, Saint Bartholemew.  In the revision of the liturgical calendar promulgated by the Motu Proprio Mysterii Paschalis in 1969 by Pope Paul VI it was moved to August 23, “the day before her death”.  However, because August 30 was a well-established secular as well as religious date in Peru and other Latin American countries no change was made and the date of her feast is still August 30.  August 24, 2017 is the 400th anniversary of her death.

© M. Duffy, 2017
___________________________________________________
  1. There is, as everyone probably knows, considerable debate over who was actually the first European to “discover” the Americas.  This debate is rather silly.  It scarcely matters that the Irish, or the Scandinavians or English or French fishermen landed in America first.  We know for certain that the Scandinavians did attempt a settlement in Newfoundland (the very name implies something).  The point surely is that these small scale “discoveries” made no real impact.  The Scandinavians appeared to have stayed for a few years but found the land inhospitable and the natives fierce.  So they left.4  However, the somewhat more advanced technology of the era of Columbus meant that the natives could be more easily subdued and true settlement attempted by first, the Spanish, and then by every European power of the early modern era.  Portugal followed in Brazil, then France (in Canada), England (along the North American East coast and in the Caribbean), Holland (in what is now New York) and Sweden (in what is now Delaware and Southern New Jersey).  European internal struggles affected the colonies, so that by the time the eighteenth century dawned, the primary colonial powers were Spain, Brazil, France and England, with Spain holding what was, by far, the largest territory.
  2. See my comments on the life and iconography of Saint Catherine of Siena for comparison at http://imaginemdei.blogspot.com/2016/04/saint-catherine-of-siena-patroness-of.html
  3. Easily available biographies of Saint Rose can be found online at a number of locations.  Some sites are relatively clinical, some are sites of popular devotion to the saint, all contain tidbits of information:
Aymé, Edward. "St. Rose of Lima. The Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. 13. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1912. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13192c.htm
The website of the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology at Berkeley, which is illustrated by a series of what look like late 17th century engravings the source of which I have been unable to identify: https://www.dspt.edu/site/general/st.-rose-of-lima
A blog about Catholic saints also illustrated with the same series of as yet unidentified prints: http://saintscatholic.blogspot.com/2015/08/saint-rose-of-lima.html
The Wikipedia article, which includes links to images, some of them additional to my own list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_of_Lima
 4.        For a brief overview of the Viking settlement and the questions it raises see:
Linden, Eugene, The Vikings: A Memorable Visit to America, Smithsonian Magazine, December 2004, available at:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-vikings-a-memorable-visit-to-america-98090935/


























Saturday, August 5, 2017

Two Exhibitions at the Opposite Ends of Scale

Visitors viewing the altarpiece of Moses and the Brazen Serpent and the Transfiguration of Jesus
by Cristobal de Villalpando currently on view in the Lehman Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Photo: © M. Duffy, 2017

New Yorkers are blessed this summer with two exhibitions which center around paintings of religious subjects from the seventeenth century, one at the Frick and the other at the Met.  They share a century and are both expressions of the Baroque, but they couldn’t be more different, both in scale and in tone.


At the Frick

The first show centers around a tiny painting by Rembrandt, called “Divine Encounter:  Rembrandt’sAbraham and the Angels”.  This painting measures only 6-3/8 inches by 8-3/8 inches, about the size of a trade paperback book.  But into that small space Rembrandt poured a monumental composition in miniature that includes not only Abraham and the three angels, but also a landscape, the façade of Abraham’s house and his wife, Sarah.  Typically for Rembrandt, he uses variations in lighting to help tell the story, which is drawn from Genesis 18:1-15.  Abraham is visited by the Lord, who appears as three men to whom Abraham offers refreshment and food.  The visitors predict that Sarah will become a mother in her old age. 

A visitor to the Frick viewing  the tiny Abraham and the Angels
Photo:  © M. Duffy, 2017
In Rembrandt’s interpretation, the tent becomes a house, seen in shadow surrounded with plants and a tree, with Sarah peering from the door at the top of a small staircase.  Abraham is shown kneeling before the three, a bowl in one hand and a pitcher in the other.  The three visitors are reclining and seated in a semi-circle.  A long standing iconographic tradition, going back to the Byzantine empire, depicted the three visitors as identical angels, representing the Holy Trinity.  However, while Rembrandt does represent them as winged, his figures are not identical.  Clever use of lighting and action emphasizes their differences. 
Rembrandt van Rijn, Abraham Entertaining the Angels
Dutch, 1646
Private Collection
The figure closest to the viewer, shown with wings tucked behind his back is dressed in reddish robes and appears to have very short hair.  We cannot see his face, which is turned away from us.  Only a sliver of his profile is illuminated.  The middle figure is not so deeply in shadow, but not yet in full light either.  He is eating and his wings are unfurled, but not yet spread.  His reddish-blonde hair is chin length.  The third figure, shown in dazzling white garments in full light, appears with widespread wings and golden, shoulder length hair as he gestures toward the hidden Sarah.  It is the moment of revelation about the nature of his visitors and the moment of the promise to Abraham that Sarah will have a son.

This tiny painting is surrounded by a series of drawings and prints by Rembrandt that show other moments in the life of Abraham, and even another version of the same subject.  The exhibition is a charming and interesting exercise in Rembrandt connoisseurship and well worth the price of admission to the Frick.  It runs till August 20.

At the Met

Cristobal de Villalpando, Moses and the Brazen Serpent and the Transfiguration of Jesus
Mexican, 1683
Puebla, Catedral de Nuestra Senora de la Immaculada Concepcion
The other show is also well worth the admission price at the Met, but is at the opposite end of just about every scale you can imagine.  It is “Cristobal de Villalpando:  Mexican Painter of the Baroque”.  Although it includes 11 paintings (including one loaned by my undergrad alma mater, Fordham University) the centerpiece of the exhibition is an enormous, 28-foot tall, altarpiece, lent by the Cathedral in Puebla, Mexico and exhibited for the first time in a museum.  

This huge canvas depicts two different Biblical scenes.  In the lower half we see the scene from Numbers 21:5-9 wherein the wandering Israelites are attacked in the desert by serpents, resulting in the death of many people.  At God’s instruction Moses makes a serpent of bronze which he mounts on a pole.  Anyone who has been bitten and looks at it is cured.  In the upper half we see the scene of the Transfiguration of Jesus (which happens to be the Gospel for this Sunday, August 6, 2017, the feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord) in which Jesus reveals Himself in His full glory, accompanied by Moses (identified by the staff with the serpent) and Elijah on clouds as His disciples Peter, James and John look on.  

The relationship between the two scenes is made obvious by the inclusion in the Transfiguration scene of the Cross.  As the bronze serpent set upon a pole by Moses cures the snake bitten, so Jesus, when lifted up on the Cross, as He is lifted up at the Transfiguration will redeem and heal humanity.

A Change in Focus

The collections of paintings in this country were originally formed by wealthy patrons, like J. P. Morgan or Henry Clay Frick, whose tastes tended to focus on the art of Europe or of American artists who painted in the European tradition.  Their bequests and donations gave us the splendors of the Met and other large and small American museums.  However, as with every age, there were blind spots and gaps in what they provided, which our museums have been struggling to fill.  One area in which the Met was lacking for decades was in the area of later seventeenth-century French painting.  Several purchases over the last few years have filled that gap.  Another, much bigger, gap was in the area of Latin American art.  The Met has a good collection of pre-Columbian art and some modern Latin American art, but until recently very little Spanish Colonial art, leaving a large gap between the sixteenth and the twentieth centuries.  A small show called “Collecting the Arts of Mexico” , showcasing recent and not so recent acquisitions of Mexican work, has been on display in the American Wing galleries since last year,  It continues through September 4 and is worth seeing.  Now we have this splendid exhibition of the work of Villalpando which will be with us until October 15. 

Villalpando was a native of Mexico City and learned his craft there.  So, although he had access to the Baroque style through his training and through works of art, especially through prints of European works, his style does represent a truly American vision.  His figures are more ethereal, more agitated and much more colorful than anything produced during the equivalent period in Europe.  His compositions are often crowded with figures and frequently are organized in an almost medieval way.  Some of his motifs appear to have been his own inventions, and his pride in them is reflected in his highly visible signatures, which often read “Cristobal de Villalpando inventor”.  As the reviewer for the New York Times suggested “the outstanding altarpiece from Puebla should be a pilgrimage site of its own this summer”1.  And so should the little painting at the Frick.

In a subsequent article I will discuss some of the other paintings by Villalpando that are included in the Met exhibition.

© M. Duffy, 2017


  1. Farago, Jason.  “From Colonial Mexico, a Towering Vision of Grace”, The New York Times, July 26, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/26/arts/design/mexico-cristobal-de-villalpando-metropolitan-museum.html

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