The Holy Name of Mary, the Battle for Vienna and the Art of a Mexican Baroque Painter*

Cristobal de Villalpando, The Holy Name of Mary (detail)
Mexican, c. 1685-1690
Mexico City, Museo de la Basilica de Guadalupe

History, and its related discipline the History of Art, are funny things.  You may start off researching one thing and suddenly find yourself looking at something completely different.  I had this sensation a couple of years ago, when I first began research on the image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.  I discovered that the familiar image had a long pre-history, well before Saint Margaret Mary began to see visions of Jesus displaying His heart .¹   Similarly, the coincidence of the subject of a painting in an exhibition of the works of Cristobal de Villalpando at the Metropolitan Museum and the feast day honoring the Holy Name of Mary led me on an exploration with astonishing vibes.  Like the Marian title of Our Lady of Victory the feast of the Holy Name of Mary is related to the long struggle of European nations against the Muslim Turkish Empire. 

For a little more background, we need to realize that Europe fought a long, long struggle against aggressive elements of Islam.  It has been argued, beginning in the early 20^th century with the historian, Henri Pirenne, that, although the barbarian invasions of the fifth century did great damage to the western Roman Empire, they are not the event that divided the southern Mediterranean world from the northern half.  Pirenne’s theory was that remnants of Roman Imperial administration and Roman trade survived the fall of Rome and continued to function to a limited degree between northwestern Europe and North Africa and the Levant during the period from the fifth to the seventh centuries. But, in the mid-seventh century, began the sudden, rapid conquest of the region south of the Mediterranean by aggressive Islamic armies sweeping out of their home in Arabia.  The armies of Islam  that conquered Egypt and then all of North Africa to the shores of the Atlantic and swept on into Spain by the early eighth century (711) dealt the remnants of the old Empire a final blow.  The western Mediterranean became closed to north-south shipping.  Communications and trade virtually stopped.  For example, papyrus, an early form of paper, which had been imported to Europe from Egypt prior to this, ceased to exist in Europe and parchment, made from the hides of cattle, became the norm.²

Modern Europe has largely forgotten that the tide of aggression engulfed all of Spain, save for a tiny enclave in the northwest, and pressed on into France.  It was finally stopped at Tours in 732 by armies led by Charles Martel, whose grandson Charlemagne established the great Carolingian Empire in the ninth century.  From then on western Europe was spared invasions from the south, although still having to deal with invasions from the north, i.e., the Vikings, and from the east, i.e., the Slavs and Magyars. 

After the victory at Tours, with the establishment of the Carolingian Empire and apart from the Viking invasions there was a reasonably peaceful climate in most of Europe, for the next several centuries.  There were small territorial wars between the emerging feudal kingdoms and between rival feudal lords.  With the exception of Spain, where sporadic fighting between the dominant Muslim culture, centered on Cordova, and known as Al Andaluz, and the remnants of the Visigothic Christian kingdoms in the northwest, known as Castille, Leon and Asturias continued for centuries, Europe was generally internally peaceful.

 

However, there was war in the Levant, centering on the area of Palestine which contained the holy city of Jerusalem.  The region was lost by the Greek Christian Byzantine Empire, which centered on its capital of Constantinople, in a single battle in 636.  The Byzantines continued to hold a line in Anatolia, in present day Turkey, with frequent skirmishing, while the victorious Muslims established a caliphate at Damascus, in present day Syria.

By the late fourteenth century, however, the native dynasties derived from the first wave of Islamic expansion had been swallowed up by a tide of newcomers, the Turks. They burst upon the scene in the mid-eleventh century. Converts to Islam, they took seriously the call to wage holy war which had begun to falter in the Arabs and pressed it so vehemently that by 1453 they had crushed the Byzantines, destroying the Byzantine Empire and turning Christian Constantinople into Muslim Istanbul.  In the centuries that followed this victory they invaded and subdued Greece and the Balkans, including Transylvania, conquered eastern Hungary and had extended their armies all the way to the gates of Vienna, twice.  The first siege, led by the great sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, in 1529, failed, although Suleiman retained control of the territory the Ottomans had conquered up to that point. 

August_Querfurt, The Turkish Army Besieging Vienna
Austrian, c. 1750-1760
Private Collection

The second siege, in 1683, was very nearly an Ottoman victory.  After two months of siege by the Ottomans, under the command of Kara Mustafa Pasha, and several allied armies from areas where there was great antipathy to the Austrian Habsburgs, the city was in an extremely desperate condition. The besiegers, encamped before the walls of Vienna, vastly outnumbered the defenders,  Emperor Leopold I and many of the citizens of Vienna had already evacuated.

Then, in early September a relief force from Poland, led by King Jan Sobieski, joined forces with armies coming from some of the German states.  However, this assembled relief army was still only half the size of the attacking Ottomans.  

Artur Grottger, Meeting of King Jan III Sobieski and Emperor Leopold I near Schwert
Polish, 1859
Lviv, National Museum

Nonetheless, an attack by the relief forces, plus the confusion caused among the Ottomans by having begun the battle fighting on two fronts (on the one hand with the relief armies, while on the other continuing their attack on the city) began to break the enormous Ottoman army.  

Anonymous, Siege and Relief of Vienna in September 1683
Austrian, After 1683
Vienna, Heeresgeschichtlichen Museum

Towards evening of the day of battle the largest cavalry charge ever recorded, spearheaded by the famous Polish winged hussars led by their king, finally broke the Ottomans for good and permanently lifted the threat coming from Istanbul.

Martino Altomonte, Relief of Vienna
Italian, c. 1685
Herzogenburg, Herzongenburg Monastery

Modern depiction of King Jan Sobieski and the Winged Hussars
From the 2012 film "Day of the Siege"

The Polish king had placed his forces under the protection of the Polish Madonna of Czestochowa, the famous “Black Madonna”.  Mass was celebrated before the Polish army went into battle, blessed by their king. 

Juliusz Kossak, Jan III Sobieski Blessing His Troops Before the Battle for Vienna
Polish, 1871
Color Lithograph

As had happened after the decisive defeat of the Turkish navy at the battle of Lepanto, a little over 100 years earlier (October 7, 1571), Pope Innocent XI established a feast in honor of the Virgin Mary on the date of the battle. ³  The siege of Vienna was raised by the battle outside Vienna on September 12, 1683. 

Jan Matejko, Jan Sobieski Sending a Message to the Pope Following the Victory at the Siege of Vienna
Polish, c. 1882-1883
Vatican, Vatican Museums, Sobieski Room

Although the feast day was established there was not an immediate outpouring of images related to it. There had, in fact, already been some iconographic images of the Holy Name of Mary in preceding centuries, as there was already an established devotion to the Our Lady under that title in the territories of Europe and the New World that were under Spanish rule. 

Previous images that included the name of Mary had focused on the words of Luke 1:28 for the Angel Gabriel “Hail Mary, full of grace” (“Ave Maria, gratia plena”). 

Simon Marmion, Annunciation
From a Book of Hours
Flemish, c. 1475-1485
New York, Pierpont Morgan Library
MS M 6, fol. 21r

Neroccio de' Landi, Madonna and Child with Saints Jerome and Mary Magdalene
Italian, c. 1490
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Simon Bening, Madonna and Child
From a Book of Hours
Flemish (Bruges), 1531
New York, Pierpont Morgan Library
MS M 451, fol. 97v

Apparently, it was only around the year 1600 that artists began to focus literally on the name of Mary, usually depicted as the monogram “MRA” and sometimes shown with the monogram for Jesus “IHS”.  Occasionally, the two monograms are superimposed on each other to create a compound image.  

Michael Snijders, Monogram of Maria MRA, made up of Marian symbols
Flemish, c. 1608-1630
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum

Martin Baes, Names of Jesus and Mary in Latin and Chinese
Dutch, c. 1614-1631
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum

Paolo Naldini, Angels with the Names of Jesus and Mary
Italian,  1633
Rome, Church of the Santi Nomi di Gesu e Maria, Cappella Maggiore

Attributed to Guglielmo Borremens, Adoration of the Name of Mary
Italian, 1721
Palermo, Church de Immacolata Concepzione al Capo

Johann Christoph Handke, Adoration of the Names of Jesus and Mary
Czech, 1744
Gross-Ullersdorf, Castle, Small Chapel

Jan Punt after Jan de Wit after Peter Paul Rubens, Four Angels Celebrating the Name of Mary
Dutch, 1759
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum

It is clear from some of the contexts that the monogram is an actual substitute for an image of the virgin, as in the print in which the annunciation of her birth to her father, Joachim, is imagined as an instance in which an angel shows him the monogram of Maria instead of a figure of his soon-to-be daughter. 

Johan Esaias Nilson after Johann Evangelist Holzer, Annunciation of Mary's Birth to Joachim
Dutch, c. 1765-1770
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum

In my several week search of image resources the one truly dramatic image of the title that I have found is the one by seventeenth-century Mexican painter, Cristobal de Villalpando, that I mentioned in the beginning of this essay.  This image was displayed as part of the Villalpando exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.  In this really beautiful picture Mary kneels before a golden object, which may be the Ark of the Covenant (to which she is frequently compared).3  She is surrounded by angels and archangels, who play musical instruments, while in the background a further countless throng of other angels, vaguely seen, surround her into the depths of the picture plane.  Her face is lifted adoringly toward the heavens, where her monogram appears in glory.  And around her head, instead of the traditional halo is a band, lettered in light, which reads “El Dulcissimo Nombre de Maria Santissima” (“the sweetest name of the Most Holy Mary”).  Thus, the name of Mary is doubly honored, in the presence of Mary herself. 

Cristobal de Villalpando, The Holy Name of Mary
Mexican, c. 1685-1690
Mexico City, Museo de la Basilica de Guadalupe

What is particularly intriguing in this picture is the date, between 1685 and 1690, which is to say, just a few years after the Battle for Vienna and the establishment of the feast of the Holy Name of Mary for the entire church.   Can its somewhat startling iconography be a reflection of these events?

© M. Duffy, 2017

*Please note that this essay refers to a past exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art which took place between July 25, 2017 and October 15, 2017.

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1. See: "The Sacred Heart of Jesus—An Iconographic Introduction" at
    http://imaginemdei.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-sacred-heart-of-jesusan.html
2. Pirenne, Henri.  Mohammed and Charlemagne, Translated by Bernard Miall, London, George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1939.  Available on the internet at https://archive.org/stream/HenriPirenneMohammedCharlemagne/PirenneMohammed#page/n3/mode/2up
3. For this see: "Our Lady of the Rosary, a Forgotten Battle and an Almost Forgotten Pope" at
     http://imaginemdei.blogspot.com/2016/10/our-lady-of-rosary-forgotten-battle-and.html
4. Brown, Jonathan; Gomar, Rogelio Ruiz; Kasl Ronda, et al., Cristobal de Villalpando, Mexican Painter of the Baroque;  Mexico City, Palacio de Cultura Citibanamex-Palacio de Iturbide and New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2017, p. 62.

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 19^th 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 17^th 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 20^th 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

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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 17^th 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/

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

Scripture texts in this work are taken from the New American Bible, revised edition © 2010, 1991, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington, D.C. and are used by permission of the copyright owner. All Rights Reserved. No part of the New American Bible may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the copyright owner.