Pascual Perez: El Carmen de Puebla

Our series of posts on the artist Pascual Pérez* continues with a visit to the religious complex of El Carmen in the city of Puebla, notable for its multiple tiled exteriors.
   Like nearby San José, El Carmen is also a repository of outstanding colonial artworks. Numerous paintings by eminent Pueblan and Mexican artists grace the walls of the church, chapels and conventual rooms—including works by José Joaquín Magón and Cristóbal de Villalpando among others.

Two works by Pascual Pérez are found in the church precincts: the larger of the pair is protected behind a balcony in the Chapel of Santa Teresa. This panoramic, curved mural depicts the Virgin of Carmen as protectress of her Order—that of the Discalced Carmelites.
   In a classic pose, the Virgin of Carmen carries the crowned Christ Child on one arm; both hold scapulas, as do the angels on the right. Beneath a spreading cloak, upheld by archangels, St. Teresa kneels with her nuns on the right while John of the Cross gestures amid a group of bewigged notables on the left—both prominently dressed in the distinctive black habit and white mantle of the Order.

Another large painting of the subject hangs in a transept of the main church.

While the first canvas is well preserved, probably because of its sheltered location, the second Pérez painting, although signed, is in poor condition and in need of restoration. 

   In a rare depiction—the only one we are aware of in Mexican painting—this large canvas depicts the Stigmatization of Magdalena de Pazzi, a 16th century Carmelite ecstatic and mystic who was canonized in 1669. 
   The nun receives the Stigmata from Christ on the cross while being crowned by the Virgin Mary on the left.  (The story of Pazzi's stigmatization, although undocumented, may have represented an effort by the Carmelites to counter or rival the popularity of the leading stigmatic of the age, St. Francis)
* Pascual Pérez , "El Mixtequito," was a prolific, leading light in the Pueblan school of painting, active in the later 1600s and early 1700s. His work covers a broad range of religious subjects and is found in churches and collections in the city of Puebla and its environs, including Cholula. His interment in Puebla cathedral attests to his regional prominence at his death in 1731.

text © 2018 Richard D. Perry

our appreciation and grateful acknowledgment of the use of his images go to Tacho Juárez Herrera, who tracked down photographed most of Pascual Perez' known works.