Gregorio José de Lara: A Vision of St. John on Patmos

In our last post we described a group of paintings by the 18th century Pueblan artist Gregorio Lara, that were recently rediscovered and restored, and are now on display in the museum of San Miguel Huejotzingo, Puebla. 
   Of possible Tlaxcalan origins, Gregorio José de Lara y Priego, to give him his putative full name, was active in the Puebla region during the mid-1700s. He ran a large studio and one of his students was the eminent poblano painter Miguel Jerónimo Zendejas, who was also his brother in law.
   Other signed works by Lara are in the sacristy of San Gabriel de Cholula, and six large canvases on the theme of the Passion are reputedly in the church of Santo Domingo de Puebla.

The focus of this post however, is another singular work by Lara, his Vision of St. John on Patmos, a signed painting now located in the Museo de la Basílica de Guadalupe in the city of Mexico but at one time thought to have hung in the Dominican church of San Juan Coixtlahuaca in the state of Oaxaca.
   In the foreground the youthful St. John the Evangelist, dressed in his traditional green with a red cloak, is seated with his symbolic eagle companion on the shore of the island of Patmos. An inkwell and manuscript lie on the ground in front of him. 
   As he recounts in his Book of Revelation, John looks up to witness a vision of the Woman of the Apocalypse:

“A great sign appeared in heaven: a Woman, clothed in the sun, with the moon under her feet, and a crown of twelve stars on her head…. Another sign appeared in the sky: a great red serpent, with seven heads and ten horns, on its head seven crowns. Its tail drags the third part of the stars of the sky and precipitated them on the earth…the Woman was given the two wings of the big eagle to fly to the desert, to its place, away from the Serpent”

In this painting, the scene is portrayed as described, although the Woman, often identified with the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception, is here depicted rather as the Virgin of Guadalupe—a uniquely Mexican portrayal.

text © 2018 Richard D. Perry