Pascual Pérez: The Virgin of the Seven Joys

Several paintings by Pascal Perez are found on display in the prestigious Museum of Religious Art in the former Dominican convent of Santa Mónica in the city of Puebla.
   One of the most interesting of these is this portrait of the Virgin of the Seven Joys (Los Gozos), a later work of middling quality by Pérez, painted in 1715. 

Although the conventionally sweet faced virgin, pierced by seven arrows in imitation of her more common Seven Sorrows iconography, is generic in appearance, the figure in the lower right of the frame has more individual character. 
   It is in fact a closely observed portrait of the eminent patron of the painting, one Ignacio Asenjo y Crespo (1650- 1736), a canon of the cathedral and a close associate of the long serving bishop of Puebla and Tlaxcala, Manuel Fernández de Santa Cruz (1673 - 1699)  
   Asenjo y Crespo is best remembered for his persistent and successful promotion of the cult of Los Gozos in Puebla during the early 1700s, and the renovated, eponymous city chapel is one material result of his endeavors.

At least two other works by Pérez are on display in the Museo. One portrays a cloaked St. Luke with his bull writing his gospel in a large arcaded hall, overlooking cameo scenes of the Nativity and the Crucifixion.

St. Catherine of Siena is the subject of a second canvas. She stands in her Dominican habit clutching a cross before a skull and book on a table draped with a green cloth. A storm rages outside. 

* 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.  
color images courtesy of Niccolò Brooker and Tacho Juárez Herrera
Visit our other pages on Pascual Pérez: San Andres Cholula; San Jose de Puebla; El Carmen; The Temptations of Christ;