Yucatán: The Cholul murals

Located just beyond the spreading suburbs of Mérida, the state capital, San Pedro Cholul is a colonial gem, its classic T-plan mission set in a meadow like atrium with two standing stone gateways. Like most of Yucatan's churches, Cholul started life as a simple 16th century open air chapel with a belfry and thatched ramada. This was succeeded in the 1600s by an imposing stone church—essentially the one we see today.

Cholul, the Sanctuary arch mural before restoration

During restorations * beginning in the 1990s, a dramatic variety of vivid polychrome murals was uncovered throughout the church, previously hidden beneath a 19th century whitewash cap. 

   Believed to date from the late 1600s or early 1700s, this group of recently restored frescoes is dominated by a visionary scene of the Coronation of the Virgin. In a complex composition reminiscent of the doorway mural of the Virgin of Izamal as well as those of the apsidal fresco at Dzidzantún, this mural originally spanned the entire archway above the sanctuary—formerly the open chapel and now the apse of the church.

   Mary is shown seated at center surrounded by the Holy Trinity and accompanied by a celebrating multitude of apostles, musical angels and other religious figures rendered in a forthright folkloric style. 

Cholul, the Sanctuary arch mural after restoration

The Apsidal Murals
Beyond the sanctuary arch in the apse itself, several other mural passages have been revealed, some superimposed on earlier painting, including the remains of a painted wall retablo. Blue robed angels appear on the decorated side walls.
The most notable surviving fragments include polychrome scenes of saints Peter and Paul undergoing martyrdom.

 

The Painted Arches
Peter and Paul reappear in their more customary poses beneath the sanctuary arch below what seems to be a Garden of Eden scene including the voluptuous figure of Eve? amidst a riot of tropical vegetation.

  

Processions of much retouched saints and martyrs line the piers and arches along the nave, along with angels bearing the Instruments of the Passion. The bold placement, vigorous draftsmanship and rich coloration of these figures is enhanced by the addition of greens and yellows to the usual palette of reds and blues.

 

    

In addition to the figural murals, segments survive of colorful friezes and painted niches.

Cholul, cactus frieze

* Restorations were completed during 2005 and 2006 by INAH Yucatan under the direction of maestro Fernando Garcés Fierros with the patronage of the active Yucatán chapter of Adopte una Obra de Arte

text © 2018 Richard D. Perry
images courtesy of Adopte, Niccolo Brooker & Robert Jackson

José Joaquin Magón, pintor poblano: Puebla Cathedral

In this concluding post on paintings by Magón we highlight several large scale works by the artist that hang in the sacristy of Puebla Cathedral:

This expansive panel, (commissioned to commemorate the reconsecration of the cathedral by Bishop Juan de Palafox y Mendoza in 1649) portrays the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception (La Purísima) as patron and protectress of the clerical company of Puebla Cathedral that includes another portrait of Magón's main patron Bishop Pantaleón de Abreu.

Bishop Abreu portrait - detail of above

 

There is a second portrait of La Purísima by Magón in the cathedral sacristy.

Another painting in this area attributed to Magón and located in an altarpiece is this depiction of the appearance of the Virgin of the Pillar (El Pilar) to St James (Santiago Apostol)

Text © 2018 Richard D. Perry

color images from online sources

Jose Joaquin Magon, pintor poblano: The Holy Trinity

As we noted in our initial post on the artist, Works by Magón are found throughout Puebla.  One interesting example is found in the parish church of Magdalena Quecholac, a former Franciscan mission church.

This representation of the Holy Trinity is closely based on a well known version by the eminent Mexican painter Cristóbal de Villalpando, located in the Puebla city church of El Carmen.

The Holy Trinity by Villalpando

Text © 2018 Richard D. Perry

color images from online sources

José Joaquín Magón, pintor poblano: La Santa Pulqueria

Another devotional painting by Magón with unusual subject matter is called La Santa Pulqueria (Pulcheria)*—a work commissioned for the Jesuit college of the Holy Spirit, now in the collection of the University Museum in Puebla.
   The back story to this complex painting lay in the aftermath of the earthquake that destroyed Lisbon in 1756, when Magón’s patron, Bishop Pantaleón Álvarez Abreu, ordered prayers and processions to avert similar catastrophes in Puebla, of which this work was to be a part.
   The pious Byzantine empress Pulcheria was the cofounder of Hagia Sophia basilica in Constantinople. Here she is represented holding the Church, with her family— husband of convenience Marciano, her three virgin sisters, her brother Emperor Theodosius II and her rival and sister-in-law Eudocia—and crushes heretics beneath her feet. The saint’s association with earthquakes, however, is not clear.
   It is also a puzzle that Magón, a painter who worked with such dedication to the Carmelites, agreed to paint one of his most important works for the Society of Jesus, a staunch enemy of the Order at the time.
*Although the saint is generally known as Pulcheria—a reference to her beauty—the Spanish spelling of the saint’s name, Pulqueria, more popularly refers in Mexico to a drinking house where pulque, the alcoholic maguey beverage is consumed.

Text © 2018 Richard D. Perry

color image © Tacho Juárez Herrera 

José Joaquín Magón, pintor poblano: San José de La Luz.

In the second half of the sixteenth century the Mexican Provincial Council declared Saint Joseph the patron of New Spain. The reevaluation of his figure in Europe coincided with the conquest of the new continent, so he began to be represented as a man of 30 years, a young saint who sponsored the nascent territory of the viceroyalty.
   The popular devotion to San José in New Spain grew during the second half of the18th century and generated some new images such as the invocation of San José de la Luz using the iconography of the Virgin Mary, a representation that was forbidden by the Holy Office in the territory of New Spain; This association of Joseph with Marian iconography was censored throughout New Spain by the Holy Inquisition, because of an ecclesiastical law that prevented the saints from sharing invocations.

painting of the Virgin of Light by José Joaquín Magón (Museo Soumaya, Mexico City) 

However, popular fervor prevailed over ecclesiastical dispositions. There was such a strong devotion to San José in the eighteenth century that the iconographic attributes given to the Virgin of Light were granted to the saint in some portrayals.

Thus, this oil on canvas of Saint Joseph of the Light by José Joaquín Magón shows the saint in an almost identical posture, holding his floral rod and carrying the baby Jesus. 

On one side an angel proffers a baskets of flaming hearts and like the Virgin in the earlier portrait, Joseph saves a soul from the jaws of Hell - a rare example of this representation.  Another local example is this tiled version from the church of La Luz in the city of Puebla:

Text © 2018 Richard D. Perry
color images by the author and from online sources

José Joaquín Magón, pintor poblano: Ocotlán

the sacristy of the Basilica of Ocotlán

Recently, six large canvases by José Joaquín Magón were identified in the sacristy of the ornate Basilica of Ocotlán in Tlaxcala. Painted in 1754 under commission from his great patron Pueblan Bishop Domingo Pantaleón Álvarez Abreu, they portray six scenes related to Christ’s Passion. Here are three of them:

The Last Supper (detail)

The Way of the Cross (Via Dolorosa)

Calvary (signed by the artist)

Signature and dedication 

Together with the other canvases, A Taking of Jesus (Kiss of Judas) a Flagelation and Crown of Thorns (Rey de Burlas), these paintings are under restoration.

Text © 2018 Richard D. Perry

color images from online sources

José Joaquín Magón, pintor poblano: Casta paintings

José Joaquín Magón was also known for his casta paintings, a wildly popular genre in the mid-1700s, intended to illustrate the bewildering hierarchy of racial mixtures in the New Spain of the time, a genre that as a man of mixed race he would have been drawn to.
   Ironically, the largest collection of his casta portraits is currently found outside Mexico: in the Museo de América, in Madrid, Spain, brought there from Mexico in 1772 by Francisco Antonio Lorenzana y Butrón, the then newly appointed archbishop of Toledo.

 

  

 

  

Recently restored these 16 canvases are all inscribed with the names of each racial group - some of them now viewed as demeaning or derogatory, especially concerning the lower echelons of the racial hierarchy.

 

 

 

 

Text © 2018 Richard D. Perry
color images from online sources