Miguel Cabrera (Antequera de Oaxaca, Mexico, 1715 / 1720 - Mexico, 1768)

Miguel Cabrera (Antequera de Oaxaca, Mexico, 1715 / 1720 - Mexico, 1768) "Saint John of Nepomuk" Oil on canvas. Signed. 167,5 x 104 cm. Cabrera is considered to be the greatest exponent of 18th century Viceroyalty painting, with production that the Dallas Museum of Art defines as "legendary: more than 309 works from his great studio have been documented". Miguel Mateo Maldonado y Cabrera was born on February 27, 1695 in Antequera, present-day Oaxaca, Mexico, a fact known from the painter's will in 1768. He was the son of unknown parents and godson of a mulatto couple. He moved to Mexico City in 1719, where he began his artistic training, passing through the workshop of Juan Correa in the capital of the Viceroyalty. Cabrera painted altarpieces in the Jesuit church of Tepotzotlán, Mexico State, in the church of Santa Prisca in Taxco, Guerrero and in the cathedrals of Mexico City and Puebla. Cabrera was not only a painter, but he also participated in the attempt to found an academy of Arts in 1753 and in 1756 he became consolidated as an intellectual, not only as an artist, since he published a narrative about the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe in 1756 entitled "Maravilla americana y conjunto de raras maravillas observadas con la dirección de las reglas del arte de la pintura", a narration about the image of the Virgin Guadalupe in the printing press of the Jesuit college of San Ildefonso. In addition to easel painting, his production includes the design of altarpieces, large format works, as well as small paintings on copper and nun's shields. Cabrera's religious painting shows figures of remarkable beauty, a beauty understood under the ideological assumptions of the devotion of the time. It is a refined art that possesses a well-arranged chromatic richness, is sustained by great work in the composition and, no less important, subtle and expressive drawing. Of all the painters of that time, Cabrera was the one with the greatest personality; the conventional treatment of his figures was undoubtedly the basis of his painting style, because he placed models that were not ideal in his paintings, but corresponded to people that the artist knew and interacted with, such as when he incorporated portraits of donors or the so-called "prelates" in some paintings, because he had the need to observe directly and copy from nature. He was appointed chamber painter of Archbishop Manuel Rubio y Salinas, who commissioned him to study and paint the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe. The image was sent to Pope Benedict XIV, from whom he obtained the highest recognition as a painter of Guadalupe. Highlights amongst the portraits he painted are the one of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, kept in the National Museum of History, and the one of Juan de Palafox y Mendoza, located in the Museum of Colonial Art in Morelia, Michoacán, Mexico. He was also a painter for the Society of Jesus, for whose churches he produced numerous works. In 1753 he was named president for life of the Academy of San Carlos. His work is preserved in many churches and convents in Mexico. It is also present in numerous public and private collections. Two of his images of the Virgin of Guadalupe are in the Vatican Museum. Another, made in 1756, for the temple of San Francisco Javier, is preserved in the National Museum of the Viceroyalty. The Museum of Art of Dallas, has a Santa Gertrudis La Magna by Miguel Cabrera and another representation of the Saint, also by Cabrera and dated in 1768, is part of the collection of the José Luis Bello y Zetina Museum of Puebla, Mexico. Likewise, we highlight an important series of Caste paintings from1763 that is kept in the collection of the Museum of America in Madrid. They depict families, father, mother and child of the various castes and social strata, in everyday life situations. Finally, mention should also be made of the Pinacoteca de La Profesa or the Andrés Blaisten Collection in Mexico, as depositories of Cabrera's work. The Museum of America in Madrid is currently exhibiting a very important retrospective of the painter. The painting we have here shows very interesting iconography: that of St. John of Nepomuk entering into glory. The saint was a Bohemian priest and vicar general of the diocese of Prague. He was martyred in 1393, for his fidelity to the secret of confession, when King Wenceslas IV wanted to know the sins of the Queen that he kept silent. The monarch, very angry, ordered his tongue to be cut out. Not achieving his goal, and full of rage, he had the priest thrown into the river from the Charles Bridge in Prague. For this reason, he is today considered the patron saint of confessors, who have to keep their vow of silence. The scene also depicts the saint ascending to glory. He wears five stars in his halo, which legend says were seen around his head when his corpse was rescued from the river. In the background, the scene of his death unfolds, in which we find the bridge, and the sol