Miguel Güelles (active in Seville, 1607 - 1637)

Miguel Güelles (active in Seville, 1607 - 1637) ‘Immaculate Virgin’. Oil on canvas. 162 x 108 cm. This extraordinary Immaculate Conception, with its vivid colours very much in the taste of New Spanish America, perfectly exemplifies the constant exchange that took place on both sides of the Atlantic. Miguel Güelles was a Baroque artist active in Seville who worked almost continuously for the viceroyalties of Peru and New Spain. In 1608 he contracted with the provincial of the Order of Saint Dominic in Peru to execute a series of forty-one canvases dedicated to the life of Saint Dominic of Guzmán. Thirty-six of these are kept in the convent of Nuestra Señora del Rosario or Santo Domingo in Lima. In 1619 he also granted power of attorney to collect in Mexico a crate of thirty canvases containing paintings of hermits, possibly landscapes, which he had given in Seville to ‘Fray Baltasar Maldonado of the Order of Saint Francis to take to the province of New Spain’, although on this occasion he probably acted on his own initiative, without commission. We are grateful to Enrique Valdivieso for his help in cataloguing this work.