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The Painter, Mateo Mexía, and his Works in the Convent of San Francisco de Quito
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 December 2015
Extract
The religious painting of Ecuador started very early. In fact, the first Franciscan friars who accompanied the conquistadores brought the visual arts to this new territory. Fr. Jodoco Ricke de Marselaer, with another priest, Fr. Pedro Goseal, or Gosseal, founded a school of art in 1534.
In 1553 this school was raised by Fr. Francisco de Morales to the category of a college with the title of Colegio de San Andrés. In this school, until its extinction in 1675, a great part of the painters of the región were educated, not only Indians but also Creoles.
The three main influences which molded this Quito school of painting were the following: It was born under the Flemish style at the Franciscan school of San Andrés; then it was influenced by the Spanish painting of the second half of the sixteenth century, and lastly it absorbed the teachings of two Italian masters. The influence of these three currents was felt in various ways: the Flemish appeared through the first Franciscans and through the engravings they constantly used in the composition of paintings; the Spanish appeared more directly in the style of the paintings themselves, and the Italian current, the last and most powerful, was the one which triumphed in all of America at the beginning of the seventeenth century.
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- Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1960
References
1 Some idea of the development of painting in Quito can be gathered from the following works: Navarro, José Gabriel, Las Artes Plásticas en el Ecuador (México, 1945)Google Scholar; Vargas, José María, Arte Quiteño Colonial (Quito, 1944)Google Scholar; Dorta, Enrique Marco, Historia del Arte Hispanoamericano, Vol. 2 (Barcelona, 1950)Google Scholar; and Navarro, José Gabriel, El arte en Quito en el Siglo XVI (Quito, 1958).Google Scholar Of the twelve reproductions used in this article, all are photographs by the authors except Fig. 1.
2 Navarro, , El Arte en Quito, p. 9.Google Scholar
3 Ibid., pp. 9,16.
4 Navarro, op. cit., p. 18, affirms that Juan de Illescas arrived in Quito “ por el año de 1580.” This date is curious when one remembers that Harth-Terré, Emilio in his “Artífices en el Virreinato del Peru,” pp. 60 f.,Google Scholar n. 3 states “ que desde los primeros años del mediosiglo XVI figura Juan de Illescas—en Lima—.” In the private archive of Dr. Harth-Terré one can see a series of bibliographical cards which seem to make it very difficult for Illescas the elder to have been in Quito in 1580, after he had made, in 1560, his last will and testament in Lima. His son, “Juan el mozo” does not seem to have moved his residence from Lima either around the time indicated by Navarro, and since the latter gives no source for his statement, there is nothing to do but to follow the clear documentation on the matter.
5 Navarro, op. cit., p. 19.
6 Ibid., pp. 22 f.
7 The first to note the dependence of Bedon upon Bitti is Soria, Martín S. in his La Pintura del Siglo XVI en Sudamérica (Buenos Aires, 1956).Google Scholar See also de Mesa, J. and Gisbert, T., Holguin y la Pintura Altoperuana del Virreinato (La Paz, 1956), p. 15.Google Scholar
8 Fr. José María Vargas, op. cit., p. 51, gives the names of the painters who were members of this confraternity. Fr. Bedon began the official minute-book of this cofradía and painted a design in the title-page, which is the one mentioned just above. The book can still be seen at the Dominican convent in Quito.
9 He is listed in the membership book of the brotherhood as “Andrés Sánchez Pintor.”
10 Navarro, , “Un pintor quiteño: un cuadro admirable del siglo XVI en el Museo Arqueológico Nacional, Madrid,” reprint from Archivos (1929), 30 pp., 4 illustrations.Google Scholar
11 J. de Mesa and T. Gisbert, Un pintor quiteño del renacimiento (in press).
12 Reproduced by Angulo, Diego in La pintura del siglo XVI, Ars Hispaniae, Vol. 12, fig. 247.Google Scholar
13 Navarro, José Gabriel, “Contribuciones a la Historia del Arte en el Ecuador,” Boletín de la Academia Nacional de Historia, Nums. 7 & 8 (Quito, 1922), p. 227n.Google Scholar Later Fr.Vargas, José María refers to Mexía in two of his works: El Arte Quiteño en los Siglos XVI, XVII y XVIII (Quito, 1949), p. 110,Google Scholar and Arte Religioso Ecuatoriano (Quito, 1956), p. 32. Fr.Sanz, Benjamín Gento O.F.M. in his work Historia de la Obra Constructiva de San Francisco (Quito, 1942) does not refer to Mexía.Google Scholar
14 Soria, op. cit., p. 100.
15 Ibid., fig. 70.
16 See above, note 14. We are indebted to Fr. Calvo, O. F.M., of the monastery of St. Francis in Quito, for the facilities afforded us in the study of the paintings of Mexía.
17 See above, note 14.
18 Gudiol, J., R., La Pintura Gotica, in Ars Hispaniae, Vol. 9 (Madrid, 1955), fig. 327, pp. 380 ff.Google Scholar
19 Iñiguez, Diego Angulo, Pintura del Renacimiento, Ars Hispaniae, Vol. 12 (Madrid, 1955), fig. 147, p. 140.Google Scholar See also Post, Chandler R., A History of Spanish Painting, 10 (Cambridge, 1950), p. 79, fig. 21.Google Scholar
20 Ibid., p. 144, fig. 50. This picture is attributed to Cristóbal de Mayorga by Dr. Angulo.
21 Ibid., p. 59, fig. 13.
22 Ibid., p. 71, fig. 17.
23 Ibid., p. 277, fig. 104. This picture remains without identification, and Post discusses possible authors at some length.
24 Ibid., p. 214, fig. 79. This work is attributed to Pedro Romana, or his circle, of the school of Córdoba.
25 See Soria, op. cit., pp. 45–78, figs. 17-41. See also Mesa-Gisbert, , Holguin y la Pintura Altoperuana, pp. 11, 15, fig. 1.Google Scholar
26 Vargas, op. cit., pp. 50–52. See also Angulo, , Historia del Arte Hispanoamericano, pp. 466–468,Google Scholar figs. 421, 422 (This part of the volume was written by Dr. Enrique Marco Dorta). Soria, op. cit., pp. 76 f., fig. 47 speaks of the influence of Bitti on Bedon, and the influence of the latter on the later Quiteña school.
27 For the work of Sánchez Galque, see Navarro, , Artes Plásticas Ecuatorianas (México, 1945), pp. 160 f.Google Scholar Angulo reproduces the picture “Los Primeros Mulatos de las Esmeraldas” in Fig. 420, op. cit. Navarro, in his Contribuciones a la Historia del Arte en el Ecuador, 3, 7 shows that the painter’s real name was Andrés Sánchez, and that he figures in a list of painters that formed part of the Brotherhood of the Rosary established by Fr. Bedon in Quito in 1588. See Vargas, op. cit., p. 51. Other works by Sánchez are studied in an article we have in press entitled “Un pintor Quiteño del renacimiento,” where two new pictures of Sánchez are published.Google Scholar
28 The very position of the retable, behind the main altar over the smaller chapels, together with the brilliance of the gold and polichrome of the carved woods, or the colors of the paintings incorporated, made of the retable the outstanding ornament of any church.
29 Navarro, , Contribuciones a la Historia del Arte en el Ecuador, 3, 210.Google Scholar
30 Ibid., IV, published as Numbers 12, 13, 14 of the Boletín de la Academia Nacional de Historia, p. 132n (Quito, 1923) [one volume].
31 Ibid., p. 132.
32 Ibid., p. 130.
33 Ibid., p. 132.
34 Soria, op. cit., p. 125n. Kelemen, Pál reproduces this painting as an anonymous work in his Baroque and Rococo in Latin America (New York, 1951), fig. 144.Google Scholar
35 This sketch has been published by Hollstein, F.W.H., Dutch and Flemish etchings, engravings and woodcuts, 9 (Amsterdam, 1949), p. 135.Google Scholar
36 Kelemen, op. cit., fig. 136.