spanish colonial art

Virgin of Guadalupe, Sebastián Salcedo

No image is as distinctively Mexican as the Virgin of Guadalupe, with her characteristic spiky aura and blue robe with gold stars.

Here the Virgin is surrounded by prophets, saints, angels, and seven miniature scenes of her miracles, all identified by inscriptions. At the bottom, Pope Benedict XIV and an Aztec princess (symbolizing Mexico) flank a landscape showing the Virgin’s church north of Mexico City.

Painted on copper in Mexico City in 1779 by Sebastián Salcedo, this image was brought to Santa Fe, New Mexico, around 1800 to hang in the new adobe church of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

European & American Art