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Miguel Cabrera (painter)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For other people named Miguel Cabrera, see Miguel Cabrera (disambiguation).
In this Spanish name, the first or paternal surname is Maldonado and the second or maternal family name is Cabrera.
Miguel Cabrera
Born
Miguel Mateo Maldonado y Cabrera

1710
Nueva Antequera (now Oaxaca)
DiedMay 16 1768
Mexico City
NationalityNew Spanish, Mexican
MovementBaroque

Miguel Mateo Maldonado y Cabrera (Oaxaca de Juárez 1695 – Mexico City 1768) was a Mexican painter of the late Baroque in New Spain.[1] During his lifetime, he was recognized as the greatest painter in the viceroyalty. He created religious and secular art for the Catholic Church and wealthy patrons. His casta paintings, depicting interracial marriage among Amerindians, Spaniards and Africans, are considered among the genre's finest.[2] Cabrera's paintings range from tiny works on copper to enormous canvases and wall paintings. He also designed altarpieces and funerary monuments.[3]

Biography

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Miguel Cabrera, El arcángel san Rafael (c. 1745-1768), the lobby of the House Museum Guillermo Tovar de Teresa at the Museo Soumaya
Portrait of Cabrera's patron, Archbishop Manuel José Rubio y Salinas, 1751. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Altarpiece of the Virgin of Guadalupe with St. John the Baptist, Fray Juan de Zumárraga and Juan Diego

Cabrera was born in Antequera, today's Oaxaca, Oaxaca, and moved to Mexico City in 1719. He may have studied under the Rodríguez Juárez brothers or José de Ibarra. Cabrera was a favorite painter of Archbishop Manuel José Rubio y Salinas, whose portrait he twice painted, and of the Jesuits, which earned him many commissions.

In 1756 he created an important analytical study of the icon of the Virgin of Guadalupe, Maravilla americana y conjunto de raras maravillas observadas con la dirección de las reglas del arte de la pintura ("American marvel and ensemble of rare wonders observed with the direction of the rules of the art of painting", often referred to in English simply as American Marvel).[4]

In 1753, he founded the second Academy of Painting in Mexico City and served as its director.[5]

Most of the rest of his works are also religious in nature; as the official painter of the Archbishop of Mexico, Cabrera painted his and other portraits. In 1760, Cabrera created The Virgin of the Apocalypse, which describes the chapter 12 of the Book of Revelation.[6] He is also known for his posthumous portrait of the seventeenth-century poet Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.

Cabrera is currently most famous for his casta paintings. One of the sixteen in the set that was missing for many years was purchased by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2015.[2] The museum received information that the last of the sixteen, thought lost, may be in Los Angeles, California.[7]

His remains are located at the Church of Santa Inés in Mexico City.

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See also

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References

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Wikimedia Commons has media related to Miguel Cabrera (painter).
  1. ^ Bailey, Gauvin Alexander. Art of Colonial Latin America. London: Phaidon Press 2005, p. 418
  2. ^ a b "LACMA purchases long-lost masterpiece, once kept under a couch". Los Angeles Times. 2015-04-01. Retrieved 2015-04-01.
  3. ^ Bargellini, Clara. "Cabrera, Miguel." In Davíd Carrasco (ed). The Oxford Encyclopedia of Mesoamerican Cultures, vol 1. New York : Oxford University Press, 2001
  4. ^ americanmarvel.org[usurped]
  5. ^ Hamnett, Brian R. A concise history of Mexico. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999: 97 (retrieved through Google Books, 1 May 2009). ISBN 978-0-521-58916-1.
  6. ^ "Miguel Cabrera, Virgin of the Apocalypse – Smarthistory". smarthistory.org. Retrieved 2019-02-21.
  7. ^ An 18th century masterpiece appears to be hiding in L.A., Los Angeles Times 22 October 2017, front page. accessed 18 November 2017.

Further reading

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  • Bailey, Gauvin Alexander. Art of Colonial Latin America. London: Phaidon Press 2005.
  • Carrillo y Gariel, Abelardo. El pintor Miguel Cabrera. México, Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 1966. OCLC 2900831
  • Castro Mantecón, Javier; Manuel Zárate Aquino Miguel Cabrera, pintor oaxaqueño del siglo XVIII,. México, Instituto Nacional de Antropología, Texas Press 1967.
  • Katzew, Ilona. Casta Painting. New Haven: Yale University Press 2004.
  • Peterson, Jeanette Favrot. Visualizing Guadalupe. Austin: University of Texas Press 2014.
  • Toussaint, Manuel. Colonial Art in Mexico. Translated and edited by Elizabeth Wilder Weisman. Austin: University of Texas Press 1967.
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