Assumption of the Virgin
Anonymous artist
Cuzco (Peru), late 17th century
Oil on canvas
Cuzco (Peru), late 17th century
Oil on canvas
193.5×281 cm
Provenance
The unveiling of a large-scale painting like that of the Assumption of the Virgin in a private collection in Chile, with its sure and solid drawing moulding the figures, and skilful understanding of space allowing for each body to be arranged in place while simultaneously suggesting the ascending movement of the scene (supported by the falling flowers, which seem to be left in the wake of the passing clouds) should always be taken as an opportunity (through the appropriate in-depth stylistic analyses) to rediscover the work of new talented artists who have fallen into oblivion. Based on a 1618 engraving, the dissemination of which is beyond question, we will now seek to highlight the formal and stylistic features of the painting we are addressing here, in order to facilitate future research with the support of responsible patronage.
Artistic output in the Americas was marked by constant references to European visual sources, such as those provided by engavings produced in the workshops of master painters. The 1952 publication of Martín Soria’s article Una nota sobre pintura colonial y estampas europeas (A Note on Colonial Painting and European Prints)202 initiated a process of searching and cross-checking engravings and paintings in the Americas.203 Fifty years later, in 2005, the PESSCA project took up Soria’s initiative once more, building a Latin American virtual catalogue of visual sources.204 This tool has made it possible to link our Assumption of the Virgin painting with another eight works (to date) derived from the same engraving between the 17th and 18th centuries.
The genesis of this composition goes back to 1613-14, when Peter Paul Rubens (Siegen, 1577 – Antwerp, 1640) made a drawing of the Assumption of the Virgin (Fig. 1) which, along with another eleven, was intended to illustrate a Catholic book of prayers titled Breviarum Romanum. In the drawing we observe the apocryphal episode in which the Virgin Mary ascends to heaven following the resurrection of her body.205 The image includes two different moments in the same scene: on the one hand, St. Thomas (standing still on the right-hand side, his arms raised in surprise) as spectator of the ascension; and secondly, the apostles’ and three Marys’ visit to the tomb where they are astonished to discover the absence of a corpse. The following is a loose and indirect translation from the Greek of the homilies to the birth and dormition of Mary as pronounced by John of Damascus (Syria, 675-749CE):
Surprised to find Mary’s tomb empty, where all that remained were her funeral clothes, exuding ineffable perfumes, the apostles deduced that God had resuscitated her immaculate body, bestowing it with incorruptibility, and taken it to heaven without waiting for the universal resurrection of the Last Judgement.206u
In accordance with this description, one of the apostles is seen examining the funeral shrouds on top of the tomb, while one of the Marys is holding a bunch of flowers, a visual metaphor for the “ineffable perfumes”.
In 1618 an engraving was made of the drawing by Theodoor Galle (Antwerp, 1571-1633) (Fig. 2), leading to its rapid dissemination and popularity. The earliest recorded case where this engraving was used as a source for artistic creation came from the palette of the painter Lázaro Pardo de Lago in 1632, still exhibiting certain Mannerist throw-backs in its style and figures.207 Then, among subsequent pictorial works there is an anonymous painting from Cuzco, currently preserved at the Convent of the Carmen de San
Fig. 1 Peter Paul Rubens (Flemish, 1577-1640), Assumption of the Virgin, 1613-1614; drawing
8José in Santiago de Chile (Fig. 3),208 dating from the end of the 17th century (the convent first opened its doors in 1690),209 which invites close comparison with the painting we are addressing in these pages, particularly in the use of flowers falling from the sky. That might help when it comes to positing a possible date for our painting.
If we move on first to a comparison between the painting we are studying here and its visual source, the Galle engraving, it is worth noting that although there are compositional elements that indicate it must surely have been based directly on said engraving (and not on an intermediary painting), our painting also features certain major additions. Starting with the similarities, the oil work kept the engraving’s oblong vertical format, as well as the arrangement of the majority of the figures from the lower register and that of the cherubim who are lifting the Virgin Mary ad astra. From this point on, everything differs, to a great or lesser degree, in favour of the Cuzco painter’s creativity. In the earthly sphere of the painting, for example, the individual depicted in profile between the two Marys has now disappeared, whereas another two faces have been added on the right-hand side. These minor modifications were a device aimed at balancing weights and gaps, in accordance with the painter’s personal tastes, as was the fact that he also added the winged face of a cherub underneath the Virgin. More important was the replacement of the company of angels in the upper left-hand corner of the engraving with two simple winged cherubim in our painting. In short, the Cuzco work gained greater symmetry.
Despite all the above, the painting’s greatest innovation is really the preciosista style so characteristic of the Cuzco school. Rather than a headdress, the Virgin boasts a glorious mane of hair falling down in long, loose ringlets, giving her an almost triangular appearance (almost as if she were a processional figure). Then, in the lower register, instead of the austere and classicist coffin of the engraving, what we find in the painting is not only an embellished and sumptuously decorated version (one might call it Baroque), but one that has also been enlarged (to the point of almost completely obscuring the Mary knelt before it). Finally, throughout the entire painting the cherubim are seen casting and scattering flowers as they rise, alluding to a sort of rhetorical over-abundance of Marian perfumes. The flowers fly, fall and come to rest both on the coffin and the ground. Alongside this hyperbolic device, we should mention that the Virgin has been decorated with a crown of twelve stars, the symbol of the Immaculate Conception.210 But returning to the flowers scattered by the cherubim, what is interesting is that this is the same additional element our painting shares with the aforementioned anonymous work from the Convent of the Carmen de San José in Santiago de Chile, and that opens up a new set of questions.
If we take into account this parallel between our painting and the one from the Carmelite convent, with both being Chilean works originating from Cuzco, did either of them serve as inspiration for the other when it came to the floral innovation, or was there perhaps another painting that acted as a link between them? In one sense, this question lies at the heart of the two works’ chronology, and that borders on speculation. If we limit ourselves to matters of style, the preciosista execution we mentioned earlier, which reaches almost planimetric levels in the funeral clothes, is not easy to date precisely, given there is no study that has set itself the task of untangling the birth and evolution of this underlying characteristic of Cuzco painting. However, in the interests of providing a tentative answer, one might posit a provisional hypothesis, given there does appear to have been a tenuous creative link between our painting and the one from the Carmelite convent. In the light of this apparent iconographic familiarity (but not a stylistic one, we must be quite clear about that), we might date the painting to the late 17th century.