Madrid,
In the exhibition line aimed at strengthening the presence of viceregal art in its speeches, the Prado Museum hosts the exhibition “so far, so close. Guadalupe from Mexico in Spain”. He began to take shape in 2018, when Jaime Cuadriello, his commissioner with Paula Sumba, directed at the La Cátedra Museum From painting to the era of the image: Spain/ New Spain; Only a year ago since the arrival of Miguel Falomir to the direction of the Pinacoteca, and that line, that of blurring the borders between the art of the Peninsula and that of the viceroyalty, favoring the visibility of the latter, was among its purposes.
In this sample, precisely, the dialogues between the paintings made to the either side of the Atlantic are constant, and the hierarchies, left aside around the image of the Guadalupana, probably the most venerated virgin in Christianity (and perhaps also, as Cuadriello has pointed out, for those who do not believe). Around it a diverse iconography was generated in one and the other geographies, but with suggestive contact points, the result of intense relations between Spain and the viceroyalties and between the territories at local and regional level.
There were more than a thousand works of art linked to the Virgin of Guadalupe who crossed the ocean to be treasured in our country since the seventeenth century, in which the commissioner baptized as a spiritual and artistic transfer unprecedented, with social and emotional derivatives and unparalleled in other European countries with respect to their overseas territories. Keep in mind that, in their transfers, these compositions were accompanied by chaplains, fortunes and sumptuous objects.
To the first religious dimension of the images of the Guadalupana, others that turn these works into the starting point of multiple cultural and political studies were gradually added: the Creole leaders used them as a means of extolling the Hispanic monarchy, especially in the critical stages of the reign of Felipe IV during your independence process. Its expansion did not retreat, yes, the result of the geopolitical fluctuations: the cult arrived in Italy, the Philippines, Portugal and the rest of South America.
Most of the pieces that are part of the tour The oldest of the exhibition correspond to José Juárez, are dated in 1656 and come from the monastery of Sister María de Jesús de Ágreda (Soria); They open the visit.
They testify to the appearance of the Guadalupana, a century and a few decades before, on the hill of the Tepeyac (former sacred space) and the indigenous Juan Diego, dressed in clothes that, according to tradition, shone like the sun. He wanted a temple to be dedicated in that area and made several miracles: the healing of the dying uncle Juan Diego himself, the birth of flowers in an arid and lifeless zone and the expression of his own image in the tilma, the dress, which carried who saw her. Given the relatively recent character of these events, the works of art acquired the role of diffuser of that news in the orb, becoming a sensation.
The exhibition is structured in thematic sections that collect from the earliest representations to VERA EFFIGIES that were reproduced for devotional or political purposes seeking to replicate that initial stamp miraculously preserved in a gross fabric, not suitable for pigment. We will observe very close creations of the aforementioned Juárez and Velázquez (his portrait of Jerónima de la Fuente), from Zurbarán, Juan Correa, Antonio Vallejo or Manuel de Arellano.
From that thousand works of Guadalupana themes that arrived in Spain (eighteen of our cathedrals they received them) most did so from the mid -seventeenth century to the independence of Mexico, in 1821. From that date, the circulation of these images has been reduced, linking to globalization and migrations and exiles.
The representation model was soon configured: the Novohispanos Juárez and Correa and the Andalusian recorder Matías de Arteaga carried out the first series dedicated to the apparitions and established a fee that survived for three centuries and that was not only pictorial, because he moved to the sculpture, the Sunctuaria arts and even the architecture.
He responded to a scheme of late and Nordic origin, although due to his dating he also offers Renaissance proportions. The hands of the Virgin appear in prayer, and her figure is surrounded by a solar mandorla. Pisa a waning moon and an angelic Escabel, as we will appreciate in the compositions of Pedro Villegas, an oil on the table arrived from Seville, or in the altarpiece of the Virgin of the Pópulo de Medina del Campo. This iconography was equally characteristic of Marian advocations very widespread in that same period, the first half of the 16th century, and link with the representations of the Immaculate Conception.
Some images of Guadalupana were clearly inserted into artistic debates of the moment, such as the claim of an intellectual status, and not only handmade, for painting. According to some interpretations, God would have painted this Virgin using as pigment those roses of Juan Diego and San Lucas would have inherited that power to paint it. Both portrayed, in turn, in that process Juan Correa, José García Hidalgo and, perhaps, Joaquín Villegas.
In any case, this reproduction of the Marian image in the rustic layer of the indigenous was conceived as a great proof of the sacred character of the appearance, for remaining intact despite the unfavorable conditions. In one of the first Mexican altarpieces that were provided to the Virgin, a Santa Faz to equate the divine nature of both; And in the meadow we will contemplate the recreation of the latter by Zurbarán.
Since it was usual for these images to be veiled, covered by light curtains or stained glass, and that only exceptional occasions were revealed, to maintain their mystery halo, the assembly has replicated that sifted perception in one of his works. Music would reinforce those sensations and, curiously, in many representations of the Virgin of Guadalupe Extremadura curtains, fringes and gallons suggested trapantojos and enigma.
Delicious pieces in polypine workshop polycromy and another with Nácar inlays from Castellón. They refer to the aforementioned arrival of this cult of the Philippines, a context in which the images with Encanchados would be related to the ornamental work of Las Lacas Namban Japanese
As for the first Guadalupes That they were exposed to the cult in Madrid, were arranged at the initiative of Pedro de Gálvez, general visitor of New Spain, in the former convent of the Augustinian Recoletos and in the school of Doña María de Aragón, corresponding to the Augustinian shoes. They have been lost, but in the exhibition we can see an engraving by Pedro de Villafranca that collects one of those works and an oil from Senén Vila that responds to its model. In addition, the one who in the mid -18th century was the best -known recorder in the capital, Juan Bernabé Palomino, also dedicated to this Virgin a stamp that was very popular in both America and Spain and that celebrated his Board of Trustees on Mexico City, proclaimed in 1737.
Only a few years later, in 1746, it would be sworn as the main patron of New Spain, after a severe epidemic, and then multiplied their representations outside the viceroyalty. The weapons or the Aguileño shield alluded to them to the kingdom, then showing the Virgin as an indigenous princess carrying some attributes of the ancient Empire of Moctezuma.
It also refers to exposure to the diffusion of the Mexican sanctuary of Guadalupe in images converted into Memory locusdestined to activate faith in the distance, to culminate with those VERA EFFIGIES: Scale or faithful portraits of the original stamp to transmit its sacred character. They incorporated to them posters that narrated the appearance and that defended the condition of the first image as a divine work, not exit of the hand of man.
The function of these compositions was to celebrate faith in the Guadalupana, hence the floral garlands, the lauretan litanies symbols, the choirs, the laceriarias and their motto, taken from a psalm (the 147): Nothing did the same with any other nation.
Other verses of Sister Juana Inés de Castilla, which related the cult in Mexico and Spain without verticalities, also recalled the commissioners: The compound of Wonder/ Divine Protective American/ that is passed by Mexican pink/ Rosa de Castilla appears.
“So far, so close. Guadalupe from Mexico in Spain”
National Prado Museum
Paseo del Prado, s/n
Madrid
From June 10 to September 14, 2025
