Virgen de Guadalupe

Antonio de Torres, a cousin of the renowned painters, Nicolás and Juan Rodríguez Juárez, was one of the most distinguished and sought after artists of the eighteenth century and was responsible for raising the status of artists and their profession. The image clearly meant to instruct, depicts a beautiful young woman surrounded by the golden rays of the sun with a garland of roses that seem to blossom from the very canvas of the painting. The story is clearly illustrated through the use of the four vignettes at each corner of the composition which recount the narrative of the miracle. The cartouche under the angel’s wings shows the construction of the sanctuary requested by the virgin and underscores the relevance of the image.
The Virgin of Guadalupe, a potent cultural and religious symbol not only in Mexico but throughout the rest of Latin America and the Philippines, became a formidable icon from the time the account of her miraculous apparition on a hill at Tepeyac near Mexico City to a peasant named Juan Diego was known. Her image has been traditionally depicted as a young mestiza with folded hands on a crescent or half-moon and an angel with eagle’s wings at her feet. The young woman’s dark complexion and Spanish features serves as a reminder of a new nation made up of the ancient Aztecs and the foreign conquerors. Her golden cloud refers to her coming from the heavens or realm of the gods. In painting, this is the image that has come down for centuries and has been celebrated and used by artists, poets, writers, and the leaders of the struggles against Spain in nineteenth-century Mexico.