La Caridad en los Primeros Tiempos de la Iglesia

In the corner of a dungeon, a half-naked old man, chained and loaded with fetters, is lying on the floor with his back against the wall. Two men have come to comfort him in prison: one of them, standing on the left, offers him with his right hand a basket with bread and fish, a possible emblematic allusion to the viaticum; the other, with gray hair and beard, is on his knees and is in the act of throwing a mantle of brown wool over the man’s shoulders and back. It seems that this character has taken off his own mantle, in order to tuck in the prisoner. He carries a grey tunic, decorated with a golden border in sleeves and collar, and a "pallium", a liturgical garment consisting of a strip of white cloth made with the wool of two lambs, which covers the shoulders and hangs in front and behind. This object identifies him as an ecclesiastical hierarch, perhaps a bishop. The "pallium" is usually adorned with black crosses; here appears a swastika, a widespread sun symbol that, in this case, refers to Christ.
In October of 1879, the regulation that established the celebration of biennial competitions to encourage advanced students of the National School of Fine Arts, that attended the class of composition, and thus to prepare them conveniently for its definitive emancipation of the school was approved. The subject to be represented was fixed by the professor in charge of the relative branch; the contestants formed an initial sketch and then developed it thoroughly. The awarded works were available for the school and their authors received a bonus that did not exceed 400 pesos.
For the biennial contest of 1883, the subject assigned to students of figure painting was to "represent a sublime act of charity." Three students participated that year with promising results: their works became part of the school galleries and are currently distributed between the Museo de Aguascalientes and the Museo Nacional de Arte: Gonzalo Carrasco presented San Luis Gonzaga helping the sick of the plague of Rome, while Alberto Bribiesca painted El buen samaritano (both paintings are in Aguascalientes). José María Ibarrarán opted for one of the early Christian issues that constituted his specialty: charity in the early days of the church.

It is possible to argue that, just as he had done to paint El sueño del mártir in 1877, on this occasion Ibarrarán was again inspired by the reading of the novel Fabiola, or Iglesias de las Catacumbas (1854), by Cardinal Nicholas Wiseman, more in terms of situations and general ideas that in relation to a narrative or leading specification. Wiseman dedicates several important passages to describing and commenting on the usual visits that the first Christians used to make to the prisons of Rome to help their imprisoned brothers and to give them the viaticum, not without grave danger of being discovered and imprisoned themselves. He explains: "Christians used to provide themselves by means of bribery for entering into those dwellings of pain, and not of sadness, and they facilitated to their beloved and venerated brethren how much they could alleviate their pains and increase their temporal and spiritual consolations." And he insists on describing such visits to prisoners as "a generous act of charity": not because of a central character of the novel, the martyr Pancracio, is taken prisoner in turn when he practiced one of those sublime fraternal acts. Wiseman also mentions the presence, among the inmates, of some old Christians condemned to temporarily serve in the construction of imperial works, before being graced with martyrdom in the circus, where, in the eyes of the pagans, they did not play a good role. They died at the first claw of the beasts.
The insistence of the English writer in the relevance of the artworks of mercy in the times of the church in the catacombs corresponds perfectly with the doctrine and the practice of the Mexican church in the previous years of the total defeat of the conservative party in 1867. The forced political abstention to which the Catholics were reduced led them to concentrate exclusively on the secular apostolate. In a pastoral letter that the archbishops of Mexico, Michoacán and Guadalajara signed in 1875, they exhorted the faithful to adopt, in accordance with the current anticlerical legislation, an attitude of resignation or "passive resistance" strengthened through continuous prayer, the frequent use of the sacraments and the practice of works of piety and mercy. There they encouraged their parishioners to demonstrate that they were "good Catholics, with the soft perfume of their true piety, and with the pure gold of their multiplied works of mercy with the sick, the destitute and the helpless orphan."

There was an intense participation of the laity in educational and social activities. For example, the main tasks of the Sociedad Católica de la Nación Mexicana, founded in December 1868 and very active at least until 1877, were aimed at the foundation and maintenance of schools of Christian orientation, from the most elementary to professional levels; to the publication of newspapers and brochures that defended the traditionalist Catholic positions, and to the charitable work carried out in jails and hospitals. Other pious groups had a great increase at the time, such as the Conferencia de San Vicente de Paul, an association of ladies with charitable purposes that fulfilled the Christian commitment of "caring for men, helping him in his miseries and consoling him in his pains ", as stipulated by Saint Thomas Aquinas (whose thought was then in the process of revaluation). Not by chance, the interest of Catholics to participate in charitable works increased noticeably after Congress decreed, in December 1874, the expulsion from the country of the Hermanas de la Caridad, a religious order highly esteemed and popular in Mexico. Also, in this matter of the promotion of charity, as a response to the obstacles that the government of Lerdo put to the Catholic cult, the official position of the Church had much to do, as expressed in the aforementioned pastoral letter. In fact, the last section of the same is dedicated to reflect on the "Suppression of the Instituto de las Hermanas de la Caridad", and on the different strategies to adopt with the purpose of promoting the practice of acts of mercy and love of neighbor.

Ibarrarán work was painted in 1883, during Manuel González's management, one year before the first re-election of Porfirio Díaz . The policy of conciliation with the Church inaugurated by this president had already been under way for some time. Therefore, the early Christian reference is here associated not so much with the feeling of persecution and precarious life in front of the power of an enemy State (as it is still seen in The Family of the Martyr, by the painter himself), but rather with the need experienced by the Catholic Church to re-connect in some way with its origins, in its desire to reconstitute itself, as well as with the significance given to Christian charity as an answer to the problem of modern "pauperism". Since then, Mexican Catholic thinkers they gave an important place in their publications to the "social problem", resulting from the irresponsible and inhuman notion of property and the concentration of wealth in few hands propitiated by capitalist production. This was one more argument in the endless controversy between Catholics and liberals.

The painting by Ibarrarán, along with the sketches and paintings participating in the biennial contest of 1883, were sent to the twenty-first exhibition of the National School of Fine Arts, which took place in December 1886. It is already said that it won a prize, as well that the paintings of Carrasco and Bribiesca and, in virtue of that, he stayed at the school to be part of his galleries.

The high appreciation of this work was evident in the fact that it was sent, as a sample of Mexican academic production, to the Universal Exposition of Paris in 1889, and to the Columbian Universal Exhibition of Chicago in 1893.

The data we have collected about the career of José María Ibarrarán, after his graduation from the National School of Fine Arts, are scarce and scattered, but allow us to corroborate the painter's fundamental interest in making his career a sort of profession of religious faith. It does not seem he had an abundant production. He did not attend, for example, the twenty-second exhibition (1891) and contributed with only one work to the twenty-third exhibition (1898-1899): Sagrado Corazón de Jesús.

In 1900, he participated with two paintings in the First Contest of Fine Arts organized by the Catholic Circle of Puebla and inaugurated on April 15 of that year: Las informaciones de 1666 and Castillo de Emaús. He won the first prize in the composition section for the first of them, and for the second, a first prize in the section of "Copies of paintings" (although the memory of the exhibition does not clarify which original was copied, it is possible that it was the famous painting by Ramón Sagredo). The painting of Las informaciones de 1666 presented and awarded there was a small version of the mural-sized version executed in 1894 for the collegiate church of Guadalupe, as part of the ornamentation works for the coronation celebrations of the Virgin of Guadalupe, held on October 12, 1895, which was probably the year that the collector José Luis Bello y Zetina acquired this version, in whose museum, located in Puebla, still remains.

With such antecedents, we should not be surprised by the suspicion with which the young students of painting at the National School of Fine Arts looked at Ibarrarán when it seems that the rumor has spread that, as the possible retirement of José Salomé Pina due to his advanced age approaches, that one could be named professor of the class of Painting of colorful. In May of 1903, a group of alarmed students went to Justo Sierra to request that, instead of give the position to Pina Ibarrarán, Germán Gedovius should be granted.

In fact, Ibarrarán was not part of the teaching faculty of the Academy, although he did teach the drawing class at the National Preparatory School. His contact with the Academy was very sporadic and circumstantial.

La caridad en los primeros tiempos de la iglesia entered the National Museum of Art as part of the original collection.