Mercury Lulling Argos to Sleep

The Catalonian Sculptor, Manuel Vilar, arrived in México at the end of the 1840's to run the sculpture department of the renovated San Carlos Academy. As a teacher, he succeeded in transmitting to his students the strict tenets of the Classical school of sculpture while at the same time incorporating the fashion for using the emotionally charged expressions and delicate, sinuous, almost sensual lines that were associated with Romanticism. He trained up talented sculptors such as Juan Bellido y Felipe Sojo. From time to time, the Academy put on exhibitions of its students' work, at which participants' progress could be ascertained and scholarships awarded to the creators of the most outstanding pieces. The present sculpture, shown at the VII th Exhibition in 1855, took second place in the groups' category and earned its creator a 160-pesos prize. The piece concerns itself with a topic from Greco-Roman mythology, depicting Mercury, wearing his typical winged helmet, as he sits atop a tree stump playing his flute, while Argos, sitting with his back against the same stump, is sunk in a lethargic torpor induced by the sound of the instrument. The figures are shown moments before Mercury, at the behest of his father, Jupiter, kills Argos with the sword he is holding in his left hand, thus permitting the goddess, lo, to escape the scrutiny of Juno's servant. This sculpture remained in the Academy's collection until the early XXth century. It then stood in the National San Carlos Museum, becoming part of the MUNAL's founding endowment in 1982.