The Metropolitan Cathedral

Once Mexico had won its independence, its frontiers were opened to the citizens and interests of foreign powers that were in competition with Spain. The Englishman, John Phillips, was one of a series of foreigners known as "traveling artists" who, while in this country, drew and painted all the features of the young -and, to them, exotic- nation that fascinated them. While representing British mining companies in the Hidalgo region, Phillips also took advantage of his stay here to draw exterior and interior views of Mexican buildings that belong to the genre known as "perspectives", which places emphasis on the painstaking depiction of buildings, taking great care with the vanishing lines, in order to produce faithful effects of scale and depth. In 1848, his drawings of buildings, squares and cities were converted into lithographs in London and, along with his descriptive comments, published as an album under the title Mexico Illustrated, aimed at a British public interested in scenes from faraway countries. One of the plates in this volume depicts the enormous expanse of the Mexican capitals main square as the true heart of the nation. The said square is seen from the south side, with the imposing facades of the Metropolitan Cathedral and its chapel in the center, and is peopled by convivial figures from the different sectors of Mexican society. This plate, which is, at one and the same time, an exemplar of the oeuvre of one of the first foreign artists to visit Mexico and a valuable visual historical record of the place depicted, formed part of the collection of works donated to the MUNAL by the National Fund for Culture and the Arts under an agreement signed on the 12th of June, 1991.