Mariano Alejo Álvarez and his Son

José Gil de Castro was able to adapt the colonial tradition of portraiture to the new demands of his age. The leading protagonists of the independence movement posed for him, including the scholars and middle-ranking officers who formed the new ruling class of the young republic. Mariano Alejo Álvarez (Arequipa, 1781 - Lima, 1855) was one of those who participated in the defining of republican Peru. His portrait would have been painted around 1834, when he was named as president of the Supreme Court of Justice. His figure stands imposingly straight on the surface of the canvas. His rigid posture and austere suit project the image of a strict and severe patriarch. This formality is contrasted with the domestic setting in which he is placed with his young son, who is represented in an identical pose, as an echo or reflection of the paternal image. The forms of the body are expressed in an abstracted lineal synthetism that contrasts with the excessive naturalism of the details of the faces. But it is precisely this rigidity in the pictorial design, together with the obsessive detail and dense materiality of its execution, which lends his work the powerful presence that characterizes it. By giving a citizen like Álvarez the pasteboard pose of independence heroes, Gil de Castro manages to transform his subject into a true icon of the republic. (NM)