Portrait of the Daughters of Manuel Cordero

From the beginning of his stay in Rome, Juan Cordero gave proof of his talent as a portrait painter, which is evident in the first works that he sent to Mexico. This piece produced later in the artists life, when he was 53 years old, is of a somewhat private nature since the subjects are the painters nieces, Concepción, who is holding a parasol, Guadalupe, dressed in black and shown in profile, Angelita, wearing a white dress, and Dolores, kneeling and clad in blue. The young ladies' attire, well-tailored and made of expensive material, attests to their well to do status, while the somewhat idealized landscape in the background, in which reddish tones and tropical foliage prevail, gives us a glimpse of Chapultepec castle, whose environs, where young people were given to strolling, were a fashionable haunt of the upper class México City dwellers of the day. This life-sized piece was shown at the 1875 XVIIth Exhibition of the San Carlos Academy, where it received a bad press from José Martí and Felipe Santiago Gutiérrez, who especially criticized the inexpressiveness of the faces and the uncalled for idealization of the landscape. On the other hand, Felipe López López disagreed with these strictures, arguing, in another newspaper, that faces showing "strong passions" were appropriate in historical works, but not in portraits. Notwithstanding this controversy, the work was shown at the Philadelphia Exhibition in 1876. Mrs. María Elena Sáinz de Campillo donated this painting to the National Fine Arts Institute. It has been part of the MUNAL s collection since the latter was founded in 1982.