Pursuits of Don Francisco Tresguerras

Francisco Eduardo Tresguerras was born in Celaya, where he spent most of his life and left exemplars of his work in places such as the Carmelite Church. He traveled to México City in 1774 to explore a possible religious career, and again, in 1794, to seek the degree of "supernumerary academic", which was refused, leaving a lifelong psychological mark on him that is reflected in his writings. Juan Benito Díaz de Gamarra, a key modernizing influence in neo-Hispanic thought, influenced Tresguerras' intellectual development. The latter's literary oeuvre includes Pursuits, the title of which, in addition to paying homage to the writings of Diego de Torres de Villaroel, justifies the wide assortment of topics covered in this work, in which Tresguerras employs the genres of self-portrait and autobiography as means of psychological and critical exploration. In the said piece, which contains some of the best examples of satirical writing produced in New Spain, he impugns, in both prose and poetry, the work of his contemporaries, who did not recognize his genius as an artist and are referred to by him as "dilettante scholars". Several of the book's pages contain illustrative drawings filled with figures taken from Hieronymus Bosch (1450-1516) and Jacques Callot (1559- 1635), and the volume is also adorned with vignettes in ink and watercolor that bear witness to the author's command of artistic technique. Two of these manuscripts exist, one which belongs to the San Carlos Academy and is now located in the Reserve Fund of the Mexican National Library, held by the National Autonomous University (UNAM), and a later one that complements the latter, which, until 1932, belonged to the architect, Federico Mariscal, being acquired by the MUNAL in 1993.