The Antesacristy of the Franciscan Convent

Eugenio Landesio, an Italian, arrived in México in 1855 from Saint Lukes Academy in Rome in order to join the staff of the National Fine Arts School as a teacher of perspective, landscape and ornate painting. Alongside the depiction of rural landscapes and urban scenes, Landesio promoted a sub-genre called "building interiors", which was very popular and much in demand, forming a part of the "perspective painting" which concerned itself with the depiction of streets, squares and buildings linked to the political, religious and cultural history of México. Views of interiors inject some features of daily life into the hidden world of city salons by means of broad focus, the miniaturization of figures and painstaking rendering of the minute details of buildings and ornamentation, while the religious buildings in México City, which were outstanding for their monumental size and showiness, attested to a strong adherence to the Catholic faith and reflected the stylistic principles of Baroque art in general. The Franciscan Convent, one of the biggest, most imposing buildings in Viceregal México –of which the only part that remains today is the Chapel of Our Lady of Balvanera, in front of the "House of Tiles" in Madero Street- took the form of an immense quadrilateral that covered an entire city block on the western edge of the capital. Landesio faithfully reproduced the antesacristy of this monastic building, sparing no detail in his endeavor to convey the mystical atmosphere that filled the said space, inspiring genuine self-communion. Europeans did not fail to be impressed by the intense religiosity -generally lacking in their own countries- that prevailed in Spanish America. Before Landesio, the Italian, Pedro Gualdi, and the Englishman, John Phillips, among others, had already depicted this popular religious fervor that attached to Spanish-American religious buildings. This work was shown at the VIII th Annual Exhibition of the old Saint Carlos Academy, and went on to form part of the latter institution's collection. It passed from the National San Carlos Museum to the MUNAL in 1982.