Images for Faith and Devotion

Wooden frame wrapped in silver leaf for a worship painting. In the corners and in the interstices it has overlapping spear-like plates in silver plate, embossed with flowers and fallen leaves.

Due to its style the work may belong to the baroque tradition, but evolving into neoclassicism, when crests with flower garlands intertwined with adornments of bows and ribbons became fashionable.

This portrait represents a little over half the body of Miguel Anselmo Abreu y Valdes (1711-1774), native of Tenerife in the Canary Islands, who came from a distinguished family in the King's service.

The portrait identifies him already as the Bishop of Oaxaca, which perhaps was done to remember who he was in an important time in Puebla. The subject of the portrait looks at the spectator while he touches the pectoral cross that distinguishes him as bishop.

This work from the Amparo Museum represents Juan de Palafox Mendoza (1600-1651), a prelate in Puebla de los Angeles from 1640 to 1649.  

 It is an engraving painted with great care and delicacy in which Palafox looks at the spectator and touches his pectoral cross, insomuch that behind one can see the miters of the bishoprics that governed.

Due to the visible characteristics of the paper, it was suspected that it could be a work manufactured in the 19th century, although its theme seemed to belong more to the 18th.

This is a small format painting on copper, of those that were worn on the chest of nuns of some orders such as the Conceptionists, the Hieronymites and in some cases Augustinians and Dominicans, as a group and personal emblem.

These objects have generally been called " nuns' shields" but in the colonial era the term shield was very rare, and the name that was used consistently was "chest medals."  

These small works, almost like cabinet pictures, were made by the great painters who worked regularly in larger formats which is why in many cases they are signed. The Amparo Museum medal, for example, is signed by Jose Maria Vazquez.

It fits the model for chalices, which is basically defined by the undulating and rounded profiles and a stem composed of two contrasting piroform pieces. This became fashionable in New Spain during the second quarter of the eighteenth century.  

Generally covered with dense naturalist ornamentation in relief, the model was equally as cultivated by the silversmiths of the vice-royal court as by those in Puebla de los Angeles.  

  Portable solar-style monstrance set on four supports cast in the shape of an inverted pear. It has an ovoid base with a protruding rim. The base is divided into two areas by a smooth step, the lower part of the convex profile. 

As was standard for Mexican chalices and monstrances at the turn of the nineteenth century, the base hides the internal mounting of the piece through a lid or decorated plate, screwed onto the base through the four piriform feet that hold it off the ground.  

Circular alms dish worked in embossed silver plate. A wide rim with an undulating border decorated with a classic laurel wreath.  

  It is clear that the piece was wrought in New Spain, where this type of circular alms dish completely covered with radial vegetal decoration and with a central button for a religious figure, mainly in cast silver, became popular in the seventeenth century.  

A pair of lecterns on fixed iron supports made in embossed silver plate and nailed onto an inner frame of cedar wood.

Rectangular in shape, the support is defined by its sinuous contours determined by the trace of movement of the rockeries and struts that are silhouetted at the edges.  

Characteristic of Baroque silversmithing are this type of altar lecterns made of a wood core covered with laminates of embossed silver.   

In the Vice-royalty of New Spain, Bartholomew the Apostle was usually represented by following two basic iconographic types: as a dignified apostle, with few attributes, clothed and accepting the divine plan; or else  at the time of his martyrdom.

The Amparo Museum painting represents him as the first type, in an oval format in which Bartholomew appears half-length with the knife with which he was flayed in his hand and a book; most likely the Bible.  

This oval from the Amparo Museum, of great simplicity and concentrated emotionalism, has artistic characteristics that recall the good craftsmanship of painters such as Jose de Ibarra and his disciples.  

The sacristy chests of drawers are items of furniture that serve to store the various liturgical vestments worn by the religious orders in those places before practicing their Sacred Duties.   

It is not an inlaid piece, or one that features complex decoration. It has three front drawers which are crudely decorated. Some of the motifs, such as the stars with flowers and vegetation, were carved as separate pieces and subsequently positioned on the fronts of the drawer.

As far as the handles are concerned, all indications suggest they are from the vice-royal period.  

The original work from which the painting derives in the Amparo Museum was painted by Lucas Cranach "The Elder" around 1537, for the first electors of Saxony. "At the beginning of the 17th century, it was given to the Archduke-Bishop of Passau, a German city located on the Danubio River.

While it was still in Passau, around 1622, a vicar made a copy; this replica was known as Passaviensis, which was dedicated as a protector against the waters and the plague.

The work in the Museum is an example of this increasing devotion, as its label indicates, against the plague. It also has a unique engraving on the back of the canvas that says "Josepe Clemente", a name that perhaps refers to the creator or to the person with whom he traded with for the fabric or the work.