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Art of the Americas to World War I
Course: Art of the Americas to World War I > Unit 4
Lesson 2: Viceroyalty of New Spain- An introduction to New Spain
- Hispaniola’s early colonial art, an introduction
- Prints and Printmakers in Colonial New Spain
- The Bug That Had the World Seeing Red
- The Medici collect the Americas
- Virgin of Guadalupe
- Virgin of Guadalupe
- Defensive saints and angels in the Spanish Americas
- Elite secular art in New Spain
- Classical Architecture in Viceregal Mexico
- Hearst Chalice
- Puebla de los Ángeles and the classical architectural tradition
- La Casa del Deán in Puebla
- Mission churches as theaters of conversion in New Spain
- St. Michael the Archangel in Huejotzingo
- The convento of Acolman
- Murals from New Spain, San Agustín de Acolman
- Atrial Cross, convento San Agustín de Acolman, mid-16th century
- Atrial Cross at Acolman
- The Codex Huexotzinco
- Miguel González, The Virgin of Guadalupe
- Frontispiece of the Codex Mendoza
- Images of Africans in the Codex Telleriano Remensis and Codex Azcatitlan
- The Convento of San Nicolás de Tolentino, Actopan, Hidalgo
- Bernardino de Sahagún and collaborators, Florentine Codex
- Remembering the Toxcatl Massacre: The Beginning of the End of Aztec Supremacy
- Featherworks: The Mass of St. Gregory
- A Renaissance miniature in wood and feathers
- A shimmering saint, St. John in featherwork
- “Burning of the Idols,” in Diego Muñoz Camargo’s Description of the City and Province of Tlaxcala
- Map of Cholula, from the relaciones geográficas
- Engravings in Diego de Valadés’s Rhetorica Christiana
- The manuscripts of Luis de Carvajal
- Baltasar de Echave Ibía, The Hermits
- Mission Church, San Esteban del Rey, Acoma Pueblo
- Sebastián López de Arteaga, Marriage of the Virgin
- Cristóbal de Villalpando, View of the Plaza Mayor of Mexico City
- Talavera poblana
- Biombo with the Conquest of Mexico and View of Mexico City
- Screen with the Siege of Belgrade and Hunting Scene (Brooklyn Biombo)
- Screen with the Siege of Belgrade and Hunting Scene (or Brooklyn Biombo)
- The Virgin of the Macana and the Pueblo Revolution of 1680
- Miguel de Herrera, Portrait of a Lady
- José Campeche, the portraitist of 18th-century Puerto Rico
- José Campeche y Jordán, Portrait of Governor Ramón de Castro
- José Campeche, Exvoto de la Sagrada Familia
- Juan Patricio Morlete Ruiz, Christ Consoled by Angels
- Mission San Antonio de Valero & the Alamo
- Nativity group, from Guatemala
- Jerónimo de Balbás, Altar of the Kings (Altar de los Reyes)
- Miguel Cabrera, Virgin of the Apocalypse
- Cabrera, Portrait of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
- Casta paintings: constructing identity in Spanish colonial America
- Spaniard and Indian Produce a Mestizo, attributed to Juan Rodriguez
- Church of Santa Prisca and San Sebastian, Taxco, Mexico
- Crowned nun portraits, an introduction
- Crowned Nun Portrait of Sor María de Guadalupe
- Escudos de monjas, or nuns’ badges, in New Spain
- Christ Crucified, a Hispano-Philippine ivory
- Saintly violence? Santiago in the Americas
- What does the music of heaven sound like?— St Cecilia in New Spain
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What does the music of heaven sound like?— St Cecilia in New Spain
Andrés de Concha, St. Cecilia, 1590, oil on wood (Museo Nacional de Arte, Mexico City, Mexico)
A conversation with Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank.
Video transcript
(jazz piano music) - [Narrator] We're in the
National Museum of Art in Mexico City, looking at a painting of Saint Cecilia by Andrés de Concha. Saint Cecilia was connected with music. She supposedly lived in the
second or third century. On her wedding day,
music was being played, and she decided not to
focus on that music, but instead to focus on the divine. - [Narrator] And she
convinces her husband to have an abstinent marriage,
meaning they're refraining from sexual relations,
and her husband, Valerias, asks her to show him the
angel that protects her, and the angel comes and crowns them both. And so that crown of roses
that we're seeing here refers to that moment of the story. And the story continues. She and her husband will be executed. What's remarkable is
that instead of focusing on the violence of her martyrdom, eventually she's beheaded,
she's struck in the neck, but here, we see this elegant neck that's exposed to us, but
we don't see the wounds. - [Narrator] Saint Cecilia
lived during the time of the Roman Empire when
Christians were persecuted. We see her seated in an Earthly setting. We also have a heavenly setting. We have the Virgin Mary at
the top with the Christ child, in the middle of a sun and clouds, Saint Cecilia looks up toward the heavens, this foreshortened angel
comes in to crown her. - [Narrator] Andrés de
Concha is really focusing on the glory of this saint. - [Narrator] Right where I feel like I can almost hear the
music of the heavens. - [Narrator] So this painting
was completed around 1590, by this artist who came
from Seville, in Spain, and made his way to the
Americas as part of this early wave of immigrant artists to come and fill the need for more
Europeanized-looking art. - [Narrator] There was
a great need for art, there were churches that were being built that needed altar pieces. In fact, this painting
was meant for a church here in Mexico City. - [Narrator] We think for
the church of St. Augustine, and it would have been
likely placed in the choir, which makes a lot of sense, given the subject matter of the scene. To see this nice mirroring
of the organ in the sky in the heavens with the one that we assume is on the terrestrial, the Earthly realm, it's just behind Saint Cecilia. And then we see a mirroring
of the books of music, and this incredible detail on the table, we see this open book of music, where we can read the musical notations, and that's mirrored
with a book that's open and being read by angels in the sky. - [Narrator] We have a sense of a division between the celestial realm
and the Earthly realm, the blues and silvers
of the spiritual realm, and the greens and the
browns of the Earthly realm. And we also have a
sense of a vertical line that unites the Virgin Mary
and Christ with Saint Cecilia. - [Narrator] There are these
mannerist tendencies here too, and we see that in the
angel playing the harp, where you have these pinks
and greens, like shot silk, and even in some of the
ambiguous spatial dimensions that we see here in the painting. - [Narrator] We can't measure the space between Saint Cecilia and
the angel playing the organ, and the organ itself is
overly foreshortened. There's ambiguity in the
treatment of her anatomy. Her forearm seems too
long, her fingers too long, but that's also contrasted
with areas of the painting where we do see the
artist paying attention to small details. - [Narrator] One of my
favorite details is the tassel on what's probably velvet or some type of luxury material that
is draped over the table, and the artist has very
carefully delineated each little piece of the
fringe on this textile. - [Narrator] Or we could
see it also in the tassels on that green fabric just
behind Saint Cecilia, or in attention to the
luxuriousness of the brocade of her dress, this
mannerist ambiguity of space and attention to the body, but also a Northern renaissance-inspired
attention to detail. So these influences coming together here in New Spain in the late 16th century. - [Narrator] He belongs to this first wave of European artists who are ushering in new artistic techniques and new strategies that are different than
what you're finding in these missionary
complexes called conventos, where you have mural
paintings and art objects that are being made by
the indigenous population. It's this really interesting
moment where you start to see all of these influences coming together and creating something new. - [Narrator] So this move
from paintings on walls, which were part of an
indigenous tradition, to the tradition of painting on canvas. - [Narrator] And something
that would have signaled a more Europeanized object. (jazz piano music)