(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)