Attributed to Juan Patricio Morlete (San Miguel el Grande, Guanajuato, Mexico, 1713/1715 - Mexico, 1772)

Attributed to Juan Patricio Morlete (San Miguel el Grande, Guanajuato, Mexico, 1713/1715 - Mexico, 1772)
"Triumphal entrance of Alexander in Babylon"
Six-panel folding screen. Oil on canvas. 192 x 312 cm. The first panel is missing.
An oil painting on canvas (n.d.) by Juan Patricio Morlete was exhibited in 2015 at the Museo Nacional de San Carlos in Mexico, as part of the permanent exhibition "Neoclasicismo" with the same theme and great compositional similarities to this painting. There is another canvas also by Morlete which is very similar to the former, which forms part of the artistic patrimony of the Fomento Cultural Banamex. It is one of the paintings of the set of battles of Alexander the Great which the artist painted in 1767, inspired, as Ilona Katzew explains (2014), by a monumental series of engravings by Charles Le Brun (Paris, 1619 - 1690) of "The Triumphs of Alexander", which were commissioned by Louis XIV and sent to European governors as propaganda. One of the engravings by Jean Audran (Lyon, 1667 - Paris, 1756), can be found in the Barcelona Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya (MNAC).
We find it curious that the scene in our painting is in reverse, compared with the two canvases we mentioned, the engravings and the original picture by Le Brun (1665), which is exhibited in the Louvre Museum. This may be due to the fact that, as this is a screen and not a fixed painting, the final location of the piece of furniture would have influenced whether the painter would decide to develop the scene in this direction, considering that this would have been a commission, which is most likely. Moreover, the artist moved the scene to an environment with more vegetation and no architectural structures, he varied the treatment of the colour by adding more reddish tones, incorporating some native elements (feathers, cloaks, etc.) and he even draws some faces which, in our opinion, have more indigenous features. It is known that Morlete made variations on the original engraving on occasions, for fun or because the commission he received required it. He would augment the margins or add characters and vegetation, which could explain these modifications.
In any case, as well as the obvious similarity in the theme, composition and main elements of the painting, we would like to go deeper with this comparison and point out the treatment that the artist gave to the horses, giving them special expressivity, as if he was painting their portraits or wished to humanise them or give them a certain personality, with some features that are recognisable in the three paintings we are concerned with.
With regard to the support of our painting, folding screens arrived in the New World through the route that united the Far East and Spain via Mexico, on vessels known as the China Ship or Manila Galleon. It is not exactly known when the first contact with New-Hispanic society with this and other products of an Asian origin happened, but it is known that they formed part of the embarkations in 1585, when a Japanese ambassador came to Mexico City as part of her voyage to visit Philip II and Pope Gregory XIII. Katzew (2014) also reminds us that screens were also the central items in 1614 in a gift from the Japanese shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu (Okazaki, 1543 - Shizuoka, 1616) to the viceroy Luis de Velasco (1607 - 1611).
This growing exchange between Asian and Colonial Latin American civilisation was not an accident, it happened in the context of the empowerment of the creoles in which, according to Gauvin A. Bailey (2007) "feelings contrary to Spain" began to grow, and "Asian art gave Hispanic-Americans a way of expressing their pride in the indigenous antiquity of their land."
With regard to folding screens, these were extremely popular in New-Spanish houses, becoming an essential piece of furniture in practically all the homes of the period, almost regardless of the household’s economy. In fact, Sofía Sanabrais (2007) tells of the existence of "biombos ordinarios" (ordinary screens) with cheap textiles and no paintings in humble homes. However, this did not mean that screens became unattractive to richer families; it was quite the opposite, they were widespread among the houses of the élite, and their multifunctionality may be a possible reason for this.
On the one hand, New-Hispanic screens were used to delimit spaces or hide furniture, in their most practical aspect, as occurred with the "biombos de cama" or bed screens (Sanabrais, 2007). On the other, their decorative use also had many devotees, whether as "backdrops or as central pieces for social meetings, in which they would serve as a subject of conversation, " (Katzew, 2014); we imagine that these conversations would be especially lively when they were referring to screens painted by the best artists of the period: Cabrera, Correa or Morlete himself. In fact, we know of a screen in the Franz Mayer Museum in Mexico that is signed by Juan Correa: "The four elements and the liberal arts" (c. 1670); and "Folding screen with fête galante and musicians" (c. 1760) can be attributed to Miguel Cabrera. Although, the majority of screens that have survived to the present day are anonymous as they were not normally signed by the artist (Codding, 2007).
Finally, focussing on the artistic value of the "protection against the wind" (if we refer to folding screens using the literal translation of the Japanese term ‘byôbu’, which the Spanish ‘biombo’ comes from), the suitability of their format with, usually, ten screens around two metres high, for depicting narrative compositions must be highlighted. It is not surprising, therefore, that they made the ideal support for mythological and allegorical subjects which we see in the screen by Correa that was previously mentioned. They are also ideal for views of cities, as we see in one of the first screens that illustrates the Mexican capital (1690 - 1692), in the Franz Mayer Museum, as well as scenes of high-class parties, such as the screen attributed to Cabrera; or for historical themes, good examples of this being "The Conquest of Mexico" attributed to Miguel González (Mexico, active 1662 - 1698) or the folding screen we have here, which we attribute to Morlete.

Bibliographic references:
- Bailey, G. A. (2007). Asia en las artes de la América Latina colonial. En J. J. Rishel y S. Stratton-Pruitt (Comps.), Revelaciones. Las artes en América Latina, 1492 - 1820. (pp. 57-71). Fondo de Cultura Económica.
- Brown, J. (2014). De la pintura española a la pintura novohispana, 1550-1700. En L. E. Alcalá y J. Brown (Eds.), Pintura en Hispanoamérica, 1550 - 1820. (pp. 103-148). Ediciones El Viso.
- Codding, M. A. (2007). Las artes decorativas en América Latina, 1492 - 1820. En J. J. Rishel y S. Stratton-Pruitt (Comps.), Revelaciones. Las artes en América Latina, 1492 - 1820. (pp. 98-145). Fondo de Cultura Económica.
- Kagan, R. L. (Ed.). (1998). Imágenes urbanas del mundo hispánico. 1493 - 1780. Ediciones El Viso e Iberdrola.
- Katzew, I. (2007). Estrellas en el Mar de la Iglesia: los indios en la pintura novohispana del siglo XVIII. En J. J. Rishel y S. Stratton-Pruitt (Comps.), Revelaciones. Las artes en América Latina, 1492 - 1820. (pp. 337-481). Fondo de Cultura Económica.
- Katzew, I. (2014). Pinceles valientes. La pintura novohispana, 1700-1785. En L. E. Alcalá y J. Brown (Eds.), Pintura en Hispanoamérica, 1550 - 1820. (pp. 149-204). Ediciones El Viso.
- López Guzmán, R. (Ed.). (2021). Tornaviaje. Arte iberoamericano en España. Museo Nacional del Prado.
- Museo Nacional de San Carlos (30 de marzo de 2015). Juan Patricio Morlete Ruiz, Mexico, 1713-1772 Entrada triunfal de Alejandro el Grande, s.f. Óleo sobre tela, 83 x 127 [Tweet] [Imagen adjunta]. Twitter. https://twitter.com/museo_sancarlos/status/582608136462204928