Colonial school, Mexico, 18th century. Virgin of the Solitude. Oil on canvas. The theme is a new way of ...

Colonial school, Mexico, 18th century. Virgin of the Solitude. Oil on canvas. The theme is a new way of representing the sorrows of the Virgin. She appears kneeling with her eyes downcast and desolate, clasping her hands tightly at her waist in a gesture of prayer, after having proceeded to the burial of Christ. She was dressed in the style of the Castilian noble widows of the moment, with a black cloak, white monk garments and a long rosary hanging from her neck. The devotion to this Marian dedication arose in Spain in the middle of the 16th century. This Marian typology originated from the sculpture carved by the Castilian Gaspar Becerra in 1565, for the Convent of the Order of the Minimums of Victory in Madrid, by indications of Queen Isabel de Valois, giving rise to the popular Virgin of the Dove and spread in New Spain aided by pictorial representations, in which the artists used techniques to deceive the eye with the illusion of three-dimensionality, by capturing on the canvas the sculpture of the mother of Jesus Christ on an altar, flanked for bouquets of flowers and curtains. The New Spanish paintings of this Marian dedication were exact representations of the Spanish sculpture carved by Becerra. This work can be related to the one painted by Cristóbal de Villalpando preserved in the San Pedro Museum of Art in Puebla and to the Solitude of the Comendadoras de Santiago Monastery in Madrid. Reference bibliography: Juana Gutiérrez Haces and Pedro Ángeles "Cristóbal de Villalpando, ca. 1649-1714. Reasoned catalog". Banamex Cultural Fund. Mexico, 1997. 145 x 104 cm.