SOURCE OF DEVOTION AND INSPIRATION

María Santissima de la Merced, La Peregrina de Quito (the Pilgrim of Quito). Italy. Circa 1770.

Exceptional engraving on paper. Measurements. Engraving: 50 x 37.5 cm. (19.68 x 14.76 in.) Plate: 52.2 x 42.5 cm. (20.55 x 16.73 in.). Piece in very good condition, with few specks of oxidation.

Print made in the workshops of a famous Italian house, owned by the Remondini family. The latter devoted special attention to the sale of its works in Spain and in the Spanish-American overseas territories. Painted papers and prints that originate in American "provincial" paintings forming a corpus with Mexican, Central American, Peruvian devotions (including the provincial “Peregrina de Quito”, whose fame expanded when it was transferred to Cádiz) and Brazilians.

Objects of devotion, the prints reached a strong influence on Spanish-American viceregal painting of a religious nature. In this exchange, the Remondini house, founded in the late 1650s in Italy, reached its peak thanks to merchants based in Cádiz, who took their merchandise to America. The stamp referring to the Pilgrimage of Quito - three versions are known, one of them offered here - apparently takes as a model an engraving made in 1768 by the Sevillian Diego de San Román y Codenia. (1).

In religious practices, says Díez Borque: “There were occasions when the stamp came to be considered as a talisman against misfortunes, since in addition to recounting in it the miracles that had been performed through the Virgin of a certain dedication, such as the stamp of the “Milagrosisima Image of María Santísima de la Merced, the Pilgrim of Quito, venerated in her Convent of the Barefoot Mercedarian Fathers of the City of Cádiz”, collected at the same time the scene of the resurrection of a dead person (. ..) ”. (2) So we see it in the scene formed in the upper right corner.

Notes:

1. Raffaele Moro R .: Las torpes imágenes americanas: devociones locales entre los Alpes y los Andes a través de las estampas Remondini. In “Andina Magazine”, Year 12, No. 2, December 1994, p. 496.

2. José M.a Díez Borque: El auto sacramental y el imaginario visual religioso: Antiguo Testamento. In "Current state of Calderorian studies", edition of Luciano García Lorenzo, Kassel, 2000, p. 53.